According to Hansen at Consumers Union, more than 50 countries containing a third of the world’s population require some sort of labeling of food containing GMOs. Hirshberg said that countries requiring labeling include all of the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea and Russia.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not require labeling and, Agriculture Committee Chair Carolyn Partridge, D-Windham, said, no state does, either. Hirshberg said that 21 states are working on similar bills.

The committee is clearly hesitant to make Vermont the first state in the nation to pass a law opposed by biotechnology giants like Monsanto, a company with a track record of aggressive litigation to protect their products.

We pursue these matters for three main reasons. First, no business can survive without being paid for its product. Second, the loss of this revenue would hinder our ability to invest in research and development to create new products to help farmers. We currently invest over $2.6 million per day to develop and bring new products to market. Third, it would be unfair to the farmers that honor their agreements to let others get away with getting it for free. Farming, like any other business, is competitive and farmers need a level playing field.

GMDNA and natural DNA are indistinguishable according to the most mundane chemistry, i.e., they have the same chemical formula or atomic composition. Apart from that, they are as different as night and day. Natural DNA is made in living organisms; GMDNA is made in the laboratory. Natural DNA has the signature of the species to which it belongs; GMDNA contains bits copied from the DNA of a wide variety of organisms, or simply synthesized in the laboratory. Natural DNA has billions of years of evolution behind it; GMDNA contains genetic material and combinations of genetic material that have never existed.

Furthermore, GMDNA is designed – albeit crudely - to cross species barriers and to jump into genomes. Design features include changes in the genetic code and special ends that enhance recombination, i.e., breaking into genomes and rejoining. GMDNA often contains antibiotic resistance marker genes needed in the process of making GM organisms, but serves no useful function in the GM organism.

The GM process clearly isn’t what nature does (see "Puncturing the GM myths", SiS22). It bypasses reproduction, short circuits and greatly accelerates evolution. Natural evolution created new combinations of genetic material at a predominantly slow and steady pace over billions of years. There is a natural limit, not only to the rate but also to the scope of gene shuffling in evolution. That’s because each species comes onto the evolutionary stage in its own space and time, and only those species that overlap in space and time could ever exchange genes at all in nature. With GM, however, there’s no limit whatsoever: even DNA from organisms buried and extinct for hundreds of thousands of years could be dug up, copied and recombined with DNA from organisms that exist today.

• water damage in second floor ceiling sheetrock/wall sheetrock could have been caused by ice dams on third, but he's agreeing with this more by process of elimination than by any direct evidence.
• sheathing on third floor appear to have failed at least in part
  (possibly plywood was not as thick as currently recommended for rafter spacing, possibly years of ice dams and snow, possibly having tar paper instead of ice and snow shield if that's what's under shingles, possibly not vented correctly/not right at ridgeline/not at all )
• he gave a "if it was my house" recommendation:
  put a cold roof of corrugated metal on the third floor. Don't take off anything, but use 2x4 for strapping (not the regular strapping), and use metal but not standing seam. 

Another colored pencil on mat board, 6cm x 6cm.

Part of the once-hypothetical "Critters Lugging Stuff Around" series.

Possibly not quite done, now I see it larger onscreen after the scan. Something about the bottom of the suitcase and the contrast by the suitcase handle.

Hmm. Well, if I update this, I'll note so here. If I remember!

On stuff in my deviantArt prints so far. Maybe more later.

Mom had some scraps of mat board she was getting rid of, so I thought I'd try my hand at a technique I've seen Jessica Douglas [link] do some time ago. (Go see her very fabulous art, even though there's nothing quite like this in her gallery right now.)

So. Colored pencil on mat board.

Very fun! Because of the darkness of the mat, and because of the thickness/strength of the board, I had to push my nervousness with applying color with a heavier hand. Very good for me!

I don't have a mat cutter, so the other experiment was trimming away some of the red with an X-acto knife. Feh. I like it OK in the original (better than a smooth edge), but not in the digital versions, go figure.

Also, there's clearly some dust on my scanner. Whoops. Nor am I at all sure that you are seeing the colors I am, and on my laptop's LCD screen, the colors are darker and slightly more muted than in the original.

The original is about 6cm by 6 cm. Yeah, tiny! ANd that's why this image is so small—sure, I scanned it at 600dpi (the scanner whined about 1200, silly thing, though that was before I rebooted it), so I could print it bigger, but ... I probably shouldn't! (Might anyway...)

Longfingers (inked, whole) by *metasilk on deviantART

Inked drawing of some creatures from somewhere and/or somewhen else. Inspired (accidentally, compositionally) by a coloring book illustration from Torn World.

