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U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Finding
tree3075 writes "The LA Times is reporting that a survey by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has found hundreds of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists have been instructed to change findings to favor business interests. I'm not surprised anymore when I read these things."
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Scientists were saying the same thing just under a year ago...
It is unfortunate that this happens in the scientific community... a community that should have an objective and unbiased interest/perspective.
Same story about "Global Warming". You have scientists that are paid by the oil companies to deny that global temperatures are increasing, when you have other "no biased' scientists that are giving direct proof of anthropogenic interference to the global climate system.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
Well, let's see. We've had two columnists paid off, party plants in the Presidential press pool, and 200 scientists now reporting they've been pressured to alter results. Yeah, those red staters really are so much smarter than those of us in the blue states. They memorize the propaganda more easily.
Every year I fear more and more for our country, and every year the average American just seems to be that much more baffled by bullshit. We're never going to see anything resembling what we -thought- was a "clean" electoral process again, I'm afraid.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Scientific honesty is the core and foundation of all of our discoverys. If kepler modified his measurements to fit into the then current view of things, astronomy would have been set back 100 years.
It's so encouraging to know that this administration so thoroughly distorts and perverts "facts" that would potentially interfere with business interests.
Intelligence, economics, science ...yep, they've got all the bases covered. Covered in fantasy, but covered nonetheless.
Um, why did you already divide this into a Republican/Democrat debate? No one else has done any bashing yet, even the article submitter didn't (amazingly.)
:-P
What really bothered me about your post, though, was this:
"1. In the last 15 years, the majority of most of these scientist's time has been spend under a Democratic president;"
What, can we all just pick an arbitrary number of past years, whichever happens to overlap the point we want to push? Try 4 years? 20?
Thanks for the interesting tidbit though.
A biologist in Alaska wrote in response to the survey: "It is one thing for the department to dismiss our recommendations, it is quite another to be forced (under veiled threat of removal) to say something that is counter to our best professional judgment."
What's worse is that the American people didn't care to open their eyes to this and get rid of W when they had the chance. The scientists can only fight for so long before the next, brain washed generation is far more willing to churn out whatever studies are requested for the right price. Science is becoming another consumable, to be bought and sold like oil and food.
I guess there might be some hope left, but I'd look for a lot more of this in the next 4 years. I don't forsee a Worker's Revolution either, but I think we can do better and leave some things as unbuyable. Maybe I'm just a member of a dying breed that holds onto a bit of dignity. I mean, liars are going to have more money, and morals no longer seem to matter in our reltavistic society. I guess relativistic science is next, and I don't mean Special Relativity.
SAILING MISHAP
Slightly related to the post, but here's my 2 cents. Science is expensive. Very expensive. And when a scientist has the choice between getting his career ruined because of bad results / wrong hypothesis or lie in order to get a second chance, some do chose the second option. Of course, the 'lie' isn't always intentional, even conscious; some tend to alter to reality in order to see what they want to see. You can't be always right, but when you're wrong, funding (private or public) gets a lot tougher to get. It can be fatal to a scientific career... when you put your life behind an idea, you tend to want to be right. No matter what. The funding system is just bad; failure is punished too harshly.
Now back on topic, political ingerence in science is even worse. Especially when motivated by a $$ agenda. Your career versus a should-be-protected plant? Not everyone has the courage to say 'no'... I admire this group of scientist, they had the courage to stand up. Sadly, some don't, and we'll never know it.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
In Australia, some call it bush bashing. Others call it four wheel driving!
So, uh... This contradicts their findings how again?
Who is behind "Activist Cash"?
Don't get me wrong, it does look like the UCS is partisan. But it's not like the rebuttal is coming from a totally neutral voice, either.
there was a huge fire spreading, and in some places people weren't allowed to clear the fire hazard twigs and stuff from the ground because it endangered some animal's habitat.
I suppose the fire came and destroyed their habitat anyway, and the people lost their homes too.
I'm normally disgusted by anything the Republicans say about environmental issues but that one incident really was a black mark on liberalism.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
science should be held above political agendas.
typical republican response:
its not happening.
it is happening, but clinton did it first.
left wing media conspiracy to slam bush. (which is pretty funny considering the whole talon news thing.)
cite another left wing conspiracy. BOOGIE MEN EVERYWHERE!
cite michael crichton.
cite a volcano! think of how many spotted owls have been killed by volcanos! think of how much C02 volcanos release.
like humans can actually damage nature, its so big!
but economic growth is important.
when the real response should be: really? lets fix this. remove politics from the system.
Bush sucks -- he sucks really hard. Just because Clinton was every bit as big an asshole, doesn't make Bush any less an asshole.
Face it -- America has become a fascist state, where science is censored in favour of business interests. All that matters anymore is that the trains run on time. The Democrats and the Republicans are both equally culpable, because they are exactly the same party. There's no difference between them anymore, nor has there been any difference for several decades. Clinton may have talked the liberal talk, and Bush may talk the conservative talk, but their policies are virtually indistinguishable.
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
once you pull something like this, you do not deserve to be called a "scientist" any longer
Who is behind "The Center for Media & Democracy"?
:P
Don't get me wrong, it does look like Activist Cash is partisan. But it's not like the rebuttal is coming from a totally neutral voice, either.
There were under 800 cattle from mad cow affected countries imported into Canada before the importations were stopped. And the US imported over 1600 cattle from affected countries.
Yet Canada has found 3, before they entered the human or animal food chains, and the US found one after it was partly processed. Tell us who is doing a better job of detecting mad cow in North America?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
why did you already divide this into a Republican/Democrat debate?
He was planning ahead. See:
Example 1
Example 2
I'm sure there will be many more to follow.
He also brought it up because the group of scientists in the article (and always has been) are extremely leftist and always have been. It's the same as when Fox News gets mentioned, just in the opposite direction this time.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
The Republicans and the Democrats are exactly the same. They are both corrupt corporate puppets. They just present different lies about what they stand for.
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
Who cares about either party? Tampering with the scientific process AT ALL must be condemned.
If political pressure was allowed to alter "scientific fact" then:
1: The sun would orbit the earth, the center of our solar system.
2: It would be the nature of things to move, then stop.
3: People could breath in space.
4: The earth would have suddenly come into existance a tad over five millenia ago.
5: Humans would have suddenly formed a few days after the earth.
6: Evolution would NOT have been proven to occur in a laboratory.
In all honesty, posts like the parent show growth in a disturbing trend. To wit, very well-spoken idiots who can completely miss the obvious in attempting to bash rivals at every irrelevent turn.
By the way, you know how the neoconservatives always claim that they never went to college because it's "just liberal brainwashing"? To me, that just screams "Sour grapes".
In the Soviet Union, when a biologist's findings did not match the ideals of Histoical Materialism, Lysenko would have the offending scientist sent to the gulag. Or worse...
How much longer before we find out the "Union of Concerned Scientists" is actually an Al-Qaida front organization?
[o]_O
And your point is...
Looking back, it seems the UCS was correct. There is global warming, that is a fact. Almost no scientist will deny that fact.
www.archiphysics.com
Okay, so "more than half" of 30% makes it a little over 15%. So thats around 210+ scientists. Technically, the summary is right in saying "hundreds", but it sounds a whole lot more sensational than it really is.
Secondly, also from TFA
If that's not dodging the issue, I don't know what is. I would seriously like a spokesman for a scientific agency to give a better defense to his stand than that very vague statement that says nothing.False sensationalism and dodging aside, I believe this is a very serious issue. If the scientific integrity of this office has been reduced because of corporate pressures, there's very little faith left in me for any scientific agency. People generally assume that science works in the best interests of man, even though the results may go against him.
StrayByte.Net
"In the last decade and a half, i.e., a pretty good chunk of time, more time was spent under a Democratic administration...i.e., other arguments aside, if there are any "problems", they're not only due to Bush."
Are you a professional idiot?
I bow down before your masterful cynicism.
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
Jeebus, you're an idiot. Nobody said anything about stopping all construction or all use of wood.
There are some trees that probably shouldn't be cut down and some places where we shouldn't be building new houses. That doesn't mean we have to revert to the stone age.
But hell, I guess that's what passes for rational argument among right wingers these days. Bush has people lie about inconvenient facts. Since his mindless followers don't have that kind of power, they resort to building strawmen to tear down.
- Old Man of the Mountain ---- "I want to disturb my neighbor"
See here.
Dawn of the Dead
root@sabbath:~# GET 'http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la -na-scientists10feb10,0,4954654.story?coll=la-home -nation' | grep -c -e "15|fifteen" ...now where did that number come from?
0
Nice "talking point" you have their chum. It should even last another 3 years. Don't wear it out.... OOOPS. Too late.
Someone had to do it.
Yes, indeed, let the Bush bashing begin.
anyone on the conservative or Republican side of the spectrum is a greedy, money grubbing liar who would just LOVE to see an end to all environmental concerns
Anyone is free to make up their own minds about this, but allow me to illustrate a point:
Republicans are pushing for voluntary environmental controls. However, in publicly owned companies, the primary objective is to increase shareholder value. While it is an extreme example, a publicly held company could, in theory, be sued for complying with such regulations, as it would pull away capital but does not increase shareholder value in any way.
So how is it that the "voluntary controls" Republicans are doing something for the environment? I'm not calling the Democrats saints, either, but let's not disingenuously pretend that Bush or his friends give a rat's ass about the planet, eh?
The Free desktop that Just Works
I know what you mean. All those Nobelists in the Union of Concerned Scientsts are just hacks. Heck, you can't even get a Nobel prize in the physical sciences without being a liberal, everyone knows that.
Sheesh.
If you'd like to criticize the substance of their report, indicating what they did wrong and why their conclusions are flawed, that'd be a worthwhile contribution to the discussion. Until then, though, all you've contributed is ad hominem.
Put another way, your response is the equivalent of suggesting that General Relativity must be wrong because Einstein abused his wife.
Since the trees are being cut down faster then they grow back your unwillingness to give up your comforts will effect your children and grandchildren.
Get a free Mac Mini
I'm writing this from a house that is made from a lot of wood, sitting on land that used to be the home of some animals who now get hit crossing the street. It would be easy for me to point my finger at "industry" and say they're wrong, but would I be willing to give up my house, land, and paved roads to my job? I don't think so.
Shelter is one thing, eggregious "shelter" (eg. 20k+ square foot mansions) is another. I'm not trying to accuse you.
I wonder whether people would be willing to relinquish a personal convenience or luxury in order to HIRE independent nonprofit watchdog organizations to monitor for abuses by government, industry, scientific, and personal special interest groups. It's feasible -- just look at the contributions that went to vote recounts last year.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Look, there are all sorts of groups that have agendas. That does not mean, a priori, that everything they say is bullshit. UCS is pretty well respected, and you just blow them off 'cause you disagree with their political perspective. That's why I posted that reference to the pundits Bush has been paying off: they too just pile on anyone who disagrees with Bush. Relax, man, and have a real political discussion, instead of just assuming liberals are such monsters. Discuss the issue.
The free market has no friends.
Fuck Slashdot
It's a vast left-wing conspiracy. Decent people know that God put the environment here and God will fix any pollution problems, assuming the rapture doesn't happen first!
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
The Million Dollarman Ted Debiase would approve of this.
Slashdot HAS been invaded by rightdroids.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
I never ceases to amaze me how so many people frown upon protecting the world we live in, the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat. "Liberal agenda" my ass. This is about our survival as a species. You would hope that the people expressing deep concern over matters of the environment would receive thanks and praise for the efforts. Nevertheless, there is no shortage of greedy, wholeheartedly selfish people out there out to ensure their own personal and short-term gain, the consequences be damned. but then, I suppose I'm just some unamerican hippie...
Join Tor today!
In the news today, scientists working on politically sensitive issues are pressured by politicans.
Slashdot readers are shocked and amazed.
"I blame the Bush administration" says one.
"Who would of thought there would be a connection between the Federal government and Federally mandated enviromental issues?" Crys another.
"Wait, it doesn't say if enviromental groups were pressuring the Scientists." Commented one before he was quicken beaten down.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Ok. So why can't we just take that argument on its own merit instead of pressuring scientists to alter their findings?
If you're going to bash the bad stuff, at least praise the good along with it. Slashdot posters love to tout clean nuclear power, but ignore it when it's brought up by the President they love to hate:
"To keep our economy growing, we also need reliable supplies of affordable, environmentally responsible energy. Nearly four years ago, I submitted a comprehensive energy strategy that encourages conservation, alternative sources, a modernized electricity grid, and more production here at home--including safe, clean nuclear energy."
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Do you mean 'political pressure' or 'religious pressure' - or the opinion that your current president is a religious nutter.
I'm Australian, I have no opinion on the whole political Bush thing anyway. (Like another guy said above, bush bashing is about bying a wreck and driving it through the scrub until you are forced to walk several kilometers home with a big old smile on your face - or anything related to the vagina.)
Agree with your last point.
And you're right the poster was planning ahead, but there was no need to make it Republican/Democrat. Both comments you linked talked about "Bush" and the "Bush administration"; in my opinion, dividing it into parties is useless (since party definitions are so vague and candidates vary widely.)
He was defending the Republican party, when really he needed to defend Bush to be effective in the main thread. Luckily I think we've avoided a useless party-war thread here...
anyone on the conservative or Republican side of the spectrum is a greedy, money grubbing liar
I wouldn't say anyone one the conservative side of the spectrum fits that description. Hell, I'm fairly conservative on a number of topics as are quite a few of my friends. But the handful of people running the Republican party right now are in fact greedy, money grubbing liars.
And one of their hallmarks is using arguments which are known logical fallacies. Since you seem to be doing the same thing, I'll address them.
1. In the last 15 years, the majority of most of these scientist's time has been spend under a Democratic president;
There is nothing in the article relating to 15 years. I would probably classify this as "Unrepresentative Sample". You clearly chose 15 as it is the largest number for which your statement is true. Change that number to 5 years, or 20 years, and the opposite is true.
2. The "Union of Concerned Scientists" has been a liberal activist organization blah blah
This is simply an ad hominem attack. Good for emotional appeal, but logicially it's meaningless.
3. Most scientists in FWS reported no such pressure;
Does this even try to advocate anything?
I mean, economic development is always bad, and any edict on "endangered species", no matter how shaky, is always good, right?
And a perfect example of a straw man argument. No body is actually claiming that economic development is always bad. Well, except for the neo-cons when they want to beat up a straw man so they can feel superior.
All of that, and no where in your post is there anything which could actually be considered a reasonable argument that either a) political pressure is not being applied or b) it's OK that political pressure is being applied. Just the usual cloud of fallacies trying to obscure the actual issue at hand.
1400 people were sent surveys. 30% responded which means about 420 people responded. These people responded in spite of "...memos from Fish and Wildlife officials that instructed employees not to respond to the survey, even if they did so on their own time. Snow said that agency employees could not use work time to respond to outside surveys."
However, 69% [~300 of the 420 people who responded] said they had never been given such a directive[to alter results]. And, although more than half of the respondents said they had been ordered to alter findings to lessen protection of species, nearly 40% said they had never been required to do so.
So of the 1400 people sent surveys, 420 responded IN SPITE OF ORDERS NOT TO DO SO and of those 420, only 42 said they had been forced to alter results.
That's not to say that science and politics shouldn't be mixed this way. It's bad. But it happens on BOTH SIDES of the political line.
Look at one of the last quotes:
"Sally Stefferud, a biologist who retired in 2002 after 20 years with the agency, said Wednesday she was not surprised by the survey results, saying she had been ordered to change a finding on a biological opinion.
"Political pressures influence the outcome of almost all the cases," she said. "As a scientist, I would probably say you really can't trust the science coming out of the agency.""
That's 12 years under Republican Administrations and 8 years under a Democratic one.
You guys want to stop this? Good. But first realize this is not just a Bush/Republican problem... This is a SYSTEM WIDE problem.
Okay, so "more than half" of 30% makes it a little over 15%. So thats around 210+ scientists. Technically, the summary is right in saying "hundreds", but it sounds a whole lot more sensational than it really is.
And how is 210+ out of 420 scientists not "sensational"?
Science is scewed to serve the agenda of the politic, and as such has become perverted by money and politics. This problem has precious little to do with political leanings. I just wish that Americans would stop blaming the left and right politics. It has nothing to do with science and precious little to do with right and wrong. Afterall a bird cannot fly with only one wing!
This news in: Slashdot Editors Report being told by the cultocracy to where aim the slashdot effect.
Slashdot, the Weapon of Mass Download.
Someone had to do it.
Let the Bush bashing begin! ...even though in the last 15 years, the majority of most of these scientist's time has been spend under a Democratic president;
Because as we all know, every single issue can and should be immediately broken down into a Republican/Democrat, Conservative/Liberal dichotomy. Once you have the dichotomy you can then immediately discern what everyone's views on the issue must be based solely on which side of the Republican/Conservative dichotomy they fall on any other issue.
There's a saying:
"The more issues a person tries to arbitrarily shoehorn down into a Liberal/Conservative dichotomy, the more certain you can be that the person is an American."
Once you're done with the pointless partisan bickering that, frankly, has no real bearing on the issue at hand, feel free to actually get back to discussing the topic.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
In other news, the March of Freedom was going to happen anyway.
