Bush vs. Kerry on Science

chrisspurgeon writes "The science journal Nature put 15 questions to Senator Kerry and President Bush. Read the candidates' responses on topics such as stem cell research, greenhouse emissions, and manned spaceflight to Mars."

Comments

Other candidates

[MadFarmAnimalz]

I would have liked to hear what the other candidates' responses would have been, for contrast. Kucinic in particular.

In a chart, even better.

(going to be some election, with even non-Americans like me taking this intense an interest, hm?)

Re:Other candidates

[Zorilla]

Yeah, too bad we're stuck with only two candidates. I'd rather see this question asked:

Interviewer: "Can either you, President Bush, or you, Senator Kerry, describe to us how your views differ on corporate elitism?"

(Tumbleweed rolls by)

Re:Other candidates

[Zorilla]

...and prepare for another 4 years of Bush if one decides to vote third party.

Re:Other candidates

[Deusy]

Well, I thought that Kerry's answers were generally a stark contrast to Bush's. Where as the Bush answers tended to be the standard ambiguous crap that usually comes out of his Whitehouse, the Kerry answers offered some firm decisions on some matters and ones that will make some officials sweat profusely if he wins.

For instance, on further Nuclear weapons, he was straight to the point. I paraphrase, "We will discontinue research for next-generation Nuclear weapons, they are not needed."

Also, he was very firm on all questions regarding international matters that America needs to work as part of the international community and not alone (read: not invading countries without the support of the UN or abandoning important treaties like Kyoto). It was good to see such positive assertions.

I also wonder why he's so consistent in referring to 'John Edwards and I'. Perhaps he wants to underline that he won't be a lone ranger?

This guy might actually be a reasonable dude. Of course, we all know that power corrupts, so it will be interesting to see if he (and John Edwards) stick to his (their) guns if Kerry does become the next president.

But whether Kerry can beat Bush probably comes down to whether people believe that Kerry will "kill those darned terrorisms that perpopulate the global world order and need exterminating by sending Arnie to war". Which is quite a sad indigtment of American politics. I don't know why I complain, British elections seem to pivot on who the Sun, Mirror, and Star (ie. the 'gutter' tabloids) tend to support. That and Blair is better than any current alternative.

Which makes me wonder... I wonder how Bush would do in a Prime Minister's Question time that Blair blazes through every Wednesday. (If you don't like Blair, you should watch PMQs, he's really rather good at verbally destroying anybody who attempts to attack him.)

Re:Other candidates

[Zorilla]

It is confusing, isn't it? Basically, only in a clean-room hypothetical, would 90% of voters choose a third party. In the real world, third party candidates either don't get very much media attention for potential voters to care or are considered a bit too extreme.

The theory that a vote for Nader/Badnarik is a vote for Bush stems from the idea that people who vote for change are probably voting for Kerry and not for Bush. So, by voting for a third-party, you're effectively taking a vote away from Kerry.

Re:Other candidates

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

I had posted this in a previous story. This newer story seems to be more "on topic". This expresses the sad state of democracy these days.

---
Since I recently moved, I tried re-registering to vote in the new district. My wife (hardcore Republican) said not to bother because I usually side on the independent and I would be "wasting my vote". Funny thing, when I pass by the political party tents at the local Fair, they all ask if I'm registered to vote. I say, "No". I let them speak their piece about registering to vote, and I'm usually ready to fill out the paperwork they provide as a convienience. When I mention the fact that people tell me I'd be wasting my vote because I side with Independents, they get all quiet and move on to the next person. I guess their mottos are, "Please support Democracy and register to vote (as long as you vote for us)"

Every time that happens, I see why I side with the independents.

Re:Other candidates

[gfxguy]

I disagree... Bush clearly states bills he's signed in the past and what he plans in the future, and in some cases is clearly more realistic than Kerry...

For example, on the stem cell question, Bush makes it quite clear that people should stop thinking of stem cell research as a solution to all medical problems, and especially NOW, at the current time, we shouldn't be giving false hope to people who have recently been diagnosed. Bush also talks about what he's actually done a lot more than Kerry, who has had 20 years to actually take the initiative on something.

As far as the nuclear weapons (and the missile defense question) go, here is where we start to see a stark difference in answers, and so it depends on which side of the fence you are on... both gave reasonable and direct responses, I just happen to support the President's side of those issues, especially now that North Korea has nuclear weapons and probably the conveyance to get them to U.S. soil. Moreover, in the past few years, we've seen other countries become nuclear powers... including India and, if I'm not mistaken, Pakistan. It behooves us to stay ahead of the curve.

By the fifteenth question, I was actually getting annoyed at the "John Edwards and I will pass..." respones. Really? You can sidestep congress and just pass those things on your own? Well, learn something new every day.

Re:Other candidates

[EinarH]

> ...or abandoning important treaties like Kyoto...

Kerry stated in the article he does not support the Kyoto treaty.

Read again.

like Kyoto..., as in international treaties, not necessarily the specific Kyoto treaty.

Re:Other candidates

[corian]

The theory that a vote for Nader/Badnarik is a vote for Bush stems from the idea that people who vote for change are probably voting for Kerry and not for Bush.

When the choice is between a candidate from Party A who supports invading Iraq, opposes gay marriage, and thingks the FCC should have additional censorhip rights and a candidate from Party B who supports invading Iraq, opposes gay marriage, and thingks the FCC should have additional censorhip rights, the only vote for change is Part C.

Kerry == Bush.

Re:Other candidates

[MikeMacK]

Bush makes it quite clear that people should stop thinking of stem cell research as a solution to all medical problems, and especially NOW, at the current time, we shouldn't be giving false hope to people who have recently been diagnosed

Yeah, instead of false hope, it's much better to give them NO hope at all.

Re:Other candidates

[fatmonkeyboy]

It behooves us to stay ahead of the curve.

Well, the point is that our nuclear weapons are pretty "good". We can, quite easily, use them to nuke cities or islands full of civilians if we so desire.

What do you want to do? Nuke them harder?

Tactical weapons research...taking out military targets. That's worth researching. It can make war more humane while making our military force more powerful.

But I don't see any advantages in having nuclear weapons more devasting than what we already have.

Well, maybe for attacking space aliens or something.

Re:Other candidates

[kesteloot]

Really? You can sidestep congress and just pass those things on your own? Well, learn something new every day.

this reminds me of a bush quote The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law. -- Dubya confusing the executive and the judicial branches of government in Austin, Texas, Nov. 22, 2000 http://www.dubyaspeak.com/presidency.shtml

Re:Other candidates

[Zorilla]

Yeah, someone at work asked me, "So, are you going for Bush, or Bush Lite?"

I mentioned something similar in the thread here. Apparently somebody doesn't like me talking about this because most of my responses in this thread are marked as overrated and flamebait in part.

Re:Other candidates

[CurbyKirby]

Really? You can sidestep congress and just pass those things on your own?

Yeah, by resorting to tactics that passed the PATRIOT Act like the Bush administration did. By using national tragedy to push though legislation that infringes upon rights with no guarantees and vague security goals.

Simply print a 300-some page document late at night and ask people to vote on it first thing in the morning, and see how many people are willing to vote against something with that name. Kudos to the 79 who did.

By the way, It probably took you till the fifteenth question because he didn't actually use the terms you supposedly found and quoted. Try these direct quotations:

Question 6: "John Edwards and I support a strategically balanced..."
Question 7: "John Edwards and I are committed to increasing funding..."
Question 8: "John Edwards and I would increase Federal funding..."
Question 9: "John Edwards and I believe that we can protect..."

I'm actually happy that Kerry realizes the universe doesn't revolve around him, and chooses to name his running mate.

Re:Other candidates

[hey!]

For example, on the stem cell question, Bush makes it quite clear that people should stop thinking of stem cell research as a solution to all medical problems, and especially NOW, at the current time, we shouldn't be giving false hope to people who have recently been diagnosed

Well, that's a bit of straw man isn't it? You don't have to have a cure for Alzheimer's NOW to justify research on a future stem cell based Alzheimer's treatment NOW.

Suppose a concerted stem cell research effort (not just getting out of the way, but active promotion) might lead to cures in, perhaps, ten or twenty years. Twenty years is within the expected lifetime of most Americans, and many would stand to benefit if successful therapies are devised. Even if stem cell research does not result in viable therapies in the lifetime of most Americans, it will still advance the basic science needed to find other avenues of therapy.

Re:Other candidates

[Archangel Michael]

You are wrong too.

It is the Legistlature job to write laws(bills).

It is the Executives job to write laws(executive orders).

It is the Judicial job to write laws(judicial activism).

Here is my problem with John F. Kerry. He has had 20 something years in the Senate to author any legislation he thinks is good for America. Exactly what is his record on producing such legislation. Name 10. Name 9. Name 2. He has been sitting on his ASS for 20 years. 20 years of Senate, and still we don't know where he stands. It seems as if he is for and against everything. Prolife and prochoice. Pro Gun, anti gun.

Here is my problem with George W. Bush. He takes a stand, right or wrong, and "stays the course". We have a record of how things have been done for 4 years, and it is clear where he stands, like him or not.

Which is why I am voting LIBERTARIAN. With overriding moral platform of LIMITED Government AND Personal Responsibility. Government cannot replace responisibilty and the responsible don't need governance.

Re:Other candidates

[JustinMWard]

No, you are wrong.

Researching it involves taking embryos that weren't going to turn into humans, anyway.

Saying that it kills embryos is like saying that masturbation kills sperm.

Re:Other candidates

[nutshell42]

Your "scientific reasons" are more rubbish of the we're proving definitions sort.

That said some points: This definition of "pregnancy" was initiated to accommodate the introduction of the process of in vitro fertilization, where fertilization takes place artificially outside the mother in a petri dish, and then the embryo is artificially introduced into the woman's uterus so that implantation of the embryo can take place.

Unless they vastly improved their methods, in vitro fertilizations means artificial fertilization of a number of eggs. A part is then placed in the uterus (where most simply die off) the rest is frozen for some time to see if they are needed and end in the trash after that. Mass murder.

As the well-known neurological researcher D. Gareth Jones has succinctly put it, the parallelism between "brain death" and "brain birth" is scientifically invalid. "Brain death" is the gradual or rapid cessation of the functions of a brain. "Brain birth" is the very gradual acquisition of the functions of a developing neural system. This developing neural system is not a brain. He questions, in fact, the entire assumption and asks what neurological reasons there might be for concluding that an incapacity for consciousness becomes a capacity for consciousness once this point is passed.

Ok, if this neural system might already be a sign of consciousness he'll still have to explain how there should be consciousness before the cells start differentiating (somewhere around day 6 iirc). So the morning-after pill should be all right.

Now if you're not one of the pro-life pet-scientists you should agree that consciousness before about week 20 is ridiculous.

To put it in other terms, would you rather invest $100 in an investment with a 6% return or one with a 37% return?

a 6% investment because 37% sounds LIKE SOME INVSETEMENT HAILALE MBUNGA EXPRESIDENT OF NIGERIA WUOLD SUGEST TOO YU

Re:Other candidates

[Ohreally_factor]

It can make war more humane while making our military force more powerful.

Mod this up + 5 funny!!

The history of weapons development is littered with hopes that a weapon will make a war "more humane", going back at least to the Gatling gun.

One side effect of our current crop of smart weapons that I haven't seen anyone discuss is the temptation to use them in a "pre-emptive" (read aggressive) war, since they will supposedly minimize civilian deaths. "We're not going after the people of Country X (read Iraq), we want to help them. We're only going after the military of Country X (read Iraq)." The problem we are seeing today is that when the people of Country X don't want you there in the first place, you still have to occupy it with soldiers using conventional weapons. Precision weapons, whether nuclear or not, cannot occupy a country nor "pacify" a population. You need boots on the ground for that.

When we realize the need for boots on the ground, and we realize that those boots are going to have to be there for a long time, taking casualties, maybe we won't be so quick to launch a "pre-emptive" (read aggressive) war.

Re:Other candidates

[MikeMacK]

But embryonic stem cell research has much more PROMISE than adult stem cells. If that wasn't true we wouldn't even be having this debate. If adult stem cell research has done more so far, it is only because scientists are not able to fully explore embryonic stem cells because of policies the Bush administration has put in place (only allowing funding to study the currently known stem cell lines).

As for whether we are killing human beings, or executing prisoners for their organs, nothing I say to you is ever going to convince you that a human life does not begin as soon as a sperm fertilizes an egg (nice web site by the way, I wasn't aware that some Libertarians were pro-life, I would have thought the woman's rights had some value to Libertarians) and nothing you say to me is going to convince me that a collection of cells does not a human being make and that the rights of the woman to choose to carry those cells should not be decided by the government.

Re:Other candidates

[gid-goo]

Because its bullshit. Anyone who can't see a marked constrast between having ANYONE and George Bush in the White House is living in la la land. The Onion had it exactly right when Bush was elected with the headline "At last, our long nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is finally over." While I would rather have someone who more closely represented my own personal views, which are pretty liberal, the people seem to want a lot of red meat and a little policy wrapped up in some more red meat. Too much information and the candidate is a "wonk," too much playing nice and the other guys steamrollers you with illegitimate black babies, spousal drug abuse and secretly funded attack teams which lie about your war record.

Re:Other candidates

[madcow_ucsb]

Don't know how that's flamebait. Some of us really do find them both equally unqualified. I'm not registered as a democrat and so wasn't involved in their primaries, but it boggles my mind that the party had *one* job to do: find someone better than Bush. That should really shouldn't have been a difficult task...

Last election I was registered republican and was willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt. He dropped the ball in my opinion (enough to make me distance myself from the party altoghether) And I've got a number of friends who feel the same way. Unfortunately the democrats did a piss poor job selecting a candidate that could attract us former republicans.

*sigh*

Now I'm registered libertarian, but find my beliefs a bit too hypocritical to fit well with them either...

Re:Other candidates

[Politburo]

You didn't answer me in the other story.. maybe you will here:

When I mention the fact that people tell me I'd be wasting my vote because I side with Independents, they get all quiet and move on to the next person.

Did the people speaking to you say this to you? They're not out there to counter whatever myths other people have told you. They're there to register you to vote, and hopefully convince you to vote for their candidate. If you make it clear that you're not going to change your mind easily, they won't waste time on you. Did they prevent you from registering?

I guess their mottos are, "Please support Democracy and register to vote (as long as you vote for us)"

No offense, but duh. If you thought it was anything more, you were being quite naive. However, did these people actually prevent you from registering or withdraw their assistance after you mentioned you were independent?

Every time that happens, I see why I side with the independents.

The irony of that speaks for itself.

Re:Other candidates

[MrResistor]

And while you might trumpet the lesser of two evils, I pity you for your shortsightedness and lack of character.

As I pity you for yours.

Really, it's just a difference of priorities. IMO the most important thing is to get Bush out, mainly because he'll take Cheney, Ashcroft, and the rest with him. The action most likely to achieve that is to vote for Kerry.

I may disagree with Kerry on a few issues, but I think he'll be a fine president. I don't need, or even want, a clone of myself or a puppet who just parrots my beliefs. What I want is someone capable of independent thought, who's not so blinded by their ideals that they can't at least give consideration to the opposing viewpoint.

I see those qualities in Kerry, and therefor conclude that he will be a fine president. Yeah I have some disagreements with him, but I have equivalent or stronger disagreements with every third party candidate I know anything about. A thoughtful man can be reasoned with, and is capable of changing his stance when he finds the available facts warrant it. So, I pick the one most likely to unseat Bush, which, if you recall, is my primary goal in this election.

Since I'm sure you're wondering what I meant in my opening sentence, here it is: Your shortsightedness is you apparant failure to recognize the extent of the damage Bush and company will do, not just in America but all over the world, if given another four years. Your lack of character is your refusal to do what's necessary to prevent that.

Remember, the only thing necessary for evil triumph is for good men to do nothing. I think you are a good man (social liberal + fiscal conservative = good in my book) who has allowed himself to be blinded by his ideals.

I don't mean to flame you necessarily, but it has always been my opinion that anyone taking so aggressive a stance has clearly missed something, and needs to be hit in the face with an opposing viewpoint.

Re:Other candidates

[Ironsides]

Tactical weapons research...taking out military targets. That's worth researching. It can make war more humane while making our military force more powerful.

But I don't see any advantages in having nuclear weapons more devasting than what we already have.

They ARE researching tactical nukes. It has been easy to make larger and more powerful nukes. I think China detonated a 100 Megaton or one in the atmosphere at one point. We KNOW NOW how to make larger nukes. Its making small efficient nukes that are hard. Like ones that are weaker than 20 kilotons. (Remember I SAID EFFICIENT). In nuclear weapons, 1-10 kilotons is not that easy to produce without having a lot of fallout. Tactical nukes are on the wish list of weapons.

Remember kiddies, the first nuclear weapon ever used was detonated in New Mexico,U.S.

Re:Other candidates

[Minna Kirai]

Since there are good , scientific reasons to believe that the embryo is a human being, then there is a strong case to be made against embryonic stem cell research.

If that's true, then there's an even stronger case to be made against in-vitro fertilization (aka test-tube babies, aka reproductive therapy).

To save money, the doctors always make a bunch of embryos at once, then implant them one at a time until one starts growing. Once the pregancy is going well, the leftovers are just thrown out. MURDER! And it's hundreds of times as common as stem-cell research would be. We must ban it right away!

Re:Other candidates

[thrash242]

You've obviously bought into the media spin if you think it makes it easier to "mow down" people.

If I had to be shot at with either an M16 or a typical hunting rifle, I'd pick an M16. They shoot a .223, which is barely bigger than a .22, if you know what that is (hint: they're mainly used for target practice and shooting small rodents). Deer hunters typically use .30 or larger caliber.

See, I think you think that an "assault weapon" (I use quotes because that's not even a real type of weapon--it's made up to sound like assault rifle and thus, to confuse the two) is fully automatic. It's not. It's semiautomatic. That means you pull the trigger and *bang*. You pull the trigger again and *bang*. Contrast this with automatic, which means that as long as you hold the trigger down, it rapidly fires. Many rifles and all pistols are semiautomatic. The weapons banned are not machine guns. They don't shoot any faster and they don't use any more powerful ammunition. If you look into the (now expired) ban, the criteria include things like: flash suppressor, bayonet lug, pistol grip, etc. These things are all cosmetic or at most ergonomic and have no effect on lethality. This is why all manufacturers had to do to make their rifles legal was to change minor cosmetic things. Of course, the media calls this a "loophole", but it's not, that's just the arbitrary criteria that is in the ban.

I'm not exaggerating at all when I say this: the ban only affects civilian guns that *look like* military guns. The civilian versions are semiautomatic and are made to be next to impossible to convert to automatic. It's a ban on "scary looking" guns, nothing more, nothing less.

As I've said, I have not heard *one* argument for the ban coming from someone who actually understood weapons and the ban. The media knows that most people will just accept what they say and sure enough, most people think that the ban is of fully-automatic weapons like the AK-47. Fully automatic weapons have been heavily restricted since 1934. Before that, anyone could buy a Thompson Submachine gun (a tommy gun--what gangsters use in movies) for about $200. Now you have to have a special license that is quite hard to get to own an automatic weapon.

As for purposes for owning one: many people collect them (since they *look like* military rifles), they're accurate, they're reliable, they're durable, and the main thing is that there is no logical reason to *not* let someone have one.

The printable version...

