I cannot seem to catch up n either blog reading nor writing since I left for Greece almost 4 weeks ago.  I have been home now almost two weeks and am swamped with three reports to write (with background papers on Greek and data either not yet found or in Turkish and in Greek and a summary article.  The reports I get paid for; the summary article is pro bono sort of.  The client will pay for my 145 Euro steak supper in the Galaxy Restaurant of the Athens Hilton.  I wandered in there out of curiosity and asked for a menu.  The salad was 23 Euro and I thought "What the Hell, might as well go for broke".  All this for a view of the Acropolis in the distance.  But it was an AWESOME steak.

Something I learned since I got home is not to drink a pot of coffee after supper and then read the comments section on an article about GMOs.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/10/filipino-farmers-destroy-genetically-modified-golden-rice-crops/

The absolute ignorance and venom spewed at anyone who dared to even question the notion that all GMOs are poison made my blood boil and I laid awake half the night.  The Left loves "research polls" that show that the Right does not trust science but it is my observation that the anti-food, anti-agriculture, anti-everything folks of the Looney Left have no more trust in science than the Repugnant Right.  They, too, only believe "science" that reinforces their already existing world view.  AGW?  "Science" says we MUST destroy Big Oil.  GMOs?  "Science" is all evil lies, paid for by Big Ag. Apparently "97% of all scientists" only counts when it agrees with me.

Today I ran into these two blog posts which in themselves are interesting but the real gems are in the comments section.

http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/11/08/argumentum-ad-monsantium/

http://kfolta.blogspot.com/2012/07/thoughts-from-shill-for-monsanto.html