Bush just knows how to get it done propping up our military industrial complex. Thank God for that! (No, really! Thank the invisible man in the sky.)
"I don't think Osama bin Laden sent those planes to attack us because he hated our freedom. I think he did it because of our support for Israel, our ties with the Saudi family and our military bases in Saudi Arabia. You know why I think that? Because that's what he fucking said! Are we a nation of 6-year-olds?" - David Cross
No, I mean political pressure.
Historically, those have been one in the same.
Chocolate rations are up! There is no environmental problem! The defecit is not a problem! Except social security, that's fucked! But tax breaks for the rich are the best idea since pre-emptive wars! We have always been at war with Oceania^WIraqanistanKorea!
FreeBSD for the impatient.
Sure. In fact, nearly every group or person could be argued to have an "agenda" of some sort. Frankly, it's the balance and exchange of ideas thats valuable. But UCS isn't really interested in having a discussion. They're more interested in promoting a political ideology, disguised as an "impartial" group of "concerned scientists". Where were all these findings under Clinton? And no, it's not because they weren't there. It's because they didn't look, and didn't concoct surveys. What about their condemnation of Bush's stem cell policy? Granted, it's partly a matter of the timing of Bush's presidency with scientific developments, but Bush is the first president to allow any federal funding for any sort of stem cell research at all. Ever. And if we're going to allow the indiscriminate destruction of embryos, well, there really are some serious ethical questions. Forget about all the religious crap. I'm sure a lot could be learned if we farmed infants for research - and yes, I realize that's absurd, but I'm not really trying to be absurd. I'm just exaggerating to make a point. Where do you draw the line?
But back on point, here: I didn't say I'm happy that scientists within FWS have said they've felt pressured. But, it happens. And it's not exclusively because of Bush. We have business interests - that, believe it or not, do actually contribute a lot to this country proper - that try to do what's best for themselves, and we've got idealists of all stripes who believe their agenda or torch they're carrying is the right one. But a lot of these people - on both sides - can't see the forest for the trees. Frankly, the endangered species legislation is a little overly restrictive. But wait: others will no doubt say it's nowhere near strong enough. Who's "right"? "Science"? But wait: different scientists, with different political orientations, will often interpret things in different ways. Like it or not, personal experience colors abstract areas of science as well.
The big biz side is always the default under W. For example, when pressured about tech visa workers taking away jobs, their cronnies often state that there is no direct evidence that the visa workers are taking away citizen jobs. But, there is no evidence that they are NOT taking away jobs either.
Big biz gets so much attention because they donate to campaigns, not because they are voters. We don't have a true democracy if big biz gets such a large de-facto vote. In a true democracy, they would have no vote.
Table-ized A.I.
Those damn pinko scum! Thank goodness you alerted everyone to their bias.
The Union's trendy radicalism launched it into money, power and influence.
So all liberal groups should be made up entirely of broke college students chanting stupid slogans and preaching to each other?
With the rhetoric and slander removed your post basically says that UCS has an agenda. I don't think they try to conceal that and unless they got a large number of people to lie I don't think it discredits the survey.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Hey, the article is not talking about your lifestyle choices, it's talking about scientists' ability to publish the facts as they see them without getting pressured to lie!
My 1st thoughts about the recurring contraversy over airlines neglecting the warnings just happens to be that the executives were placed in a position to decide wether they should lose millions of dollars due to delays and any anti-flying sentiment something like this (or multiple exits and parachutes) could create as a negative image of the safety of their business model ...or ignore the warnings?
Remind me again how our best interests are at heart whenever money is involved? Liberals aren't bad ppl, they tend to be a bit radical at times just because they're against war and exploitation, genocide, etc. It's usually not economically practical to entertain liberal idealists, but it doesn't mean they have nothing to say.
I forget what 8 was for.
I hear Iraq is opening up.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
The sad or annoying thing is that at least a few of them do know better. Dick Cheney, for example. However, the only concern of those few is with cashing the checks before the reality bounce happens. That's not a question of a statute of limitations, but rather the post facto law thing. Sure, in the future people will regard them as a bunch of criminals--but too late.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Shrub keeps his head up his...in the sand. That's not exactly a news flash. This is a president who has no use for scientific facts or evidence. He decides what he wants to believe then expects someone to show the world why he's right. If someone should have the audacity not to toe the line, they get axed. Is it any wonder that they got such a poor response rate? The point, as I see it, is not that so few responded, but that so few dared to respond. Liberal or Conservative is beside the point. This kind of willful ignorance by a president is bad for America.
What does this button do...
If they were intelligent, they would have develop intelligent, rational philosophies. Two intelligent people can have an honest disagreement over politics, but not when they simply subscribe to a prepackaged ideology based on being a corporate puppet. And no, I don't hate capitalism or corporations; I just think our politicians shouldn't be beholden to corporations.
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
The earth would have suddenly come into existance a tad over five millenia ago.
And there I was thinking that the earth was only 6000 years old!
Fuckwits.
Damien
If, say, Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich were president, UCS would not have even conducted this "survey" in the first place, without regard to whether or not the problem actually exists.
Does anything I've said speak to the actual problem? No, and I realize that. But I'm not sure UCS really directly cares about that specific issue either; they're more concerned with vilifying people they perceive as their opponents[1] because it has a greater chance of allowing them to advance their general agenda, which I'm sure they all believe is a good and righteous one.
[1] Whether they explicitly state it or not, it's clear from their web site and other materials that they really don't like Bush. And don't be so quick to just say "Well, maybe it's because Bush is a problem." That's not the point: you could uncover "problems" like this in any administration, but their zeal isn't consistently applied. That's what I'm getting at.
I'm not going to praise what I think is a bad idea. I love the concept of nuclear power from an air-quality standpoint, but the incredibly dangerous and voluminous waste it produces is more than I can ignore. Not only are the fuel rods dangerous, but all the parts involved in the heating of the water, etc, become dangerously irradiated and must be stored in similar conditions to the fuel rods. While I'm sure it's theoretically possible to store this stuff safely, knowing the inherent laziness and stupidities of large corporations and governments, I have a hard time believing that it will actually be done right, and that's more risk than I'm willing to take.
The Free desktop that Just Works
How about if you promise to give up all your "liberal" scientific conveniences? Starting with that computer you cut-and-pasted your crap with?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Seriously, aren't these environmental issues takes much too seriously. I mean, does it really hurt so badly if a rare bird species dies out because of a new bridge getting built. Likewise, does a redwood tree become worth more just 'cause it's 500 years old?
Nature is always in constant flux, and all that we humans do is at most accelerating the process a bit (if even that much... probably we are rather altering it slightly). It's not like there's a purpose is keeping a rare species in existance. Right? In particular, species die out and come into existance every day anyway -- I don't see the point in keeping one alive just because it would have lived if humans weren't there. It makes it sound as if humans were somehow "outside" the rest of nature, and that it would somehow serve a purpose to leave nature alone. That purpose I cannot see.
There ARE egregious examples of corporations overrunning the natural habitat of endangered wildlife to squeeze a quick buck out of the land. This is NOT one of those stories.
But it IS a story of the Fish and Wildlife Service cooking science in favor of non-objective interests. That is damning, regardless of whether those interests are business or personal.
You are totally correct in saying that science cannot answer many technological and political questions. Endangered species, stem cell research, abortion, cloning: these are ethical questions. Science can only contribute fact.
However, there is one thing which science is fantastic at. All worthy science must be reproducible and disputable. This is what makes it science. Because of this, it doesn't matter what the biases of the scientists are. This is the breakthrough that made positivist science paramount.
Don't trust scientists, but do trust the scientific process, because it doesn't trust anyone.
I think people got in a stir over this because it is not the first case of this administration pushing facts around, and pushing scientists around. They seem to like science's authoritative voice, but not the multiple voices it turns out to actually be.
Hey, those guys and girl are public sector employees (Dept. of Fish and Game, I think it was called, though now it is apparently Fish and Wildlife Service). Think of the last time you visited your loval DMV office -- maybe most of them have THAT particular type of personalty, you know what I am talking about. In any case, not too many are going to bite the hand which gives them nice govt. job (with GREAT benefits) when there is some "pressure" to look another way. On the other hand, they feel quite free to bitch in an (anonymous?) survey, no, it is almost impossible to fire them!
;-)
I guess the term "scientist" lost it luster when it stopped being applied to indepedently wealthy gentlemen with curiosity about how the World works (or ones so smart that wealthy private persons just feel like funding their work) and started being applied to everyone with some education and certain level in the society. I wish we would go back to 18th century in the way we do science. Otherwise it is all fake, serving this or that special groop (whoever pays).
And yes, technically my job title is "Scientist", working for one of the big defence contractors. No, I do not do "science" in the original sense of this word. But looking back at the University life -- it was prostitution as well...
Paul B.
News flash: government agencies are political.
Political, yes. But until recently, few of them were partisan. And fewer made falsifying science into public policy.
Let me try: "Some people used their $100 from George Bush to buy drugs. This has forever marred capitalism; the Republican party will forever be politically shunned."
Does that sound stupid to you?
You see that brine there? That's my brine.
My first +5 post, and I forgot to login. --;;
Well, it depends. If you're sitting in one of these hellishly ugly subdivisions that just plowed through 100 acres of forest to build your ass a place to sit, to produce trash, to add to congestion, and to pollute the air with your daily commute in your SUV, then yes ... you are at fault. However, some people actually move into a rural area and try to keep it rural. You may need some help from your township/county leaders and such, but if you can pick up 10 to 100 acres on the outskirts of a smaller town, and you can get your neighbors to do the same by promoting a spread-out comfortable style of living to keep land costs down ... then you won't have the same kind of impacts on the environment. Drive an efficient car to work, or work from home some of the time. Compost and recycle all sorts of would-be garbage. You'd be amazed how far a little thought and effort goes. Even using recycled materials to build your house is easy to do. But the problem is that these developers just keep plowing through rural America, turning it into fields and fields of ugly strip housing ... because it's easy, cheap for them, they make a huge profit, and the masses are too stupid to figure out a better way on their own. It amazes me that a 1/4 acre lot in a hideous sub goes for the same price as a 1 acre lot on the side of a country road a little further away. Are people really that desperate for human interaction that they have to live with other people in their backyard too? Sigh.
I just finished attending a course dealing with applying for contracts and grants with various federal agencies. One of the "must have" aspects is the long-term ability for the idea|product|etc. to become commercial. Depending up on the agency you file with, you may or may not get feedback. And if you do get feedback and you don't provide commercial viability, don't be surprised to see that as a lacking property. I asked if this was something which changed with the political climate. The only effect has to do with how much money is available. Many of the agencies have topics of interest and you can occasionally submit your own but the DOD generally solicits only the topics it posts. So the thing to do is build some rapport and potentially see if your topic might get posted. Anyway, I don't see how which member's member is using the toilet in the White House has anything to do with some secret agenda which doesn't agree with a particular poster's political bent.
They way you Yanks are going you won't need any WOMD to fuck you over - you're doing a fine job all by yourself.
...
Great choice of president, by the way. And secretary of state. And secretary of 'defence'. And
The United States is one of the few industrialized nations NOT to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Neither Democrat or Republican have pushed to ratifie it because that would hit big brothr business in the pocket.
If kepler modified his measurements to fit into the then current view of things, astronomy would have been set back 100 years.
;-) ).
Do not you think that there were plenty of astroLOGISTS at the time who might have noticed that things do not exactly add up up there, but just were not interested in following THAT route? Kepler might as well decide to be one of them (and forever forgotten), in which case another bright guy with access to the same technology (best at that time) would publish the same observations.
The problem is that now almost all science is funded from "public funds", so there is really no incentive to go against what the public believes (and public ius represented by the bureocrats in Washington, you know...
Paul B.
"For biologists who do endangered species analysis, my experience is that the majority of them are ordered to reverse their conclusions [if they favor listing]. There are other biologists who will do it if you won't," said the biologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Seeing as they couldn't find anyone willing to back up their assertion with their names this accusation is worth as much as any made by an anonymous coward, that is to say, don't assume it's horseshit right away but don't trust it either
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Bill Moyers article: http://www.alternet.org/story/20666/
Hey, you think your house is cool?
...is paved with good intentions.
The most amazing thing in this article is how generic it is. It does not specify if the scientists are contract or Federal employee. It does not specify WHO is telling them to change data, nor exactly what kind of data and from exactly what kind of reports. It does not specify the statictical methodology used. I mean, come on. If you think this article is "good", think again.
I'm not saying some part of it, all of it, or even more is the truth. I'm just saying that there is nothing to convince me of it. There is not a single series of supportive, factual pieces of information. It's all heresay and overly political. Nice.
Wow, what a partisan, science-hating post to make right out of the box! This doesn't address the issue of scientists expected to change their conclusions on the basis of politics, or the substance of the claims. Like scientists or not, but you can't in good faith ignore them just because you don't like their politics.
Science is the most powerful way of developing new and accurate information about the world we live in. By all means, make policy on the basis of more than science, but don't subvert science to advance wishful thinking. Everyone loses that way.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
Nothing is ever enough for these people. To guarantee "survival of our species", they would have 99% of us dead, and the rest living in grass huts hunting and gathering.
It's all based on shaky science and the idea that we shouldn't take any risks. Okay, the climate of the Earth may change within the next thousand years. Maybe as a result of human activity, maybe not.
But if we give in to their demands, we will be slaves to a worldwide communist state in ten years.
Brutal honesty is better than ignorance by deceit.
Come on. Say it. You know you want to. Ok, I'll do it for you...
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I'm entitled to them.
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.
We use words like honor, code, loyalty...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use 'em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!
Kaffee: Did you order the code red?
Jessep: (quietly) I did the job you sent me to do.
Kaffee: Did you order the code red?
Jessep: You're goddamn right I did!!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
.. just not with your subject line (unless you forgot to put quotes around "capitalism" to mean "statist economy"). ;-) Obviously you are coming from the Left, and I am coming from the Top (libertarian, you know...) but yes, Science is becoming another consumable, to be bought and sold like oil and food. -- see my previous comments in this thread.
the only way to give it some dignity back is to detach it from the government oversight (whoever runs the govt. at the moment), and the only way to achieve THAT is to have enough of independent private wealth in society to fund interesting scientific projects. And no, I do not mean "it is cheaper for me to give $1M grant to this professor who will prove that I do not harm anything than $5M fine to the EPA who thinks that I am harming everything around my plant".
Anyther perspective for you -- I grew up in Soviet Union (decidedly non-capitalist country) and the environment there was, to put it mildly, REALLY bad. Free society (which some of us equate with capitalism, obviously in the different sense of the word that you used in your subj) seems to be doing much better.
Paul B.
I thought the parent post was funny moreso than trolling, especially given the other recent news of the day. There are parallels to be drawn between government attempting to subvert science and government attempting to subvert media. Both activities try to control public perception of facts by circumventing the people who have historically provided them.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
The last time I looked, falsifying or causing the falsification of Federal government documents, including research was Federal crime.
My grandfather worked at a USDA research station and the scientist there always had to attach some boiler plate to their research submissions saying that the research was sound to the best of their knowledge. I would image that the scientist in the survey had a similar obligation.
If these scientist have real solid evidence that science was altered then they need to provide the names of the studies and the people involved so we can through some people in jail.
If they can't or won't do this I call bullshit.
he's not turning it into a republican/democrat debate. the organization making the scientific claims has a political bias, and therefore politics have gotten involved.
just like the bush administration alledgedly has the motivation to alter the data to further their goals. UCS ALSO has the SAME EXACT motivation to modify the report linked to in the article to further their goals. Science and polotics CANNOT be allowed to mix
Does this mean that the bush adminstration didn't do these things they were accused of? No. It simply means that the report cannot be trusted on its own. It may be true, it may be false.
face it, we're inclined to blame our adversaries for any problems we face weather it is republican or democrat. the amount of political mudslinging in the comments on this post is astounding. has anyone thought that this may have been the original intent of the article?
UCS and Bush both have their political agendas -- I wouldn't trust either on a report on the enviornment.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
millennia
The Ezine Directory
Reality is that which will kill you if ignored long enough.
I love the concept of nuclear power from an air-quality standpoint, but the incredibly dangerous and voluminous waste it produces is more than I can ignore
Please do some research on this before you buy into "dangerous and voluminous" waste FUD. The vast majority of such "waste" can be used to produce electricity in breeder/plutonium reactors. Most of the remainder can also produce electricity, though at above-market costs. An agressive program of reprocessing and transmutation could reduce the time that waste is more radioactive than uranium ore to under 500 years and reduce the volume of such waste to under 50 cubic meters per year -- and that is assuming all of our current electrical and transportation energy is supplied by nuclear power. Such a program would only add about 10% to the cost of electricity. And even if you blew off the expensive transmutation, 97% of the current waste is U-238 and plutonium which can produce electricity at competitive costs.
Google around for the Advanced Fuel Cycles Initiative for more info.
Kill, Tux, kill!
