Slashdot Mirror

The report wasn't declining populations, it was there was not enough ice, and they were drowning. which was false. Which you obviously missed. On purpose.

The report was of seeing one bear. Do you have evidence that observer lied? No one else does.

The bigger question is, why are you so interested in this one poor bear? It's doesn't show anything scientifically, yet people are suing each other over it. It's a side show that people who want to discredit scientists are focused on. If you honestly cared about the truth here, you wouldn't been bringing this bullshit up.

Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

The USGS pushes gas fracking with wild tales of vast reserves. Until it admits it overestimated by 400%. Fracking doesn't create the jobs, either.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has allowed many species and habitats to be extincted and ruined, either by sportspeople themselves or by the industries the F&WS is charged with protecting them from.

And then there's the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was at the center of the way Republicans were selling casino franchises to mobsters through their Christian Coalition mafia, through Jack Abramoff. At least in that criminal enterprise people went to jail.

That's just off the top of my head, and from what's been reported. I'm sure there are people and perhaps whole offices that are not corrupt - it's a big department. But if we're rounding off, it's fair to say "totally corrupt".

If you click through the links in the Summit County Voice articles that have been covering this story, you get to
"Feds may be muzzling scientist over Arctic research":

We think they’re [Interior Department investigators] nervous about his portfolio of science in the Arctic,” said [watchdog org] PEER director Jeff Ruch, explaining that there’s enormous pressure to move ahead with offshore drilling in the [Arctic] region.

It's obvious what's going on here. The Interior Department, which under Bush/Cheney took cocaine and hookers from drilling, other oil and other energy corps who are supposed to pay (minimal) royalties to the Department, is totally corrupt. That is the agency that pretended to regulate BP and other drillers, allowing the Mocambo blowout to poison the Gulf last year (and generally, in less reported ongoing operations). Obama hasn't worked hard enough to replace the crooks running that department. But it's much harder when the Senate's Republican minority abuses the filibuster to block any useful replacement of the crooks, installed by Bush/Cheney when Republicans had the monopoly over all 3 branches. Specifically here Republican senator James Inhofe, paramount climate change denier, is wrangling the scientist witchhunt to protect the oil corps. Not to mention the lockstep loyalty Republicans practice in opposition to anything Obama does. Especially when it might interfere with oil corps' vast, subsidized profits protected from the consequences of their epic destruction.

I don't know why we even have to ask "who's responsible?" Of course it's the oil corps and their wholly owned assets in the government. The government should run real investigations, try and convict the people making and executing these plans. Then anyone asking the question will have to be an obvious employee of the oil corps, making their living by trying to make it somehow questionable who's doing this to us.

Is the world becoming so serious -- or so frightened -- that fantasy is no longer allowed?"

Only the fantasies of Americn fear are allowed. Look at us the wrong way and we'll level your country, rape your children and kill the parents.

Just because.

Yes, everything and everyone are to be feared. Always. You can never be too safe. Unless safety costs money - like 1/2 the Food and Drug Administration testing labs our administration is in the process of dismantling.

I'm opposed to this simply because I view it as an arguement to essentially dismantle peer review by flooding it with disinformation.

As the article mentions, there are many organizations that don't like scientific information having consensus and respect.

This is very clear by:
1. The Forced ShutDown of EPA Libraries
2. Scrapping the funding of the NASA earth program
3. Censoring of the US Geological Survey

_

Whats more,
The article mentions this guy is from an Exxon PR firm.
A group which stands the most to gain from disinformation.

That amounts to the same thing. The only things that can be proven beyond a doubt are math theorems. That means that scientists are reduced to reporting only measurements if they want to fit this criteria. If a scientist states a conclusion that they feel the data supports and a politician disagrees with it, that conclusion will be removed. No hypothesis are proven conclusively by evidence. There are always other possible explanations.

And given that this is the same administration that offers a book up for sale at the Grand Canyon stating that the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood and forbids rangers from stating what they think the age of the Grand Canyon is, I think it's clear that they aren't interested in truth.

Here's the actual press release that appears to talk about the canyon policy. Reading through it, it looks like there's a bit of misunderstanding on who exactly is saying or not saying what (I don't think selling a creationist book means that if you ask a tour guide they have to tell you the canyon is 6000 years old). They do have links to letters and responses though, you can read them yourself. Other sources picked up their press release but don't mention anything about a ban on telling people how old the canyon is.

Do tour guides at the Grand Canyon take orders directly from the Federal Government

Why, as a matter of fact, they do. It's a national park, ruled by the National Park Service.

much less the Presidential Administration?

Mary Bomar, current director of the Park Service, was appointed by Bush and confirmed October 2006.