[jbarr]

...in .pdf format is here if you don't want to hassle with the Flash presentation.

Re:The printable version...

[Lextar]

Could you please warn us that there is a high resolution image of a presidential candidate on the first page of the pdf?

I didn't really want to know about all of his skin problems :)

Re:The printable version...

[Zocalo]

Or, if you prefer plain HTML and JPEGs, the BBC has a summary of the major and more contentious issues here.

It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...

[caitsith01]

...that Bush didn't write those answers himself. For one thing there are words of more than three syllables used throughout. For another it appears that the person who wrote them was actually familiar with Whitehouse briefing papers and current scientific issues. And the final clue is the use of the word 'nuclear' instead of GW's preferred 'nucular'.

I'm sure the same goes for Kerry, although he is actually able to spell and say most of the words used in his responses.

I really don't see the point of this kind of 'interview.' Basically, each candidate is asked a series of questions, each of which has a 'good' or 'bad' answer. The results will shock you.

Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...

[jeffkjo1]

...that Bush didn't write those answers himself. For one thing there are words of more than three syllables used throughout.

The Bush campaign hasn't suffered at all from this attack on Bush's intelligence. It didn't suffer in 2000 either. However, Al Gore's campaign did latch onto it in an attempt to put down Bush and gain more support for the Dem's. It didn't work, in fact, it played to Bush's advantage. Instead of focusing on real issues, Gore was busy telling us all what a moron W was. You'll notice Kerry hasn't taken that strategy. There's a reason.

Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...

[caitsith01]

Well, you've outdone me by a good ten years with your unique take on sarcastic parody. Your brilliant feigning of ignorance and faux-praise have cut through me like a rapier. I was unprepared for this level of subtlety and satire on the Internet which to me has previously been the most unassuming and earnest of places. And from a ./ nerd of all people! Well I never.

Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...

[Coryoth]

I really don't see the point of this kind of 'interview.' Basically, each candidate is asked a series of questions, each of which has a 'good' or 'bad' answer. The results will shock you.

You mean the fact that, even on the fairly open questions, they bot do their best to hedge their bets and say as little as is possible with as many words as possible? Yes, that's what happens when you interview professional politicians, and I have begun to wonder about the point as well.

Why do we put up with interviews that simply give these politicians a platform to speak, rather than interviews that actually question them in depth? How about trying to actually fish a position and some definitive words out of them, instead of letting them answer with the usual nice sounding but empty rhetoric.

Okay, to be fair to Nature this was a written interview, so they didn't really have much choice, but this style of political interview is pretty much all you see in the US.

1. Politician is asked a question.
2. Politician gives a stirring mostly pre-prepared speech that may even have some vague relevance to the question asked.
3. Interviewer moves on to the next question.

What's with that?! Watch some BBC interviewers - I'd love to see nice half hour or hour interview of Kerry or Bush conducted by some of the BBC political interviewers. I think I would learn far more in that half hour than I have in all the election coverage so far.

Jedidiah.

Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...

[kavau]

I really don't see the point of this kind of 'interview.' Basically, each candidate is asked a series of questions, each of which has a 'good' or 'bad' answer. The results will shock you.

Well, there are a few questions that do tell you where the candidate is coming from. For example, when asked about the threat of global warming, Bush's ghostwriter basically replies: "Naw. Nothing is proven, so there's nothing to worry about", while Kerry's says "The threat is real and we'll deal with it." Other points where they differ is research into new kinds of nukes, rushed deployment of a missile defense system, and manned missions to Moon and Mars.

Of course, we didn't really have to read the answers to know the candidates' stance on these issues. They are basically only reaffirming what we already know.

Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...

[gotan]

I'm sorry to rob you of your illusions, but there's some nations out there with less schoolyard killing-sprees than the US sees and without terrorists (let's not elaborate on USAs "shock and awe" war that killed a good number of iraqui civilians), and those nations are getting fed up with the USAs unilateral policies.

Yeah, i know France is not too popular in the USA now since they had the guts to stand up against Bushs private war on Iraq (for which still no legitimation exists: there were no WMDs, Bin Laden has better connections to Saudi-Arabia and the Bush Family than to Iraq, and had this really been about evil dictators with WMDs the war should have taken place in Vietnam). Neither is Germany, or the Chinese, those evil commies (the hysterical american reaction to anything that reeks of communism is really funny).

The USA are pushing through their foreign policy without any scruples, even by war if they think it'll get them to their goals. There's lots of nations perceiving the US in that way and not all of them are radicals and terrorists.

Do go on and mod me down if you can't stand criticism, i don't care.

Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...

[SuiteSisterMary]

It happened. And Bush and co. were pissed.

Unlike American reporters, who lob softball questions Bush can field with prepared, rehearsed answers, Coleman performed as most European broadcast interviewers normally do -- in a naturally engaging, intellectually rigorous, conversational manner. However, Bush bristled at Coleman's questions and interviewing style, about which the White House (which posted a transcript of the session on its Web site) later "lodged an official complaint with the Irish embassy in Washington."

Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...

[Coryoth]

Wow. Thank you. Worth pointing out that there's even a link to the video. Worth watching really, especially because they don't edit Bush into soundbites - they let him ramble (until he fails to answer the question). Bush really didn't like being interrupted whenever he ran off track - he wanted to use it as a platform to give speeches.

For those who can't see the video, there's the transcript.

Jedidiah.

Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...

[gfxguy]

Interesting... I didn't see the video, but I read the transcript, and it sounded like good questions and good answers. There was some interrupting, which happens in every good interview, but Bush did seem to get around to the points he was trying to make, and Bushes responses to the interruptions could have been better.

Maybe the video shows him bumbling and stumbling a bit more than the text of the interview shows?

Still, I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't think this was a bad interview for Bush. After all, why would the Whitehouse website put it up if it was?

I think you are looking at it through Kerry-colored glasses and seeing the messenger bumble, perhaps, without actually seeing the message... he gave good responses, IMO.

Re:It doesn't take a scientist to figure out...

[Coryoth]

Maybe the video shows him bumbling and stumbling a bit more than the text of the interview shows?

No. No bumbling (I don't recall saying he did). It did show the clash of styles though - Coleman looked very frustrated when Bush refused to actually enter into a conversation, and Bush looked decidedly annoyed by her interjections. What came across to me (being mostly familiar with European style poltical interviews) was that Coleman wanted to conduct a conversational interview, responding to points as they came up, and digging down into issues. In contrast Bush seemed more inclined to simply give speeches. He seemed to have a variety of pre-canned anecdotes and short speeches, and tended to use the question to springboard into those (which then potentially drifted off into making a different point).

Still, I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't think this was a bad interview for Bush. After all, why would the Whitehouse website put it up if it was?

Interesting question. It was the Whitehouse who sent a formal complaint to the Irish embassy and cancelled Coleman's next scheduled interview. Presmably you don't do that if you think it went swimmingly well.

I don't think it was a bad interview for Bush - it may have been in the hands of a more forceful interviewer (Coleman mostly let Bush run over top of her the few times she tried to interject a question), but as it was, it simply showed the difference in style. US politicians are mostly used to givign pre-canned speeches, and not actually being probed on an issue.

I think you are looking at it through Kerry-colored glasses and seeing the messenger bumble, perhaps, without actually seeing the message...

I don't think so. I'm no fan of Kerry, and I would expect him to perform pretty much the same - mostly canned speeches that he extemporises around to fit it to the question. That's generally how US politicians work, because the people who rise in US politics are the people who are very good at doing just that.

Jedidiah.

Easier to read version

[Xeo 024]

The flash player isn't exactly the most legible thing to read, so here is the more coherent printable version (PDF).

for lazy slashdoters

[Anonymous Coward]

Climate change

Throughout his time in office, President George Bush has been slammed by environmentalists for avoiding steps to reduce global warming. Climate experts recommend cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions - and John Kerry pledges to take a greener stance.

Yucca Mountain

Twenty years ago an act of Congress put forward Yucca Mountain as a possible repository for the nation's nuclear waste - but fierce disputes over whether the site might leak radioactive material have held up its construction ever since. Now the mountain, in the political swing state of Nevada, has emerged as a hot campaign issue in the US presidential race, and both candidates claim that sound science is on their side

Stem cells

Before President George W. Bush arrived in the Oval Office, most Americans had never heard of a stem cell - a microscopic biological entity that can transform into hair, muscle or other human cell types. But four years on, the issue has escalated into a divisive one in US politics, and looks set to attract continued attention in the forthcoming election.

Manipulation of science

George Bush's presidency has suffered a rash of accusations that he is either ignoring or manipulating science. Democratic rival John Kerry, meanwhile, pledges to follow impartial scientific advice - but observers say that they are yet to be persuaded.

Nuclear weapons research

Late in 2002, the Bush administration proposed controversial plans to begin work on new designs for nuclear weapons. The idea has prompted fierce scientific and political opposition ever since.

Re:for lazy slashdoters

[Coryoth]

Throughout his time in office, President George Bush has been slammed by environmentalists for avoiding steps to reduce global warming. Climate experts recommend cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions - and John Kerry pledges to take a greener stance.

Kerry is also very careful to not actually commit to anything. He'll consider options, but potentially he could continue right along with Bush's current policy, and it would not actually contradict what he said.

Jedidiah

Re:for lazy slashdoters

[Creepy]

Paraphasing issues they differ on, and ones they agree on (15 questions, not the 5 analyzed):

Yucca Mt:
Bush: for Yucca mountain. Claims safe, but only touting safe for 10000 years, where at least 100000 would be needed for radioactive decay to safe level.
Kerry: against Yucca mountain.

Nuclear Weapons Research:
Bush: more Nuke spending
Kerry: less Nuke spending

Emissions/Environment.
Bush: voluntary emissions changes
Kerry: greener stance - stronger base emissions guidelines.

Stem Cell research:
Bush: keep current - policy leans towards funding by private sector so taxpayers not responsible for paying for "further destruction of human embryos"
Kerry: loosen restrictions, as long as still morally acceptable.

NASA/Moon/Mars:
Bush: 15 years to manned moon mission (and base?) and use that as a launching point for future missions.
Kerry: NASA needs more funding (no real answer on manned mission to moon or Mars)

Mad Cow:
Bush: USDA leading taking measures such as banning eating of 'downer cattle' (fyi, animals that can't walk at time of slaughter), prohibiting specific material from older cattle (+30 mos), and expanded surveillence.
Kerry: Bush mishandling - need to ensure 1997 ban on bone-meal in feed (fyi, this is usually the ground bones of sheep, where the prions that cause mad cow come from).

Drugs:
Bush: US is gold standard for speeding new therapies and drugs to patients.
Kerry: Make sure FDA has funding to make sure drugs are safe. Current approval rate may be too fast to be safe.

Things they both agree with, to an extent: missile defense system (continue it), scientist movement (allow, as long as security isn't compromised), WMD (get global community involved), ITER fusion (keep research), biomed (both claim committed to it), endangered species (make changes that best protect the species), and transgenic crops (important to agriculture).

Re:for lazy slashdoters

[gfxguy]

I think your summaries are a bit unfair.

Emissions/Environment.
Bush: voluntary emissions changes Bush claims he has commited the nation to a goal of reducing "greenhouse-gas intensity" by 18% over the next ten years... that sounds like a pretty firm statement to me.
Kerry: greener stance - stronger base emissions guidelines.

Stem Cell research:
Bush: keep current - policy leans towards funding by private sector so taxpayers not responsible for paying for "further destruction of human embryos" Bush administration has spent hundreds of millions on stem cell research, but pushes the use of adult stem cells.
Kerry: loosen restrictions, as long as still morally acceptable.

If you want a good summary, take a look at the BBC summary

Re:Religeon

[gowen]

1st Corollary : Any slashdotter who cannot spell Religion is unlikely to have informed, intelligen opinions on the subject.

Neither party truly supports science

[Anita Coney]

Each political party has agendas. Each party will use science to support their agendas. However, when there is no real science to support their agenda, or when real science contradicts the agendas, bad science will be created or the importance of science will be lessened.

Both political parties are guilty of the above. Merely because the right believes in invisible beings who control our destiny, doesn't make it worse than the left, who believes that creating a permanent welfare culture will end poverty.

Re:Neither party truly supports science

[Kphrak]

This has to be the most insightful post on this article I've seen, and it's a shame people appear to be modding it down.

You may prefer Bush or Kerry as President, but their knowledge of science begins and ends at the poll stand. If enough people believe something, even if it's crackpot, one of these candidates will choose that position to gain a few more votes.

Re:Religeon

[Anonymous Coward]

Says who? Religion and science are not mutually exclusive, although most slashdotters' simplistic attitudes fail to reflect this. That's like saying that someone who enjoys music couldn't possibly be any good at nuclear physics.

I'm studying biology and chemistry in high school; I also happen to be a Christian. Science and religion simply cover different aspects of the world. As elegant as science is, and as helpful as it has been to the world around us, it has no room for things like morality.

Re:Religeon

[ChzMstrX]

That's simply ridiculous to say. I'm not W lover, but c'mon. The Catholic church is doing some spectacular astronomy research; and last I checked they read the Bible for guidance in decisions. Religion and science don't have to be at odds.

Re:Religeon

[Anonymous Coward]

2nd Corollary : Any post criticising the spelling of another poster will contain at least one spelling error. (OK, mine is technically a typo).

Re:Religion

[richie2000]

intelligen

The defense rests, your Honorificness.

Next up ...

[The Mgt]

... Dracula vs. Wolfman on childcare.

Re:Next up ...

[PetoskeyGuy]

I've always thought of them as Kerry / Bush as Frankenstein vs Egor

Re:Religeon

[nuclear305]

While I will ignore the lack of proof in your comment to back it up (Even if it is in TFA) I must point out that looking to the bible for help does not necessarily indicate a person is not pro-science.

Being agnostic myself, I obviously don't do this...however, it is my opinion that religion as a whole is designed to instill hope, etc in a person. So what's wrong with reading a book while looking for a little help/inspiration/whatever?

Gah...flash.

[LarsWestergren]

Why the hell did they need to make this into Flash? There are no animations, no images, just hyperlinked text which is rendered too small... or not at all at first actually, as I normally use Firefox with adblocker.

With regards to the questions, wouldn't it have been more fun if they had asked B and K unprepared questions on science directly in person, without any speechwriters to hide behind?

"The HIV virus is a retrovirus. Can either of you tell us what that means?"

"Give us the strongest arguments pro and con for the existance of man-made global warming."

Re:Gah...flash.

[Nodatadj]

And what would either of those questions have proved? That neither Bush nor Kerry are scientists?

Bush and Kerry do not make policy, they are just the public faces presenting the policies of their respective parties.

Whether the creation of personality politics where you vote for the most attractive public face ("Oh, I don't like him, he has a parking ticket, I'll vote against him") rather than on parties and their policies is a good or bad thing I'll leave for you to decide.

Re:Religeon

[jbarr]

I'll bet that if President Bush instead claimed that he got his inspiration from "LOTR" you'd be drumming a different beat... ;-)

Unfortunatly

[Lifix]

Bush's supporters have been shown to vote for him soely on moral ground. The poorest county in america voted more then 80% for Bush. Why you ask? Because Bush has the Christian Right, a sizeable population. Bush can screw the enviroment, tax people into the ground, reinstate the draft, declare war on canada and mexico and still have the christian right's vote.

If people will wake up and realize that voting for Bush without understanding the issues is killing our country, then perhapse they will change... but until then bush can look forward to having all the bible thumpers under his belt, and abusing his power more and more. Ah well, personally, I think you should have to have a slashdot account to vote this year.

Re:Unfortunatly

[Plaeroma]

What is most unfortunate is that these people are tarnishing the already shot reputation of Christianity. Going from what it seen on the media, being Christian means hating gays, supporting war, turning America into a theocracy, and opressing anyone who disagrees. This is a far cry from love your enemies, forgive those who wrong you, and peace loving message I garnered from reading the Bible. Not saying that approach is the best either, but these Right wingers certainly have no place in calling themselves Christian.

Re:Unfortunatly

[Gigs]

...he is continuing to pledge to reduce taxes further while increasing spending more...his understanding of economics is very poor.

Perhaps his is not as bad as your's? You see that he has not pledged to reduce taxes, he's pledged to reduce the tax rate! The tax rate is a government surcharge on transfering capital. When you lower the tax rate its allows money to be transfered from one entity to another more cheaply. And as such more money does move! As that money is moved it is taxed. And even though the tax rate is lower the exponential increase in the amount of capital moved more than makes up for the reducion in the tax rate. And as such the income of the government increases. If money did not move the counrty would grind to a halt.

Re:Unfortunatly

[NonSequor]

You make the flaw of assuming that all forms of supply and demand affected by taxes are highly elastic. The fact of the matter is, people cannot live without transferring capital. Expecting an exponential increase in the transfer of capital is exceptionally naive.

I believe that this country would benefit greatly from massive tax reform. However, I also believe that tax policy is too crude of a tool to reliably control the economy. The effects of policies this broad are too subtle to predict and even after the fact, attributing changes in the economy to specific policies is an intellectual fraud.

Re:Unfortunatly

[akp]

And even though the tax rate is lower the exponential increase in the amount of capital moved more than makes up for the reducion in the tax rate. And as such the income of the government increases.

And thus the increases in federal income tax revenue that happened in the 80's under Reagan and the 00's under Bush. Except that neither happened--tax rates were lowered, and tax revenues--surprise!--lowered also. Read about it at Wikipedia.

There are some arguments for supply-side economics, but no (or incredibly few) serious economists believe that reducing marginal tax rates increases tax revenue. It might reduce tax revenue less than one would expect, but it doesn't increase revenue.

Re:Unfortunatly

[YrWrstNtmr]

Your key phrase is "Going from what it seen on the media..."

Does the media's view accurately reflect the view of most Christians? Doubtful. The media is in it for $$$.
The 'truth' is merely a happy accident if and when it happens.

Re:Unfortunatly

[Gigs]

...and tax revenues--surprise!--lowered also

Bzzz wrong answer, but thanks for playing the "lets make up data game"... I like to rely on more useful data like say the IRS Internal Revenue Gross Collections, by Type of Tax, Fiscal Years 1973-2003 which clearly shows that tax revenue doubled from 1980 to 1989!

...but no (or incredibly few) serious economists believe that reducing marginal tax rates increases tax revenue.

Believe as they might the data shows otherwise.

Non-Americans

[caitsith01]

I suspect more non-Americans than Americans are taking a really keen interest in this election. Considering that only, what, 40-odd percent of eligible voters actually bother to turn out on election day in the states, you could hardly say interest there is raging, despite the fanatical partisans we see all the time on the news. Given the disproportionate effect that US policies have on my country (Australia), I would kill to be able to vote in this election.

Of course, if non-US citizens could vote, it's pretty clear what the result would be. Although maybe we shouldn't publicise this, it might provoke a nationalistic wave of support for you know who...

Re:Non-Americans

[Yorrike]

I can't vote in the US elections either, yet the term "leader of the free world" is still used. Guess I'm not important enough to elect my "leader".

The aforementioned term springs from the same mindset from which the term "World Series" is applied to a US-only baseball league.

Re:Non-Americans

[caitsith01]

My favourite US-ism from recent times is that some of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are charged with "attempting to kill Americans." Apparently it would have been ok if their intended victims were Canadian. Cue lame anti-Canada jokes...

Re:Non-Americans

[amightywind]

Although maybe we shouldn't publicise this, it might provoke a nationalistic wave of support for you know who...