And being a Nobel Laureate qualifies them to speak on political pressure in government conservation sciences how, exactly? A Nobelist in some field of natural science who has worked for the government (or extensively reviewed the work of those who have), sure. But how many have? The last time the "Union of Concerned Scientists" trumpted that Nobel Laureates supported something it was a letter to President Bush regarding stem cell research. Turns out only two of the scientists won for work in embryology. 27 others won for other areas of medicine and the remaining 53 won for entirely unrelated fields like physics and economics. Before that it was a letter to then-President Clinton on the topic of missile defense which had exactly no winners in that area (though at least one physicist had some experience), but again plenty of doctors, chemists and economists. What is it about winning a Nobel Prize that qualifies you to speak on anything and everything as if you were an expert?
If you'd like to criticize the substance of their report, indicating what they did wrong and why their conclusions are flawed, that'd be a worthwhile contribution to the discussion. Until then, though, all you've contributed is ad hominem.
Pointing out the bias in the source is perfectly valid. In fact, it's good science to point out that your data or conclusions may be based on tainted sources.
Put another way, your response is the equivalent of suggesting that General Relativity must be wrong because Einstein abused his wife
And your response is like insisting that there is no cosmological constant because hey, Einstein insisted it was the biggest mistake of his life and he's a Nobel Laureate so it must be right!
You accused the poster of an ad hominem by attacking the source rather than the data but you're doing the exact opposite by trying to claim that the opinion of a Nobel Prize winner automatically carries greater weight on every topic on which they may care to opine.
Agreed. The statement decrying all conservatives and Republicans as greedy pricks is an ignorant one. Click the link to Antiwar.com and try reading a sampling of the editorials. Conservatives outnumber liberals by a considerable margin.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
I love the numbers of this survey.
1400 polled 400 responded.
Of those 400 46% said that they were being pressured so 184.
The story really is 13.14% of scientists polled agreed with our leading questions. And look at some of the actual questions and responses
24. In my experience, scientific documents generally reflect technically rigorous evaluations of impacts to listed species and associated habitats.
strongly agree agree don't know disagree strongly disagree
7.5% 54.3% 13.8% 18.1% 4.3% 25.
USFWS strives to substantially incorporate independent peer review in formulating and validating scientific findings.
strongly agree agree don't know disagree strongly disagree
7.7% 52.2% 16.4% 18.8% 3.6%
26. I have been directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from a USFWS scientific document.
frequently occasionally seldom never not applicable overall
2.2% 8.9% 9.2% 68.8% 10.4%
Overall the polls show a good amount of the usual worker problems (We need more money, we don't trust upper management, ect...), but the part about economic and political pressure doesn't specify about who is applying the pressure.
They could just as easilly be getting pressure from groups like PETA to increase the number of species declared endangered.
Unfortunately the entire LA Times is an opinion piece these days. They are like the boy who cried wolf; Even if it's true, if it's in the times, I can't take it seriously. They tweak polls until they come out right and did their best to throw the gubenatorial election. I like my media political operative free!
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
It's just those pesky scientists causing trouble again. They're always trying to stir things up...turn people against the visitors....don't worry about it, Diana will sort them out.
"Slashdot, the Weapon of Mass Download. :-)"
;-)
Which is why I do my part by never RTFA. Mostly cuz the articles are usually basically what the summary says, e.g. "windows teh cool, SCO rulez, linux teh bad!"...
The comments are what I come for
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
... unless you also put the total number of cows in both US and canada into you equation.
Say, there are no cows in Canada and they;ve just imported 800, learned that their precious purchase is at danger of that mad cow desease and screened all of them, finding 3 mad. Depending on the accuracy of their test, they might've missed another 3 or 4 or 400...
Say, there is a million cows in the US and 1600 were added. Learning of the desease, they tested all of them and found just one mad.
Who did better? Again, no one knows...
Paaul B.
RTFA: "...more than half of the respondents said they had been ordered to alter findings to lessen protection of species".
Mod parent "moron".
6: Evolution would NOT have been proven to occur in a laboratory.
Please, point me to your source on this. I'm very interested in these laboratory experiments.
Friggin' moderators. Hey, read the damn article before you start slinging flamebait around idjit! It's very relevant to the thread and the post it's attached to.
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Let's not pretend there is a single mainstream politican, republican or democrat, in the country that gives two shits about the enviornment with the exception of gaining support and voter base.
If the public doesn't believe the system can ever work properly, it's all that much easier to manipulate it. This seems to be a recurring theme with the current administration. If you screw up, screw up big and everyone will let it slide:
1) Hey, this strategic intelligence stuff is difficult, how could we know there weren't WMDs there?
2) Wars are complicated. Taking control of a nation is complicated. Of course there are bound to be a lot of really, really serious screw-ups in our planning.
3) What is "torture?" I mean, really. Aren't we really just splitting hairs here? One man's "brutal interrogation" is another man's "questioning session." Besides, this sort of thing has always happened throughout history, but in previous American wars there weren't nosy reporters snooping around all over the place.
4) Everyone knows government is inefficient. We're trying to cut the size of the government. If we cut domestic spending, we can slice out the deficit and shrink government. And we all know that the military and government are two totally different things, which is why $8 billion in missing funds in Washington demands outrage, while $8 billion missing in Iraq is just the fog of war.
5) It's impossible to estimate the cost of war in Iraq before we go in. It's impossible to estimate the cost of the war once we're in it. Therefore it is obviously impossible to estimate its cost in the future, which is why it's not in the budget package.
Desensitize the public to gross incompetence by convincing them that it is to be expected, and over time the public will come to expect it. Those who are outraged will be promptly marginalized as hopelessly romantic idiots.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The people who know what they are saying about the environment are suggesting very rational means of protecting the environment, but for every one of the rational experts there are a hundred screaming morons making inarticulate and unhelpful demands.
Which group gets heard more?
The people who actually care about the environment should worry about getting their acts together. Until they do that they will continue to be dismissed for the nutjobs a great many of them are.
Anyway, this is stupid: It's science. If you report something that's wrong, the next group comes along and makes you look like a twit. Why would anyone risk their professional standing for some transient political nobodies?
PBRs are the type I'm most familiar with, but there are other designs (e.g. CANDU) that are similarly less dangerous, more stable, and less waste-creating than your standard ol' fashioned water-mediated fuel rod reactor.
Yes, but that's true of *any* kind of power plant. By that logic, we shouldn't have power plants at all."Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
They love research grants even more when no strings are attached. Do you really think private entities don't apply pressure when they fund research?
What about Haliburton? The love their federal contracts.
Say, does Haliburton make significant money from anything besides federal contracts? Do they make appliances or aeroplanes? Do they do medical research?
To be consistent, shouldn't you extend your disdain for anyone or group that gets a significant portion of their funds from the government? (And if Haliburton is a bad example, I know there are many, many "private" companies that make all or nearly all of their income from public money.)
There's a lot of fundamental research that happens at Universities that businesses have no interest in. Anthropology, paleontology, history, mathematics, physics, cosmology, geology, biology, etc. You just can't privatize it because no one envisions the payoff. But remember, your CDs and DVDs use error detection/correction mechanisms based on mathematics, specifically group and field theory, developed in the 1700s. This math was viewed as completely without practical application for centuries! Indeed, the founder, Galois I believe, revelled in the fact that his theory had no application but was completely esoteric.I see that get pulled out all the time. How many times has this happened, that a company has been sued for acting in an ethical manner, potentially contrary to maximizing (as in reducing, not eliminating) profits? How many times has it even been threatened?
Not recalling the outrage against the investors for acting so unethically, I have to believe it's "practically never," but I could be mistaken.
sig fault
Given that every company and every government department has a "Confidentiality Agreement" (Agreement Ha!), or "Official Secrets Act", or "Commercially Sensitive Information" or "Trade Secret" or....
Conspiracy is this civilization's norm, not something cranky and weird.
It's what we do every week in the monday morning meeting.
Don't believe me? Just try paste the minutes of your last meeting on a publically visible website and see how long you last.
If what were doing is so good, why not let people see, it should be engendering public confidence and hence really good public relations.
Imagine a world in which, by law, if every meeting of three or more held was publically accessible. How would our world change?
How much that we do, which are basically ashamed of, will suddenly not be acceptable?
Which actions would suddenly no longer be orchestrated by these meetings?
I ask you, think back to your last two work meetings. What would have been said or done differently if your customers, shareholders, or the press or other stakeholders were listening?
Quite a lot.
a planet that is billions of years old
That's not what the sticker on my biology textbook says.
#!
Sounds interesting, if it really works. I'm always wary of stories like this since it seems too good to be true, and is likely to be heavily influenced by the people who make money on the furthering of fission power.
Thanks for the info, though - it definitely looks worth checking out.
The Free desktop that Just Works
How come stories about how Bush's administration is doing something bad always get some Bush apologist quickly posting "let the Bush bashing begin", but stories that criticize enemies of Bush don't get the same defensive kneejerk? Because Bush apologists have no defense, except to portray critics as being mean, or having an agenda.
"The facts are clearly biased against President Bush"
- (paraphrase) John Stewart, The Daily Show
--
make install -not war
... instead of replying to me (whom you obviously will find in perfect agreement with you! I mentioned my political inclinations quite obviously... ;-) ) try engaging one of those leftist/statist kids/pops -- maybe we even have a chance to put an idea or two in their heads. ;-)
But yes, I do appreciate you making this point -- just a pity that noone will probably see it except for someone who agrees with it anyway.
Paul B.
Of course he's planning ahead. Republican "yesism" is notoriously well organized. Bush "bashing" isn't even necessary any more; Republicans get mileage out of crying about it even when it doesn't materialize. When the fascists are on the march, their propaganda is always in order.
--
make install -not war
What's your point? That it's okay to lie about the cost if you think it's worth it? From the article:
If I'm parsing the phony "on the other hand" journalism correctly,
That's not acceptable. I don't care how cozy your house is.
-- . . ramblin' . . .
lol. :)
*elevator music plays*
David Suzuki (Canadian biologist/environmental advocate) tells a fable about microbes in a test tube. The microbes double in number every day. At 6.25% capacity, a few scientist microbes start to get alarmed about dwindling rescources. The next day, at 12.5%, more microbes chime in about overpopulation. The politician microbes pooh-pooh them. After all, the test tube is 87.5% empty! At 25% the vast majority of the scientist microbes and a good many of the other microbes are getting worried, and finally convince the rest of the microbes there's a problem.
They all work feverishly, and come up with a solution.
They build a new test tube.
I, for one, welcome our new censored, creationist supporting theocratic "scientists"
At least we get pussy. How is Goatse's ass, AC?
I never ceases to amaze me how so many people frown upon protecting the world we live in, the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat. "Liberal agenda" my ass. This is about our survival as a species.
... yourself?
Our species survived just fine before the environmental movement. Furthermore, our species isn't threatened by bad food, bad water, or bad air. Individuals might be, but not the species. Maybe environmentalists would be taken more seriously if you weren't so pretentious?
You would hope that the people expressing deep concern over matters of the environment would receive thanks and praise for the efforts.
How much "effort" did it take for you to be concerned? You want thanks for your feelings now?
Nevertheless, there is no shortage of greedy, wholeheartedly selfish people out there out to ensure their own personal and short-term gain, the consequences be damned. but then, I suppose I'm just some unamerican hippie...
Nice job. Create a boogeyman, and set yourself up as the victim. Not bad for one sentence.
When someone else wants something, they're greedy. When you want something, you should be thanked for your feelings. Are you sure you care about the environment? Are you sure you don't just care about
Exactly. How does that qualify them to speak about this? It doesn't take a genius (or even a Nobel Laureate) to know that political pressure on scientific research is bad, so we don't need them for that. What we need to know is when and where it's happening, and these people not being involved in it, are in no position to tell us! I don't care that they're Nobel Laureates because they still don't know what's happening here! That's why it's so dishonest. Are you so sure about that?
Your link requires a subscription, so I have no idea.
How, exactly, has the original poster shown this supposed bias to have affected this particular study? Thanks in advance.
Several flaws in their study have already been pointed out. You would think Nobel Laureates would know how to perform proper experiments, assuming they were even involved that is, and not just inappropriately lending their name and stature to a political cause they happen to agree with.
I don't trust Nobel Laureates on everything
Just when it's convenient to support something you already believe? I'm not sure that's better.
Can you go over that again? I still haven't figured out how Bush thought that going to war shortly before an election, knowing that there were no WMD's to be found, and not bothering to plant any fakes of his own, would work to the benefit of his "holy causes." Qui bono?
Am I missing something? Did not every serious observer, from John Kerry to MI5, believe that Saddam had WMD's prior to the war? Are you saying that they were all so stupid and gullible that they could be misled by the smooth lies of the inarticulate smirking chimp moron Bushitler?
morals no longer seem to matter in our reltavistic society.
You can say that again. Though I must say, that sounds pretty comical coming from the lips of a leftist... Jacques Derrida, call your office....
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I live in a pretty urban area, but grew up in a rural area. I knew more of my neighbors in the rural area than I do now. People live very close to each other tend to put up a shell and ignore all the other bodies in their space.
*elevator music plays*
Is that you?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
This is about our survival as a species. You would hope that the people expressing deep concern over matters of the environment would receive thanks and praise for the efforts
Similar rhetoric is used to defend the patriot act and DMCA (this is about our survival as a country, survival of the economy, respectively). A noble cause is not enough, you have to put together a workable plan that doesn't end up destroying people's livelihood in the process. It's easy to say "Stop Greenhouse Gases", it's hard to figure out how exactly to do so without causing economic collapse.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
It's only true for, what, 9 to 15 years?
What the hell it has to do with anything, I do not know. That sort of random political statistic usually means someone is talking gibberish.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I'm not even sure where to begin with a reply to this 'let the bush-bashing begin' comment. The fact of the matter is that the LA Times article by CowboyNeal "...hundreds of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists have been instructed to change findings to favor business interests..." is completely consistent with the fact that the Bush administration has consistently supressed and distorted scientific findings whenever it does not suit their pro-business ideology. As someone else already pointed out, tampering with the scientific process at all MUST be condemmed: it's stupid because in the long-run it means shooting ourselves in the foot, really. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have done a bit of this in the past, but what the Bush administration is doing stinks so bad and it's so indefensible that it is reminiscent of the Trofim Lysenko affair in Stalinist Russia. Stalin considered that the science of genetics in the 50's was not consistent with marxism so he banned the teaching of genetics; then he put Trofim Lysenko in charge of genetics in the USSR because Lysenko 'created' a (pseudo) branch of genetics which was consistent with marxism! As a result, Russia lost several decades of genetics knowledge and research. What Stalin did to genetics in the USSR, the Bush administration is doing to science in general: it's basically filling scientific/technology goverment positions with numerous Lysenkos. How very, very sad; I wonder how much US science will regress after four more years of this.
Then again the Union of Concerned Scientists has a very outspoken agenda, and generally colors all of its statements based on that. I'd take this with a grain of salt.
Glad someone else noticed, I thought I was going insane there when I read the article documents and saw nothing of the sort reported by the original post.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Nah, they'll just have a lot less hardwood and a lot more pine et al. Most evergreens grow plenty fast.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Middle manager (nervously): Ah, very well, but you might want to take out the part about the President and Halliburton. I don't think that's been proven yet.
Lefty scientist: Oh ho! See? See? Censorship! McCarthy! Halliburton! Enron! Chimpy! Bushitler! WMDs! Arsenic! Kyoto!
Too much Law; not enough Order.
How did this get insightful?! This is crap. Yes, if we don't change something, future humans may suffer...but "freemacmini," i don't see you giving up your computers run by power from a plant that (most likely) is run off of coal or some other air-polluting source. I'm not doing it, the parent is doing it, and neither are you obviously, so cut down on the hypocrisy, "selfless savior of the future"
Hunger for Dictatorship
... advocating nuclear holocaust and mass bloodshed for more than a year now." One of the biggest right-wing talk-radio hosts regularly calls for the mass destruction of Arab cities. Letters that come to this magazine from the pro-war Right leave no doubt that their writers would welcome the jailing of dissidents. And of course it's not just us. When USA Today founder Al Neuharth wrote a column suggesting that American troops be brought home sooner rather than later, he was blown away by letters comparing him to Tokyo Rose and demanding that he be tried as a traitor. That mood, Rockwell notes, dwarfs anything that existed during the Cold War. "It celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state. The new ideology of the red-state bourgeoisie se
War to export democracy may wreck our own.
by Scott McConnell
Students of history inevitably think in terms of periods: the New Deal, McCarthyism, "the Sixties" (1964-1973), the NEP, the purge trials--all have their dates. Weimar, whose cultural excesses made effective propaganda for the Nazis, now seems like the antechamber to Nazism, though surely no Weimar figures perceived their time that way as they were living it. We may pretend to know what lies ahead, feigning certainty to score polemical points, but we never do.
Nonetheless, there are foreshadowings well worth noting. The last weeks of 2004 saw several explicit warnings from the antiwar Right about the coming of an American fascism. Paul Craig Roberts in these pages wrote of the "brownshirting" of American conservatism--a word that might not have surprised had it come from Michael Moore or Michael Lerner. But from a Hoover Institution senior fellow, former assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, and one-time Wall Street Journal editor, it was striking.
Several weeks later, Justin Raimondo, editor of the popular Antiwar.com website, wrote a column headlined, "Today's Conservatives are Fascists." Pointing to the justification of torture by conservative legal theorists, widespread support for a militaristic foreign policy, and a retrospective backing of Japanese internment during World War II, Raimondo raised the prospect of "fascism with a democratic face." His fellow libertarian, Mises Institute president Lew Rockwell, wrote a year-end piece called "The Reality of Red State Fascism," which claimed that "the most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing."