Ah Christian Fundamentalists... they're just like Islamic Fundamentalists... only different.

No matter what truth, facts, or educated postulations you try to help them understand and consider, to them, the world will always be flat and the Earth will always be in the center of the galaxy.

I was raised Baptist. Of all the wacky stuff the pastor threw at us, we all could appreciate a few simple principles: Mind your health, don't sleep with my wife, try not to kill anybody and education is fundamental. Traveling beyond the doctrines of common sense tends to lead to the swamps of stupidity.

If these fundamentalist zealots, in all their glorious wisdom, wish to outlaw science, deductive reasoning and critical thinking from education, then it's only fair to outlaw their solipsism as well.

And for the record, the Grand Canyon was NOT created 6000 years ago by a disastrous flood survived only by a zookeeper with a really large ship and a meticulous knack for breeding animals... hey that's genetics! Oops, sorry, too scientific, I meant that's the will of our Lord.

Exactly what part of the United States government being run by religious fundamentalists do you not understand?

According to MPAA v. 2600, the government mandates using the <a> tag along with the href attribute and a link to a website with the DeCSS code subjects you to civil liability. Not exactly opt in.

Porn sites are not going to use the proposed tag, exactly as your question suggests. And that is why the government will try to mandate it. You call it a slippery slope. I call it a likely outcome.

Nice troll though. Looks like you snagged a few moderators.

Not trollish by any means. I wish there were a Godwin for comments like yours. Since only one moderation occurred at the time of your post, I assume you are just trying to fill in space with this?

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=706

"Washington, DC -- In an extraordinary letter of protest, representatives for 10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists are asking Congress to stop the Bush administration from closing the agency's network of technical research libraries. The EPA scientists, representing more than half of the total agency workforce, contend thousands of scientific studies are being put out of reach, hindering emergency preparedness, anti-pollution enforcement and long-term research, according to the letter released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

"In his proposed budget for FY 2007, President Bush deleted $2 million of support for EPA's libraries, amounting to 80% of the agency's total budget for libraries. Without waiting for Congress to act, EPA has begun shuttering libraries, closing access to collections and reassigning staff. The letter notes that "EPA library services are [now] greatly reduced or no longer available to the general public" in agency regional offices serving 19 states."

These are not 10,000 tin foil hat wearers, he has a long history of censoring information that doesn't fit his agenda.

"The entire employee pool doesn't get changed out between administrations so that absolutely everyone is a total unthinking tool of the prez"

It only takes one crony at the top of the agency to change it's direction.
Look at the CIA and the WMDs, the CIA analysts reports said no evidence, and Niger Uranium documents false.
Those reports went through a special office of hand picked (by Cheney) staff.
Out came the report, WMDs proven and Niger Uranium memos true.

Too vague. Let's make up a scenario or two.

Or let's not, and look at a sample complaint.

I don't see any reason to believe that all -- or any -- of them are less innocent.

Because there was a survey that said so? Surveys are often slanted, but it agrees with everything else I've read on the issue.

Too vague. Let's make up a scenario or two.

Or let's not, and look at a sample complaint.

I don't see any reason to believe that all -- or any -- of them are less innocent.

Because there was a survey that said so? Surveys are often slanted, but it agrees with everything else I've read on the issue.

Now hold on here. Of course most libertarians, just like anyone else in a civil society, see the value in laws and regulations. People always stereotype Libertarians as wanting to start some anarchist society, which couldn't be farther from the truth. The whole idea behind Libertarianism is that people have a fundamental right to do as they please as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others. And when someone does infringe on the rights of others, they must take full responsiblity for their actions. Of course we need laws and regulations... how else would you decide when someone does something wrong?

That all sounds good and no one would object to having laws that limit individual freedom the least, while simultaneously protecting society as a whole. Like the old adage says, "The right to swing your fists stops where my nose begins."

The problem with the libertarian party, and the reason why they're viewed as antiregulation zealots, is because that's the image the party's official statements paint.

Now I could go through their platform and official statements over the years, and write treatise on how the perfectly reasonable political philosophy has been perverted and drastically undermined by the reactionary zealots of the Libertarian Party, but I won't. Instead I'll lillustrate the point by examining the party's opposition to the thousands of year old role of government ensuring the health and safety of its citizenry. A role that is not only considered reasonable by the vast majority, but also popular with the citizens. A role of government that widely regarded, that the LP's oposition to which is typically used by the party's detractors to illustrate just how out of touch the party is. I'm going to talk the about meat inspectors.

The Libertarian Party is against meat inspectors because people are smart enough not to buy infected meat, therefore anyone selling infected meat would go out of buisness. That all may be true, but there's typically no way for the average person to stand at the meat counter at the local Kroger's and start testing for E.Coli.