It already has. One of the most effective slurs against Kerry has been "he looks French."

Re:Non-Americans

[gathas]

Although maybe we shouldn't publicise this, it might provoke a nationalistic wave of support for you know who...

Voldemort? I didn't realize he was running

Re:Non-Americans

[Yorrike]

If those people did vote, however, you'd bring an end to this stupid two party system the US has and bring a wider spectrum of political opinion to the US.

Political diversity can only be good for a country like the US.

Re:Non-Americans

[Coryoth]

Voldemort? I didn't realize he was running

He's not. Cthulhu/Yog-Sothoth '04 is the "Greater Evil" ticket this year, having beaten Voldemort out in the primaries in May.

"Why Choose the Lesser Evil: Cthulhu/Yog-Sothoth '04"

Jedidiah.

Re:Non-Americans

[thelaw]

It's possible to lead someone without having authority over them. In fact, that's the way leadership usually works. Anyone can command somebody who has to obey them. But true leaders encourage, inspire, and persuade people who don't *have* to follow them.

That's how captains of athletic teams are usually picked, and why middle linebackers are so important to the performance of a football team's defensive backs. The US military picks its combat leaders based on their performance *before* they have authority, not after.

The leader of the free world, if the US President abandoned that role, could just as well be French President Jacques Chirac or Nigerian President President Obasanjo.

Jon

Re:Non-Americans

[Eslyjah]

Not even close. I'm an American (actually I have dual-citizenship, but that's neither here nor there) and I think that many non-Americans are very poorly informed about the issues involved in this election. I read the foreign papers (I speak French and Portuguese), and the analyses I have found therein are extremely cursory and often irrelevant. I had a discussion on Iraq with my cousin who is not an American and he spouted off this nonsense about war for oil. My brother is currently living in France and is inundated with idiots who think Bush is Hitler (and who apparently have no understanding of their own history).

Whatever side you come down on in this election, Americans believe that this is an extremely important one. And not just for foreign policy reasons. The country is making a choice between a candidate with strong socialist leanings (wanting to nationalize healthcare) and one with more capitalist ones (Medicare expansion notwithstanding). Quite frankly, the American issues you care about are only a small fraction of the ones I care about. Taxes, school vouchers, Social Security reform, healthcare, tort reform, and judicial appointments matter to me. There is no way that these issues matter to you in the same way.

If non-US citizens could vote, they would select the candidate that emasculates American military and cultural influence the most in order to shift the worldwide balance of power in their favor. Based on America's interests both domestically and abroad, I am confident that Americans will not vote in the same way.

Re:Non-Americans

[rotor]

Um yeah.... If they were attempting to kill non-US citizens on non-US territory, the US would have no right to hold them. That doesn't mean it would be "ok", but it would be Canada's job to arrest and hold them. And don't think that they wouldn't.

Re:Non-Americans

[evslin]

http://www.fairvote.org/turnout/preturn.htm
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html
http://www.fec.gov/pages/htmlto5.htm
http://www.multied.com/elections/

Look at some of the figures on that last link. The last time the turnout went above even 70% was 1900 - and that was a 2 party election. Hell the turnout 1896 was almost 80%, and that was a 2 party election too. So I'm legitimately curious about this, guys - if what I'm saying is a bunch of crap then why in the last century have voter turnouts held around the 50%-60% range? Are we waiting for something? The right issue, or set of issues? The right guy? The right scandal? I'd honestly like to know.

Re:Non-Americans

[llansamlet]

Fair point, but we do see that voter turnout in the US is horribly low, and that most of the arguments seem to be taking place about what someone did or didn't do 30 years ago. That's why I get the impression that many either don't care, care about trivial things, or are just totally disenfranchised by both 'choices'.

That's why it looks like a bit like the vote is sort of wasted on just the US voters.

What media source would you suggest for a genuinely interested non-US, so that they can become more informed about the real issues and not see a crazy texan and the dullest man in the world slag each other off?

I watched much of the Newsnight (BBC) coverage from both party congresses, and really enjoyed reports from genuine republican, democrat heartlands which seemed to address real history, background and issues. Also candid interviews with delegates, to see how their beliefs differ from the 'party line'. I feel,hope I understand some of the republican cause slightly more now as a result of this and some in depth articles in the papers.

Re:Non-Americans

[HalfFlat]

You have to forgive people for thinking that the motivation for the invasion of Iraq had something to do with oil.

Because as it has become apparent, it certainly had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, nor with 'liberating' the Iraqi people. Or if it did, it was executed so incompetently that claiming an ulterior motive is almost charitable.

None of the evidence that has come to light so far paints the actions of the current US administration in a positive light, inasmuch as it relates to the wars it has started. As regards other international affairs, it has actively fought any steps that would impinge upon the short-term benefit of large US corporations, for example in the arms industry, drug manufacture, agriculture. And of course there is the blatant disregard for the US' contribution to global warming.

Policies based in religious thought, not science, shape the US' position when looking at international family planning and poverty issues; the US has thrown its political weight around in trying to stymie UN policies on education and family planning which touch on contraception.

In international policy the US has been consistently belligerent; even now it is unilaterally trying to bully Iran on nuclear issues. It has strained relations with major allies, and amazingly has made itself even more disliked in the middle East.

So there are very good reasons why people outside the US have a very low opinion of Bush. Calling him a modern Hitler is hyperbole, but such low opinion of him is not unfounded.

Re:Non-Americans

[Your_Mom]

or Nigerian President President Obasanjo.

Didn't you hear? He died.

His son just sent me an e-mail talking about a lucrative business deal. Sadly, I really can't discuss it here.

Re:Non-Americans

[Dixie_Flatline]

That's a tiger rock.

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
[Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange]

Just because you haven't suffered another attack doesn't mean that your country is safer, or Bush has done his job. I'm not saying he hasn't, but you're attributing to causality what you can only attribute to correlation. It's like me BLAMING Bush for the attacks because there weren't any attacks on the U.S. before he came along.

Re:Non-Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

You may be right about your understanding of internal american affairs, but let me tell you, you're wrong about your assumptions on non-US citizens.

You're talking of a world where countries "emasculate" each other, where there's a "shift of power", "military influence". It's your right, and Bush's too, to see international relations as a perpetual conflict, with a winner wielding power.

In this case, I can understand that you'd like to be in the winner's team.

There are also people who think that you can see things otherwise. Equilibrium. Mutual understanding. Trying not to get infuriated when contradiction comes. That's called adult behaviour, when you don't forcibly want to show others that you got the longest dick.

Oh, by the way : the issue at stake is the same in both private and international relationships.

Re:Non-Americans

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I haven't seen US territory get hit with another major attack in the last three years.

This is not meant as a troll--although this is the hardest topic to avoid starting one in--but if we were hit, would you change your vote?

I ask because I firmly believe that we will be hit if Uncle Al thinks it'll help his goals, and I don't think that we can prevent it if Uncle Al cares to execute it. But then the question becomes: a) does Uncle Al prefer to see Bush or Kerry in control? I believe that there are arguments for either, which I'll probably have to elaborate on in the thread below; and b) would an attack make Bush more or less re-electable? Americans would surely feel the same wave of patriotism that they did the first time, and rally behind the commander-in-chief; otoh, Bush has credited himself with making the world and the US in particular much safer since he's the guy in charge. If Uncle Al puts a lie to that, are Americans likely to hold him accountable?

It's hard to me to guess, since I'll be voting for Kerry regardless of what happens. So I'm interested to hear from a "leaning-to-Bush" kinda guy to know if your vote could be flipped by an attack. I'm guessing that it couldn't be--but it seems like you've predicated your decision on his ability to make us safer, and if it's demonstrated that he really hasn't, I wonder if your opinion will change.

(Just to make sure this gets modded as a troll--I can't believe Cheney's latest statements, to the effect of: vote for Kerry and we'll be attacked; we've made the world safer, as we haven't been attacked since 9/11 due to our response. Either they know a lot more about Uncle Al's capability than I do--entirely possible--or they're doing a lot of wishful thinking and whistling past the graveyard. Uncle Al has already shown a willingness to influence the democratic process, so to challenge them to do it again seems like a stupid stupid stupid thing to do. I think it would have been much smarter to say "re-elect Bush as he's the only guy with the gumption to complete the job that's been started but to say that the job is over when it clearly isn't is just boggling. Didn't they learn from the Bring It On and the Mission Accomplished tough talk?)

Re:Non-Americans

[Tyler Durden]

...vietnam storytelling -err- recounting -err-, flip flopping...

Yeah, no kidding. It's so much better to support someone who dodged the experience altogether by using his daddy's power. Or with several deferments, maybe. Especially in a conflict they supported at the time.

Bush/Cheney for 2004! Because true patriots choose hypocritical, cowardly chicken-hawks to decide foreign policy.

Re:Non-Americans

[Eslyjah]

A good starting point, in my opinion, is to read the opinion mags. The New Republic is a leading left-of-center opinion magazine. National Review is indispensible for those of us on the right. The Wall Street Journal provides the most insightful coverage of the major papers that I have seen, although they are obviously pro-capitalism and are therefore accused of being right-of-center. They require a subscription to read online, but I enjoy reading their editorial pages, which are free, and love their Best of the Web Today feature.

Obviously, I'm right-of-center politically, and what I find insightful, you may find unconvincing.

Re:Non-Americans

[Zangief]

The aforementioned term springs from the same mindset from which the term "World Series" is applied to a US-only baseball league.

Nobody else in the world bothers with beisbol. Too boring. (Yeah cubans also care. And some wacko Japanese)

It's just like the Miss Universe Contest. You can be sure there are not other girl in the Universe as pretty as ours.

Re:Non-Americans

[gstoddart]

Um yeah.... If they were attempting to kill non-US citizens on non-US territory, the US would have no right to hold them.

Ummm .... yeah.

It's not as if the only people who have been detained were provably in the act of actually trying to kill US citizens on or off US territory.

A lot of the detainees in Guantanamo were actually non-US citizens found in a non-US territory who have yet to have been proven to have any intention of killing US (or otherwise) citizens. The government has refused to provide any evidence outside of closed military tribunals to back this up. They've just said 'unlawful combatants' and said the Geneva convention doesn't apply.

The person who you were responding to was pointing out this very same thing.

So, er, what right to hold these people is this actually acting on again? Certainly not for having actually found them in the act or demonstrated what they're accused of.

Re:Non-Americans

[mark2003]

Because the US pays a disproportional cost for UN activities?

Is this the same US that refused to pay any UN dues recently? The same US that gives less per head through government aid than almost any other western nation?

Even if what you had claimed bore any relation to the truth, twisting foreign aid so it furthers your religious views rather than actually being focussed on delivery the most aid is morally reprehensible whether you pay the most or not.

Oh, and I would disagree that there is no diference between 70% and 90%, it's probably 100 million people and most of those that would have changed their opinion would be the most educated and influential of those populations, in fact the ones most likely to support the west.

Re:Non-Americans

[NSash]

Calling him a modern Hitler is hyperbole, but such low opinion of him is not unfounded.

His raging militarism alone would justify such a comparison. Expansion of government power at the expense of civil liberties; secret extra-judicial detentions; and the sanction of inhuman treatment of prisoners from the highest levels of government (only a fool could ignore the evidence that this was premeditated) only make it more apt.

Re:Non-Americans

[danharan]

If non-US citizens could vote, they would select the candidate that emasculates American military

The choice of word is particularly interesting since the rest of the world thinks the US is a macho, violent country.

I'd also like to point out that you'll find complete idiots in the US, so you would have to compare educated people on both sides. Similarly, contrast US foreign reporting to what you find in French papers and it's fair to say that they have you beat- or for that matter, Canadian or British media.

You are right that most of the world would not vote for Bush. This is not to emasculate your country so much as the fact that on almost any issue mentionned in the article, Bush seems to be against the world majority.

Re:Non-Americans

[jtshaw]

I completely agree. Bush sure makes it easy to say there were no reasons other then economic gain for invading Iraq because he continues to lie about the reasonings for the war in the first place.

The facts are pretty simple. We had been saying for years that any WMD programs Saddam did have were moved out of country. There army was completely crippled from the early 90's. They had no proven links with the terrorists. Yet we are suppose to be stupid enough to believe they were a threat to the well being of us in the US?

Truth is Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two countries most involved with the terrorism. Iran admits to having a WMD program. We have proven they funded people like Bin Ladin. We have discovered that all of the major terrorist leaders either live in Saudi or Iran. Course you don't see us lined up to fight them do you? Saudi leaders are Bush family friends and we would want to jeopardize the military bases we have there (there are more US military bases in Saudi Arabia then any other country other then the US). Iran is actually organized well enough to fight a war if we showed up, and the economic gain from fighting a war with them wouldn't be nearly as high.

We would have been far better off spending the billions we have spent in Iraq to fix problems on our own soil, or to cut down on some of our debt. Instead we spend get to spend billions on Iraq and Bush wants to cut taxes. It doesn't take a smart person to realize that is a terrible idea. Which is of course why we have never ever had a tax cut during a war.

Kerry probably isn't the best person to lead the US. But Bush has proven he is a terrible person to do the job.

I don't typically vote Democrat, but I sure as hell will in this election.

Re:Non-Americans

[mark2003]

The first assumption has no value - whether the Earth is cool or not compared to most of it's history doesn't matter. It suits us and our civilisation.

On the second assumption - almost all scientists involved in any kind of climate research would maintain that human action is very likely to be responsible for this. It's only in the US (out of the developed world) where there is any political disagreement on this...

Re:Non-Americans

[untaken_name]

Yes, it would be so very interesting to watch baseball teams from other nations compete with baseball teams here. eheheh. You know, back in 1903 (when the first 'world series' was held) every professional baseball team in the world was eligible. If there are now professional baseball teams outside north america (because it isn't just US teams, you dipshits, don't forget the Canadians like you people who trot out the tired old 'world series' blast always do) that want to compete, maybe they should...I dunno...get popular and good enough to do so. Then, perhaps, they'd be invited to attend. However, much like basketball, any player from outside the US (which many, many US ballplayers are, something which is almost always left out of the same old anti-US bullshit you're spewing here) who has real talent has already moved to the US to play. Ichiro comes to mind. Hey, but once someone moves to the US, they're immediately US-centric jerks just like the rest of us apparently are. If the world series were opened to the rest of the world, it would still be two American teams facing each other in the finals, unless that was expressly prohibited, in which case the one American team would win each game by 15 runs or so. Nice try, though, it sure sounded good when you typed it out, I bet. Perhaps you should have realized that people have been throwing variations on your comment out since 1903. Find a new (and, if it isn't too much to ask, relevant) aspect of American society to ride, dillhole.

Re:Non-Americans

[nutshell42]

Obviously, I'm right-of-center politically, and what I find insightful, you may find unconvincing.

I believe I speak for many of us when I say that we like to read stuff that doesn't agree with our political viewpoint as long as it is well reasoned and doesn't claim to be the absolute truth but acknowledges that it's only an opinion.

Re:Non-Americans

[Thurn und Taxis]

If you honestly believe that either major-party candidate will (or even has the power to) "emasculate American military and cultural influence", then you'll be deciding your vote for entirely the wrong reasons.

Re:Non-Americans

[Martin Blank]

Why was it bad to talk about candidates' experiences (or lack thereof) serving in the military in 1992 and 1996, and somewhat taboo in 2000, but suddenly it's the only thing that anyone talks about? This is ridiculous.

From both candidates, I want to get solid answers to the following questions, among others:

• Will you, or will you not, push the re-implementation of the budget rules that required that all spending increases be balanced by tax increases, and tax cuts by spending cuts? Why or why not?
  
• What specific cuts will you push to balance the budget?
  
• What is the strategy to exit Iraq in a reasonable time period? What things could accelerate or delay this strategy?
  
• Why, if you're in favor of securing the nation, is the southern US border among the most weakly patrolled in the western world? What plans do you have to decrease the number of illegals getting into the country via land borders to as close to zero as possible?
  
• How will you change enforcement of laws against hiring illegal immigrants?

Re:Non-Americans

[akp]

Dude, The New Republic is full of neo-conservatives and hardly qualifies as liberal. You want left/center-left, read The Nation or Dissent, or go to the Center for American Progress.

Re:Non-Americans

[jdbo]

> the candidate that emasculates American military and
> cultural influence the most

Ah, are you implying then that they'd vote for the candidate who tied up the U.S. military in an unnecessary war (Iraq), leaving us vulnerable to a resurgent Al Quaeda (going into Iraq forced us to give less attention attention to re-building Afghanistan), an increasingly aggressive N. Korea, not to mention other "Axis of Evil" members?

Or are you implying that they'd vote for the candidate who would squander the world-wide goodwill expressed towards the U.S. post 9-11 via ham-fisted diplomacy and the above military action?

Or maybe they'd vote for the candidate whose fiscal irresponsibility has driven the nation into an unprecedented degree of debt, all the while without a net creation of jobs (the latter of which no president has accomplished since Hoover, who presided over the Great Depression).

BTW, nice slur against Kerry - implying that a willingess to acknowledge and work with other nations towards mutual benefit is "emasculation", as opposed to intelligent foreign policy!

I hope that you're proud of your talking points!

Re:Non-Americans

[ArsonSmith]

I'm an American (actually I have dual-citizenship, but that's neither here nor there)

Not to nit-pik but isn't that both here and there?

Re:Non-Americans

[mark2003]

Clueless?

Interesting that you call me clueless when you just trot out the same crap you see on Fox news.

It is not an American charity, if it was to be described that way then it would be more accurate to describe it as a European charity. The European nations contribute more per head of population and have a larger total population than the US. It is not an uncaring and socialist (why socialist is used as an insult I will never understand) organisation, it has problems and is often hamstrung by some of it's members particularly the US. Being a bit more secular and liberal we tend to look more at the benefit to the recipients rather than see it as an opportunity to enforce our religious views on others.

With respect to the survey results - Egypt does not have 500 million inhabitants but I was applying this across the entire middle east. My assertion that the 20% that swapped were pro-west originally is simple logic and onviously beyond you. If they hadn't been pro-west then both survey results would have been 90% hating the US. And generally in the middle east it is the educated and wealthy that support the West.

Re:Non-Americans

[haxor.dk]

"Hmm...FOX News not aligned with the right...."

Dear heavens. Why does this nonsense always pop up? FOX is "!rightwing" because it presents news at an angle you don't like?

besides, what about New York Times with the "left"? I don't hear you whining about that ? Because you like that bias, perhaps ?

"Besides, FDR was acting with world support against a common foe, while Bush eschewed world support against a 3rd world country that harbored no ties to Al Qaida or had any chance of launching a missile outside of their own back yard. But it's the same thing."

Nonsense. There was a tremendous opposition to joining in on the WWII in the USA before Pearl harbour, which was ironically partially provoked by PDF himself beforehand. The american people did not want to repeat the disaster of WWI. Regardin "international support", many nations praised Hitler's initative, especially in social areas, even Mohandas Ghandi and the then Catholic Pope! And yes, dammit, even W. Churchill himself (before germany started strong-arming Poland). Saying that FDR was a benevolent dictator while Bush is an evil one (which isnt true, dictatorwise anyway) is revisionism and should be unveiled for what it is.

Re:Non-Americans

[Dixie_Flatline]

Not so. In Lisa's example, Tigers DO exist. They aren't invented, there just aren't any there.