I would argue that Rockwell--who makes the most systematic argument of the three--overstates the libertarian component of the 1994 Republican victory, which could just as readily be credited to heartland rejection of the '60s cultural liberalism that came into office with the Clintons. And it is difficult to imagine any scenario, after 9/11, that would not lead to some expansion of federal power. The United States was suddenly at war, mobilizing to strike at a Taliban government on the other side of the world. The emergence of terrorism as the central security issue had to lead, at the very least, to increased domestic surveillance--of Muslim immigrants especially. War is the health of the state, as the libertarians helpfully remind us, but it doesn't mean that war leads to fascism.
But Rockwell (and Roberts and Raimondo) is correct in drawing attention to a mood among some conservatives that is at least latently fascist. Rockwell describes a populist Right website that originally rallied for the impeachment of Bill Clinton as "hate-filled
Check out the last issue of Discover... the one that had the big "Evolution proved" headline on the cover. It was a fascinating article. I'm sure you can grab a back-issue or find the story on line somewhere.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
It's so sad that it's always Republican vs. Democrat. Why can't it simply be the People vs. the Government - the way it should be.
Find coupons in Greeley
At least, the bad genocides, where people we don't dislike are getting killed by people we do dislike.
I mean, even the Republicans would probably issue at statement condemning them or something.
As long as it wasn't someone we were actively trading with. Or might want to in the future.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I know your post was meant as a joke, and it is kind of funny, but I feel the need to respond to it. It is sad that it's always Republican vs. Democrat because both sides fail to see the benefits that the other brings to the table. Republican's goal of reduced taxes is great, just like Democrat's goal of environmental protection. Someone I read/listened to a few days back said the problem with politicians is that they get elected by saying yes to everything. However, in order to serve the people properly, they have to say no.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
same song, different verse
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
The original poster is right. Democrats and Republicans are virtually identical in concept and representation. If I had 5 mod points, I'd give him all 5.
The "Union of Concerned Scientists" has been a liberal activist organization throughout its history, originally organized to protest the Vietnam war They protested the Vietnam War? I'd say that increases their credibility, wouldn't you? By the way, the article didn't say anything about Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, or liberals. Methinks you're responding to an attack that wasn't there. Any environmentalist will tell you that when it came to the environment Clinton sucked up to business interests as well as any Republican.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
We don't have true democracy. We have a republic. We have a republic because tyrrany of numbers sucks.
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
1. By the same selective reasoning: in the last 24 years, twice as much time has been spent with a republican president as without (16 years under Reagan, Bush and Bush as opposed to 8 with Clinton). That doesn't really mean anything either.
2. They were right wern't they? The Vietnam war turned into a defeat for the western nations involved, a horrific period for the soldiers on both sides of the conflict, a drain on taxpayer money, a tragedy for the people of Vietnam and an embarrassment for everyone but Ho Chi Minh and the Soviet backers. Being right doesn't automatically make one into a biased left winger.
3. Most pedestrians havn't been violently assaulted on the streets, it doesn't mean crime isn't a problem.If one scientist has been pressured it would be too many.
Nothing but twisted rhetoric and logical fallacies with
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
This is a case where RTFA is almost worse than nothing. Not only is the article biased, but the survey and those who made it is biased - and their reporting of the results is beyond biased.
e su lts.pdf
Here's a link to the survey questions and results:
http://ucsusa.org/documents/FWS_questions_and_r
Reading the actual results of the survey tells a far different story than that reported by those conducting the survey - or the LA times who seem to have just regurgitated the PEER/UCS press release without doing any kind of actual reporting.
Based on their own survey results most respondants feel the opposite of what is being portrayed in this story. Most of them are happy with the FWS and don't feel pressured.
Of course also keep in mind that the FWS told it's employees not to respond to this survey (most likely because they knew UCS/PEER were just looking to create another hit piece since that's what PEER does full-time.) So those who did respond are already those who aren't good at following directions and are probably upset with their jobs for one reason or another.
That this even counts as news is either a testament to how liberally biased the LA times is or just how poor "news" reporting in this country has become.
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
1: The sun would orbit the earth, the center of our solar system.
2: It would be the nature of things to move, then stop.
3: People could breath in space.
4: The earth would have suddenly come into existance a tad over five millenia ago.
5: Humans would have suddenly formed a few days after the earth.
6: Evolution would NOT have been proven to occur in a laboratory.
Notice... the first three items are in the present tense. The last three are in the past. While the validity of the first three points are obvious, there is no validity to the last three. Why? Because as much as can be proven about present-day conditions, there is no true proof of the past. To say that you have proven history is to violate the scientific method, transferring theory into facts with no evidence.
I can give an equally plausible theory that counters what you have mislabeled as fact. An all-powerful God creates earth, so that it is in a condition to support life and mankind. This is done instantly, but the result is the same as if earth formed from "scratch" 4.5 billion years ago.
But, I cannot and will not call my theory fact. You also cannot call yours fact without violating the principals that we, as scientists, are supposed to be upholding. Which, if I recall, is the point of this discussion. NOT some attempt to defend something that would need no defense if it were actually true.
And yes, I am a scientist. I work in university research and am obtaining my graduate degree. Not all Christians are stupid, as you seem to imply.
Didn't you mean SHOULD NOT be allowed to mix?
Hard in today's world, I know but unfortunatelly that's how it is.
Says who? I don't believe you. This country is more heavily forested now than it has been in the past hundred years. Abandoned agricultural land is returning to forest everywhere.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
So you're the infamous Anonymous Coward.
Flamebait? Why is this modded flamebait? It's true. The LA Times is worst kind of trite hollywood "left-wing lite" tripe. It's smug, vapid hand-wringing liberal style has disgusted serious political progressives and conservatives alike for over thirty years.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I have heard scientists who have told said that their science supports something *it does not support*. Then when overruled, they complain that political or business interests are overriding science. But it often is not true. Don't believe them just because they say it.
For example, here in WA, we have a lot of land use issues. A common practice is for the environmental lobby to say that the "best available science" says that for a certain type of environment with a certain type of animal, a certain buffer size is required. But often they are just wrong.
There are many ways in which they are wrong. Sometimes they unscientifically compare different types of environments as though they are the same. Sometimes they don't take preexisting man-made structures into account. Sometimes -- this is no joke -- they mistake the size of the study for the recommended buffer size.
These sorts of things go on all the time. And there's no justification for taking their word for it, especially when they have their own political agenda.
Until recently, few of them were partisan in a direction with which you disagreed.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Science and polotics CANNOT be allowed to mix
Wow. The Bush administration is ahead of the ball on this one. They do what they can to make sure that science doesn't enter politics...
If they looked ahead, they'd realize that extinct wildlife won't give any revenues.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Except the voters would kill him. It's all nice to hear sob stories about how someone can't do something with their land because of the guberment randomly deciding they can't, but in the real world, just wait till they start talking about how there are only 30 Wild Pine Goats, 8 of whom live in the area under discussion, etc, etc, and the tide of public opinion would rapidly side with the almsot extinct animals.
Looking back in history, I can't think of any president that wanted to do something that the American people had decided not to do, so he asked specialists in the field to lie for him so he'd have justification to do it.
*thinks a second*
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. (I actually know the real expression, and even what it means!)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Actually, having worked for the forest service and watched the shenannigans involved in some of the "environmental" impact reports, I have to say that I tend to believe the article, and I'm Republican. A report will come in saying something like "the cut as designed will have the following adverse effects ...," typically things like muddying the water and silting up spawning beds in really nice trout streams, "to avoid this the clearance along these streams should be be increased to say 90 horizontal feet."
... well ignore that. Anyway, it wasn't based on ANY environmental concern.
The TMO had anticipated a 10 foot or 20 slope foot exclusion along the streams, and maybe a generous kickback from the multinational that wants to cut the timber and sell the best stuff to the Japanese - who at least appreciate nice wood. The original recommendation involved maybe 50 acres of timber out of 5,000. The TMO cries real tears in the SO's office and words are heard about "tree huggers" and "owl lovers" "jobs lost" and similar nonsense. The best timber is in those corridors!!
The SO may also be, almost unavoidably HAS to be, acquaintented with the multinational reps as well. Surprisingly the directive comes down, "change the corridor to 35 feet."
The backside of the story is that since many "specialists" know how these things work, they work very hard to identify "issues" that will protect their recommendations. Consequently, the stream is good but not critical trout habitat and some accountant (not a field scientist but a real, honest to god accountant who has never ventured into the woods alone in his life) has already determined how much stream the forest can "afford" to protect. His determination was made on the basis of a dollars and cents estimate he pulled from
The biologist, knowing the dweeb who REALLY made the critical stream determination, has "fudged" the data, and another hot topic was inserted the hypothesis that creek corridor is nesting territory for spotted owls - who never harmed the biologist - but at least they'll protect his fish. When his crew is out "hoot owling" he'll be out there with a speaker system giving them something to listen and report. Most are pretty young, naieve, and honest, so he can't let them in on the secret.
The SO meanwhile knows perfectly well what's up. He recons that the entire issue is childish and that both the TMO and biologist would have been screaming just as loud regardless. He also knows the area is not pristine and that it was denuded 80 years ago, so there isn't any owl habitat really. But he does like fly fishing and plans to do some on that creek next spring now that biologist has pointed it out. So he pulls and other number out of the air, one he hopes will keep his multinational pals and the local loggers more or less happy, salt the beer of that conniving TMO, and piss on that biologist that lied about everything, all at the same time. Just maybe it'll protect the stream enough, too. Besides, he's retiring in 5 years anyway.
Were you aware that under the laws of Texas, the Governor is powerless to prevent an execution? He can issue a one-time stay of execution for six months, but all pardons, paroles, and commutations have to originate with the state board of pardons.
Personally, I don't think we're putting nearly enough people to death. Most violent felonies, child molestation, etc., ought to be death on the first offense. Three felonies of any kind are proof enough for me that the perpetrator is a sub-human monster who ought to be put down with no more remorse than we spare for a rabid dog.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Yeah, they can't even stand a little torture.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Who determines the scientists?
Just because someone has a PHD doesn't mean they are immune to human failings. Scientists can get caught up in their beliefs as much as religious folk, and once that happens anything they observe will be slanted slightly to fit in their world-view. This of course assumes that they really believe in their work, and they aren't just doing it for the money. Once you pay the same people to get the data, interpret it, and act on it then all the data suddenly must be collected and interpreted in order to produce the most costly (hence profitable) action.
I mean look at AIDS research. If all the money devoted to researching AIDS was focused on direct study and prevention AIDS would be gone right now, but a most of it actually goes to various "lets not make the victims feel bad" junk. (I'm not saying that they should be made to feel bad, but the number one vector of infection is through personal irressponsibilty.) Another chunk of the money is spent on "administrative" costs such as paying the people who work for the AIDS groups, organizing benefits, and advertising not for people to not engage in risky behaviour, but instead for more money to study AIDS.
Organizations made for the sole reason of eliminating a problem often find it is in their best interests to allow the problem to continue indefinatly.
I'm all for actions taken to preserve our world so long as those actions can be proved to be an actual benefit. If endangered species really benefited the environment then they wouldn't be endangered. Sure the spotted owl fills a vital niche in the ecosystem, but if it isn't filling it well enough to survive then maybe it should die off so a more capable species can take over. Its a little thing called survival of the fittest.
Currently man defines the concept of fitness. This does not mean we should destroy all other species; it just means that we deserve our spot in the world. If things start pushing us towards destruction we will have to take action, but right now other than the obvious immeadiate problems we shouldn't try to fix things that may not be broken.
For those of you who wonder what "party plants in the Presidential press pool" refers to in TellarHK's comment, I have a link to a Guardian (a UK paper) article on Jeff Gannon, the fake reporter representing a right-wing news organization who got outed and resigned, on my blog at: http://sundroid.blogspot.com/. By the way, the news is being reported in every major U. S. paper, I picked Guardian because it does not require registration.
Sun and Fun
I believe so. Or something very much like it. Remember, Osama and his ilk don't just want us out of the Middle East. They want to wipe Israel off the map, kill every Jew, re-conquer lost Muslim lands such as Spain, and eventually force everyone in the world to become Muslim or die. They are quite clear and vocal about this. So long as we exist in a non-Muslim nation, we are targets for this type of Muslim.
I want my government to find all Muslims who think like this and kill them quickly and ruthlessly.
--ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
They agree that the globe is warming. "Global Warming" has come to mean something completely different, a sort of demipolitical construct that's part fact, and obscured by several truckloads of BS and poorly made assumptions.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
I'd unleash such an epidemic, even if it meant I had a 95% chance of dying.
Back in 1981, I worked at CDC. At that time, a branch became aware of a new disease that was spreading. When they approached the White house for several millions to stop the spread, they were told no. The CDC was so sure that this would be a nightmare, that they sent in some of the top guns to convince Reagan to fund it (one was a mormon bishop whose lab had won numerous awards for its' work). Of course, it was just in the gay community, and Reagan talked to his priest and came back and still said no. Obviously, this was AIDS. When my boss was asked to take on the AIDS research, he turned it down and it went to Gallo.
What I found interesting was that much of this never made the history books. We were told to just forget it. From much higher.
Of course, we have another disaster brewing with "Mad Cow"/Scrappies/CWD/KJD. It is thought that these are the same prion in different animals. But this admin is ignoring due to the possibility of hurting cattle export for the large agri companies (esp in Texas).
Many Leaders today, have hidden agendas. You need to be sure that it is in our best interest.
Heck, you can't even get a Nobel prize in the physical sciences without being a liberal
Since the nobel is granted based on "benefit to humanity", an idea itself heavily tied to political bias and agenda-pushing, this is more true than you will ever know.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Damn, I used my mod points yesterday.
This is very insightful. If we don't understand our enemies real motives we can't hope to defeat them.
"Drug related crime" is a misnomer, "prohibition related crime" is the more accurate and correct phrase.
The difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is that the Republicans grub their own money, gained through business, while the Democrats attempt to grub my money, gained by seizing it through force of law. As this becomes less true and the Republicans begin to reach for my pocketbook in a decidedly Democrat-like fashion, my tendency to vote for anything that's not a third party shoots down dramatically.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
For a list of "scientists" who are really shills for big industry denying global warming, see:
environmentaldefense.org
Also, when your right-wing relatives start citing contrary "legitimate sources", it's always good to look them up at the Disinfopedia:
sourcewatch.org
Here you can easily identify sheep-skinned pundits and astroturfers.
"You have liberated me from thought."
1. In the last 15 years, the majority of most of these scientist's time has been spend under a Democratic president
I would hope the President of the USA is "Democratic", maybe you meant Democrat? Also, think about the Republicans gaining control of congress. OH NOEZ, SOMETHING DISAGREES WITH MY PARTISAN STUPIDITY 1111
Seriously, though. If you think the Republican party or "conservatives" in the US Government machine are going to do a better job of keeping business interests out of research, you're out of your mind. Both major US political parties are devolving into supporters of Fascism-in-the-shadows.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
The best arguments always occur with the maximum number of participants on each side.
:)
I love these republican/democrat debates
i hate pansy republicans
Slashdot posters love to tout clean nuclear power
I'm not sure which slashdotters you're talking about, but I'm certainly not one of them.
Personally, I like to tout the virtues of solar, wind, and non-invasive hydro. I actually lived in a solar house for about 20 years, so I'm well aware of the issues with it, but I'm also well aware of the solutions, not just the ones that have been around for 30+ years, but also those that have emerged in the last few years.
That said, there is no perfect energy technology, and the right way to do it is to have a little of everything. My main issue with nuclear is actually Yucca Mountain. I don't think it's a suitable site, and the process by which it was selected was totally fucked. The best sites are in Texas, and I think it's quite telling that none of these Texas energy guys who're always touting nuclear as "clean and safe" want the stuff in their backyard.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Quite the opposite.
Many companies and whole industries "voluntarily" do things to keep government regulation away. This increases value to their shareholders -- by preventing an even greater outlay of capital that would result from more stringent regulation.
Excuse me. Pointing out that a group has a radical political bias and has a long history of fact twisting is not a meaningless ad hominem attack. BTW, both groups doing the pseudo-study do indead believe that ALL economic development is bad. They also are striving for the abolishment of private property and personal freedom. All you need to do is a google on these and their affiliate organizations, and their leaders to see that this is true. A word of warning. The liturature of these so called enviro groups are crafted by lawyers who are very good at twisting facts when possible and out right lying when the fact are not twistable. If you are lucky, you might find some analysis of the standard set of techniques they use to distort reality. I wish I had a link handy to one of these articals.
Just because a group espouses enviromentalism and uses enviromental law to push their political agenda does not make them friends of the enviroment. In fact, it has been demonstrated numerous times that their activities are harming enviromental causes. The only reason I am on to them is that I am involved with Wolf recovery efforts, an enviromental cause I feel deaply about. These so called enviromentalists latest activities are deletarious to all wolf reintroduction efforts. That is becaus things have been going fairly well for the wolf, which is bad for them. When I started seeing the things they were doing, I got curious. Why would enviromentalist be doing things that are harmfull? Could they be stupid or misguided? So I did some googling. It did not take long to figure out what these people really were about. It is actually kind of scary.
