Word: cotton
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...with great amusement that I read Spike Lee's misinformed comments about the movie The Patriot, which is set during the American Revolution [PEOPLE, July 17]. Lee said, "I kept wondering, Where are all the slaves? Who's picking the cotton?" As any schoolboy knows, cotton did not become king in the South until after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, in early 1793, several years after the events portrayed in the movie. STANLEY W. KANDEBO Newtown...
Michele Ravera's e-mail address vividly describes her new hobby--heylady youreonfire@hotmail.com Ravera's a fire spinner. To get her jollies, she plays with two clumps of flaming, kerosene-soaked cotton wadding connected by a chain. As Letterman would say, Kids, don't try this at home. Visually spectacular--and spectacularly dangerous--fire spinning can now be seen not just at the Burning Man festival or in Phish-concert parking lots but also at New York City's touristy South Street Seaport and Los Angeles' Venice Beach. "When those flames are whooshing around me," sighs Ravera, "I feel like...
...continuing flap over Bt corn and cotton--now grown not only in the U.S. but also in Argentina and China--has provided more fodder for debate. Bt stands for a common soil bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis, different strains of which produce toxins that target specific insects. By transferring to corn and cotton the bacterial gene responsible for making this toxin, Monsanto and other companies have produced crops that are resistant to the European corn borer and the cotton bollworm. An immediate concern, raised by a number of ecologists, is whether or not widespread planting of these crops will spur the development...
...that is beginning to happen, although--contrary to expectations--the reports coming in are not necessarily that scary. For three years now, University of Arizona entomologist Bruce Tabashnik has been monitoring fields of Bt cotton that farmers have planted in his state. And in this instance at least, he says, "the environmental risks seem minimal, and the benefits seem great." First of all, cotton is self-pollinated rather than wind-pollinated, so that the spread of the Bt gene is of less concern. And because the Bt gene is so effective, he notes, Arizona farmers have reduced their...
...DELHI, MAY 2000 The government approves large-scale field trials of Bollgard, Monsanto's pest-resistant GM cotton. Two years earlier, activists and angry farmers had burned fields planted with transgenic cotton...