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

There's no 'very, very careful' about it. They cannot be stopped going wild. Plants, artificially engineered to be robust and disease resistant, will likely outperform wild strains and will spread by natural means.

We need to be clear what we're doing here: once this box is opened there's no closing it. Most effects of this will be benign; some won't. We just don't know. Do we really want this?

I don't understand the legal position on this - perhaps someone could enlighten me - but just because you declare yourself not bound by the Geneva Convention or by International Law, surely that doesn't mean you can't be prosecuted for breaking those laws, in other counries, if not the US?

I don't think that most British people (and I am one) cared less about Princess Diana. Her death was tragic but all this talk about 'profound changes' to England (not Britain, then?) is a load of nonsense. She was just a media creation and if you're the sort of person who cares about that sort of thing then maybe Princess Di was a big deal for you.

As for the monarchy in general, they're largely symbolic and harmless enough. Personally, I'd rather have the Queen as head of state than somebody else (like a President) who might actually want to meddle in things.

What dismays me is the depth of anti-UN sentiment there is in the US, as evidenced by people like the appalling John Bolton who, right from the outset, made it clear that he despised the UN and all its works.

The US, as you might expect as a veto holder and major financial contributor, has more say in UN policy than any other single country but, as the article makes clear, all this to-ing and fro-ing between Annan and the US, modifying UN policy as necessary to keep the US on-side, can't be good for the UN, and sometimes not for the US. When things go America's way, the UN is 'right', when they don't, it's 'wrong'.

The EU, for example, has major economic clout but, as it consists of separate countries, cannot always act as a single coherent unit to influence the UN as much as the US can. We saw this over Iraq where the view of most of Europe, and most of the rest of the world and the UN itself, was strongly against invasion, but abetted primarily by Tony Blair, the Bushites were able to force the UN to a vote for war and, when it looked like this was going to fail, just ignored the UN and went to war anyway.

So the UN is always going to be pulled around by competing interests, with the US pulling harder than anybody else. I think the UN, corrupt and inefficient as it is in parts, nevertheless does a pretty good job in very difficult circumstances - we hear all about the bad things but rarely about the myriad projects around the world that the UN is running that improve people's lives. And as for Kofi Annan, he at least stopped the ship from sinking when it was under fierce attack, mainly from the US.

It's all been said by others but, for me:

1. Saddam is dead - couldn't happen to a worse man.

2. He should not have been executed - a civilized society does not kill its citizens if it can avoid it. Shame on the likes of Tony Blair who acquiesced to the execution even though it is officially not acceptable in the UK - so it's OK for them but not for us.

3. The trial was a total farce, orchestrated by the US. He should have been tried by the International Court.

4. His execution was disgracefully rushed.

5. No good will come of it.

What disturbs me about this article is Numbers' insistence that it is not necessarily stupid to believe in Creationism or Intelligent Design. You may have a PhD and be a very nice person, but, if you are prepared to deny the vast weight of evidence in favour of evolution because it doesn't fit with your religious beliefs, then, at some level, you are indeed very stupid.

It's not even as if an acceptance of evolution necessarily conflicts with a belief in God - it's possible to accept science all the way back to the Big Bang and still believe in a 'Creator' (what caused the Big Bang?), but if you deny that the history of life on Earth stretches back millions of years then, sorry, that's just stupid.

The horrible thing about the Iraq mess is that there is no solution that doesn't involve a lot more bloodshed and turmoil in the region and around the world. Salon has suggested a number of bad ideas but I don't know of any better ones.

Even after all these years, I'm amazed that this was allowed to happen. In the run up to war, people round the world were screaming 'for God's sake don't do this' as anybody with half a brain cell and the faintest awareness of how the world works could see that what we have now would be the likely outcome, and yet Bush and Blair et al could not.

How can these people retain any shred of credibility? Aznar in Spain and Berlusconi in Italy have paid the price for supporting the war so why haven't Congress or Parliament forced the resignation or impeachment of those buffoons Bush and Blair?