"America is a Christian culture" wrote Keillor. And he's right. It is. Stating a fact is never hate speech.

It's a Christian culture made vibrant, in part, by its non-co-religionists, and I'm sure Mr Keillor would agree. But a Christian culture nonetheless.

"People who feel excluded" wrote Keillor. Not "people who should be excluded" or "people who I'd like to exclude". Then, setting the bar of "Christmas" at sugary treats and songs made meaningless by their inclusion in supermaket muzak, Keillor sets about including everyone. If you're excluded from Christmas, you exclude yourself, he says. Again, truth, not vitriol.

The same persons of Jewish faith who claim, in these letter pages, to be outraged by Keillor's inclusiveness, could never, then, travel to Fiji. Or India. Or Laos. Or anywhere that wears the beliefs of the majority on its sleeve. By the same logic you would have to ban public celebration of Jewish holidays in Israel, lest they offend the multitude of Muslims, and Christians, who live there.

As an atheist living and working in China, I am amused every year at the Christmas lights that are put up here. I could wax sarcastic about a nation of Communist atheists celebrating the birth of Christ, or, as Keillor suggests, I could simply get over myself, and take from Xmas what it has to offer.

And it has to offer, frankly, a lot. Peace on earth. And good will to all. For starters.

An excellent article Andrew, as usual covering sides of the issue that are not often expressed.

But one of the responses contained this:

China won't allow small and medium businesses by foreign entrepreneurs to start up! The reality is that you still need a "local partner" do to anything and you have no leverage.

Which leads me to ask -- where does this kind of misinformation about China come from?

I am a "foreigner"; I just started a small business in China; I don't have a local partner; I have plenty of leverage. There is not a single fact in that quote!

This is the thing that scares me the most in this debate, the pushing of information that's just flat wrong as fact. Worse, if that's possible, is the trundling out of information that used to be true.

Because the usual response to that is not "Is that still the case?!" but rather "Oh yeah, I'd heard that." Thus "common sense" and things that "everyone knows" are made.

Considering the very big decisions the world still has to make about the "Rise of China," I hope that articles like yours are far more widely read, even if you are dead wrong when you call the US a "free market".

The US has import tarrifs on just about every kind of product from just about everywhere:

http://www.ita.doc.gov

Certainly, view China clearly for what it is and what it represents. But please do the same for the US.

Any "grand bargain", therefore, would have to take into account not only China's currency activities and imposts, but the US's grand mastery in manipulating its own currency (most recently so it can afford the interest payments on its loans) and its egregious tarrif system, especially in the agriculture sector.

A mostly sober and informative article ends with this:

And unless we're very, very careful, the transgenes will go wild, until there is no wild left.

This is the sort of "Franken-" nonsense that the debate about genetic engineering does not need.

Let's just get one thing really clear: every single vegetable you eat has been heavily genetically modified, over thousands of years, by the process of intensive human agriculture.

Indeed, every successful plant species is so because it has been "genetically modified" by natural processes to fill a niche, pushing aside all other competitors for that slot. Take southern Australia's Mountain Ash tree, for example. It uses the simple expedient of growing faster than everything else after a fire. Other species that it overshadows and kills? It doesn't "care" -- it just "wants" to live. To a plant, biodiversity is a threat!

But, fortunately, our planet is cut up into millions of temperature, humidity, soil acidity, water table, etc. zones. Thus natural biodiversity.

Imagine a genetically engineered corn, that grows well where there is less water than the original crop.

It will still need all the other conditions for corn to grow -- just less water.

It's the same with transgenes. So corn is modified to produce more sugar? It's still corn. It still won't grow on the floor of a forest, or at the edge of an ocean, or above the treeline, just to name a couple of environments hostile to corn of any kind.

The idea of it busting out and growing everywhere is just Science Fiction Theatre nonsense.

There are 6 billion humans. We need to carefully manage the "wild" we have left, no question. But let's correctly identify the real threats that exist. No need to invent false Franken-threats.

In fact, it will almost certainly be genetic engineering, allowing us to grow more food on the land we already use for agriculture, that saves forever the "wild" that is left.

One side says "organic farms produce more per acre".

The other side says "no they don't".

Can we see some numbers, please? I would prefer numbers from some kind of independent "umpire" -- but in lieu of that even numbers from the two "sides" of the debate would be useful.

I agree with Norman Borlaug that plants don't "care" where the nitrogen ion comes from, and that the "health" benefits of so-called "organic" food are almost certainly non-existent.

But I'd also dearly love for fertilizer not to have to come -- one step removed -- from oil.

Real production figures have to be out there somewhere! Anyone?