(disclaimer: I'm not American, I'm just calling this as I see it. Some may be offended by this, sorry.)
America is no longer the land of the free, and the home of the brave. It's just a haven for corporate controlled special interest groups. Too bad, if people (meaning the government, and the corporations they're tied to) were less interested in making money, and more interested in helping their own country, and the planet as a whole, they really could be what they claim they are. As it stands, it's pretty much a lie. We see this all the time in things ranging from the war in iraq (which was based on a false premise to begin with), to ridiculous patent grants, to other environmentally important things like the Kyoto Accord. All the while, these people who make the key decisions are not held accountable for their actions. And when they are held accountable, which is rare, they're treated with more respect than they should be due. Got a CEO who made millions off the suffering of others? I got two words for you: General Population. Right beside the murderers, car thieves and rapists. Too bad it doesn't happen.
Frankly, I don't blame American individuals per-se. Some might say "well, you voted them in!" but if you have a good long look at the choices, there may as well not be any choices. Like people anywhere, they have their own worries on an individual level. It's not surprising that some of these scientists who are coerced by corporations with extreme power just comply. I mean, they have their own families to feed, and that has to be a primary worry of many of them. What would you do if someone threatened to take away your ability to provide for your kids? Lets face it, these people are caught in an economical machine they just can't change.
The truth is, capitolism doesn't work in favour of the base population. It's a system based on keeping the poor as poor as possible, and the rich as rich as possible, with a mid-point "hump" that's really hard to get past, even if you work your ass off. The government tends to make this whole thing far worse by letting large business entities get away with murder.
If I were American, I'd move. Anywhere has got to be better than where America is currently heading. You may wake up one day to find out your country has become the very thing you hate, assuming it's not there already.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
You should try looking at the actual numbers sometime. Average tax burden under Republicans is less than half a percent lower than under Democrats, and that's more than made up for by the combination of gross fiscal irresponsibility and dramatically slower economic growth under Republican leadership. Oh, and average individual income is higher under Democrats, too.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
To the intelligent Slashdotters:
Thank you for being able to cite evidence backing your points and for being able to debate without turning something into a flamewar.
To the rest of you:
[Group name/individual] is destroying (pick one)[our way of life/the economy/our country]! Those who disagree with me are all lying self-serving hypocrites painting a false picture of my side! Blame [the opposing side] for everything!
Just insert the appropriate phrases and presto! It's the average Slashdoter response.
For all of the shouting I see precious little debate going on. Mostly I see a lot of purely partisan bullshit flying from both sides. being a Slashdotter doesn't automatically make you smarter than everyone else. Cut the crap and take lessons from the Slashdotters who know how to debate.
Yes I know it's a rant, but I just had to get that off my chest.
1. In the last 15 years, the majority of most of these scientist's time has been spend under a Democratic president;
4 Years of GWB
8 Years of WJC
3 Years of GHWB
But if you include the entire Bush 41 term, and look at the past 16 years, it's pretty much even.
If we go back 20 years, it's 12 Republican to 8 Democrat.
Both sides do it. It's a sad fact of life.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Science should never be forced to change accordingly to politics. Didn't we learn anything from the past? Galileo Galilei, for example, was forced to change his mind because the backwards church demanded it. To say that these scientists today were silenced because during the last 15 years there was a democratic presient for 8 years is simply ridiculous. Are they complaining about how they were silenced back then, or are they complaining about how they're silenced now? I have read about how conservatives (who, for some reason, seem to believe in mythological creatures a lot) are trying to skew data to fit their own ideas on how reality should be. This doesn't have to do with biology alone, but also things such as abortion. There are more examples where science is slowly being forced to move to give room for personal beliefs and religion and politics. This is dangerous and dishonest and, yes, evil.
Bacteria can be observed to mutate and evolve to adapt to their environment under laboratory conditions. On a larger scale, when industrialisation first occurred in Britain, populations of wild moths were observed to evolve to contain a far greater percentage of darker-coloured moths (previously a very rare mutation) because darker moths were more likely to survive as they could camouflage themselves against soot-blackened trees.
Now, neither of these proves anything about whether or not evolution occurred in the past, and whether it was the reason humans developed. That theory is merely a fairly direct extrapolation from the above examples, and without any fossil evidence to the contrary it has gained credebility as a fairly likely explanation of how things actually happened.
Where I live, there are generally three kinds of government sponsored science. I suspect it is the same in the US.
The first is done by the fixed grants to the universities, going to teachers/researchers with tenure, who can research any subject they want. There is so little of this left that it is probably insignificant.
The second is more or less generic grants everybody can seek. Probably similar to the NSF. We can not choose what we want to research, we send in proposals within the scope of the grant, and some get funded, presumably based on scientific merit. But we can publish any results, subject only to the traditional peer-review by journals. This is where the largest share of research today happens.
The third is the research insititutions who are directly part of the various branches of government. Research there are directly related to specific tasks required by the department. Researchers are not asked to lie, but results that does not support the policy of the government are not published, and the summary and consclusion of published reports are written "politically", and sometimes contradict the scientific meat of the reports. But journalists doesn't speak science, so the contradiction is seldom discovered.
Privately funded research are mostly similar to category three.
Don't trust scientists, but do trust the scientific process, because it doesn't trust anyone.
I think people got in a stir over this because it is not the first case of this administration pushing facts around, and pushing scientists around.
And that's any different from Bill Clinton and the WHO pushing around the "facts" on second-hand cigarette smoke in support of their agendas - how?
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Hold on...
I saw this in the news, and I believe that it was just a school board in a town in Ohio where they voted to have "intelligent design" included in the biology curriculum. However, the teachers refused to teach it, saying it wasn't science. But I don't know about the entire Dept of Education being on board.
Very strange that when most non-US citizens say "hmmm, reasonable", most US-citizens shout "Liberal liberal"...
..." It would really be a nice thing to have a few more political parties in the US - official ones, say ones that get invited to debates...
As if, as if this label excuses anybody to use his/her (godgiven?) brains and run back to daddy Bush or mummy Kerry.
While it is true that in certain key area's the Democrats in the US are every bit as ugly as the Republicans - who at least do it in the open - that doesn't mean all is said or all is excused.
The land of the free doesn't seem to offer much debate culture. Everything is instantly polarized, categorized and thus excused from further intelligent debate, because "Liberal Liberal - Communist Communist - Unbeliever Unbeliever -
Anyway in this case some scientists from an organization with more democratic roots than republican roots say worriesome things.
What? They CAN'T BE TRUE because of their alleged political agenda?
The opposite however is very plausible I presume, that a government that has a history of noncooperation, changing the facts and bending the media by methods that are frowned upon by every side of any spectrum DOES NOT however interfere in the scientific process.
Right. I think I'll go with the side of the actual scientists who're reporting facts that can be verified here and there before shouting foul.
But hey, you know, if that gets to you, just shout "Liberal Liberal" a few times. I'm sure you'll feel better in no time.
note: the term liberal means conservative right-ish bastard where I come from, so it indeed is slightly insulting...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
By the way, you know how the neoconservatives always claim that they never went to college because it's "just liberal brainwashing"? To me, that just screams "Sour grapes".
Do you mean neo-conservatives like Bill Kristol (Harvard), Alan Keyes (Harvard, University of Chicago), Leon Kass (University of Chicago) or Allan Bloom (University of Chicago)? If anything, neo-conservatives are hyper-educated.
Neo-conservatives may be reprehensible, but uneducated they aren't. Most of them were students or professors at some of the most prestigeous universities in America. You ought to read some history of Straussianism and the neo-conservative movement.
Perhaps you're thinking of the Religious Right?
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Nah, they'll just have a lot less hardwood and a lot more pine et al. Most evergreens grow plenty fast.
That may be true, but we don't build houses from oak.
Go to your friendly neighborhood lumber yard, and look at a stack of 2x4s. Look for a circle on the end of the 2x4. The little circle is the freakin' center of the tree. You'll find one in about half of the 2x4s.
That means that half of the harvested timber is small enough to get one or two 2x4s from. Half.
We're cutting pine & fir faster than you think.
hummmm.
Scientist being fired by the current admin over pushing this.
The admin constantly fighting against this as well as anything that would hurt is oil imports (literally).
Yeah, yeah, all the scientists are liers. Instead, we should believe in a president who has fought in 'Nam, created companies that did awesome, ran a clean baseball team, fought against drug use all hist life, stopped terrorists attacks from occuring to us, currently stopping the deficit that was created during clinton's admin, got rid of all the Nukes in Iraq, and captured Bin Ladin and stopped all the terrorists attacks in Sadi Arabia, Iraq, and Isreal, and slowed down CO2 production. Oh, also is about to save out Social Security (hummmmmm). Yep. That is the man.
What does god have to do with Christianity?
Infact it's worse than that. It seems that a certain type of American will rise this exact argument every time anyone says *anything* in defence of the environment.
It's bullshit.
There's no reason living in a modern house means you have to accept science being manipulated for political ends.
There's even no reason you can't live comfortably *and* environmentally conscious. It's not a black or white situation. I realise that for some people it is very hard to see the world in something more than binary, but the world really ain't like that.
Either you go live in the stone-age, or you loose the rigth to critisize *anything* that hurts the environment really ain't a reasonable position.
Aside from that trees aren't generally being cut down faster than they grow back. Yes this is true for some types of trees, and true for some regions. And that is in some cases a problem. But in no way is it generally true.
In Norway where I come from the amount of standing forest has increased by 80% the last century. Largely because today most power (most as in 98%) is produced by hydroelectric powerplants rather than like earlier by burning wood in inefficient ovens.
Also, the house my father now has is both *enormously* more comfortable, and at the same time uses a lot *less* energy than the house my grandparents live in (built in 1935).
This ain't special.
Yes there are examples of situations where the environment and your comfort are in conflict. But there are also tons of examples of situations where it's both possible and realistic to improve the situation for the environment and at the same time improve your comfort.
This "Caring for the environment means you gotta suffer" ranting seems to me to be intended to do nothing more than pacify Americans. I think the more clever of them are seeing trough it though.
Our species survived just fine before the environmental movement.
Wow, you must be a teenager. How long do you think "our species" has been industrialized? Forever?
Some reading for you, since you obviously haven't exposed yourself to much history.
Please learn how statistics work before saying that a low response rate plays a role in the actual statistics. A low response rate changes the margin of error, not the percentages. The actual statistic is >50% of 1,400 scientists +/- some margin of error that they don't give, not 15% of scientists, since you have no data on what those other 70% who didn't respond think.
...but would I be willing to give up my house, land, and paved roads to my job? I don't think so.
Yeah, good point. Since you use wood and wood products, we should have utterly no concern that scientists are being pressured to change their reported findings.
Wow. I feel better already.
The article isn't about environmentalism. It is about political pressure for scientists to report what the administration wants to hear. I'm not saying the report is accurate or not or that the issue is important or not, but if we want to argue those claims, then the construction and location of your house is fairly irrelevant.
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
I don't know where that myth has come from but it's not true. St Helens spewed forth more CO2 than humanity makes in a single year, not since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Any other gasses you were thinking of?
And St Helens was an incredibly rare event. We get eruptions like that about once a millenia.
Even though some sky-is-falling, Pavlov-trained mod labeled this "Troll," I'll sacrifice some karma to say "Yea, amen, praise the lord, and pass the ammunition!"
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
There is global warming, that is a fact. Almost no scientist will deny that fact.
Hearing this line should set off alarm bells. Scientific truth does not heed consensus. It doesn't matter what percentage of scientists agree or disagree about something.
So if you as a reader hear this line, your first instinct should be to ignore the person who told you, because they are just parroting the majority view.
Trees get narrower as they go up, so at the bottom you may get more than one 2x4. Also, these trees were probably harvested because they were wanted and suitable for 2x4's.
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
I can give an equally plausible theory that counters what you have mislabeled as fact. An all-powerful God creates earth, so that it is in a condition to support life and mankind. This is done instantly, but the result is the same as if earth formed from "scratch" 4.5 billion years ago.
So God creates earth and puts in lots of fake evidence, like fossils, so mankind is led to believe that earth is 4.5 billion years old?
While that theory obviously cannot be disproved, I would not call it plausible. Instead I think that the evolution theory is most likely correct, and we just have to take unprovable things like the afterlife as a surprise. Something that religious people seem unable to do.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Sort of like a drug. You know it is killing you but you keep coming back for more..
Is there a slashdot addict support group?
are the literal "canaries in the coal mine" of the environement. They're warning bells for more serious consequences.
Another moron...
ANY criticism of the rightwing - or government in general, which is even worse - is now to be referred to as "Bush-bashing"...as though that means something...
What it means is that this idiot expects everyone to assume that Bush can do no wrong BECAUSE the Democrats do it, too.
Sorry, moron, I am neither a Republican NOR a Democrat (nor a Republicrat nor a Democan) and I don't give a rat's ass who's in the White House party-wise.
But Bush is STILL an asshole and the agenda of his administration is greed, power-lust, and fucking religious lunacy.
And anybody who supports this chimpanzee...is a chimpanzee.
So fuck you.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You're right, censorship is bad. The only thing worse is complete ignorance of spelling and grammar.
That was classic intercourse!
Why don't you use hardened concrete and bricks like we do here in Europe?
The trees would be grateful.
Yeah, we meet everyday at 1 o'clock at my slashdot journal.
But remember, we aren't spamming for iPods, so we can still hold our heads up high.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Let me see if I'm following your argument. If your house is made of wood, it should float. If it floats, that means it weighs the same as a duck.
Therefore, if George Bush weighs the same as a duck, his administration isn't pressuring scientists to lie to promote the lumber businesses of that he and his friends own.
Quod Erat Demonstrandum
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Um, aren't you a Slashdot poster?
There may be lots of people on Slashdot who detest President Bush, but there's no shortage of Bush defenders and apologists, either. It's total FUD to imply the Slashdot community is more or less of a single hive mind, fanatically devoted to tearing Bush apart to the point of ignoring anything good he does.
(Whether merely mentioning the words "clean" and "safe" in a mention of nuclear energy in a speech is enough to qualify it as "the good" is another issue, of course. It sounds to me like you're responding to a criticism of Bush's environmental policies by complaining about the fact the parent poster didn't laud Bush for including the words "clean" and "safe" in a speech. Are we to applaud him every time he says something meant to sound positive, and America-hating destroyers of freedom every time we fail to do so?)
From TFA:
"But when it comes to altering data, that is a serious matter. I am really sorry to hear that scientists working for the service feel they have to do that. Changing facts to fit the politics -- that is a very unhealthy thing. If I were a scientist in that position I would just refuse to do it."
The "scientist" who alters data is simply not a scientist. Period. It's like a preacher who is an atheist. It simply doesn't make sense. Science is all about the data, and facts - even if your results fly into the face of your hypothesis, you have to accept them and find another explanation for them - not alter them.
If politicians found out that scientists cannot be pressured they'd have to stop doing it. You shouldn't be able to "rent" a PhD and tell them what to say. I might as well buy my degree on the internet if I let that be done to me. But there are always spineless individuals in every field and they give the rest of us a bad name.
Good for them for going public with this - one has to ask: exactly how long has this been going on, and where else has this junk science been taking place...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
...that nowhere in the article is it explicitly stated just *who* supposedly instructed these scientists to fiddle with their data, conclusions, etc? Scientists were mentioned, the Fed was mentioned, the Game & WL folks were mentioned, and assertions of interferance were mentioned, but there is not one sentence explicitly linking them together. That brings to mind the old addage: "Consider the source".
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
That's pretty pathetic, not to mention cynical, that because you are a corrupt and miserable excuse for a human being that everyone else who claims to be a scientist must also be just as corrupt.
And your harkening back to the "good old days" of the 18th C. is equally pathetic.
My guess is that your career as a corporate prostitute began long before you ever got to college. My question is how do you deaden the pain you must have knowing what a waste of space you are?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Since I'd like to be with the other 5 % (at least, for the moment), please give me a sign when you're ready to (nearly) exterminate the human race, so I can take shelter in time.
;-)
If you don't know how to proceed once you got the virus, please look for good advice to films like 'Outbreak' and '12 monkeys'.
But then again, could you hold off untill the EU decides about swp? I might change my mind, depending on that outcome.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
The scientists' incompetence or political agenda is not even at issue. The alleged problem is that are being ordered to alter data and sign their names to conclusions they don't believe in.
Consider the motivations for doing such a thing. One asks someone to sign something in order to add their credibility to the conclusions. So this is not about some more-competent scientist overruling some incompetent hippie employees. The conclusions clearly come from sources who do not have the independence or qualifications to be taken seriously.
I do admire your skepticism -- you're not intimidated by someone in a white coat. But don't extend that to contempt of them. Do you really think there's no difference in competence between the local enviro-crank group and federal scientists? Seriously.
In the places I've worked where the management was constantly overriding the technical employees, it's never been the employees' fault, and the management has never been right. When there's a pattern of overruling, invariably it was the boss who was incompetent, or some procurer was getting a kickback, or there was some other agenda.
And there's no justification for taking their word for it, especially when they have their own political agenda.
Myself, I find it a little bit easier to believe that the political administration is the side with the political agenda.