In situations like this, it's hard to prove causality, and it's all I'm trying to point out. While it's true that there are definitely enemies of the US lurking both outside and inside its borders, there's no guarantee that it's the Bush administration's policies that are keeping them at bay. Perhaps they're working on new strategies for attacking, or perhaps they're waiting for a more strategically advangageous time to attack. Neither of us can know exactly why they're not currently blowing something up, so it's unreasonable to make such assertions.

I was very careful to say that I don't know if Bush has helped or hindered the situation - that's not my place to say.

As for your final analogy, I'm afraid it doesn't work like that with terrorists. You can threaten a country into submission, but by their very nature, Terrorists don't respond well to threats. Anybody that is willing to throwthemselves in the line of fire with a bomb strapped to their body isn't going to pay much attention to the rock that you're brandishing, no matter how large.

Re:Non-Americans

[uujjj]

The fact that you consider the New Republic left-of-center speaks volumes about your politics. Most Democrats (rank-and-filers, not idiot DNC consultants) can't stand TNR's foreign policy.

Conservatives: please do not take the New Republic as representative of left-of-center views. It is not.

For your left wing fix, consider Counterpunch. For something moderate, take a look at The Nation or the columnists for Salon.

PS Any slashdot story that includes the word "Bush" (notwithstanding those discussing plantlife) is flamebait and should probably go on flamebait central.

Re:Non-Americans

[Tyler Durden]

You, repukes, will never Clinton alone, will ya?

True. But remember Clinton was against the Vietnam War while Bush and (I think) Cheney was for it. If you believe something is worth fighting for and yet you're willing to let others less fortunate than yourself who don't have your conviction risk themselves instead, then I'd have absolutely zero respect for you. If I met someone like that on the street I'd consider it my duty to spit in their face. Unforgiveable.

Kerry has his faults, but for some people to hold his actions involving Vietnam beneath those of Bush (who openly said that Kerry was more courageous) and a lot of his cabinet takes a type of moral double-speak that I simply cannot comprehend.

Re:Non-Americans

[clambake]

The difference is that there has been evidence of planned attacks which have been thwarted.

That wouldn't be evidence collected by the same people who told you there were WMDs in Iraq, would it?

Re:Non-Americans

[Ohreally_factor]

Saying it was "for the oil", as if the oil was a spoil of war we could easily ship back to the US in one fell swoop, is disingenious. It was for control of the oil so that the withholding of it cannot be used as a weapon against us to strangle our economy (and perhaps to use as a weapon to strangle other economies that threaten to overtake ours).

Control of the oil supply is actually a pretty sensible goal. However, that is not how the war was sold to Congress or the American people. Basically, they lied to us about the reasons for going to war, and are still lying.

Granted, if they had been straight forward, they wouldn't have been allowed to enter a war of aggression, but that's how democracy is supposed to work.

Another problem with lying to push policies through is that the liars seem to eventually believe their own lies. Thus, when the Iraqi people didn't accept us as liberators and dance in the streets, our leadership wasn't prepared (and still doesn't seem to be). There was no plan for winning the peace. If the administration had been honest about it's goals, one would hope they would also have a realistic plan for occupation.

Eurpoean perspective

[Tx]

I really hope you guys elect Dubya again. We in Europe need all the help we can get competing in science, so Bush is our man.

Re:Eurpoean perspective

[harmonica]

Funny, yet sadly true.

However, both Bush and Kerry emphasize that they want to make it easier again to attract smart foreign students, at least according to this SPIEGEL article (in German). In the time since 9/11 it has become extremely hard to get into the country, and not only for students that match certain profiles. Even if you're a white female Christian from Northern Europe there were quite a few obstacles.

Re:Eurpoean perspective

[Tom]

We in Europe need all the help we can get competing in science, so Bush is our man.

But only until they find oil in the Netherlands.

Re:Eurpoean perspective

[feldhaus]

I really hope you guys elect Dubya again

"Again"? They didn't elect him the first time...

Move along Move along

[booyah]

Nothing to see here...

the responses are political canned responses, most likely passed off to higher ranking lackeys in both organizations...

keep moving, nothing to see here.

Re:Religeon

[Anonymous Coward]

Religion and science are not mutually exclusive

Religion and science? Perhaps not. Religion and the Bible in particular? Definitely.

The Bible is not self-consistent. The Bible makes claims that contradict observable phenomenon. The Christian faith requires people to make assumptions against available evidence. The Bible is inherently anti-science.

As elegant as science is, and as helpful as it has been to the world around us, it has no room for things like morality.

You are missing the point. Nobody is saying that science can replace religion. The previous poster's point was that the Christian faith in particular requires an attitude that is directly in opposition to the scientific process.

Science != religion

[amightywind]

Any president who reads the bible for help making presidential decisions cannot be pro-science

+5 Insightful??? Are you saying science is a substitute for religion, or those who practice religion should be dismissed as scientists? President Bush's actions in expanding the funding of NSF, NASA and many other agencies suggest that he is pro-science. Would you have said the same thing about Jimmy Carter who was also devoutly Christian? How about Albert Einstein who was a practicing Jew, or Donald Knuth who is a devout Lutheran.

Re:Science != religion

[TGK]

Einstein was willing to put his science before his faith, such as it was. Many have argued that Einstein's religion was more a reaction to oppression in Europe than it was a deeply seated religious belief.

Interesting comparison

[dcsmith]

Not a bad read for anyone interested in science. In addition to revealing their stances on the individual areas of science in question, the answers also give some indications on how the candiates see science's impact on the US and global economies, the environment and even US interations with other nations. Actually more information than you might expect out of campaign rhetoric.

I was amused that most of Kerry's responses mentioned John Edwards, but Cheney is not mentioned ONCE in Bush's answers. I suppose that makes sense for the questions about energy policy...

Its clear that the candidates don't ever plan on using these responses verbally. I'd love to see W try and pronounce "carbon sequestration". (In the Bush response to question #12.)

Discover also has an analysis...

[Silverlancer]

Over similar issues. Except this one is just an anlysis, no interviews. The sad thing is just how horrible Bush's scientific policies are. For one, when he dropped the USA out of the Kyoto treaty, he claimed that Global Warming was an "unproven hypothesis." While it is still sometimes disputed how much of global warming is caused by humans, global warming has been well-known for decades and the proof is very solid.

Re:Discover also has an analysis...

[Mycroft_514]

Then you haven't done enough homework.

The model that supports global warming is seriously flawed. The only people that support global warming in the scientific community are those whose grants are based upon it. Gee, I wonder why.

You want to seriously look into how the Global warming scam is being played, check out www.junkscience.com They have a lot of information over there that just might open your eyes.

Re:Discover also has an analysis...

[InsaneGeek]

You think possibly the fact that not a SINGLE person in the senate voted (95 to 0) that the Kyoto treaty as it stood was acceptable, might also be a reason why he didn't persue entering into it?

In fact Bush has said that he supports the concept of the Kyoto treaty, (which would basically contradict what you are trying to say that he doesn't believe that humans can cause issues) but like ALL the other senators (remember every single one said don't sign it, Dem & Repub) has issues with the writing.

And it's not just all the US Senators, here's an open letter from SCIENTISTS also concerned with the content of the Kyoto treaty. http://www.envirotruth.org/openletter.cfm I'd say that a number of nations were rushing to "pat themselves on the back" rather than actually solving the issue.

Re:Discover also has an analysis...

[maxpublic]

Global warming is real, and measurable. It isn't up for debate, except among fools who like to stick their heads in the sand and pretend it isn't happening.

What's up for debate is how much of the warming is being caused by humans. It could be that human activity is having little impact and that the warming is natural; or it could be that humans are accelerating a natural process; or that humans are the primary cause of warming. Nobody knows.

Max

Funding

[Zorilla]

It should be noted that the current ban on stem-cell research actually only prevents funding research on the topic. Has anybody else seen that piece on 60 Minutes about the Howard Hughes research center that has been able to research it anyway because of its massive private funding?

That said, I'm still against the blocking of research funds. More eyes can be useful on this subejct, obviously.

Re:Funding

[Blitzenn]

The fact that you missed in the funding ban is that if a research lab pursues embryonic stem cell research, they will lose ALL of their funding in ALL of their areas of research. The Bush administration has made it clear that they do not want to be tie to this in any way. Nearly every major research firm in America recieves federal funds to aid their research in one fashion or another. They are not going to pursue private funding for research in this area and risk losing all of their funding in others. It is a scare tactic used by the government to stop the research and it works pretty effectively.

Re:Funding

[Blitzenn]

Aids research has been going on longer than that. Perhaps we should stop that too, it MUST be a lost cause then. CAncer research has obviously been a complete waste of time according to your theory. Come on that is simply idiotic.

Secondly, I would expect there to be more results from a fully funded parallel research as opposed to one that is nearly completely choked off. That's simply commonsense.

Re:Funding

[magefile]

Stem cells are not all equal - adult stem cells are partially differentiated, which embryonic stem cells are completely undifferentiated. Guess why stem cells are so useful/versatile/powerful? Yup, they're undifferentiated. So do you want the embryonic ones, or the half-assed adult ones that are only good for a few situations?

And there's a heck of a lot of research that's been going on for more than 20 years that hasn't delivered yet.

Re:Funding

[Curunir_wolf]

Wrong. Fetal stem cells aren't being banned; they're partially differentiated anyway, so they're no better than adult stem cells. It's embryonic stem cells we are concerned about.

Then it seems to me that the moral delimma is an even greater issue. Presumably, the way to get new lines is to get some sperm and egg donations, perform some invitro fertilization, then harvest the resulting embryos. (Please correct me if I'm wrong, IANAMB.)

The argument is that you have created a person (a unique human individal), and you are going to experiment on it.

Personally, I don't agree with that. An embryo, undifferentiated, in no way viable, should not be considered a protected entity. But I do understand the view point that this is "creating human life in order to destroy it". And for many people it is morally wrong. I don't really think it's a religious issue. Few people would support performing medical experiments on human beings. But from a certain perspective, this crosses the line into that territory.

So I think Bush made a reasonable compromise in order to provide funding that was not available before, knowing that he was under pressure to not provide funding for any kind of stem cell research.

To me, the funds should be available without those restrictions, but everybody's taxes are being used to provide the funding, so I see the need for compromise. And calling it a "ban on stem cell research" is disingeneous political posturing, and not conducive to an honest debate. The issue, I think, is that research facilities using federal funds for stem cell research are banned from creating new embryos.

Re:Funding

[Obasan]

If we only funded sciences that gave immediate results, we wouldn't have much of ... well, anything, right now.

Many scientists feel there is potential in embryonic stem cell research. Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong... but one thing I guarantee, they know more about their field than you do. Scientists get credibility and reputation for working in areas that produce results. Those results may come in baby steps, and wrong turns may be taken along the way. But I think those scientists are in a better position to know whether its worth investing in embryonic stem cell research than we are.

(And lest you feel there may be some kind of conspiracy to 'get funding'... labs & institutions that don't produce interesting research lose credibility in the community and funding. It isn't in their best interest to pursue a field if they truly think its a doomed project, they would just be tarnishing their own reputation.)

Re:Religeon

[vgaphil]

He's also pro-life AND pro-war, go figure.

Nice can of worms

[Big_Monkey_Bird]

I just hope people don't read their bible for science anymore. WWGD : What Would Galileo Do?

Answer2 - interesting reasoning...

[someme2]

This is interesting: "what would you do to ensure that your administration receives genuinely impartial scientific advice?"

Both essentially answer: "It is really important to get impartial advice, that's why I will take only impartial advice."

Both don't get at all into the problem - which is "how do you know what advice is impartial?".

Both answers have nice parts like Bush's world class sentence "I have sought out the best scientific minds..." - completely ignoring that the question was "how do you deal with the problem that it is hard to know what good science is?"

Kerry's reasoning is equally interesting when he says "[Hey, how do I ensure that I receive impartial advice?] My administration would never utilize biased advice."

That's true Mr. President. You can very well be sure that you receive impartial advice when you just don't utilize the biased advice!

JUST ALWAYS BE SURE THAT YOU PERSONALLY SEEK OUT THE BEST SCIENTIFIC MINDS!

Both candidates didn't say anything about the problem itself stating trueisms of the worst order.

Re:Answer2 - interesting reasoning...

[cynic10508]

JUST ALWAYS BE SURE THAT YOU PERSONALLY SEEK OUT THE BEST SCIENTIFIC MINDS! Both candidates didn't say anything about the problem itself stating trueisms of the worst order.

Probably because we don't know how to adequately define what the 'best' scientifid mind is. Is it the one that gets published most through the politically-charged journals? Or the one that teaches the most classes? It seems like bias (as to what is the 'best' scientific mind) again rears its ugly head. So its a catch-22 perhaps?

Re:Answer2 - interesting reasoning...

[danila]

This is not science fault - this is a fault of wacko environmentalists. They are organised - they can manipulate public opinion, media and lawmakers. After all, you don't want to be AGAINST Spotted Owls, do you?

A big indicator of the problem was the candidates' response to the BSE question. They both said this is a serious problem that warrants a lot of attention (and funding), even though less than 100 people died from BSE during 5 years. Heck, I am sure more people die because they don't wash their hands before eating. :) So politicians only care about problems that are PERCEIVED as important, they don't care how valid is the science. Eventually, when people in the USA realise that global warming is happening, every American candidate will start supporting Kyoto protocol and other measures.

President Kang

[caitsith01]

Kent Brockman: Senator Dole, why should people vote for you instead of President Clinton?

Kang: It makes no difference which one of us you vote for. Either way, your planet is doomed. DOOMED!

Kent: Well, a refreshingly frank response there from senator Bob Dole. ............

Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles.

[audience gasps in terror]

Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.

[murmurs]

Man1: He's right, this is a two-party system.

Man2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.

Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away! ..........

Marge: I don't understand why we have to build a ray gun to aim at a planet I never even heard of.

Homer: Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Missile defense

[antifoidulus]

They ask an interesting question about star wars here. Bush claims that the program is working, and will be much more fully operational soon, Kerry says that more research is needed. However, the question only focuses on the scientific aspects of the system, not on it's stratagic usefulness. The world is much different than it was during the Soviet era. During the soviet era, outside the possibility of submarines the only way for the Soviets to attack the US was through missiles, because we hardly did any trade at all with our "enemy", but today the world is much different.
Suppose North Korea really wanted to nuke the US. They have missiles that could potentially reach Alaska, MAYBE California, and will soon have the nuclear technology to make weapons, if they don't have it already. But if North Korea really wanted to attack the US, why would they use a missile whose source can be detectable when they could just sneak a missile on one of the thousands of Chinese ships that come to the US each year that go virtually unsearched by customs? North Korea would have to be morons not to have spies working in the Chinese shipping industry(unbeknowst to China of course).
We are just dumping money down the drain on a system that is questionable both scientifically and strategically.

Re:Missile defense

[prisoner]

That star wars thing was a great idea in the 80's. Throw some money at it and watch the soviets squirm. Now? I just don't know what the hell is going on with it. Sure, it might be good to research and test at a low level of funding but to start sticking those interceptors in silos when we haven't had a real unscripted test of the real launch vehicle? It seems like we're spending a lot of money on it before we're sure it's actually going to do anything. As far as what the N. Koreans will do, who knows. Their leader is as crazy as a shithouse rat.

Re:Religeon

[orcrist]

Ah, the same church that imprisoned Galileo for his findings and writings?

OK, that was a cheap shot, that was hundreds of years ago.

No, that's not a cheap shot. In fact the "hundreds of years ago" makes it worse: they didn't admit they were wrong about Galileo until 1992!!

-chris

Re:Religeon

[qwijibo]

Of course they tell you that they believe in an invisible man in the sky on faith alone. There are a lot more people who can accept that without question than people who can fathom the truth.

Do you really think the church is going to come out and say "we know that intelligent design is how we got here because we actually met the space aliens who put us here"? It's much easier to claim some individual omnipotent being is responsible for everything. Do you realize what it would do to society if people knew we were a science experiment by a bunch of deviant aliens? How else do you explain the anal probes?

They didn't imprison Galileo for his ideas. They imprisoned him because the church is a cash cow and Galileo met the aliens and was trying to set up a competing company. The church is the original big-faceless-corporation.

This conspiracy has been brought to you by the fine people at Halliburton and the letter W.

Re:Religeon

[NeoSkandranon]

At least a Christian has (ideally, I realize this is not always so) a somewhat consistent set of morals to base their decisions on. Whether GWB is adhering to those is a different bowl of kibble, but my point is, guidlines, right?

I would be fairly scared (regardless of the fact that I'm a christian) of someone in power who had no set of beliefs other than "Do what you can rationalize to yourself", which strikes a string on most athiests I know.

Exactly my point

[caitsith01]

How good would it be to see an interviewer sit down and totally grill Bush or Kerry for a good hour, with no aides or press secretaries, or time limits to force them to move on, and with no fear of losing 'access' and no drip-fed policy announcements and spin.

I often think about this. I think I have decided that open press conferences should be consitutionally mandates. The President should have to face the public and the press at least once a week throughout his term, and during the campaign there should be both compulsory debates and compulsory open press conferences. None of this stage managed bullshit.

Doonesbury says it well.

Re:Exactly my point

[stray]

I'd mod you up for that if I had the points.

For me, living in a small European country where you often hear politicians speaking freely in unscripted debates and interviews, it is really strange that you put up with a president puppet so far removed from the ordinary people. If it's all a staged show, how can you trust a leader?

I also was quite disappointed by the interview. It's pretty pointless to just publish carefully prepared sitting-on-the-fence talk, kind of like newspapers just publishing PR press releases instead of "independent" news (if there is such a thing).

Re:Exactly my point

[guyo26]

The UK has this, it's called Question Time or Parliamentary Questions (PQs) Note also that the questions and answered are published in book form.

Something we could well copy from them, although I admit that it's highly unlikely under the current adminstration.

An excellent idea

[SolemnDragon]

In fact, why not expand this to other issues? Why not require an on-the-spot literacy and basic knowledge test? I think that this would be a great idea, no leader left behind, and all. I may sound snarky, but i mean it. I'd love to see them have to answer some basic stuff. Things they really ought to know if they've got their hands on the purse strings and their finger on the button...

1. Which country does the US currently owe the most money to?

2. How much is one trillion, in millions?

(If you can't answer this, i don't want you spending my taxes. The English answer is often different from the American answer, too.)

3.a. What's the basic standard treatment for radiation sickness?

3.b. How thick should the walls of a fallout shelter be?

***

What else should be on the test?

Re:An excellent idea

[stray]

I'd like to hear them (well, the W anyway) answer some of these:

- How many sovereign countries are there in the world?

- How many world religions?

- Earth's circumference? Land surface? the U.S. land surface?

- How long does it take to cross the U.S. by car, east coast to west coast? How many timezones do you traverse? How much do you pay for the gas for this trip?

Have a public debate, randomly draw 10 questions like those out of a pool of 100, and let the candidates answer them.

I don't know any exact answers to any of these questions, but I think it would be very interesting to hear some unprepared guesses from the candidates, orally, with a bit of discussion about how they arrived at their answers.

You'd get to know the guys a lot better than by being inundated by election TV ads and smear campaigns.

Re:An excellent idea

[CrkHead]

What else should be on the test?

Without removing your shoes, please count to twenty.

Re:An excellent idea

[Idarubicin]

3.b. How thick should the walls of a fallout shelter be?