This is a digitally cleaned up version of the original illustration. There's a matte version also (that is how I gave it to my friend for her birthday).

Visually, I wonder which version is better, and why... I don't mean in terms of quality of the image file you see, but whether the cropped (by the matting) or uncropped one is better.

I also had in the back of my a head a book I had as a kid, After Man: A Zoology of the Future. I think these are marsupalian, with some raccoon-like and some lemur-like characteristics.

List for the New Room

1. Cut, rout, and install back-band around trim (finished in April or early May)
2. Caulk around trim (finished!)
   1. storage room (10/23)
   2. inner hall (in progress, waiting on back band, December)
   3. main room (in progress, waiting on back band, January)
3. Install island loft floor with trapdoor (edging install late April or early May)(flooring installed. Not sure when in 2011. Needs urethane and trapdoor. Oh, and ladders!)(Working on railings Feb 2012. Still needs another coat urethane on floor, but railing posts got urethaned 2/12/12!)
4. Loft trim (most room trim installed in 2010, backband in 2011; there's a little more to do in loft and to cover where the settling/snow-bearing spackle-cracking happens)
5. Priming
   1. ceilings in storage and inner hall (11/1/10 storage ceiling)(Inner hall primed sometime; it was primed anyway when I started cutting in today 2/12/12)
   2. prime (white) the room (partly done in 2010; still needs the rest of the priming on ceiling)(on hold while insurance sorts out water damage--Feb.Mar 2012)
   3. prime (grey) island loft walls (brief diversion as we repair some sheetrock dents with spackle, Jan-Feb 2012...)(Changed plans, and only grey-primed island loft walls. Mo and I did that yesterday, 2/11/12!)
   4. prime doors and trim (all but doors and window sashes are pre-primed, yay!)(In progress! lepi and Mo and I primed the doors, Feb 2012).
6. Painting
   1. Paint storage room (11/3 in progress: did the cut-in of corners; 11/4: rolled 1 coat; 2nd cut in; 11/6: 2nd coat rolled...)
   2. paint inner hall (cutting in bright Sunflower yellow today, 2/12/12! Great paint--first mixed in 2000 or 2003 and finally getting used. Glorious color.)(Finished the yellow! Primed and first coat of trim done too! 4/26/12 Almost done!)
   3. doors
      1. paint (First coat real paint on Mo's room door, part of inner closet door, Mar 2012)(Inner closet door has full first coat 4/26/12)
      2. install knobs
   4. paint room 4 colors
      1. Sea teal (R did a coat of this early fall 2011, I can't remember. Great color. Needs second coat and to have the upper (horizon) line cleaned up.)(On hold pending insurance adjuster for water damange, mar 2012)
      2. Gold straw island (first coat of gold straw (island loft) and  done in early fall 2011.)
      3. Bashful blue, day sky ceiling
      4. Evening blue, night sky loft walls (Woot! Mo and I did the first coat of this today 2/12/12. Lovely. Looks lighter until it dries.)
   5. trim
      1. storage trim (installed, primed.)
      2. inner hall trim (first coat started Mar 2012)(finished first coat 4/26/12)!
      3. room trim (On hold pending insurance adjuster for water damage, mar 2012)
   6. paint chalkboard fish
   7. add glitter, maybe
   8. add glow-in-the-dark stars
7. Electric
   1. Install switches (In Progress: 11/6: R installed light, switch in storage; I think some switches were finished by February. Had to redo part of the wall because missed finishing some wiring -- OOOPS.)
   2. Install lights (In Progress! 11/6: R installed light in storage by swapping new light into M's old room and putting that smaller one in the storage room/closet).
   3. Install fans
8. Replace window hardware
9. Install shelves in storage room (11/6: R starts cutting baords; Abi tests bottom shelves at baseboard height. She is so going to to climb these eventually...11/7: R cuts more boards! Done! by end of November 2010)
10. Bring all the STUFF back up from the living room to storage (Done! by end of December 2010)
11. Furnishings
    1. Make nice shelves for inner hall
    2. Make nice cupboard for inner hall
    3. Paint dresser
    4. Put furniture in room
    5. Put games in nice cupboard
    6. Put old books on nice shelves or some other cool books
12. Convince kid to sleep in room (this will be EASY now--2/12--he's so ready!)

A more-or-less daily aggregation of news, tweets, and blog entries about art, artists, and whatnot. Auto-tweeted, but I haven't been able to get it to hook into Facebook yet. It won't embed here in LJ either, so here's a link:

A project I wish I'd had time to contribute to! Check out the Torn World Anthology: http://www.tornworld.net/familyties.php