Guess what most scientists in the world do for a living? Give up? They work in military R&D. Even the US, which has more R&D budget per GNP applied to general science than anywhere else, has more scientists working for the military-industrial complex than anywhere else.
Now, we know they want that Alaskan oil. No eskimo, caribou or sanctuary are going to stop them. And you think a bunch of *scientists* are going to fight back? With whose grant/tenure? They're already owned, forget it.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
You're kidding, right? Reduced taxes for whom, the rich? People who don't really need it?
And why all of the wasted money on the military? The world isn't impressed by the US's "mighty" arsenal. It's like the musclehead who goes around flexing his arms thinking that people will respect him because of it.
n+1. The people writing this survey like to wantonly split infinitives.
strongly agree | agree | don't know | disagree | strongly disagree
Man, this is so funny!
;-)
;-)
The parent poster:
- typical republican response: "it is happening, but clinton did it first."
- you: "If you really think it's only "Republicans" bending science, it's probably because the bending done by "Democrats" is invisible to you."
Now, I'm just wondering: ARE you a republican? That would top it off.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Posts like that remind me that reading slashdot isn't always the intellectual equivalent of masturbation.
It's a shame you didn't learn spelling in school. People might take you a bit more seriously.
France has gotten pretty good at it over the years. They have the most advanced non-military nuclear technology in the world, by some yards. IIRC they've also never had a nuclear accident, a nuclear scare, or any trouble (beyond some stupid politics in the 60s over bombs in the pacific, and then some stupid politics in the 80s over disposal) with their industry screwing up.
~cHris, who would be genuinely interested in counter arguments if cites can be provided.
Actually, this must be conclusive evidence that general relativity is completely wrong: Einstein: Why Socialism"
In 1969, forty-eight professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology formed the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) to protest America's involvement in the Vietnam War
Interesting considering it was Lyndon B Johnson (D) that got us into that dam war in the first place.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Note that a group of replanted trees (aka crops) is not the same thing as a forest. A true forest is a heck of a lot more valuable than cropland.
Which is why I do my part by never RTFA. Mostly cuz the articles are usually basically what the summary says
Wait, are you reading the same slashdot I'm reading?
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
That depends COMMA.
You BASTARD.
"When the fascists are on the march, their propaganda is always in order"
I thought exactly that when I read your post. Amazing how hypocrisy pervades virtually every discussion here.
"Bush "bashing" isn't even necessary any more"
So why do you do it?
I think we need to start a fucking campaign and educate the masses about democracy vs. republic. I fucking HATE the fact that we're out trying to spread democracy in the middle east. All they have to do under a democract is convince 51% of the population that keeping 49% of the population down is a good thing and you have a wonderful democracy.
We are a fucking republic people. The rule of law rules not the majority.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
In the last 20 years, more time was spent under a Republican administration. Why the arbitrary 15 year figure?
1) Forest Service and Fish & Game have notoriously been in the pocket of business, usually logging and mining. With Gale Norton as SecInterior, what else can anyone expect?
2) Maybe the Union of Concerned Scientests is loaded with liberals because the conservative scientests just don't give a damm....
And how exactly do you know that the lab "professor" (which is funny, back when I was in school the labs were run by the TAs, not the professors) was a liberal? And how do you get from her telling you to falsify this one result to the idea that there are too many pseudo-soft science adherents? I don't see anything about "soft-science adherents" here, just one lazy graduate student or post-grad (and if everyone else got an A, frankly, that's not a very good school).
It doesn't, but it was never intended to.
It does damage their credibility, however. No one should read the findings without understanding the bias of the people who did the research.
You'll notice I never claimed anyone was biased, only that if a bias exists it should be well known.
I guess I've just been missing it the whole time. A vast left-wing conspiracy? And here I have, been working on my own individual left-wing "agenda" for years, without coordinating with the hive! Damn. For all I know, I was reinventing the wheel OR being counter productive to Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy official policy! I must make contact soon. It sounds like one hell of a good time.
(Substitute Left-Wing with Right-Wing and reuse at will)
Exactly so.
I have come to the conclusion that the Bush
administration does not care one whit for
the American taxpayer and consumer, but only
for the interests of their "corporate sponsers".
Once the reports of BSE in American beef stocks
became apparent, the importation of USA beef into
Korea and Japan were curtailed. With some minor
changes to testing for BSE, and some serious
pressure from the Bush administration, those
beef exports are now on the increase again.
A small Kansas meat packer that spent millions of
dollars building a new feedlot, slaughterhouse,
and meat packing facility was shut down by the
Bush administration (FDA & USDA) because they
wanted to test each and every cow before they
were processed -- a testing regimen that would
have garnered them most (if not all) of the
export market to Japan and Korea. The attitude
of the Bush administration would appear to be
that small business interests that promote food
safety must be suppressed in favor of the big
corporate meatpackers that don't test.
Personally, I have stopped eating beef because
I don't trust the Bush administration to protect
my interests. Fat corporate profits trump food
safety and the environment in the USA these days.
And there really is no downside for the Bush
administration in taking these actions, because
by the time widespread human infection by BSE
becomes readily apparent, they will be long out
of office.
Am I cynical? You bet I am! With good reason.
It's so sad that it's always People vs. the Government. The government does after all consist of the people's elected representatives. Either the people are incredibly stupid, or the government isn't that bad.
Didnt you know that logic and commonsence doesnt apply to politics?
Its all about who's side you are on.. Nothing more..
Bash the other's guy.. Even when it makes you look like an idiot.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yet another reason to call for the impeachment of the brainless horse's arse we have for a president. (If the story is true)
Thanks Damien. That was the funniest thing I have ever read.
It's amazing nobody quoted Richard Feynman yet.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Republicans get mileage out of crying about it even when it doesn't materialize. When the fascists are on the march, their propaganda is always in order.
That's funny... how many times did I hear Democrats crying about "disenfranchisement" before any was even reported in the last election? And in most cases, they were wrong about it happening, or had absolutely no proof of it.
Both sides are equally "good" at creating fake distress.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
He isn't the one engaging in "Bush bashing".
He is replying to a reply to a reply to a comment about how this is about "Bush bashing".
That first post was a troll that included the troll phrase "Bush bashing". People replied to the troll.
People replied to the people who replied to the troll.
People replied to the people who replied to the people who replied to the troll.
Now you're getting bent out of shape because you cannot distinguish between one of those 3rd generation replies and the original troll.
That's simple Pavlovian response on your part. You react to the phrase you've seen and not to the content of the message you are replying to.
THAT'S HOW TROLLING WORKS.
Until recently, few of them were partisan in a direction with which you disagreed.
I'm sorry, but you're going to have to justify that statement. You aren't going to prove it to me just by saying it and expecting me to roll over. You have not added information to dialogue that would challenge any previous notions I had.
I'm not aware of there being reports from the Clinton administration of this many (or any, but hey) scientists coming forward to complain of top-down meddling in their reports. I'm certainly not aware that they told employed researchers not to participate in a survey designed to detect such tampering, even on their own time.
This administration has been unprecidented in the amount with which they monkey around with the actions of governmental agencies, especially over environmental concerns.
Can you find evidence to the contrary?
Hell yeah, Now just to stop people saying anything about my political agenda, I don't like any of the political parties. I vote by my own feelings and what I see as important, the way it should be. Now I just want to say that the rich should not get taxed a greater percent than the average working man/women and they definitely should not get taxed less. It seems like a good idea to me at least. I also agree with the parent about a lot of rich people working there ass off for it. I have had the priviledge of knowing my current boss before he created this job. He was born in the damn ghetto and has been, at times, reduced to pawning things to put food on the table for his family. He worked 18 hour days, 7 days a week and made this company from scratch. I don't think he should be forced to pay a higher percentage because he worked harder than most people.
This is why science is not equipped to disprove religion. Science can be said to be at a disadvantage because scientific arguments must be falsifiable, whereas religious arguments do not have the same weakness. Science advances by falsification while religion rejects it. Science as a whole is like having a handful of sand where one grain is truth. As you sift through it, you are left with fewer grains, but always contained among them is the grain of truth. It's an asymptotic approach to truth.
Unfortunately the journal gets /.'d real quick, so only the first 5 viewers/day can actually see it.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
The government does after all consist of the people's elected representatives. Either the people are incredibly stupid, or the government isn't that bad.
When you only have shit to choose from, should you then feel really great about being led by a bunch of shit?
And the third idea: maybe those elected are elected by the tyranny of the majority? If a heavily Democratic state elects a Democrat to office whose platform is raising taxes on the rich and giving the money to the middle class and poor (i.e. wealth distribution, i.e. socialism), do you think the people earning all the money will be real happy with that government? After all, they were elected by "the people."
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Hmm... Maybe I should read up a bit on the american political system. I'm always lost when the discussion turns political.
What does Democrat and Republican stand for? Both seem rather rightwing...
And why are only these two standpoints ever mentioned?
Are there only two parties? What if I'm not satisfied with those two? Am I allowed to start my own party?
If not: Why not? It's a free country, right? =/
*curious*
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
I just HAD to reply to this telling you how litteraly hilarious the parent post was to me. I spewed water out my nose, which I mistakenly was drinking while reading your submission.
Thanks Tom, you just made my day.
ROFL
/* sig */
Actually, no, we expect all children, whether rich or poor, to have the same opportunities. Who gives a shit if some dead-beat asshole has money to buy beer or not? No one. No one expects anyone to give him money. But when his kids don't have anything on their back, then there goes that whole "equal opportunity" thing right out the fucking window. And unless you're willing to start taking children from poor parents who can't (or won't) give them anything to help them succeed in life, then welfare is the only to do it.
Back to taxes: yes, if you make more money, you can better pay more taxes than some guy who can barely put food on the table, much less heat the home. Ooo. So you can't buy that new BMW. Big fucking deal. At least you're not fucking starving.
How does this in any way address the issue at hand. Let's forget about demlicans and republicrats for a bit. No true scientist should ever be required to alter their discoveries, their opinions are mostly objective if their doing their job properly.
To then have some beaurocrat come along and have them alter those facts to suit some politcal agenda and still be required to pin their name and reputation on them, is an act of cowardice by said beaurocrat(s).
If conclusions are altered by desire and agenda then it's not really science and they shouldn't be considered as scientists, they'd be more like salesmen.
The right thing to do would be to make the counter argument for human use and place them with the scientific findings AND put the beaurocrats name on it.
That's called taking responsibility for your own actions.
God has everything to do with the right wing, at least here in the US. The Christian Right controls the Republican Party (at least at this point in time). They have so much control in fact that I cannot fathom how any non-religious right-wingers are still Republicans.
Time makes more converts than reason
In the last 15 years, the majority of most of these scientist's time has been spend under a Democratic president;
And in the past 300000 years, Starbucks did not exist for a vast majority of the time. Clearly all our problems are due to the planet's lack of Starbucks coffee shops. Since my randomly chosen numbers have a larger sample size than your randomly chosen ones, clearly mine are more correct.
Most scientists in FWS reported no such pressure
RTFA harder: nearly 40% said they had never been required to do so. (in regards to being required to alter findings). That means around 60% were required to do so.
As for UCS being a radical group, sounds about right to me. Now, are you going to prove that they lied, or do you just intend to will away the numbers?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
This is the same as the "liberal media" charge. It doesn't matter what the truth really is because they can always blame the news on the "liberal media" and now they can defend Bush's idiotic decisions by just claiming the opposing side are "bush bashers".
Time makes more converts than reason
I propose this:
"We have morals, so we don't need ethics."
I attribute this idea to my friend Bart.
Insert lament about whiny liberals crying about truth, science, and freedom of speech from short sighted right wing tax cut reactionary here....>
Let's assume everything here is true and morally righteous. The fact that scientists were told to change their findings still stands. If the Union of Concerned Scientists were a group of Satan worshiping nazis it would be equally as Orwellian and generally scary that they were told by the government to suppress their findings.
Well, actually, they are rather right-wing from a non-American perspective. But in America, apparently, it's the difference between night and day. It's all in our head, but whatever.
Republicans essentially stand for lowering taxes, decreasing the size/amount of government and government regulation, etc, etc. Recently they've also seemed to take a very socially conservative point of view (ie: wanting to regulate the private life), which is somewhat ironic. However, this may just be a momentary trend and go away in the future, as Republican ideals are consistently in favor of less Federal Government intervention.
Democrats essentially stand for government programs that benefit the people (though this is not always what we get in practice!), higher taxes for the rich (to support these new government programs) and Federal regulation on anything they believe needs it (which could be quite the slippery slope toward socialism).
And there are more than two parties: there's the Libertarian party, the Green party, hell, we even have the Communist and Nazi Party in the US. If you don't like those two parties, start your own! Until you get a moderate amount of votes for president, you won't recieve any funding to help you run your party, but there you have it.
Also, even if you belong to a party, you don't have to vote for them if you don't want to. You can write in "Micky Mouse" on the ballot if it really struck your fancy. It's your choice.
The big reason that these two standpoints are mentioned is because our country has, apparently, become completely incapable of respecting the intricasy of any argument, and tries to boil everything down to two base-line viewpoints. Everything gets simpliified down to sound bites and harped on and used as war cries, regardless of whether they even truly have any meaning for their particular point.
For example, we have the "anti partial birth abortion" people vs. "pro choice". They argued back and forth for weeks/months, but no one seemed to notice that the "pro choice" people weren't necessarily for murdering fully formed fetuses, per se, but only in wanting to allow the mother, if medically necessary, an "escape route", so to speak. I don't want to get into details on which side is right or wrong, but the point is, "pro choice" is a far cry from "wanting to make sure the mother's life isn't in danger by not allowing this". But instead, it was made to sound like these people wanted to go about aborting fetuses willy nilly, just for fun. It's really dishonest - and I don't blame the Republicans/Conservatives for this - it's rampant throughout America, and, in my opinion, a serious, terminal disease to the political process in America.
(Please note that I am not a political scientist, just a geek who takes politics very seriously. I'm sure Republicans would try to paint themselves in a different way and Democrats as well, but it's really difficult to determine what is fact and what is an offshoot of their respective Public Relations campaigns.)
Bush's latest budget does a pretty good job of cutting a lot of environmental spending, including funds to the EPA.
But then again, his budget cuts just about every single social program (including No Child Left in a Ditch).
However, defense and military are through the rough.
And I think it has been empirically proven that companies don't do anything voluntarily unless there is something to be made from it.
~X~
~X~
If this is a troll, it might just be the most successful in slashdot history.
You are right God did put the environment here and soon he will wash your polluting ass from this Earth and then the pollution problem will be gone. Maybe it has already started. Heard of any big waves washing any coast lines lately?
Why does everyone think that hard working people are the exception, not the rule. In fact the US has the MOST hardworking people in the world.
I can tell you right now that I'm pretty shit poor and I work a lot harder than some other employees where I work who make 3, 4, and 5 times what I make. This silly notion that hard work in America will get you everything is ridiculous.
My suggestion to you is to live your life a little while and see how tough it can really be without money in the US.
No, but any suppression of scientific findings is always bad.
You blind fool!
It has always been Me. Versus The Man. Or versus EurAsia...I can never remember...Whens the next rally?
Sig it.
No different, but there is a much bigger pattern of such action with Bush, and the consequences (ie, increased mercury levels, global warming) are much, much worse. Sometimes not, though: I for one enjoy the new creationist pamphlets at the Grand Canyon. They're a hoot. But science it ain't.
Here's my tounge-in-cheek answer:
The Democrats stand for raising taxes, spending money, and insulting Republicans.
The Republicans stand for lowering taxes, spending money, and insulting Democrats.
There are numerous political parties (the Libertarians & the Greens are the best known), but they can't do much because the only thing the R's and D's agree on is that 3rd parties are evil, and they'll join forces against them.
Yes, you have the freedom to start your own party, but it will have to fight the established 2 party system, and you're probably better off having a boozing party instead.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Power corrupts and abolute power corrupts absolutely. It's not a new concept.
Time makes more converts than reason
Have a look here:-/ rep02.html
http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob
This is a greenpeace site so there is a bias (see comments above ad nauseam) and I have no idea how bad the 'incidents' are.
The Heidelberg Appeal
has feck-all to do with global-warming. It's just been co-opted and distorted by industry shills. 49 of the 72 Nobel prize winners who signed it also signed the UCS's "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity."economic development is always bad
Yes, it is.
I never ceases to amaze me how so many people frown upon protecting the world we live in, the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat. "Liberal agenda" my ass. This is about our survival as a species
Before you knee-jerk post a response, please read the following completely as it explains a great deal about why the right does not like the current brand of envionmentalism. It also gives a big clue to those of you who really are trying to save the earth on how to engage with your conservative counterparts (who really do want to help):
I would rather go extinct and maintain my freedom than allow radical environmentalism to be the vehicle that is used for radical soclialists to assume power. Don't get me wrong: I do want to see global warming stopped and to avert future envionmentally driven natural disasters . I really don't want the human race to go extinct. It's just that I want to do so because it's the right thing to do and I want to do it, not because someone passes laws that redefine society, alteer freedoms and change our country's morality.