I'm pretty sure I'd be uncomfortable with the foreign policy of a national leader who was really familiar with fallout shelter design....

quick summary for the impatient

[ghostlibrary]

For those who didn't RTFA, here's the answers:

Bush, questions 1-2, 4, 6-15: Yes, but no.
Kerry, questions 1, 6-15: Yes, but no.
Bush, questions 3, 5: No, but yes.
Kerry, questions 2-5: No, but yes. ... I can't believe I actually tallied these up.

Re:Religion

[Ignignot]

You are missing the point. Nobody is saying that science can replace religion. The previous poster's point was that the Christian faith in particular requires an attitude that is directly in opposition to the scientific process.

Only if you have to take the Bible literally. For example the Roman Catholic church reformed in the 60's to become much more liberal by normal Christian attitudes. Basically they say that if the Bible says "the Earth is flat" and then someone proves that it isn't, then the Bible was wrong. That's ok because it doesn't have to be taken for literal truth, or maybe someone messed up copying things along the way, or whatever. I have a fundamentalist geologist friend and he said "due to the abundance of evidence I can only say that the Earth is several billion years old." (I forget if it is billion or billions, sorry). Some religions and people are anti-science. But don't assume that Christians are all as shallow as you make them out to be. To semi-quote Neil Stephenson in Snowcrash - "Most smart people come to realize that 90% of the Bible is crap. The problem is they assume that the whole thing is crap, when that 10% is very important."

Re:Distorted views of the "Nature" of politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Nature politically far left --- is this a joke?

Teacher Associations are for K-12. Try an experiment, walk into any university and ask the professor if they belong to a teachers association or teachers union. No such luck.

Actually, having been in university for the past 30 years, I heard way more professors come out in support of Reagan over Carter then Carter over Reagan. Haven't met a professor yet who supports Bush over Kerry. But I am sure they are out there.

Re:Religeon

[Keck]

Any president who reads the bible for help making presidential decisions cannot be pro-science,

As opposed to Kerry, who tries to affiliate himself with the Catholic Church to garner votes, only to be told by the Church itself to buzz off. Guess what? They're BOTH Politicians, and the parties really don't differ that much -- and the few things they differ on are divisive indeed. What they'd like you to ignore are all the similarities -- they're both plutocrats..

My point is, don't bank on a politician to be the source of change for the better. You can do more yourself, in a single day, to positively affect your own life and those around you than either Bush or Kerry can in 4 (or 8!) years.

Re:Religeon

[Apreche]

Yes, that is because you are a wise person. However, most of the world is not as wise as you are. Some people, on both sides, believe religeon and science ARE mutually exclusive. There are people out there who think that their religeon is the truth of the world and that there was an Adam, an Eve, a great flood, a parted sea, etc. There are also some people who think that religeon is usless as a set of moral guidelines to live a better life because science is right, making religeon wrong.

I've never met him, but it appears to be that our current president is in the first category. That is the cause of much of the anger against him from the scientific community.

Re:Religeon

[stromthurman]

First, it's a Bush vs. Kerry piece on slashdot concerning science, a definite fire hazard. And to make the situation all the more flammable, the assertion is made that pro-science and pro-religion are mutually exclusive ideas.

Science and religion can co-exist, for evidence I submit Isaac Newton, as a classic example, and Dr. Donald Knuth, as a more modern one. Donald Knuth has written a number of papers and books on the topic of computer science, as well as having written "3:16", which offers analysis of Chatper 3, Verse 16 of every book in the bible.

One need not reject science to be religious, and one need not reject religion to be scientific.

Printable Version

[Crouching Turbo]

PDF Version

It's a PDF, but it's much easier to read. I hate clicking a bunch of links to read a simple article.

Re:Distorted views of the "Nature" of politics

[Paulrothrock]

Professors at universities have NEVER been Republican - republicans ask for accountability and aren't necessarily for higher teacher pay. The teacher associations are the single biggest democratic support = bias

My Republican economics, math, IT, and philosophy profs would beg to differ.

But in terms of actual, well, science (physics, astronomy, biology), yeah most of them oppose the Republicans. Mostly because they want to take physics and make more nuclear weapons (to stop other countries from getting nuclear weapons), ignore astronomy for 'flags and footprints,' and eliminate biology altogether by claiming that evolution is a myth and stem cells are people.

Re:Religeon

[sgant]

I'm an athiest, yet I don't need a set of rules written down in a book to know what is right and wrong. My morals are consistent also.

I've heard this argument before, but I just don't get it. Do you honestly feel that an athiest is some kind of wild-man who runs around in a totally sociopathic way?

Come on...

Re:Religeon

[Linux is shit]

Religion and science are not mutually exclusive

On the contrary, they are mutually exclusive. Religion means building a view of the universe based on myths, old-wives tales and cult brainwashing. In religion, nothing can be questioned or challenged, for example Christians cannot challenge what is written in the Bible, even if it is obviously false. Religion tries to explain things by making up absurd stories about gods rather than looking for the simplest logical explanations. Even when these stories are found to be false, anyone claiming such is persecuted.

Science on the other hand builds a view of the universe by observing it and constructing logical theories to explain it. If a theory is shown to be false, it is changed, scientists seek a better theory rather than sticking to the old one even when it has been proven false.

This is why science and religion can never co-exist. Science means challenging long-held theories whereas religion means having 'faith' in them no matter what.

As elegant as science is, and as helpful as it has been to the world around us, it has no room for things like morality.

Neither does religion. Religions can't make people more moral, all they do is brainwash people in thinking certain actions are moral and certain actions are immoral. Whether they are or not is irrelevent, if that's what the old religious leaders who wrote the Bible, Koran etc. thought, that's what you have to think yourself if you follow the religion. There is no room for actually deciding whether something is moral or not, you just follow the dogma and persecute anyone who doesn't.

Re:Is this really Bush v Kerry? Implications of Q6

[Mixel]

Talking to oneself ain't good, but so is the lack of line breaks...

On ITER:

Question6, Bush: "a critically important experiment to test the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a source of electricity and hydrogen"

July 13th 2004, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham [energy.gov]: "a critically important experiment to test the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a source of electricity and hydrogen"

Firstly, ITER as a source of hydrogen? I know ITER might spur the hydrogen producers, but then could this equally say ITER would be a source of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) and tritium (heavy-heavy hydrogen). Huh?

Secondly, are these the words of our much loved Mr. Bush or did he just copy and paste some of Spencer Abraham's memos? This looks more like a 'whole party' thing.

Re:Religion

[Digz]

Not so. I am Catholic, and fairly well-versed on apologetics.

Vatican II changed nothing of the faith. It was a pastoral council that changed only the expression of liturgy and language used to make the Faith more understandable to the modern world. Nothing of the faith changed.

The Church has always realized that Sacred Scripture is not a science textbook. The Bible is the story of how God relates to man and man's response. Many literary devices are used that seem to be non-sensical in modern English, but are in harmony and make perfect sense when you understand Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek prophetic language.

A perfect example is the whole "Left Behind" group nowadays which states that Christ will come not two times but three. (When He comes back the second, He will only be "in the clouds", so that's not a "real" coming back). What they neglect to notice is that the phraseology of "coming on clouds" in the Bible represents God's judgement. Ergo, when Christ comes back the second time it will be as Judge.

Many things in scripture use Hebrew prophetic language, and you have to understand the culture to understand the message. The Bible was not written outside of its culture as a message only for those 2,000 - 6,000 years later. It had relevance to the people each part was written to at the time, and you have to know the background to get a true sense of what Scripture is saying.

If you are really interested in this, check out a book entitled "Making Sense Out Of Scripture" by Mark Shea.

Actually Bush stands to lose the "Christian Right"

[ShatteredDream]

By supporting Arlen Spectre over his challenger, Bush basically guaranteed that any of his allegedly anti-abortion judicial candidates would be "Borked" again. It was Spectre, a republican, that went off like a rabid attack dog on Bork when IIRC Bush senior was trying to get him approved. And do you know what the irony of it is? Bork is the kind of conservative that would have ripped Microsoft a new asshole on its anti-trust case if it had gone to the SCotUS.

Between his support for spectre, illegal alien amnesty, spending like a stripper with a stolen credit card, new entitlements and his equivocation on supporting Israel he stands to lose the Christian Right from the comments I've been reading on right-of-center sites. Most of them are not commentary sites either, but forums like FreeRepublic.

Unfortunately most of these guys will be deusch bags in 2004 and would stay home rather than vote for Petruka the Constitution Party candidate. Why? If it ain't the big guy, and it ain't their big guy, no point in voting. Most of them are probably working class or barely in the middle class because they cannot connect two simple facts: if they came out and voted LP or CP instead of voting for Bush, the minor parties would get so many votes that the RP would be howling in pain in 2004 and would be whoring itself out to the right to get its base back. But they won't do that, so why should the Republicans give a flying fuck about the Christian Right anymore?

As I have often quipped, we libertarians are the principled on the right, the "christian right" aren't principled, their voting habits show it. Rather they are merely the spoiled brats of the right.

Re:Please,.......PLEASE!!!!

[RussDavisDotCom]

Okay, this isn't really directed at the previous poster, but I'd like to keep it in the same thread.

What do you say you guys butt out of our election? I mean, I understand you being concerned and all... but, honestly, I'm not your best forum for change. I feel a lot of countries really feel like we should all be a global nation and everyone has a say in everyone else's government.

What do you say I elect my president, you elect yours (this is assuming the post is coming from a democracy/republic) and we let them work it out. You have a problem with who I elect? Deal with it. This has never been more of a US internal matter regardless of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

This really bears repeating...

[gurutechanimal]

...but you cannot have a religious fundamentalist oil baron as president and expect him to respect pure science. I would take it a step further and say that you cannot have a truly religious person be impartial, unbiased, and untainted when making any type of policy-wide science-related decision. It's oil and water; religion and science just don't gel. Oh yeah, people say then can and do, but those people are usually of the religiously inclined, who are trying to stay true to their belief system without looking like a progress-hating ignoramous.

Slightly off-topic but relevant, I was having this discussion with a colleague. I posited that in a perfect political system, a politician would not be allowed to run for president; instead, we should only nominate and elect outgoing, well-versed, and apolitical scholars, with advanced degrees in areas pertinent to running a nation, such as economics, sociology, or whatnot. My colleagues rebuttal was that such people would not want the type of lifestyle that comes along with being El Presidente, thus would never even enter themselves in the running. Therefore, we continue to elect former actors, pure politicians, and shady businessmen to our highest office, thus perpetuating our current kakistocracy.

Suckage begets suckage.

Re:This really bears repeating...

[cascadingstylesheet]

I would take it a step further and say that you cannot have a truly religious person be impartial, unbiased, and untainted when making any type of policy-wide science-related decision. It's oil and water; religion and science just don't gel. Oh yeah, people say then can and do, but those people are usually of the religiously inclined, who are trying to stay true to their belief system without looking like a progress-hating ignoramous.

Another way of saying that is: If you are religiously inclined, you may not like being bashed, so you try to explain to the basher why he is wrong. If you are not religiously inclined, you can either just remain silent, or join in the bashing.

Re:This really bears repeating...

[mikeee]

And I posit that in a perfect economic system, all my needs would be taken care of by magical singing rainbow ponies.

Who is going to decide who qualifies as 'outgoing, well-versed, and apolitical scholars, with advanced degrees'? You? Big Brother? The Council of Guardians?

Democracy is a bad system, but it is the best.

Re:This really bears repeating...

[sangdrax]

What bullshit. Religion and science can mix perfectly. If they wouldn't, why are so many of the great scientists of the past religious? They don't bite each other since they focus on different things. Its only when you let one dictate the other when things go wrong.

Re:This really bears repeating...

[meringuoid]

Nobody who actually wants to rule people should be allowed to do so; their motives are inherently suspect.

We need a leader who does not know he is the leader. A solipsist in a shack somewhere with a cat, that's the ticket.

Re:We non-Americans are hoping....

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you going to do if we Americans turn our government into a cheap parody of a democratic process?

We are well on the way with our black-box voting machines toward making our "elections" into an episode of MTv's Real World. A majority of us don't vote, and the rest don't care whether our votes will be counted with any integrity. Both our major party candidates for President are on the record favoring illegal military interventions abroad and the capriciously systematic suppression of civil liberties at home. We are generally represented in Congress by representatives who show open contempt for their constituents interests. We see no reason to hold our President or any of his advisors accountable for the murder, torture and disappearance of captured prisoners in the WarOnTerror(TM). Worst of all, the electorate pretty much regards any criticism of these policies as unpatriotic at best, and perhaps even a majority of them consider it treasonous.

What do we have to do before the rest of the world will wake up and realize that the U.S. is experiencing its second revolution, and the outcome will not be a victory for democratic principles?

(We've not gone quite as far south as Russia, but Bush says he looked into Putin's soul and found a friend... and, no, I don't feel confortable posting this under my real name. Yes, it's that bad now in America.)

Re:Religeon

[DarkSarin]

First off, this is NOT insightful. What tripe!

I know a good many scientists who are very religious also. I may not agree with their particular views on religion, but there is nothing in them that makes them non-scientific or non-religious.

As far as I see it, religion and science are simply two different domains, as they are generally seen. Science is the rigorous search for facts. Religion is the rigorous search for hope, and probably even trying to be a better person.

That said, there are certain religions that violate this: my own religion, for instance, lays claim to all "truth", regardless of its source. That is, we accept as true, those scientific theories and laws which are reasonably well established.

As for reading the Bible (biblios in greek, I believe, which simply meant BOOK!) for help in making presidential decisions, I can only say that there are worse sources of information. After all, he could be reading hustler for advice, which seems to be what a certain other president was doing. (it's a joke).

The Bible has some really interesting insights into decision making and human interaction. Some of it is very old advice, and some of it seems contradictory, but I think many of Bush's detractors would agree that a little more of the "love your enemies" part of the Bible is not such a bad thing.

Sorry, being pro-science is not defined by your willingness to use the bible or not. That is the worst type of non-scientific illogical thinking.

As a side note, having Read the Fun Article, I am disturbed by the way they openly state that they edited Bush's comments, but in reading those comments there are no ellipses, nor other denotation that they eliminated any information. I expected more from a mag. like Nature, and am truly dissappointed. From the viewpoint of a graduate student working on a thesis, I would be ripped to shreds for that type of work. Editing comments should be avoided at all cost (after all, the site was equipped to deal with longer replies), but when necessary it should be obvious where and how.

Re:Religion

[TGK]

The Catholic Church (wow, I never thought I'd hear my self say this).... the Catholic Church has taken a surprisingly liberal view on the sciences recently, and has endured the wrath of the religious right in the United States because of it.

I'm not going to get into the whole abortion debate here, because fundamentally that's a personal decision and religion really should have nothing to do with it at the legislative/judicial level. Nonetheless, the Catholics while still endorsing "God Guided Evolution" (last I checked) also still buy into a number of other apocryphal stories in the Old Testament such as Noah and that guy who got eaten by the whale (Johna?).

What the Church needs to do is step back and say one way or the other "The Bible contains passages which may be metaphorical" or "The Bible should be taken literally at all times." If you're willing to admit the former, you need to be willing to allow the individual to judge what is Metaphorical and what is not for themselves. Obviously the Church has it within her power to take exception to this from time to time through the Pope's power of speaking Ex Cathedra.

Still, were the Church to view things in this way it would set a powerful precedent for the rest of the world and might just allow some of the Authoritarian Theocratic States (like the USA) to accomplish something in the sciences.

Obviously there are portions of the Bible that are important. That whole "love they neighbor" thing can make for a pretty decent place to live. But you can buy into that without agreeing with the bit about Adam living to be 900 or so.

summary of responses

[Anonymous Coward]

On most of the questions the responses from the candidates were equally uninformative. Overall I was impressed with the use of actual figures and specific plans in the Bush responses, versus the vague generalizations and even clearly ambiguous answers on questions like Mars and ballistic missile defenses that Kerry gave.

For the slightly interesting questions, here is the summary of responses(I am sure that Bush did not write his responses personally; for Kerry I am unsure, but I suspect that he didn't either):

Stem cell research: Bush quotes amounts of federal money given for stem cell research, whereas Kerry promises to allow federal funding of stem cell research on new lines. Scientists interested in stem cell research will all prefer Kerry's response.

Nuclear weapons: Bush promises to fund development of new types of nuclear weapons, Kerry promises not to.

Ballistic missile defense: Bush promises to deploy a system within the next two years, Kerry promises not to deploy the system Bush proposes for immediate deployment. No word on whether Kerry plans to continue funding research or eventually deploy a different system.

Greenhouse gas emmisions: Bush quotes previously announced goal of 18% reduction in US greenhouse gas emissions. Kerry promises to join Kyoto protocol.

Space science: Bush quotes Mars mission plan. Kerry promises that NASA will be given sufficient support for any future missions he proposes. No mention of any planned mission proposals, and it implies that he will can the Mars mission plan, although it doesn't say that explicitly.

In every answer Kerry pledges spend more money.

[geremy]

In answer to just about every single question, Kerry pledges to do more, fund more, oversee more, and spend more.

Sure, that is all well and good, but if he is actually elected he will realize that it will surely be impossible to do all that he has pledged, even with all the increases in Taxes that he has planned.

I saw Bush's answers as much more definative and realistic.

Re:In every answer Kerry pledges spend more money.

[geremy]

Maybe if that were Kerry's plan, but as we all know Kerry has no plan for Iraq. He nor his campaign have ever once mentioned pulling out of Iraq.

Re:In every answer Kerry pledges spend more money.

[marsu_k]

Given how GWB has managed to turn a decent budget surplus into a record-breaking deficit in just four years, I'd say he knows how to spend as well.

Re:In every answer Kerry pledges spend more money.

[HeghmoH]

Given the relatively amounts of money spent in science, all of Kerry's proposals could probably be paid for by simply rolling back half of Bush's massive defense spending increase.

Re:In every answer Kerry pledges spend more money.

[Shotgun]

The "decent budget surplus" was the figment of an accountants imagination, based on overly optimistic forcast grounded in a stock and technology bubble. The deficit was alway there, but was exacerbated by a recession and a defensive war (we were attacked first).

Or would you have our troops fight with spitballs.

I live in North Carolina. I love how John Edwards runs around telling everyone that Bush drove jobs away, and that as president he'll bring them back. My question is always, "So what did you do while you were in the SENATE!!"

Re:Religion

[Refrag]

To semi-quote Neil Stephenson in Snowcrash - "Most smart people come to realize that 90% of the Bible is crap. The problem is they assume that the whole thing is crap, when that 10% is very important."

Neil is wrong. If 90% of a source is crap but happens to be correct about 10% of its content, then clearly that source is a bad place to look for information about that remaining 10%. There is clearly a better place to look for information on that content.

Re:Religeon

[thelaw]

The Bible is not self-consistent. The Bible makes claims that contradict observable phenomenon. The Christian faith requires people to make assumptions against available evidence. The Bible is inherently anti-science.

Christians read the Bible as if it came from a teacher, not as a textbook. As a result, Christians differ over what parts they think refer to historical narrative, and which ones are meant to instruct philosophically or morally or theologically.

For example, no Christian reads the Hebrew Proverbs as if each one of the proverbs is always true in all circumstances, in all possible ways. Proverbs is a book of proverbial wisdom, that is, a book of instruction in how to live wisely. In general, following the proverbial wisdom will lead to a more prosperous life than living otherwise, and people understand that. The Gospel of Mark, however, is understood by all Christians to be a historical narrative. The book is clearly intended to be read that way, as it refers to specific people in specific places, many of which are historically verifiable. The book of Revelation, obviously, doesn't work quite that way.

