What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers? All topics are welcome in this open thread.

This missing Malaysian airliner is one of the craziest news stories I can remember. I would never have thought that a huge airplane carrying hundreds of people could disappear with investigators still mystified twelve days after the fact. If it crashed, why can’t anyone find a debris field? If the pilot diverted it intentionally, with what goal? If it was flying in the wrong direction for hours before landing or crashing, how did it evade detection by radar? Why didn’t any passenger manage to make a phone call or send a text message reporting strange happenings?

This mystery hits closer to home: why didn’t corn growers and the biotech industry heed warnings that planting whole fields of genetically modified corn across the Midwest would hasten the arrival of resistant weeds and pests? New research published this week points to “the rapid evolution of corn rootworms that are resistant to Bt corn.” I’m no longer surprised when regulators and the mainstream media ignore evidence that widespread agricultural practices are harming human health, because money talks. But in this case, failing to manage biotech crops properly is going to cost farmers and biotech companies big money. Herbicide-resistant weeds have been spreading for some time; now Iowa farmers may start using more pesticides to deal with pests that their crops were supposed to be able to repel.