If the best we have to offer to save our race is a brand of tolatarianism where the govenment knows what is best for me and I am forced at gunpoint or worse to comply, then perhaps the human race deserves to join the Dinossaurs and Wooly Mammoths. Saving the environment should not be allowed to be the vehicle where the world gets it's next Stalin or Hitler. The close association with radical leftist idealogues, pundits, politicians, agendas and envionmentalism prevents me from contributing time, money and even my company's resources to the cause. I will not invest in a future where we live in fear of the government or where destiny is determined by bureaucrats.
In other words: focus on saving the envionment and stop using it as a pretense to totally re-engineer social order, morality and the economy.
-- $G
This isn't communist. This is "manuring your field", as any country would be wise to do. It's the same exact thing as public schools. Technically, but your definition, public schools would be communist, as it is the government spending money on the public good. This is the same thing. Just like making sure children have an education and can do more than manual labor made us a great country, so, too, will making sure they don't starve to death. It's pretty much common sense.
Just one comment: the regime in Saudi Arabia isn't theocratic, it's secular. That's why bin Laden hates it so much.
That made me laugh only because it's true. Republicans are the right wing party in the United States. Democrats are the left wing party. It is true that compared to a lot of European countries the Democrats are right of center.
And why are only these two standpoints ever mentioned? Are there only two parties? What if I'm not satisfied with those two? Am I allowed to start my own party?
America has a two party system. You are allowed to start your own party and there are actually more parties out there but the system is set up in such a way as to make it very hard to have more than two major parties.
Time makes more converts than reason
Are you sure that's not just a childish snub to the countries that we're deciding are not allowed to have nuclear power?
We have infantile brats running this country.
Doh!
Regardless of all the unethical shit that goes on, 50 million+ idiots still re-elected the worst administration we've ever seen. Great job, folks.
So what do you say to the accusations that it was all fudged?M OTH.html?ex=1108270800&en=9170935c44d9b974&ei=5070 &oref=login
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/18/science/life/18
Oh, the irony of fudging results given the main article's subject...
Put identity in the browser.
In my experience, this is so wrong. Most of the people I know are Republican. I can't think of more than one that goes to church (any church) more than three times a year.
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"
as Republican ideals are consistently in favor of less Federal Government intervention.
Let us note that the entire time Republicans were harping on less federal government and getting government off the backs of the people they were consistantly an opposition party. It seems funny that once they were in charge all that changed.
Republicans when not in charge:
"Federal Government bad. Leave such things to the states."
Republicans when in charge:
"Federal Government good. States cannot make their own laws regarding marriage, etc."
I don't know... My first instinct is to search for the few dissenting opinions and see what they have to say. ;)
Put identity in the browser.
By planning ahead, does that make this a preemptive troll post?
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"
Don't blame me, I voted for KODOS.
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"
...and the Earth isn't warming either.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
That is very true. However, the bias of the scientist is evident when interpreting the resulting data. I don't believe that most people have problems with the actual data. But science in this regard is similar to statistics - you can spin the data to suit your needs.
If I may say so, life is a game, and there's so much to do and so few turns.
-Reiner Knizia
Republicans essentially stand for lowering taxes, decreasing the size/amount of government and government regulation
Not since Reagan took office they haven't. The US debt climbed from about $1T in 1980 to around $8T now.
Democratic President, House, Senate, or a combination? How are you arriving at your numbers?
Put identity in the browser.
Oh come on! UCS is not even remotely well-respected. The majority of their membership is are not even scientists. (Simply because they can't find enough scientists willing to sacrifice their integrity to the degree necessary to support UCS ultra-stupid pronouncements). They have skewed and lied about "scientific studies" for years, and been busted for it by their own fellow scientists.
Anyone who listens to a single word coming from UCS should just have the lobotomy done now to get it over with.
But it IS the People vs the Government. And the People lose almost every time. Democrat/Republican is just a two-headed beast controlled by the plutocracy, and it has successfully fooled the people into thinking that's how things have to be.
Republican - a boot grinding a human face into the dirt, forever.
Democrat - put a pillow between the boot and the face.
No scientists deny global warming? This is somewhat true. There is evidence that global warming is occuring, but there is almost no evidence that mankind has anything to do with it.
The problem is every global warming model done on a computer utterly fails to predict climate changes. In many cases, they get the opposite of real observed temperatures. On the other hand, solar emissions have been correlated very strongly to global temperatures. I don't think even the moronic liberal readership of Slashdot thinks mankind actually influences the Sun.
The bigget global warming study done by Mann has been destroyed as a total fraud.
Nice try. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Are you aware of what is going on in the US at all? You and your buddies do not represent the direction of the Republican party even if you are a part of it. Where do you think all this sudden outrage about gay marriage came from? Not many secular people give a shit about homosexuality. Where do you think all the FCC bullshit came from? For crying out loud Bush invokes the Lord's name shamelessly in his speeches.
Time makes more converts than reason
I'm not sure why you use 15 years. Perhaps I missed something in the article, or it is common knowledge that 15 years is an appropriate length of time to compare recent surveys with in the scientific community.
Regarding "reported no such pressure", I quote the article:
"And, although more than half of the respondents said they had been ordered to alter findings to lessen protection of species, nearly 40% said they had never been required to do so."
More than half is not most?
Nice try on playing the "liberal card", but they don't even talk about edicts on endangered species or environmentalism. It's solely a survey on whether or not scientists in Fish and Wildlife, who work for the federal government, have been ordered to alter data (20%) or change findings (>50%). You can say whatever you want about different view in the political arena about conservation, but that's not what we're talking about! Fish and Wildlife is creating scientific reports in which the scientists have been ordered to make statements against their professional judgement, which is not good science.
Be weary of prefessors, yes, prefessors, to coin a term. I say prefessors because they haven't quite earned the right to use "pro"-fessors since prefessors extort people's work. You should not have been penalized for doing the right thing. If your prefessor was worth anything, she/he would offer you a chance to redo the experiment in a controlled environment. Afterall, Michaelangelo didn't "fudge" on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling and Dontello certainly didn't skimp on the Statue of David's "crowning achievements". The dude is 7-feet tall and women from all around the world like to stare at him for some reason... Anyway, my point is, before you shoot yourself in the foot next time, get the grade on paper before you open your mouth if the grade is a really important one. I'd also file a complaint or at least mention your concerns to a school councelor before taking your matters to a higher level. With tightening restraints on students' speech these days, its always wise to 'look before you leap'.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
And here we go, proof of the point. Somebody who just refuses to give the slightest bit of credit to the opposing party.
Personally, I hate President Bush just as much as anybody. I think the Republican party has lost its grip on reality and is wandering off in the direction of many former totalitarian regimes with fearmongering, scapegoating, restricting of rights, and use of force (admittedly it still has a long way to go before it becomes Sovient Russia. I can still say these things without fear of reprisal.)
However, my taxes did go down because of our president. That may be misguided due to deficits, or it may be a good way to boost the economy and generate more revenue (I am not an economist).
I like having a strong military, because we don't have to worry about being invaded, which is a problem that has plagued nations for all of history. Between our location and our military, we basically don't have to worry about wars for the forseeable future. That security is very nice, and most of us take it for granted. The "respect" you speak of is there. People don't insult the musclehead to his face, no matter what they think of him. As long as you aren't lacking in intelligence or social grace, there's nothing wrong with being strong. Whether we should be involved in foreign conflicts is a different issue. I haven't seen intelligent debates on whether we will ultimately be doing "good" in the middle east, just a lot of name-calling like yours. I haven't seem detailed analysis of how much of a threat these regimes pose to the United States and our interests. I don't think we want to get involved in every conflict in the world, or that we have any business telling other countries how their government should work.
I'm also a mechanical engineer, and the defence industry provides a lot of jobs. I'm not in it right now, but I might be at some point. Interestingly, the Bush Wars have hurt the engineering part of the defence industry, since the budget is paying for the wars and not for R&D. However, for the economy to be healthy there has to be a lot of money changing hands. Private parties (like the Republicans) want to horde money and get rich. The government is in a good position to spend money to keep the country rolling.
I gave up on politics because I try to keep an open mind. I can't agree with any of the major parties, because in order to get votes they oversimplify things to prove that they are right. That makes them wrong, and I move along.
What was lost from the initial enforcement of the endangered species act is that it is functionally a Taking. If I buy or own property to build something, then the government says I can't and it loses value, they have "taken" the property.
The government should be free to buy up property to protect species, but not prevent private property owners from doing what they want with their property.
Most people here complain about the DCMA - they buy $10 software and the government says they can't change skins, transfer pictures to a PDA or whatever, but ignore $250,000 that government says (after the fact, or capriciously) you can't build on or alter.
Maybe if they called the DMCA the Endangered Software Species Act, everyone here would stop complaining about restrictions on the use of something they theoretically own.
in publicly owned companies, the primary objective is to increase shareholder value
Yes business classes in college drilled into us to "maximize shareholders' equity". What they failed to drill into the students at the same time was to do this within the limits of the law and good moral judgement.
Sure, laws and morals were talked about a few times but nowhere near as much as maximizing equity.
Some would think it is all common sense but it seems that almost every day we see that common sense is really not so common.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between reading /. and http://www.thenation.com/
Where's my "fascism"? Where's my "propaganda"? Call me a hypocrite, back it up. Or quit the empty turntables game that's all you Bushlovers have got.
--
make install -not war
You're a tool of the fake duality. If there were really just "two sides", Democrats and Republicans, then some Democrats would have backed Rep. Conyers (D-MI) when he documented the vast "disenfranchisement" (vote fraud and suppression) in Ohio this past November. No, some of us remember as far back as the misty past of 2000, and the scams in Florida. Proof abounds. You're so taken in by the false duality that you think that Republican fraud + Democrat fraud = 0 fraud, instead of double fraud.
--
make install -not war
While it is an extreme example, a publicly held company could, in theory, be sued for complying with such regulations, as it would pull away capital but does not increase shareholder value in any way.
Yeah, someone should sue the video game manufacturers and retailers for rating video games and trying to prevent minors from purchasing "Mature" games. I mean, the investors in those companies are losing big-time... just think how many more copies of those games would be sold if 12 year-olds could buy them at will.
I mean, it's not like the government would step in and force some sort of rating system if the companies didn't do it themselves.
I'm not saying environmental regulations should be voluntary, but if you think about it, some things that don't instantly benefit the shareholders do provide longer-term benefit.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Did they teach you in school not to quote an unabashedly right-wing counter-activist's personal website and try to write it off as some sort of informed document on the history of an organization?
Activistcash is a slightly more reputable, but the information source is so poorly written and clearly deriding the organization that its informational content is questionable.
Try their own website or perhaps even Wikipedia.
The percentage of people from the scientific community is irrelevant. They still only survey scientists. The fact that there's the other 90% that's non-scientists but still interested is a good thing.
I was surprised to see Kurt Gottfried mentioned though. He's no longer head of the Physics Department but is a neat guy (and wrote a textbook here).
A few points.
1) All of you who are vigorously defending the scientific method- relax. Scientists are people too. Saying that they are immune from bias just because their field is objective ignores the massive differences of opinion WITHIN every field of science. It's just an absurd non-argument. OF COURSE 'scientists' are EVERY BIT as prone to political position-taking as anyone else. I do trust 'SCIENCE' but I do not particularly trust any organization just because it has scientists as members and the word 'science' in its name.
2) The group in question is largely composed of non-scientists.
3) Science groups have made other wonderful, politically motivated claims in the past. Nazi 'scientists' had all sorts of wonderful positions on scientific issues. At one time it was mainstream scientific belief that black Africans are objectively inferior to Europeans due to a supposed (and of course actually non-existent) lack of cranial capacity. At one time it was absurd to believe men build flying machines, that a universal calculating machine could be devised, that man could break the 4-minute mile. Alar was going to kill all of our children. Etc, etc, etc. Science is simply not sacrosanct.
4) The WHOLE POINT of the original post is to complain about political pressure and/or political motives distorting science. The very idea that it's reasonable to MAKE THAT COMPLAINT, then follow up with self-righteous bleating about how pure science is when someone you disagree with points out that there's bias in all directions- it's kinda lame.
I think this is an excellent example of how having two strong parties really can fail the middle. The problem isn't so much the watering down of points to talking points, it's that neither side of the argument has any real need to actually learn what the other side's position is and seriously debate it.
Your pro-life pro-choice examples demonstrates it. NO ONE (credible) even among the religious community is pushing against abortions for the life of the mother. Even before Roe Vs. Wade that was legal. Watering the issue down into that point is intellectually dishonest, just like it's hypocritical for the pro-life people to protest without being willing to pay medical bills and agree to adopt right on the spot.
The debate in that arguement is whether abortion is a valid form of birth control for arbitrary reasons, not a health of the mother issue.
Never confuse volume with power.
Huh? So the minority opinion is right? Let's see, a lot of smart people with a lot of good data believe that global warming is happening, that human activity is accelerating the process and that there are things we can do to slow it down. Very few scientists with bad data and ties to politically motivated organizations say otherwise.
It is not just a majority opinion. It's real science with data to back it up put forward by professionals in relevant fields. It's hard to get a lot of scientists to agree on one issue. A lot of scientist's agree that global warming is real.
He also brought it up because the group of scientists in the article (and always has been) are extremely leftist and always have been.
Extremely left being defined as "to the left of Gengis Khan."
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
None of the questions you listed have anything to do with "usual worker problems".
... scientific document" and more than 20% don't think that their organization "strives to substantially incorporate independent peer review in formulating and validating scientific findings" and more than 20% don't think that "scientific documents generally reflect technically rigorous evaluations of impacts to listed species and associated habitats", then you've got one bad batch of scientific documents and an inappropriately-behaving organization. Twenty percent is not a few people easily ignored.
Maybe you're not familiar with science. If more than 20% of a group of scientsts say that they've been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from a
Factoring in the percentage of people who responded to reduce numbers is not valid. Unless you're a statistician who's capable of a reasonable analysis on how representative the sample is and can provide a good estimate for response bias, then you'd better leave that alone. Likewise, the total count of 184 is meaningless.
While clearly the UCS is concerned about a particular topic, the questions are hardly "leading". You try to portray this 20% of scientists as just going along with whatever the survey happens to say. You can't just write off the response like this.
The welfare is used to buy more beer, and the foodstamps are traded for $.50 on the $1 for drugs. The kids still are ignored by the parents and their only food is public school lunches which keeps them from starving. Some people actually do care about their kids, and use the welfare money for its intended purpose, but more often than not, it is used for beer or drug money. I think everyone on welfare should be tested for drug and alcohol abuse. If they show abuse, than welfare should be cut off because it is obvious the money is going elsewhere. The kids will not starve because of the free lunches at school but the deadbeat parents will suffer for their own refusal to help their family. As far as the union of concerned scientists go, there is no way they will give an unbiased opinion. They most certainly a political group under the guise of scientists. Moveon.org would probably give me less biased opinions than these crackpot 'concerned scientists'. Also weren't these 'concerned scientists' the group that said all the hurricanes in Florida were George Bush's fault because of the global warming that supposedly occurred under his administration How do you argue with such nonsense? I cant believe people are so gullible to actually believe such.
I read your comment, and made judgements about you based on it. Is that generalizing?
Good job ignoring the question, though.
I really think I understand what you mean, but frankly, i cannot help but reading "I sure as hello _don't_ want to change so I'll make any excuse I can for doing nothing". It's fine to dislike a large part of the environmental movement, ignorant to dismiss all of it (you don't know enough to make such a blanket statement about it), and stupid to use it as an excuse for doing nothing. If you don't like the way things are done/associated with, do it better. As long as you don't, don't expect to convince anyone of anything but the fact that you don't want to be inconvenienced by environmental concerns.
-
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
the group of scientists in the article (and always has been) are extremely leftist
Is that the U.S. version of "extreme left" (which to the rest of the world is actually a tad right of center) or are they actually communists who use violence to further their agenda (what a leftist extremist actually is)?
You can't take the sky from me...
"But since it's an organization with a decidedly and unabashedly liberal political agenda, I guess they must be telling the truth 100%, whereas anyone on the conservative or Republican side of the spectrum is a greedy, money grubbing liar who would just LOVE to see an end to all environmental concerns."
...
While you may have a point (albeit heavily biased; not that I'm not (see below), I'm just calling a spade a spade) about the first part, you are mostly wrong about conservatives and republicans being greedy (although I'm sure some are, as are some 'liberals'), money-grubbing (again, tit for tat) liars (see previous).
What you are right about, despite your attempted affectation of sarcasm, is that they really would like to see an end to all environmental concerns, since that's one of the keystones to hastening the return of Jesus Christ.
No, I'm not kidding.
A quote from a recent article from Bill Moyers:
"Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."
"Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true -- one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index.
"So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist Glenn Scherer -- "The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming apocalypse."
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -- Voltaire
I'm sorry, you don't seem to have a correct view of history. Wealth historically has be accumulated by a seperate priviledge class who specialized in gaining and keeping power by use of force. Usually forcing people to work (slave) for them in either slavery or as in the medival model serfs that were considered owned, they were part of the land and considered the property of who owned the land. The ones that "killed an extra animal" is only true since the stone age when the animal you are talking about was people. Of course they found that institutionalizing their control through custom and religion make life easier.
If you think that a modern chief exectutive that applies political preasure to get an envirionmental law not passed or enforced so he can make uddles of more money polluting your air and my air and the land for our children, then I think we have a better picture of what is happening and for what reason. This is not progress, they are only interested in their own bottom line, they don't care about the future other than their own.