The most-debated books with regard to historical narrativity are the first few chapters of Genesis, Job, Esther, and John. The rest are understood to be historical narrative. Whether or not you agree that it is true historical narrative, it is obvious that certain books are intended to be read that way (1/2 Kings, Exodus, Ruth, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts), and others not (Isaiah, Romans, Revelation, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon).

Despite your previous comments, the Old and New Testament Scriptures have shown themselves to be reliable in the vast majority of archaeological findings. Don't trust my judgment -- take a look at the Biblical Archaeology Society, hardly a bastion of evangelical fervor.

Jon

You mean he served in "Indochine"

[ianscot]

he's a haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who, by the way, served in Vietnam.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the French also were involved in Vietnam, as its colonial power. Will John Kerry's nefarious weak-kneed continental foppishness never cease to disgust red-blooded Americans?

The "Wait a minute, don't you think he looks kind of... French...?" moment may have been as low a moment for the American electoral process as Karl Rove's South Carolina push polls implying John McCain had sired a mixed-race child out of wedlock. Hear all about it from McCain's own campaign people.

Not that the "Frenchie" thing was near as disturbing, as a tactic -- it didn't smack so outrageously of the most extreme possible "Southern Strategy." But it was if anything even more puerile, which has got to be a record.

Re:Distorted views of the "Nature" of politics

[LarsWestergren]

So, you are telling us that among the biggest group of people who dedicate their lives to the persuit and spread of knowledge, most people are Democrat.

And the same for this science magazine.

Perhaps this should tell you something?

"republicans ask for accountability" - hehe... lamest rationalisation I've heard.
"and aren't necessarily for higher teacher pay" - oh yeah, cause as everyone knows, teachers are rolling in the dough!

Re:Religeon

[TGK]

I think you've got a good point here, but that you're being unnecessarily confrontational and that your point risks being lost in that.

Allow me to paraphrase:

Religion and Science are mutually exclusive because Science is built around the Scientific Process. Through this process of hypothesis and conclusion a theory can be disproved and shown to be wrong. Observable evidence from the physical world can be applied to a conjecture about the physical world and can be used to show that conjecture as true or false.

Religion does not have what are called "falsifiable" hypotheses. In other words, Religion puts forth explanations for which no evidence can be collected.

A Scientific Statement is one like "This ball drops to the floor because of a force called gravity which acts on all things."

A Religious Statement is one like "This ball drops to the floor because the Gods want it to and they reach out and pull it to the floor."

I can collect evidence for or against the Gravity hypothesis. We can argue over it and come to a meaningful conclusion. The Gods hypothesis is unfalsifiable because no matter what evidence I bring to the table you can say "The Gods didn't want your ball to fall" and that's the end of the discussion.

As elegant as science is, and as helpful as it has been to the world around us, it has no room for things like morality.

That's a bit misleading. It's not that Science doesn't have room for morality; it's that Science doesn't address the issue. I'm sure that somewhere someone has compiled a sociological study of what behaviors are required of the individual in a utopian society. These could be considered a scientific moral code if you wanted to think of them that way. Religion fuses moral judgments with an attempt to explain the world. These are better separated. If you have thoughts on how a person should treat another person or thing, those thoughts are your own. There is nothing unscientific about your willingness to live by those beliefs or to encourage others to live by them. We can even scientifically demonstrate which beliefs make the people around you happy and angry and by extension which are more suited to the social community we live in (a Scientific pursuit). What we can't do is say that behavior X is desirable because a deity requires it. Morality is about how you interact with yourself and your world. If you don't want to eat pork, fine, don't eat pork. Don't tell me it's because God doesn't like pork though. Even God's gotta have a reason not to like bacon.

Re:Religeon

[cluckshot]

Lets be a bit more practical here. I was raised Christian and as I grew up I began to realize that if the Christian belief statements were correct then what I was learning in Science Class was not correct. The issue wasn't the basic stuff but evolution, the age of the earth etc. Something there was quite incompatable. All due respect to my Catholic friends who believe in evolution but there is no point in any religion if you believe that you are the product of evolution.

Because science facts may be verified I began to undertake to check some of the assumptions of the evolution science teachings. Religion on the other hand may be taken on faith. I looked pretty deep. I could go into depths too far for a /. post but I began to find that Evolution Science was as full of holes as a swiss cheese. Then I began looking into its history and I learned that it was merely a competing religion to Christianity justifying some pretty bad behavior on the part of its followers.

In a more serious note: The religion of "Bush" is entirely for public consumption. He is more than willing to bed down with the worst thieves of corporate history and has no morals regards his comittments to his friends like keeping campaign promices. He shows no loyalty to the USA subjecting its people to a trade war by their own government and claiming that this piracy is good for the economy. He has repeatedly chosen to place our Congress and State Legislatures below the authority of the dictatorship in the WTO in Switzerland. At his direction we no longer have the authority to pass laws for our own health and safety without this shadow dictatorship being able to override them!

I have no doubt he prays, but when he gets up he preys on our freedom and prosperity. History is full of men who used religion to fool the populace but who themselves acted outside of any of the beliefs of that religion.

Special note to those who might be tempted to take this as a Pro Kerry statement. IT IS NOT! To evaluate one man honestly is not an evaluation of another. I merely report what is the condition of Mr. Bush(43) here. Mr. Kerry has his own problems with beliefs and facts.

Re:Please,.......PLEASE!!!!

[feed_those_kitties]

Wow, I can't believe you got modded 'troll' for that. If I had mod points, I'd give you 'insightful'!

Everyone on the planet will be "influenced" by the results of this election. Whether it be a continuation of the "send troops first, try diplomacy last" policy of the current administration, to the U.S. continuing to use WAY more than our fair share of energy (and producing WAY more than our fair share of CO2), to the U.S. being seen as a bully to the rest of the world instead of being seen as a friend to the rest of the world -- Yes, everyone will be influenced.

If you thought the last presidential was divisive, this one will be ten times more so...

Re:Religeon

[gowen]

President George W. Bush. HBS doesn't hand out MBAs like candy, you know

Lets look at some of the Business he's Administrated, shall we?

i) Arbusto Energy / Spectrum 7 (CEO, 1977-1986): Formed 1977, declared bankrupt, 1986.
ii) Harken Energy (director, 1986-1990) : GWB implicated for insider trading and accounting practices. 1992 SEC investigation still sealed. Made loss of over $20million.
iii) Texas Rangers baseball club (owner/managing partner, 1990-1994) : 383-379, for an entirely average .502 winning percentage.

So, that's two unmitigated financial disasters and a ballclub that defines "league average". If that's a model Harvard MBA student, perhaps they should consider tightening their syllabus up a little bit.

Re:Religion

[LnxAddct]

Neil is wrong. If 90% of a source is crap but happens to be correct about 10% of its content, then clearly that source is a bad place to look for information about that remaining 10%. There is clearly a better place to look for information on that content.

Kinda like slashdot? :-)

surely the best way...

[JaJ_D]

....to determine who wins is a no-holds barred, fight to the death. No problems with chad's, a brother's state, the man with the most number of votes losing, etc, etc..

Simply take both the candidates, lock them into a cage and have a gladitorial conflict to the death (or one quits).

I'm waiting for the Jessie/arnie showdown

with tongue firmly in cheek

Jaj

Our Man Dubya

[Mark_MF-WN]

Dubya's reckless defecit spending has made the Canadian dollar strong again. If he gets to screw up the American economy for another fours years, Canadian may finally have a stronger dollar the US again! Mmmm, I can't wait to buy a cheap IPod. A vote for Dubya is a vote for all non-Americans (unless yer skin ain't white and yer sitting on a lot of oil).

What the...

[tgd]

I don't believe for a second that Bush could even successfully read his responses in there, much less understand what they mean.

Clearly the questions were provided in writing where others could answer, not verbally where they had to answer for themselves.

That makes both sets of answers largely meaningless.

From a scientist: not just politics as usual

[DrRobin]

I rarely post here given signal-to-noise-ratio (and vehemence-to-knowledge-ratio) problems, but as an actual scientist and as someone who takes the responsibilities of citizenship seriously, I feel I should contribute to this thread in the faint hope of making some small difference.

I have been paying close attention to science policy since the Nixon years. Every administration, Republican and Democrat has had serious problems with its science policy, but in my opinion, and in the opinion of many of us old enough to have been there, there has never been an adminstration where Science was so badly distorted for ideological reasons. From climate change to missile defense to abortion to environmental toxins to the teaching of evolution, the Bush administration has made science subordinate to its ideological positions.

As others in this thread have noted, the actual printed responses in the Nature article are mostly unhelpful canned PR blurbs (and it is a scary sign of ideological polarization to see Nature, the world's most prestigious general scientific journal, described as "far left"), but it is important not to lose sight of the fact that this is not just politics as usual. There are plenty of conservatives and Republicans who are friends of good science, but there is nothing conservative about the Bush administration in this regard: they are radicals, in favor of science only when it supports their ideology.

This is terribly dangerous. To paraphrase the great physicist, Richard Feynman, (whom I first heard make statements like this when I was a student at Caltech): For any technological society to succeed, sound science must take precendence over ideological conviction, because nature cannot be fooled. In my opinion, the Bush administration's failure to understand this concept presents a grave danger to our country and to the world.

Re:From a scientist: not just politics as usual

[meringuoid]

For any technological society to succeed, sound science must take precendence over ideological conviction, because nature cannot be fooled.

For an example of this, read the unfortunate tale of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Soviet agriculture took decades to recover from this ideological distortion of science.

Re:From a scientist: not just politics as usual

[firewrought]

Scientists are as biased as pastors.

I see two occupations. One group uses systematic processes. For their conclusions to be taken seriously, they must expose (1) assumptions, (2) observations, and (3) reasoning. In theory, and often in practice, anyone can come along behind them and retrace their footsteps to arrive at the same conclusion. Scientist, as it were, must play with their cards on the table.

The other group (pastors) do not operate with this constraint. Any idea can be presented so long as scripture is spinned correctly and the idea itself jives with the audience's expectations. Fringe represenatives of this group (witchdoctors, cult leaders, etc.) can claim Special Revelation from Above (or Below or Within) that nobody else has access to.

Maybe the pastor sees further than the scientist, but the latter seems to produce knowledge that is more strategic in the real world (viz., for winning wars, conquering disease, exploring space, bridging rivers, understanding weather, etc.).

Your point that "all are biased" is trivial. Knowledege is an extremely tricky and difficult terrain to navigate, but some biases are much more effective at boosting accurancy than others. At its core, science is just a process that tries to correct for known human tendencies; this process can and has been practiced by people of all religions and those of none.

Re:Best episode ever

[DaHat]

When quoting that episode we must not forget 2 important quotes:

"We must go forward, not backward. Upward, not forward, and always twirling, twirling towards freedom!"

Not to mention:

Kang: "Abortions for all!"
Crowd: *boos*
Kang: "Very well, Abortions for none!"
Crowd: *boos*
Kang: "Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!"
Crowd *cheers*

Re:Religeon

[geordie_loz]

I think that people here seem to forget that for many people Science is their religion, if we understand that religion proper is a set of beliefs not the flawed structures that often encompass it (I am a christian, but would dislike being thought of as religious - Christ Died One For All - that's all there is too it for me. Sadly people are flawed and put these human systems in place, which aren't right a lot of the time)... Wow I even managed to get off-topic in my own post...

So my point was, that a lot of scientists seems to disregard the "rules" of science anyway - like not dismissing a thoery without evidence, and not accepting a theory as face (i.e. evolution - taught as fact in schools).

You claim the bible is inconsistent with itself, yet provide no reliable evidence to back this up.

I believe that many things which science would claim as proving the bible wrong are by no means difinitive.

Walk with me a while:

God creates the heavens and the earth, and the garden of eden, with loads of nice big trees. Adam cuts down one of these trees with his scientific mind, to count the rings and see how old the tree is.. he gets 150 rings, so the tree is 150 years old.. only God made it the day before. God could make a tree fullgrown on the day he made it, and it would be "150 years old" but he still made it that day..

adam for example was probably a 30 year old male when he was made, not an embrio, so if you could meet him, you'd assume the world had to be around a long time before him for him to be his age.. but he wasn't.

God isn't limited by our physical boundaries, but he does work within them, if you see what I mean, the tree with no rings would not work.. a new born baby for adam would not work..

In other words, there is no reason I see why God couldn't make the world millions of years old on day one.. otherwise it might not have worked anyway..

So you see, there's nothing that science will show me that will remove my faith in God, because I know he's real.. I do know he, being God, knows a little bit more about how things work than we do.. so I'll trust him first.

argh

[jav1231]

I like how scientists are called "impartial" in this report. Bush is slammed for not signing the Kyoto Protocol, something many consider junk. Yet, it is typical for a group of scientists to consider their position as "the" position. Global Warming is a theory, and not a unanimous one. Yet, we would hold someone's feet to the fire on it? Puhleez.

Did anyone else spot this?

[merlin_jim]

Most of Bush's answers seem to not make much sense or have major terminology errors...

But in the answer to question 6... "ITER is a critically important experiment to test the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a source of electricity and hydrogen." (emphasis added)

Perhaps one of the many scientific reviewers that parsed his comments before sending them to nature should've let him know that fusion actually consumes hydrogen?

Oh and on question 3... is "fissile materials" really a word?

the space angle

[kippy]

I follow space stuff pretty closely but I can't speak to the rest. Kerry's response is boilerplate stuff that he's said before. Bush's stance on space is flawed but a whole lot better than Kerry's in my opinion. From what I can tell Kerry thinks of space as a place to do international diplomacy publicity stunts, do drug research, and talk about how great it is. Not much more.

Not to hijack the topic but NASA has needed direction more than money and that's what Bush has given it. the engineers will fine tune the details like mission plans. the president's job is go give them broad-brushed policy. humans plus robots in space as appropriate is a-ok with me.

Re:ahem ... Re:Unfortunatly

[tji]

> Um, he's the guy who cut taxes. Kerry wants to raise them, er, repeal the cuts, er, something, unless you actually ask him, or something.

The original poster was giving an "even if" argument, not saying he raised taxes.

But, yes.. Bush did the tax refund thing. Oh boy, that $300 check really made a big difference for me. That was certainly worth growing the deficit even further than it already was. It was also at a time after the economic bubble had burst, and everyone knew the budget surplus was long gone. But, the Bushies pushed ahead, defying all logic or facts (a precedent for their Iraq policy), and did the tax refund anyway.

To me, a $300 tax break is not worth plunging the country further into debt, making the prospect of social security for my generation even more tenuous.

Just because we survived Reaganomics once doesn't mean it's sound fiscal policy.

Re:Religion

[sgant]

Huh, I have no idea what you're trying to say so I'm going to just hold on to my ideas...

All kidding aside, this is very interesting. I'll have to read up on this aspect of things because so many times it get's bogged down into what is happening on Slashdot with this subject. I haven't seen so many Troll/Insightfull/Flamebait/Interesting/Overrated/ Funny moderations in a LONG time! It's like watching ping-pong.

Re:We non-Americans are hoping....

[Politburo]

(We've not gone quite as far south as Russia, but Bush says he looked into Putin's soul and found a friend... and, no, I don't feel confortable posting this under my real name. Yes, it's that bad now in America.)

Look I hate Bush as much as anyone else, but that simply isn't true. Go to any left blog and look at some of the ranting there. Do you think those people are being tracked and locked up?

Re:Religeon

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course right and wrong can change. What society one day considers to be right can become wrong the next. Western countries no longer practice slavery or racial segregation. Women are allowed to own property, to vote and to serve in the military alongside men. You will not be arrested and forced to undergo "treatment" if you are gay. The list is long and varied, yet these are all things that were once considered "right" or "wrong" at one point.

Bush views on Evolution vs. Creation

[tji]

If you want insight into the candidate's views on science, you should look into views on basic issues, like Evolution.

Bush has made several comments supporting the teaching of creationism in public schools. But, given the radical religious beliefs permeating his administration, this is not really surprising.

Listed under science instead of politics?

[leinhos]

Mod me as a troll, but it seems to me that this should be listed under Politics rather than Science. The fact that most of the comments are about Bush vs. Kerry *Politics*, rather than anything about science.

Re:Bush already did this, Kerry refuses.

[magefile]

And Russert's questions were all pre-approved. Giving Bush & Co. time to rehearse. I'm not sure about the Woodward thing.

Say what they want to hear and hide the rest..

[pocopoco]

I'm really disappointed the answer to so many of these questions is "Oh, we'll spend more, of course". Kerry's speech at the DNC was much the same. There he started out saying he'll balance the budget and then 90% of his speech is what he'll spend more on. I didn't get to see Bush's speech, but I imagine it was much the same. If politicians weren't allowed to be such flim flams maybe we would start seeing actual solutions being proposed like ending the war on drugs, tossing out the nuke stockpile, breaking up the two party system for something more democratic (lol, ok fat chance on that one), etc..

Re:Religion

[nickco3]

What the [Catholic] Church needs to do is step back and say one way or the other "The Bible contains passages which may be metaphorical" or "The Bible should be taken literally at all times." If you're willing to admit the former, you need to be willing to allow the individual to judge what is Metaphorical and what is not for themselves. Obviously the Church has it within her power to take exception to this from time to time through the Pope's power of speaking Ex Cathedra.

The Catholic church has never held the view that the Bible must be taken literally at all times, but that "Scripture and Tradition take equal weight". In fact, the Catholic/Protestant split arose because the (soon to be) Protestants insisted the Bible was the literal Word of God, and it contradicted certain Church teachings and practises. The Catholics countered that the Word of God comes directly from the Pope, and not the Bible which is, after all, a Church-assembled anthology.

Anyway, if the Pope came up with something radical like you're suggesting, all he would do is cause another schism in the Catholic Church; some would follow the new teaching, some wouldn't, and nothing would be clarified. Least of all for the Protestants, who have no equivalent office to the Pope, and are hardly likely to take to the Pope's view into account.

Stream

[EinarH]

How good would it be to see an interviewer sit down and totally grill Bush or Kerry for a good hour, with no aides or press secretaries, or time limits to force them to move on, and with no fear of losing 'access' and no drip-fed policy announcements and spin.

Your Prayers Have Been Answered.

Stream

Use Real, Real Alternative, Quicktime or VLC. Not sure about WMP.

A real interview with the President. With a real jounalist from Ireland. From late June 2004 with Irish broadcasting.

OMG do he look incompetent. This is the little known but infamous interview where he claims that Pakistan is a democracy!

From the transcript:

Q -- and you will be discussing at the EU summit and the idea of bringing democracy to the broader Middle East.

THE PRESIDENT: Right.

Q Is that something that really should start, though, with the solving of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think, first of all, you've got a democracy in Turkey. And you've got a democracy emerging in Afghanistan. You've got a democracy in Pakistan. In other words --

[My emphasis]

Well as you will understand after viewing that; there is a reason why this is the only lenghty interview with non-preapproved questions he will do with a decent journalist asking real questions not just picthing.

Re:Stream

[Minna Kirai]

This is the little known but infamous interview where he claims that Pakistan is a democracy!

According to the CIA, Pakistan is a republic. Of course, both the USA and USSR were republics, so that word is nearly content-free in terms of describing a government. But it is funny in light of the number of forum trolls who claim "The USA is a republic, not a democracy".