Furthermore, they argue that the "USDA Approved" sticker lulls the public into a false sense of safety since all the meat they buy is "USDA approved". They then turn around and argue that this "false sense of safety" doesn't exist with the ubiquitous "UL Approved" stickers because Underwriter's Labs is an industrial organization. Figuring out why the average citizen would be deadened to a sticker because of who was putting them on rather than by the sticker's ubiquity is apparently left as an exercise for the reader.

The LP in every case touts "voluntary self-regulation of industry", like a mantra. The sole reason for this is "less taxes". Yes, VSR would ideally result in less taxes, but there's a catch. VSR doesn't work.

There exists an intrinisic advesarial relationship between the regulator and the regulated. This doesn't mean that they're always at each others' throats, ideally they're not, but it's not, nor should it every be, an relationship between equals. VSR puts the regulated in a superior position over the regulators. First, those being regulated decide what the rules should be. Typically, they're initially set just beyond current practices, because VSR is almost always introduced as a fix to an industry-wide PR disaster. So right off, the regulations are weak. Next there's no penaltys for violating even these regulations because they're voluntary. If you group didn't comply, it's because they didn't have to. So in the end, nothing changes, and the VSR industry is just as unregulated as before. Conversely, when strong government regulations exist, and when there's proper funding of enforcement of the the regulations (I say this, because cutting of enforcement budgets has been a popular tactic of late because it effectively eliminates the regulations, without the political fallout of actually eliminating the regulations.) there's actually penalties such as fines and possible jail time for violators.

No, it's not debatable whether one can call creationism a theory because it's not. Let's start with the deifinition of a theory:

A well tested (as opposed to a hypothesis which is less well tested) explanation for observed events. A theory must allow one to make predictions which can be tested by experiment. When the results of those experiments are as predicted, it lends support to the theory as a good explanation. If the results are not as predicted, they may lead to the eventual modification of the theory, or even its replacement.

Since creationism/intelligent design relies on a supreme being to start the whole thing rolling, a being which can neither be proven nor disproven, the arguments for these concepts fall flat. Without being able to verify or deny any part of ones thoughts (I refuse to call them theories) you cannot have a theory. End of story.

One can argue until they're blue in the face about how their evidence shows they're thoughts are just as plausible as someone elses but unless/until they can offer proof of a supreme being their ideas are relegated to the same pile as Santa Claus and the Easter bunny.

Next thing you know people will want to believe that the Grand Canyon is only a few thousand years old and was made by the flood during Noahs time. Oh wait, that's already being done.

Well at least the fact that humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time is still a safe subject. Er, maybe not.

And they probably love Bush for making the Park Service tell the truth: Noah's Flood caused the grand Canyon. S'pose this is part of that pandering to the ignorant?

Some of the posts on this thread disturb me. They imply that people aren't taking intelligent design (ID) seriously enough as a threat to science. The posts say that maybe ID is compatible with science after all: maybe it only applies to speciation; or maybe a god started things off at a certain point, and evolution took over from there; or if you interpret "day" to be some indeterminate length of time, maybe you can make the bible's creation story match facts (hint: you can't -- the creation story has plants appearing before the sun, for example).

The point is not whether it's possible to somehow reconcile ID with fact if you try hard enough. The point is that ID is being presented as a science, when it is clearly nothing of the sort. Are there unanswered questions in evolution? Of course. But saying "god did it" answers a small mystery with an enormous, or even completely unknowable one (god). It explains nothing, and encourages intellectual laziness. If we accepted "science" like this, we'd all still think thunder was the sound the gods make when they're angry.

I don't care if people choose to believe in god or ID based on faith; that's their right. What terrifies me is when it is presented as science -- especially in our schools. There is absolutely no doubt about it: if it weren't for the fact that ID puts a pseudo-scientific face on a certain demonstrably false and contradictory "holy" book, and the fact that proponents of that book fund ID well, it would have long since been thrown out as crackpot nonsense. Instead, it is being accepted by some school districts as science. Teaching ID as science undermines our entire theory of knowledge.

So discoveries like this possible explanation for the eye are important! They can potentially narrow the gaps in our scientific knowledge, which is the only attack against "god of the gaps" arguments like ID (the fact that ID is almost impossible to completely falsify is another big "tell" that it is not scientific).

p.s. [political rant]
Defending science is especially important with Bush in the white house. This is a man who says the "jury is still out" on evolution. This is an administration that approves a National Park Service booklet saying that the Grand Canyon was caused by Noah's flood. This is an administration with the worst environmental and scientific record in recent memory.
[/political rant]