OMG do he look incompetent.

Anyone who likes to giggle at presidential incompetence owes it to herself to watch the infamous "tribal sovereignty" video.

Bush on Oil Exploration and Terrorism Then?

[MooseByte]

"Bush makes it quite clear that people should stop thinking of stem cell research as a solution to all medical problems, and especially NOW, at the current time, we shouldn't be giving false hope to people who have recently been diagnosed."

Let's turn that around, shall we? Replace "oil exploration" with "stem cell research".

Bush makes it quite clear that people should stop thinking of [oil exploration] as a solution to all [energy] problems, and especially NOW, at the current time, we shouldn't be giving false hope to people who have recently been [paying jacked-up oil prices].

One more time, with "ballistic missile defense system".

Bush makes it quite clear that people should stop thinking of [the ballistic missile defense system] as a solution to all [national security] problems, and especially NOW, at the current time, we shouldn't be giving false hope to people who have recently been [attacked by terrorists]

See, when you divorce the logic from the religious dogma held by some re: stem cell research, it's sounds incredibly stupid doesn't it?

Re:Bush on Oil Exploration and Terrorism Then?

[MooseByte]

"Actually, I think you reinforced his point quite well. I think the thrust of the comment was that stem cell research is not a panacea, does not promise to be a panacea, and is certainly not the only way to find cures for these diseases."

I left implicit what should have been made explicit. The examples I chose were topics near and dear to Bush's policies, to prove that by his own login on stem cell research, his energy and defense pet projects are equally pointless. That was explicit, and meant to illustrate how Bush's views on the matter are easily demonstrated to be rather silly.

What I left implicit was that the fact that Bush and crew are stating that stem cell research is "claimed" to be a panacea, and therefore is overblown. In reality (admittedly unfamiliar turf for the Bush administration) stem cell researchers are very careful to point out that it is NOT a panacea, but a VERY promising line of research.

Bush sets up the straw man ("they say it's a panacea and due any day now") then knocks it down. In his Black/White Me/Terrorists binary world maybe that's the only way he is capable of looking at it. But it's patently false.

"It's the people who will be diagnosed with these problems ten years from now that will benefit."

Errrr... yeah, so don't bother researching it! Screw those folks who will be diagnosed 10 years from now! We didn't have a cure so neither should they! If we can't have it NOW then nobody should get it!

Great.

"So, don't lead the afflicted on, thinking that this research will benefit them"

Can you PLEASE tell me WHO exactly are making these claims of instant gratification right around the corner? Because I've never heard it from reputable scientists in the field. Only from Bush operatives trying to justify religion interfering with basic research. Basic research, by the way, that will be perfected by other countries long before the U.S. at this rate.

Re:Bush on Oil Exploration and Terrorism Then?

[Sgt York]

I know you have never heard it from the real scientists in the field. You never will. They are far more careful with their words. I haven't heard it, either and I work right across the hall from some of them (INCREDIBLY cool work, BTW).

I do hear it in the popular media, and the implication is there in many campaign speeches (not pointing at Kerry). The biggest talk, though, is from Joe Schmukatelli. A large number of people have the impression that this stuff would be a cure-all if only Bush would let scientists work on it, and this is simply not true. It's not even true that the research isn't done. The guys across the hall that I mentioned have literally ten times the money we have. And we're a very well-funded lab.

Maybe I hear more because people around me know I'm in the field, so perhaps my experience is skewed. But I do get that exact impression (ES==Fountain of Youth) from the general populace.

The problem is not that scientists are overblowing their claims. The problem is that when newspapers & TV report on research, they leave out a lot of the qualifiers that we throw in. It's a problem that we have had in science for a long, long time. It's not a conspiracy or anything, it's just that reporters use hyperbole a bit too much in order to make the story more interesting. And this gives the wrong impression.

Very few people listen to scientists, most listen to journalists. Very few people read JBC, or even know what it is. Some people at least know what Cell is, more have perhaps read a Xeroxed commentary article from Nature. Most people don't even get their science from Scientific American or even Popular Science. They get it from the WSJ, the NYT and the local news. And I have not yet seen a report in the popular media that doesn't blow discoveries way out of proportion.

Re:Bush on Oil Exploration and Terrorism Then?

[MooseByte]

"The problem is that when newspapers & TV report on research, they leave out a lot of the qualifiers that we throw in. ... Very few people listen to scientists, most listen to journalists."

I completely agree with you. Mainstream "journalism" is in a pretty damn sad state in the U.S. Following the SCO coverage alone was sad enough. They just parrot whatever they're handed in a press release. They don't ask the hard questions. They drop qualifiers for sexy headlines, turn complex issues into "News McNuggets". They don't pin down politicians and suits even when they're spouting the most obvious of lies or misconceptions.

Journalism in America is dead. Now it's all just one giant "Access Hollywood" sham. So much for the Fourth Estate.

Good From God, Bad from Devil

[copponex]

The Gospel of Mark, however, is understood by all Christians to be a historical narrative.

Christians differ over what parts they think refer to historical narrative.

Therein lies the problem. If the Bible was so clear, there wouldn't be 1600 sects of Christianity. Face it. The first liberalization of the bible was the New Testament, and it'll keep going until (I hope I see the day) the United States is just like Europe - where people believe some parts and ignore others, and combine other religious principles as well.

And, since every line of the bible is open to interpretation, the places where the Bible coincides with other history (which it should, since it was written during or after), do not mean that the rest of the bible is true. Okay, Egypt had slaves! That doesn't man a stave can turn into a snake.

Meanwhile, half of the Christian organizations in the world lie daily to con middle-class, the poor, and vulnerable seniors out of their hard earned money. Over at World Changers, the two head pastors have matching Bentleys and matching private jets. I have a feeling if Christian "non-profits" were forced to have transparent accounting, the people who make $400 a week would keep a little more in their own pocket.

Remember, Christ walked the world with no posessions. He never asked for money. He preached love and tolerance. He spent time comforting the addicts, prostitutes, and the unloved and unaccepted. But today nearly every organization (ahem, 700 Club) calls these people sick and evil.

http://www.cbn.com/communitypublic/ -- Check it out! Pat's Age Defying Shake! Word of god, my ass.

Re:Religeon

[Khelder]

[We're wandering a bit afield of the actual article, and this is buried so deeply I don't know if anyone will read it, but...]

The parent (and gp) bring up an issue that I think is really important re morality: Is morality relative or absolute?

Judaism and Christianity are clearly on the moral absolutism side. (AFAIK other religions are, too, but I'm not as familiar with them, so I'll only talk about these two.) These religions claim that morality is not related to culture or society, but is part of the nature of the universe (and ultimately from God). Adherents of these religions may disagree on what they are, and even what evidence or data are valid for determining what they are, but they agree that whatever morality is, it is something that is Out There for us to discover/understand, not something we invent.

On the other side is moral relativism. I'm not in this camp, but from what I understand it's basically that morality is not a property of the universe, or handed down from (a) god(s), or anything like that. I'm not sure if all moral relativists believe that morality is a construction of people/culture/society, but that's the form I've seen most often.

Fallacies

[rreyelts]

Let me point out some fallacies I see being repeated over and over again throughout the threads on this topic:

Fallacy - The set of people who are scientists does not intersect the set of people who are Christians.
Fact - Many scientists are also Christians, including myself.

Fallacy - Bush does not allow stem cell research.
Fact - Bush does not support fetal stem cell research with my personal tax dollars. Dollars for stem cell research are still being spent by our government, and private institutions can perform their own embryonic stem cell research if they so choose. You can even donate your own personal money to support embryonic stem cell research.

That is all for now, thank you.

Re:Fallacies

[ad0gg]

Bush does not support fetal stem cell research

Umm its embryonic stem cell research. In no way are these things ever fetuses. They never attached to the uterus lining which is the definition of a fetus. The cells in questioned are the waste of invitro fertilization. And his ban affects all universities from exploring embroyonic stem cell research which has greater possibility of curing nerve and brain diseases since adult stem cells cannot transform into nerve or brain cells(neurons). Calling them fetuses is pure FUD and leads me to question wheter your statement about being a scientist is truthful.

Embryonic Stem cell research

Statement from the white house about in vitro fertilization and embryonic research.

The origin of embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are derived from excess embryos created in the course of infertility treatment. As a result of standard in vitro fertilization practices, many excess human embryos are created. Participants in IVF treatment must ultimately decide the disposition of these excess embryos, and many individuals have donated their excess embryos for research purposes.
White house statement

Re:Fallacies

[Spoobis]

Ok quick question, how is stem cell research any more wrong than using tax dollar to build weapons to kill people..

do you think the kurds could have got gassed by Saddam without your tax dollars..

most weapons are only for retaliation.. 1000 tomahawk missles will not stop one.. rougue fighter.

and sending thousands more people to die has yet to bring one person lost in the towers back to life.

heck hows is that afghanistan operation doing anyhow?..

sorry bout the ramble..lol

-S

Wow

[hey!]

"My administration is now well along in implementing a comprehensive climate change to advance the science, expand the use of transformational energy and carbon sequestration technologies, and mitigate the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States and in partnership with other nations."

Wow! That's a mouthful. I didn't know Dubya could talk like that.

He sounds almost like... like...

Al Gore.

Missing Questions...

[taradfong]

None had an industrial spin. I guess it's 'gauche' to talk about using science to make ourselves more successful in industry.

1) What will you do to help make American students interested in math & science again?

2) What will you do to help entrepeneurs wanting to start companies that apply science? Our economy has become such that only hugely profitable 'googles' are worth starting anymore.

3) Do you recognize that we're becoming a nation that does little but sell, market and consume products designed and built by others? How long do you think this can continue?

4) Why are we simultaneously becoming politically similar to China, in locking people into state dependence, and economically unlike China by creating a climate where designing and building things is a losing battle given taxes, entitlements, regulations and a useless, pampered, lawsuit-hungry, unqualified workforce coming out of politically-correct, declining, anti-science, anti-God and anti-industry schools?

Re:We non-Americans are hoping....

[untaken_name]

Bye! Don't let the door hit you on your ass on the way out, you spineless worm. If you don't like something in your country, take a stand and try to change it. Running is the coward's way out, and only removes support from others attempting to change the system the legal way. Fuck you and every spineless jerk that thinks running away will solve anything. You don't think that if the defenders of liberty in this country all move to Canada that the resultant tyranny here will leave Canada alone, do you? Only then the chance to reform the system will be gone, thanks in part to deserters like you running from your responsibilities as a citizen of this country. I'm sorry if you're offended, ok, I don't really care if you are. What are you doing to FIX the problem, here and now? Run away, keep running, and don't ever stop. Others will make the sacrifices so that people like you can enjoy the benefits, just like always in this country.

Bush is more akin to Milosevic than Hitler

[FreeUser]

So there are very good reasons why people outside the US have a very low opinion of Bush. Calling him a modern Hitler is hyperbole, but such low opinion of him is not unfounded.

Calling Bush Hitler is not only Hyperbole, it is also a disservice. Differences between Bush and Hitler abound, including but not limited to Hitlers legitimate election vs. Bush's coup d'etat of 2000, Hitler's staging of a terrorist attack vs. Bush's exploitation of a real attack, Hitlers murder of millions vs. Bush's murder of tens of thousands, Hitlers antisemetism vs. Bush's uncritical support of Sharon, and Hitlers devout Catholocism vs. Bush's devout Methodist(ism).

Bush is far more comparable to Milosevic. A toxic leader, with a toxic idealogy and a toxic agenda, who has no compunction about starting wars in smaller countries he ultimately cannot win, perpetuating atrocities on a relatively minor scale (Abu Ghraib, Gitmo), disregarding international law and norms to the point of alienating an ever dwindling number of friends and allies, stripping his own people of what civil rights and priveleges they once had in the name of "defending against [insert threat here]", leaving his own soldiers to die by the hundreds (or thousands) for no other purpose than to delay the inevitable defeat a timely amount (say, until after the November elections, or in Milosevic's case, until the end of negotiations), and ultimately leaving his country destitute and discredited in the world, to the point where its own citizens become reluctant to admit to their citizenship while travelling abroad.

Bush Junior isn't a Hitler. He is a Milosevic couched in a slightly different rhetoric, and he is in the process of teaching complacent Americans the same ugly lessons that Milosevic taught the Serbs a decade ago.

What is really depressing is how the Bush's and the Republicans have maneuvered themselves into a win-win situation with respect to the fiasco in Iraq through their delaying tactics in keeping Americans unaware of the ugly fact that we have already lost the war. [Yes, I know you folks in most of the rest of the world already know this, but keep in mind that our media is actively downplaying the fact that we're losing the war: most people here aren't even aware that most of Iraq, including most of its major cities, are in insurgent hands, and our troups virtually holed up in their bases under siege. One has to go to the German, French, Russian (thank you babelfish!), and other foreign media to get any inkling as to what is really going on over there ... or listen to off-the-record commentary by friends and acquaintances stationed there (none of the folks I know actively serving in the miliarty ... admittedly the several I do know are not a statistical universe, but nevertheless ... will be voting for Bush)].

Delay Americans' realization that Bush started a war he lost until after the November elections. If Bush wins, they win the presidency and can withdraw, with four years to get the American people to forget about what he has done (probably by starting a whole new mess we'll be concerned about instead). If he loses, he leaves Kerry with an untenable situation, Kerry pulls out, and the Republicans can spin it as "weak Democrats who didn't see it through."

The only cost are a few hundred American lives, and a few thousand Iraqis ... a price the Bush's and the Republicans are only too happy to pay.

I would weep for the future of this country, if there were one. I fear it resembles that of Yugoslavia only too closely.

Who is who?

[danila]

It would be pretty hard to distinguish these two guys without the clues like "John Edwards" or "current administration's mishandling of the problem".

I think both candidates are pretty clueless in science, surely neither is as smart and erudite as Clinton was (who, among other things, admitted in 1999 the possibility of human immortality and stated that it should be our goal).

The questions by Nature weren't too interesting either. The only thing that we can learn from this article is that both candidates have good support stuff who can bullshit people very well.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Religion

[Just Some Guy]

Only if you have to take the Bible literally.

And not even then. I am a Southern Baptist who believes in the literal truth of the Bible. I also believe that phrases like "a thousand thousand angels" means "more people than I've seen in one place during my life in a sparsely-populated desert region", and "a thousand years" means "a period of time longer than my cultural upbringing has prepared me to comprehend".

Put another way: suppose God spoke to me and said "here is the timeline of Creation. See that dot? That's you. See that dot? That's the end of the Universe as you understand it. Go tell people.". Say I was a shepherd that had never heard of a number larger than "one thousand", and that was referring to a flock of sheep large enough to really impress me that "thousand" means "a whole lot". I'd probably come back with something like "the Universe will end after thousands of thousands of years". I would be speaking the literal truth within my ability to express the concepts that I had never encountered before.

When someone tells me that it's 10:45 AM, I don't think that it's really 104500.000000UTC. Why people assign arbitrarily precise values to bits of information that are inherently imprecise, either to prove that their interpretation of the Bible is The One True Way or that the Bible is a self-contradictory load of BS, is completely beyond me.

Re:not really accurate

[orac2]

Most research money does not come from federal grants....The reason the drugs cost so much has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of marketing. It is almost entirely due to the cost of research and developmen

Care to back that statement up with some numbers? Because Marcia Angell, who was editor of The New England Journal of Medicine for twenty years, disagrees with you and agrees with the poster. She's just published The Truth About Drug Companies . The core thesis of this book is that Currently Americans spend a staggering $200 billion each year on prescription drugs. As Dr. Angell powerfully demonstrates, claims that high drug prices are necessary to fund research and development are unfounded: The truth is that drug companies funnel the bulk of their resources into the marketing of products of dubious benefit. Meanwhile, as profits soar, the companies brazenly use their wealth and power to push their agenda through Congress, the FDA, and academic medical centers...Drug companies, she shows, routinely rely on publicly funded institutions for their basic research; they rig clinical trials to make their products look better than they are; and they use their legions of lawyers to stretch out government-granted exclusive marketing rights for years. They also flood the market with copycat drugs that cost a lot more than the drugs they mimic but are no more effective.

If you're looking for more than the book blurb, The New York Review of Books has a footnooted, condensed version of the book's argument, noting:

In the past two years, we have started to see, for the first time, the beginnings of public resistance to rapacious pricing and other dubious practices of th e pharmaceutical industry. It is mainly because of this resistance that drug companies are now blanketing us with public relations messages. And the magic words, repeated over and over like an incantation, are research, innovation, and American. Research. Innovation. American. It makes a great story.

But while the rhetoric is stirring, it has very little to do with reality. First, research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies--dwarfed by their vast expenditures on marketing and administration, and smaller even than profits. In fact, year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States. (In 2003, for the first time, the industry lost its first-place position, coming in third, behind "mining, crude oil production," and "commercial banks.") The prices drug companies charge have little relationship to the costs of making the drugs and could be cut dramatically without coming anywhere close to threatening R&D.

Second, the pharmaceutical industry is not especially innovative. As hard as it is to believe, only a handful of truly important drugs have been brought to market in recent years, and they were mostly based on taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

and

At least a third of drugs marketed by the major drug companies are now licensed from universities or small biotech companies, and these tend to be the most innovative ones.

Re:Short term thinking.

[Jeremi]

Nobody knows how Iraq will turn out

It's true that nobody can predict the future 100%, but according to U.S. intelligence the prospects are pretty dim. Even Republicans are very concerned.

Political Bias on Science Panels?

[Zardog]

I read Kerry's quote. "My administration would never utilize biased advice..." About fell out of my chair laughing at that one.

Bush lies, Kerry weasels

[bob_jenkins]

I read through the first ten questions. I was surprised -- Bush was aware of the issues and gave pretty good answers. However, his answers contradict what his actions have been. Kerry, on the other hand, often avoided answering the question. For example, the question about whether Americans should consume less, he answered that we should be diligent about avoiding pollution. I prefer Kerry's approach -- if he's bothering to weasel, that probably means what he says has some bearing on what he'll do.

I'm impressed by just how many topics they manage to be aware of and have an opinion on.

Bush is dishonorable

[n6kuy]

Yep, Bush went AWOL.

Here's the proof!

Creation science is an oxymoron

[Tony]

I'm more interested on why people assume that it has to be creationism OR evolution.

There's no such thing as "creationism" in science. Science is merely an epistomology that stresses experimentation, prediction, data gathering, and objective analysis. The fundamentals of science is simply this: an hypothesis must be falsifiable, or it is merely conjecture and flights of fancy.

I can assert there are invisible pink unicorns all around us, helping us every day. There are only two way to prove this assertion: present all these pink unicorns, or create an experiment that tests for the *nonexistence* of pink unicorns, and have that experiment present negative results. (That's a double-negative, which is a positive. Don't do that in English.)

Also, the ideal scientist will not set out to "prove" or "disprove" an hypothesis. They set out in search of the truth of the matter. An hypothesis is merely one step on the way to that truth, and they set out to test that hypothesis. As soon as they attempt to "prove" a particular hypothesis, their interpretation of the data becomes biased and skewed. (For example, check out Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box.)

Evolution is a theory, yes; but in science, "theory" is a class of hypothesis that have passed experimentation. This means it has been backed up by evidence, not by personal belief or the assertions of ancient documents of questionable literal veracity. The basics of evolution by natural selection (generally what people mean when they talk about "evolution") have passed all tests so far. Since we can't easily directly test natural selection, these tests are mostly comprised of tests of the predictions and necessities of natural selection, such as the genetic relationships among species, or the filling-in of the fossil record.

The problem isn't a personal belief in creationism, or a higher being. (To have a creation, you must have a creator.) That is a very personal choice, and since there is no known way to prove or disprove the existence of a God, there is no way to prove or disprove creationism. And in this, I respect whichever side you choose.

However, to teach something that doesn't even rate the label of "hypothesis" as a competing theory to evolution is to ignore the fundamental philosophy of science: the doctrine of testability. This is why the proposition of teaching creationism in a science class is absurd.

Doing so would be a disservice to our children, our society, and our future.

Re:Creation science is an oxymoron

[Keith Handy]

If the unicorns are invisible, then how can they be pink?

Re:Creation science is an oxymoron

[Minna Kirai]

and since there is no known way to prove or disprove the existence of a God

Certainly there is, for a specific definition of God.

Gods in general, when defined only as "beings tremendously more powerful than any human can hope to be", cannot be disproved. But if one makes a more precise claim, such as "God is good and powerful and loves me and is watching over me", then it can be tested.

In the case of that definition, you just need to tear out the claimant's intestines with a pitchfork. If God jumps out and stops you, then he exists. If not, then either God isn't good, or he's not powerful, or he wasn't watching, or he just doesn't exist at all. Any of those 4 interpretations means that God, as defined, doesn't exist.

It also demonstrates that either Superman doesn't exist, or he wasn't within x-ray vision range at the time. Otherwise, he'd have stopped you. And it further demonstrates that a SWAT team wasn't watching you with infra-red googles from outside your window, or they too would've stopped you.

Observing that any evil exists in the world is sufficient to disprove the simplistic Christian definition of God. If heaven were a possibility, we'd already be there.

Allow me to paraphraze...

[ate50eggs]

Most of the question answer pairs go something like this: Nature: If elected, how will you balance [some issue - e.g. the environment] with [some conflicting issue - e.g. industrial growth]? Candidate: I plan on a adressing [issue one] without sacrificing [issue two]. sadly this is probably too late on the board to save anyone the trouble of actually reading the pseudo-interview, but hey, I tried.

Re:We non-Americans are hoping....

[Politburo]

Does Cuba have a system in place whereby normal people can introduce changes to their government?

Does America? The answer is no. An accurate statement would be: America has a system in place whereby a group of people can introduce changes to their government. If your group isn't big enough, no one's listening.

Re:How useful would that be?

[danila]

I'm not sure what use proving each candidate has weak areas of knowledge would prove.

You don't have to accept that for the position of a single most powerful person on the planet! There are brilliant people in the world, politicians with powerful minds, rational, capable of perceiving the whole systems at once, with erudition to rival the Library of Congress, with personal integrity, courage, honesty, the desire to change the world for the better, a vision for the future and the ability to motivate people. And you settle for a choice between a functionally illiterate retard and a boring guy, whose redeeming qualities are that he married a ketchup queen and won a purple heart thrice, and who is only marginally better.

This is stupid, really stupid. Heck, I am sure if you asked Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein whether Pakistan is a democracy, what language do they speak in Mexico or how many US troops are stationed somewhere, they will have boatloads more clue. Say what you want about their political ideas and management style, but at least they are competent.

Re:Religeon

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

I looked pretty deep

Details please, the devil is in the details, as they say. If you want to make authoritative statements, please cite the authority. If not you are merely wasting everyone's time with your soap-box antics.

I began to find that Evolution Science was as full of holes as a swiss cheese

Right so you are obviously more intelligent and better informed than every biological scientist since Darwin released his "Origin of the Species". Kudos, well done, when you get your nobel, will you remember your friends?

I really don't get this abject horror that some people have that we are descended from "monkeys", and before them from "rats". I mean, that smacks of the kind of racial supremacy that has been responsible for a whole lotta trouble. Evolution posits that mankind is descended from a branch of hominids which closely resemble modern monkeys. These creatures fought like hell, tooth and nail to survive and then prosper, and grew smarter because of their efforts, regardless of the obstacles and threats a profoundly hostile environment threw their way. I am proud to declare myself the descendant of such indomitable spirits, and I apsire to the heights which they achieved.

I'd much rather we hauled ourselves out of a puddle of mud than some divine entity handed us the keys to the kingdom, and the abdication of responsibility that that entails. Because ultimately, that is what religion is. Just a little boy looking in horror at the smashed window, yelling "It wasn't me!"

Re:Religeon

[cynic10508]

Well, for the record, I'm a moral absolutist and a deontologist (and a Christian). The nature of the relationship between religion and morality is such if you follow a religion then you also follow a system or morality, but not vice versa. It's totally possible for their to be atheistic moral absolutists. So your question is an inclusive-or rather than an exclusive-or. The answer would be that I imagine God would rather that people believe in Him but either if they believe in him or they follow a system or morals then they should act in good ways.

Re:Religious thought

[|/|/|||]

To wit, the statement "there is no God so it doesn't matter what I do" is as much a religious statement as "God says this is right, so it is what I will do".

Yes, these are both "religious" statements (based on faith). They are both, in my opinion, flawed decisions. Since gods are by definition ineffable, they should not factor into the decision at all. A person should be able to justify his decisions in such a way that the decision is the same regardless of whether God exists. Basing a decision on the existence/nonexistence of something outside of our universe is foolish.

One of the most fundamental hypotheses is "is there a God?" A scientist's answer to that statement will deeply affect the rest of their approach to a question/problem/experiment.

Untestable hypotheses are scientifically useless. The scientist can't answer such a question, so what you're saying makes no sense. The scientist may believe that there is a God, but should be able to separate this belief from his/her scientific model of the universe. In science, an untestable hypothesis is discarded.

From a "scientific" point of view, a fetus/embryo is a human being. Period.

I think the line is a bit more fuzzy than you imply. An embryo is an embryo. Is the embryo a human simply because it has the potential of becoming a human? After fertilization, the egg is a single celled organism. It divides into a multicellular organism similar to a mold or sponge. As it continues to develop, at what point is it a human? When it loses its gills? When it loses its tail? What makes a human a human, anyway? Is a string of DNA a human? Is an unfertilized egg a human?

I'm not going to tell you, because I don't know where exactly to draw the line myself. It depends on how we define "human," I suppose.

I guess it does come down to a moral decision, as you said. Whether or not you arbitrarily assign the label of "human" to the embryo, you still have to decide whether or not it's moral to destroy it. People must make such decisions without invoking religion, though, if they expect to convince others to agree with their conclusions.

Re:Religeon

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

What a sad, inaccurate picture you paint.

Some will believe in God, though not in an afterlife.

Some will have serious doubts God exists, though will choose to follow the religious laws out of habit (and hopefully) a sense that doing so can make people's lives better.

Some certainly believe that God doesn't watch over them... even they concede that for some (possibly mysterious) reason he chooses to allow bad things to happen.

Some will find evidence to support these beliefs. Others will contrive false evidence.

Few believe that dinosaurs don't exist, the rest interpret the existence of fossil records differently. Others are ignorant that there is a fossil record.

BTW, most preachers, even the most ignorant, will tell you (if you haven't been rude to them yet) that tarot-card-readers are scam artists that tell you what you want to hear. The rest will claim they are witches. Go figure.

Religion is often abused by con artists. It is speculated that religion was invented by con artists. Sometimes, it is used to make things better, to give hope and joy to people who endure the worst of conditions. When a christian organization donates food to starving people in africa, or helps rebuild homes after a hurricane strikes, surely some do it out of fear of going to hell. The rest do it because it is good to help others. You could learn from them.

You probably know more athiests...

[TamMan2000]

... than you think you do.

Most of us don't come out and say: "nice to meet you; there is no god".

I'd bet a lot of people who you know, who are morally "normal", are atheists and you just haven't realized it.

I am an athiest and independant of that, I realize that the world works better when:
You treat others as you would like to be treated...
Nothing that does no harm can be wrong...
and a few other guidlines.

So I try to live that way. In my experience, most athiest are of a similar mind.

Kerry's Senate Record

[reptilicus]

Here's a brief synopsis of Kerry's Senate accomplishments:

Instrumental in passing most recent minimum wage increase; introduced bill to significantly increase commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS; passed law addressing nurse shortage; expanded early childhood development efforts; introduced plan that expanded children's health insurance coverage; stood with consumers against big banks on the bankruptcy bill and led and won the fight to pass the anti-money laundering act to stop terrorist and drug financing; secured assistance for families of Agent Orange; and led inquiry into savings and loan cleanup.

To keep things fair and balanced, here's a view from a Kerry-Edwards site, and one from Fox News.

Busted link to answers?

[Almost-Retired]

Since I'm on the fence like the typical mugwump, I wouldn't have minded reading the (probably non-)answers from these two jokers.

But all I get is an instant white screen and the single word "done" in the mozilla status bar.

Ypu'd think those folks, as ofetn as they've been slashdotted before, would by now have enough iron to serve the masses who are interested far more in the man today, that what he was in 'nam, forgeries by CBS notwithstanding.

Seriously, if this little hoohah doesn't send a message to TPTB at CBS News that the general public isn't going to led around by their latest model of a Judas Goat, I don't know what will.

Frankly, I'm sick of the attitude that people in power think the Bill of Rights only applies to them, and not to the masses who often as not, vote with the tv remote until such time as they can step into the voting booth for real and throw the bums out.

Cheers, Gene

Re:Religeon

[jafac]

You're not talking about Christians.

You're talking about "Bible Believers".

Most of those pretty much refer to themselves as Christians. In my opinion, as a Christian, who has read the bible, but who does not believe that it is the infallible and complete Word of God, a person can base their faith on the concept of an All Powerful Creator, or a person can base their faith on what is described in the Bible. Any challenge to the precision of that description can upset their entire view of Reality.

So OF COURSE such people will be hostile to facts or reasoning that conflicts with the Bible.

Such people are really guilty of idolotry. They worship the Bible. Not God. They put all emphasis and effort into trying to twist reality into their Worldview. They're staring at the finger, pointing, instead of at the moon.

Those believers who do are not heavily invested in Biblical inerrancy often have doubts about specific things, often have fears, often have periods where they're not sure what they believe in. Sometimes they go astray. The story in the Bible tells of a people called "Israel", which is an Hebrew word meaning "Struggles with God". Above all others, these people are favored and treasured. Those prodigal sons who stray and return are valued above others. That's the lesson contained in scripture. Not "God hates fags".

One thing's certain in my mind. If far more people focussed more on God, and less on scripture (whether it's the Bible, or the Koran, or whatever), and less on what their neighbors may or may not be doing in the privacy of their own homes, and less on how to make more money than they need to live comfortably, there'd be a shitload less violence in the world.

I am a religious scientist.

[DrRobin]

I don't want to reply to this poster directly. The content and tone I think speak for themselves. I also don't want to tackle the subject of Science and Religion overall, which would be both off-topic and also biting off way more than I could chew. Since I started this sub-thread, though, I should correct the implied assertion that I am not religious. I am an honest to god practicing scientist but also a church-going, choir-singing, Sunday school-teaching religious person. Religion is not at all uncommon among scientists. What is quite rare is the kind of fundamentalist religion that asserts the absolute and unchallengeable Truth of some particular religious tradition. It is fundamentalism, not Religion, that is in conflict with science. There are fundamentalist secular traditions as well, like doctrinaire Marxism, that are every bit as hostile to open scientific inquiry.

To bring this back to the original topic, another part of the distortion of science by the current administration is the deliberate use of a false dichotomy between science and religion as a calculated wedge issue to whip up the evangelical base. Again, this is not a simple partisan assertion. Neither Bush senior nor Bush junior's Republican challenger, John McCain, did this sort of thing. This is a specific criticism of the current Bush administration and its terrible distortion of science.

As it happens, I have over the past several years been giving a cycle of lay-led sermons in my church on the connections between my field (biomedical science) and spirituality. Interested parties can get them from my .Mac page at:

http://homepage.mac.com/colgrove

In the "sermons" folder. My next sermon is coming up October 3rd (on "Death"), and you are all welcome ;^) . Just go to the Theodore Parker Church in West Roxbury, MA:

http://www.tparkerchurch.org/

Re:News Agencies Deny NK Blast was a Nuke

[Southpaw018]

Well, reading at -1 can prove so entertaining sometimes. Bush has kind of admitted that he finds black people annoying, though. In late April, 2002 - I don't remember the exact date, though it was initially published in a Brazilian newspaper on the 28th - Bush turned to Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and asked:

"Do you have blacks, too?"

Bush's overwhelming and jaw-dropping ignorance is clearly evident here...alongside many of his other statements.

Religion + Science don't mix.

[DroopyStonx]

A religious politician (one who always spews "God bless" this and that) is never good for science.

For example, Bush's limitations on stem cell research..

Quite frankly, I think it's about time we actually separate church and state. I'm sick of politican's personal religious beliefs affecting something that effects everyone else.

If you don't believe in stem cell research because you feel that scientists are playing god, well, then it's kinda tough shit, because science really needs something like this.

Re:Religious thought

[IndependentVik]

I'm not certain whether I agree or disagree with you, but the irony of your sig with regards to your reasoning is too interesting to let go.

Reasoning:
Someone searching for the simplest possible consistent laws will have to say that murder is the killing of a human, that embryos are human, and thus abortion is murder.

Sig:
"For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken

Interesting reading.

[Koatdus]

About half way down the page is a is a section titled Head to Head Bush vs Kerry where they both got a chance to answer fifteen science related questions. I found this part to be the most interesting as you get to hear their answers in their own words instead of the usual "iffy" synopsis about what they think from some talking head with an axe to grind that never took a science class in his life.

As an example of this in the stem cell section at the top of the page the editors say:

" ...he said, it is immoral to destroy embryos for the purposes of human
research...Scientists have been frustrated by this rule for three years..
They say that it is slowing progress in stem-cell research,..."

While in the q and a section Bush says:

"I am committed to pursuing stem-cell research without crossing a
fundamental line and I am the first president to provide federal funding
for human embryonic stem-cell research. ..Last year the the federal
government invested $25million in embryonic stem-cell research and
nearly $191 million in adult stem-cell research. My administration
is also creating a national embryonic stem-cell bank . These efforts
are providing a boost to research while not providing taxpayer funding
that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos.
My policy makes it possible for federally funded researchers to explore
the potential of embryonic stem-cells, while respecting the ethical and
moral implications associated with this research."

Not really the same thing at all.

I really hate that about our news. They tell us their version of what someone said instead of just quoting them in context so that we can see what they really said.

Most of the time I am convinced that our so called "objective news reporting" is anything but. Don't these people believe in the integraty of the news anymore?. Aren't reporters taught to be fair, objective, and complete anymore? It used to be that a reporters integrity and accuracy was his most valuable asset. People would talk to reporters like Walter Cronkite because they knew the man would report the facts as they happened without trying to put his own spin on things.

Anyway what does the /. crew think about sending our own questions to the candidates? We could do it the usual way where the top 10 moderated questions get sent to both candidates. I would like to see questions dealing with specific policy and specific goals and plans for the country and the world instead of "baiting" to try to make your favorite look better.

I think that it would be an interesting read.

Mixing Bush and Science

[DeComposer]

For Question 6, regarding support for the proposed ITER fusion resaerch facility, Bush responded that, "ITER is a critically important experiment to test the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a source of electricity and hydrogen."

"...and hydrogen.

I'm hard-pressed to come up with a better example of the vast chasm between science and the Bush administration.

Dear George, hydrogen is what a fusion reaction "BURNS", not what it PRODUCES.

What's particularly disturbing is that Bush's answers were very clearly vetted by someone with decent communication skills and some understanding of science. How did such a glaring error slip past the vetting process?

Related News Story and Politics & Science Webs

[placidWater]

The US House of Representatives' Committee on Government Reform has compiled a list of the W. Bush Administration's attacks on the scientific community on their Politics and Science website.

In addition, the social psychological community has been feeling the government burn recently because the US House of Representatives passed a vocal vote on 9/9/04 to block future funding of two currently approved NIH and NIMH grants (Click here for that article). This creates an unsettling precedent allowing governing bodies to trump the peer review process. [Sigh ...]

You got to be kidding me

[Aexia]

As opposed to Kerry, who tries to affiliate himself with the Catholic Church to garner votes,

Gee, he's only a life-long Catholic. He doesn't need to "try to affiliate himself", he's been well-affiliated with the Catholic Church for decades.

only to be told by the Church itself to buzz off.

A few right-wing cranks in the Church hierarchy are trying to score some political points over abortion. Notice how they don't say anything about pro-choice Republican politicians. Notice how they don't say anything about pro-death penalty Republican politicians.

And unless the Pope has come down on high and said Kerry needs to "buzz off:, the Church itself hasn't said anything.

I don't care

[kingpin2k]

I have not RTFA, so take this for what it's worth. It pisses me off that the federal government has anything at all to say about scientific advancement. Usually, we're not even arguing about advancing science, we're arguing about having access to Other People's Money (OPM) to spend on our research. Granted the occasional government ban on this or that specific area of research is something to debate, but being able to steal (by proxy) somebody's money to further your research isn't something I care to hear any candidate talk much about.

Well, all I can really do is pull the lever for Badnarik.

A different questionnaire from Science journal

[FleaPlus]

It looks like Science, the -other- premier research journal also gave questionnaires to the candidates. Their responses are available here.

Some of the responses are copied-and-pasted, but the Science questionnaire also covers issues like Creationism, NSF funding, and their "top three priorities in science and technology," which the Nature article doesn't cover.

I found their top 3 priorities in science and technology particularly interesting:

Bush: ensure every American as access to affordable broadband by 2007, perform next-generation hydrogen research, and recruit science and technology to combat terrorism

Kerry: restore and sustain preeminence of American science and technology, ensure Americans prepared for jobs of future, and ensure that his administration's decisions are informed by the best possible science and technology advice

Bush responds

[Peaceful_Patriot]

"My admministration is now well along in implementing a comprehensive climate-change strategy to advance the science, expand the use of transformational energy and carbon sequestration technologies, and mitigate the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States and in partnership with other nations."

I know the candidates have professionals to write the responses to these types of inquires, but did anyone else get the feeling that some of the 'Bush Responses' consisted of words I cannot imagine our Prez could pronounce, let alone understand?

Re:Why life doesn't count until it's born

[Minna Kirai]

AC: For thousands of years nearly every culture on earth has understood, at least in general terms, that first comes conception and then nine months later a baby pops out.

Not quite correct. Many cultures don't even consider the baby a person until well after she's born, and allow the parents to quietly dispose of an unwanted child without fuss.

Ceremonys like baptism are often when the infant becomes officially "born".

Orthodox rabbis, for example, won't hold a funeral for a baby who died after less than a week. They think it'll make everyone feel more comfortable to pretend it was just a kind of miscarriage, and not a dead person at all.

Re:Hitler was not a devout Catholic!

[CaptainAvatar]

Feh, you're both wrong. Hitler was definitely not a devout Catholic (or Christian at all, for that matter), you're right about that. But neither was he an occultist. There's no evidence that he planned military operations using astrology or numerology - at least, no evidence outside of trashy pseudohistorical paperbacks. If you've got any I'd love to see it! (OTOH, Himmler was definitely very interested in all manner of dodgy pseudosciences.)