This article was about logging companies that don't care if species on this planet go extinct (that is gone forever, never to return, done finished for all generations to come) because they can make some money for themselves by gutting the public lands, or lands that they purchased for pennies per acre. They for the most part are stealing from public lands, lands that you and I own, but that the conservative government thinks that someone should make a profit from it. And oh by the way they probably will have a job waiting for them when they get out of public office in the industry they helped.
These bozo's are going up to scientists who have use scientific methods to come up with as clear and unbiased a finding on some issue using accepted scientific methods and peer review and careful review of experiment design and all the controls that go along with that process and are being told, I don't want to hear about your findinds. Or more specifically, I don't want that truth because it affects some busness interest I am connected with philosophically, or finacially, through contributions to parties or promises of quid pro quo.
Rather than be honest and say, I am rich and I want to be richer, I want to take all the trees off that land because I have the equipment and I have a buyer for the trees already. I understand the consequences of my doing that is to wipe our yet another endagered speices, but I don't care, I want that second yacht and my jacuzzi needs cleaning. Rather than accept the responsibility they are going to the receptive government and whispering, "Well lets not tell anyone what I am doing".
That is the issue. Political presure changing the facts for personal gain. That is the evil here. It should never happen. If people want to pollute, if they want to kill that last Condor for personal gain, let them stand up and say "I don't care if that happens, I want to make that money" and take the heat from the rest of us that will suffer the lose from now till eternity.
As to your "No they expect them to share it with the lazy people or the people that do not have the means because they do not want to get out of there lazy chair and work."
These are the same people that have fought to have the minimum wage abolished and have successfully fought to have it not raised so inflation has reduced it effectively in real dollars over the years. They want to only pay the minimum wage if they can as they get multi-million dollar salaries. Just try to break out of poverty if you have to work a minimum wage job, just try to live a good human life. These people arent lazy, on the contrary they are the ones out there working long hours each day and not out on the golf course.
I think someone has sold you on a model that is not accruate and you can't see the reality that this article is talking about and the danger of allowing changing any fact to suit personal need, instead of someone accepting the responsibility for thier actions.
Global warming is a good example. Bush has relaxed the polution standards. He will be out of office when we all have to live with the devastation that is going to cause.
Republican - a boot grinding a human face into the dirt, forever.
Democrat - put a pillow between the boot and the face.
Actually -
Democrat - Pick your pocket so they can buy the pillow before putting the boot in your face.
Find coupons in Greeley
Republican's goal of reduced taxes is great ...
Huh? I see no signs that the Republicans are trying to lower taxes. Take a look at the deficit.
It appears to me the Republicans are trying to increase power by whatever means possible, including telling people their taxes will be reduced, while at the same time spending money like drunken sailors on ends that, you guessed it, will increase power. The Republicans may have some redeeming quality, but reducing taxes is not it. End the brainwashing now, please. Or perhaps you are confusing them with the Libertarians?
.... but I just can't understand why they actually went head and did it. I mean, I get told to do things all the time which are, frankly, hazardous, illegal, and just plain wrong, but I never did any of them.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Oh, right, this is the first allegation that the Bush administration politicizes science.
Do you think it's possible that liberal pro-science groups are collecting information about the Bush administration's move to faith-based science because there aren't any pro-science conservative groups?
Isn't politics fun? See, you can just make shit up. Class paranoia is the best kind!
Based on their own survey results most respondants feel the opposite of what is being portrayed in this story. Most of them are happy with the FWS and don't feel pressured.
The fact that the majority had NOT been pressured doesn't mean that it's OK. 30% of those who answered feel pressured.
Even 5% shouldn't be acceptable.
Fundamentalist Christians. Get it right. I went to a Catholic school and Catholic high school, and what do you think they taught in their classrooms? Evolution, Big Bang theory, and all of the other real sciences. The only time Creationism was even mentioned was in Religion/Theology classes, where they said that it was wrong, and that science must be listened to in order to fully understand your faith. FYI, the guy who first proposed the "hypothesis of the primeval atom" in 1927, Georges LeMaitre, was a priest. This theory later came to be known as the Big Bang theory.
Lets get this "Bush-Bashing" thing out of the way so we can get back to the real discussion.
People who don't like Bush come from all colors, creeds, and political viewpoints. Why? Because he's the man in charge, and sometimes the man in charge fucks up bad. If you thought your boss was mismanaging your firm and losing millions of dollars, you and your coworkers would probably demand his head on a platter. Ideologically, I don't see how this is much different.
When Clinton was in charge, people rode on his ass from day one for any little screw up he did. Even before Lewinsky there was Whitewater and Cattle Futures. Hell, when Bush's dad was in office, people made fun of him for everything from mistakes in the Iraqi war to vomiting on the Prime Minister of Japan's lap. Suddenly, however, if you accuse the president of making a mistake you're promoting an "unabashedly liberal political agenda"? Please.
Beliefs are not binary states. There is no "us and them," "right and wrong," "liberal and conservative." Any attempt to boil it down to that level is simple-minded and wrong.
I attended two state GOP conventions and one national GOP convention during the mid-late 1980s. I saw the takeover in action. It is real.
I am no longer directly affiliated with the Republican party, but I still have a decent grapevine through old friends and even older family. The incidental party affiliation of "most of the people [you] know" is entirely irrelevant to the matter of who formulates the planks in the party platform in exchange for delivering a highly dependable demographic bloc on election day. What James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, and the Wildmons say today will be blended with prettified supply-side economics and become the official GOP talking points six months from now.
The older Republicans were more moderate and accepted this as an expedient trade-off; the establishment only pushed the issues just enough to guarantee electoral victory. The reason George W. Bush arouses such instinctive loathing from "the Left" and such devotion from "the Right" is that he is simply the first of what will be many more generations who believe their own hype. Their party maturation began in the middle of the bargaining process between the plutocrats and theocrats, and therefore they do not maintain an acute awareness of the situation as a calculated political convenience. They have imbued their economic policies have the righteous conviction of morality, and thus they find it natural to make national policy serve their moral ends. We have been witnessing the modern birth of a religious tradition which combines spirituality with economics.
He who has an ear, let him hear.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
"Republican" and "Democrat" US political... er... stuff
:]
I think the phrase you're looking for is bullshit
N8F8, the only moral I learned from your story is that you were a brat during your college days. Maybe you still are.
You didn't offer any proof that your lab professor was a "Libbie", just that she was a dishonest teacher. You didn't offer any proof that she was representative of the entire Biology community, either, but you certainly remembered to allege that she was in all bold lettering.
I'm also having trouble feeling sorry for you for getting a B (O AS IN OH NOES!!!) on one assignment. C'mon dog, it's not like she FAILED you for being honest.
those same fundamentalist christians will say that a catholic school isn't really christian because catholics aren't really christians. i've known too many people who were "born again".
i agree though... i went to catholic school and even though there was a disclaimer in bio class, the teacher said "this goes against some of the catholic teachings, but it's science and we feel it's important you know this". or something to that extent. and then she taught us all about darwin and evolution...
please me, have no regrets.
Let me educate you on the subject matter which you have taken it upon yourself to attack in (almost) complete ignorance.
Let me educate you on my ignorance: I spent a year in a "school" in preperation for ministry and/or seminary. I have preached, performed outreach in slums and gone door-to-door to spread the good word of the magical fairy king in the sky.
I have since grown up.
If you actually read the Bible, it's very hard to get the impression that God is on an ego trip, unless you want to get that impression. It's much more like God wanting to be man's friend, but man wanting to be God, and God being unwilling to forfeit His divine nature. He was, however, willing to forfeit His life. And for you who mock Him, nonetheless.
I have read it several times including direct translations from the original languages. Yes YHWH is on an ego trip. He wants to be man's friend, but if man doesn't reciprocate (using that Free Will thing God gave us) then he destroys man. Nice guy. Oh wait, he doesn't do that anymore because he sent his son/manifestation of himself/whatever to stand in for the usual slaughtering lamb to atone for all of our transgressions against Mr Friendly to spare us Mr Friendly's wrath. At least until the rapture when Yawheh The Friendly Ghost takes his chosen ones from the evil earth and let's the rest of us succumb to devestation and disease. Then after that he throws those who dared not be his friend into eternal punishment. Sounds like he has an attitude to me.
it should be in the science section, but it's important... the bush administration is forcing scientists to ignore science to favor businesses.
please me, have no regrets.
I'm really curious how eating 1 time a day, 5 of 7 days of the weak is in any way considered "acceptable". I've seen anorexic people eat more often than that.
edit: weak => week.
Please make the distinction. We're not all ignorant.
Howdy.
YAY! Rational thought on this subject has been sorely lacking. I applaud you for using your brain.
Howdy.
Interesting that you would pick the number of years as 15 to describe the past. Let's pick the number 24 and see what happens. 2/3 Republican. But that's not my real worry about you. You seem to want to; Justify the Vietnam war, overthrow the constitution of the United States (free speech, freedom of assembly, etc), politicize what should be scientific research. Sounds like a Republican. Oh, by the way, anti-extremeist right wing does not equal liberal Democrat.
Best regards.
And, no, this isn't flamebait since this is exactly what fascism does do - among other things.
But yeah, I'm not surprised what this intellectually dull, narrow-minded, oligarchical administration pulls anymore.
Next thing you know, they'll be telling us the Grand Canyon was a result of one freak flood! DOH!
What does surprise me is that so few people seem to care that we no longer live in a representative republic. But this type of thing happens everywhere in the U.S. now, not just on the federal level. Here in Virginia while George Allen was governor, a person similar in his dictatorial and screwy religious beliefs to president shrub, the state version of the EPA was being told what its findings would be. In one case, scientists were told what their study's conclusions would say since the actual conclusions were contradictory to what the governor wanted to see.
Beware people. Fascists are here and are running our state and federal governments and I don't doubt many local governments too!
...whereas anyone on the conservative or Republican side of the spectrum is a greedy, money grubbing liar who would just LOVE to see an end to all environmental concerns.
Actually, that's pretty close to the truth.
Scientists are by definition leftist simply because they look to the scientific method rather than the Bible for the final word on matters. As long as we keep them busy bombing abortion clinics, though, they'll be too busy to start bombing schools.
"Support our Oops."
>What is it about winning a Nobel Prize that qualifies you to speak on anything and everything as if you were an expert?
What is it about winning an election that qualifies you to decide on anything and everything as if you were an expert? I think the opinion of smart people shouldn't be neglected.
"I still hold as most true and indisputable the stability of the earth and the motion of the sun." -- Galileo Galilei, June 22, 1633 after being tortured by the Inquisition.
this is loaner...my sig is in the shop
To quote PCU:
"It used to be us against them, now it's us against us"
Microsoft has been doing it for years with their Windows is more secure than (Li | U)nix studies. -- TMK
This being said, science in the public domain is one of those areas where the 'adjusting' of facts can be especially pernicious. As a society, we need to make the smartest choices we can. In order to do this, we should base our inferences on the best evidence available. It is in this respect that this report is especially troubling.
What is perhaps worse is that the manipulation of truth seems to be a common strategy by the current administration. This is decidedly Orwellian. The site truthout.org continues to raise excamples. What worries me the most is that there is some evidence that the entire democratic process may have been under attack in the recent elections. I did some research myself on this issue, and was horrified by the conclusions (see http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~isb9112/election/). I may not be an American, but I am a scientist. When it is so easy to smell a rat, it amazes me that so many normal people and folks in the (allegedly 'liberal') media can swallow the utter rubbish they are told. Hopefully, the folks at /. are smart enough and well educated enough to see how dangerous these trends are.
Breakfast is also served at school for free. I have also seen bag lunches go home with some kids for the weekends. I know it is a rough life, but the school meals are the only decent meals many kids get because of their stupid parents that misuse the money. The bottom line is that checks should be made on the kids' parents that are on welfare to make sure the kids are getting what they should, and the money is not being misused. Welfare is needed lots of times, but you must admit that it is commonly abused. If there was random drug screening and a periodic check to make sure the money is actually going to the kids accountability for the parents' actions, i think welfare would be abused much less. I know that there are very good people who do not abuse the system, and those people are what the welfare is for. The drug users and people who leave their kids home by themselves while mommy goes out to the club everynight need the government money cut off, or at least benefits majorly decreased. We just cannot go on rewarding this behavior by issuing checks for people not deserving and not using the money properly.
So your 15 year time frame is a straw-man argument if there ever was one. Similar concerns have been voiced by many other science-interest groups; read pretty much any Scientific American editorial (or, even National Geographic) to learn more.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Everyone knows that global warming is a catastrophic problem and that humans are messing with the natural, balanced flow of the environment. Well, the reality is that scientific studies and scientists themselves are providing evidence that this is not so. The balanced and ancient flow of nature?... nope. The environment is always evolving and changing. Example: the ancient redwood forests of California. They are only six thousand years old and their current presence is because they invaded the primary forests that were there before that. Is this what your post metaphorically implies: People don't care about the facts and science, only what they percieve to be common knowledge or the rhetoric they heard on the 10 o'clock news?
Analogy alert: I will gladly take counsel from a fire marshall about how to make my home safe, but a fire marshall is the last person I would want to actually make policy in my home because I want to live my day-to-day life there.
Environmental scientists, like almost all specialists, see things very narrowly, and many place disproportionate importance on the unnatural preservation of some ideal, imagined, "human-free" ecosystem. People need to work; people need to eat. Sometimes commerce should trump the conclusions of "science."
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Bag lunches would be a great thing, but I know they haven't spread to our neck of the woods, yet. Also, breakfast is only served for kids whose busses arrive early enough, at least at our school. While I understand what you're saying, in those situations, wouldn't it be best if the children WERE removed from their parents custody?
I don't know for sure. There are pros and cons. But it's worth discussing.
Because when you have a bunch of dispicable liberal a**holes who just loath off road vehicles (oh they're so noisy and dirty), recreational gold panners, parasailers, mountain bike riders, snowboarding and skiing, remote controlled airplanes, and on and on and on and want to eliminate those activities off the earth, they turn to the Endangered Species Act as a tool of choice to eliminate any group of people from "their" area.
All these liberal weenies do is just
1) turn to well funded environmental lawyer groups such as the Environmental Defense Center
2) EDC et all calls up the Fish and Game service to find a unique weed or bug (ironically using park fee money paid by the people they're trying to eliminate) without any analysis on exactly how this will impact the ecosystem. Please note that because of evolution, it's pretty easy to find some unique flora or fauna species of any given area that has to be "protected" from the big bad public
3) and then claim through the Endangered Species act that people cannot use said park for recreation anymore
4) Activity eliminated
That's why when an average person reads the original topic, they will say "great, I'm glad the Bush administration is on our side...
Although the Endangered Species Act is a noble cause and wilderness areas have a good purpose, there are many people (growing by the day). Look, there needs to be places for untouched habitat, but don't humans need areas to explore and for recreation also?
For most Slashdotters who don't ever get off the keyboard, this may be a non-issue, but for many others, this issue has turned many people against environmental causes...
It is not just a majority opinion. It's real science with data to back it up put forward by professionals in relevant fields. It's hard to get a lot of scientists to agree on one issue. A lot of scientist's agree that global warming is real.
Ever hear of eugenics? You could just as well be talking about eugenics in the early 1900's with that paragraph. As for global warming, I will not debate that the globe is getting warmer. What I will debate is how much humans are having an effect on it.
Very few scientists with bad data and ties to politically motivated organizations say otherwise.
Last time I checked Green Peace (among many others) were politcal groups. And a lot of scientists believe that more study is needed on global warming as well. Not to disprove that it is happening, but to find what all the causes of it is.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
You don't think calling a democratically elected government "fascist" is in itself propaganda?
That's the problem in a nutshell. You blast one side fo rbehavior, then do exactly the same thing in response, and the worst part is you can't see it.
No matter your feelings about our current government, calling them fascist is just hyperbolic.
Of course, now we'll see the other part of the problem, the complete inability to acknowledge a lucid point, even though you disagree. Instead, I expect several ad-hominems, followed by equivocation, and attempts to justify the "fascist" comment.
Prove ME wrong.
Ghoul, you are a gentleman, and a scholar.
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All they have to do under a democract is convince 51% of the population that keeping 49% of the population down is a good thing and you have a wonderful democracy.
What is the alternative? To paraphrase Churchill, democracy sucks, but other forms of government suck more.
Table-ized A.I.
I can't take this story at face value, since the UoCS has a history or taking a position and then "proving" the validity the their position with data that was either very selective or just plain fabricated
Given the past exploits of the UoCS, it is quite possible that the pool of respondants was tweaked by throwing out enough negative responses to create the desired end result.
The only thing I would take seriously from these guys, is a treatise on how to lie with statistics
I'm about ready to keep a running list of links on breeder reactors since it keeps coming up so much. Wired has a story I'll link to below on them (and nuclear in general). Breeder reactors tend to cost a bit more to operate than traditional reactors, but the allow you to create and recycle the old fuel. Thus eliminating the need for storage sites. France (among others) has 77% of their electricity generated through nuclear power. Recycling the control rods dramatically reduces waste and the resulting waste is much less radioactive.
http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/nuclear.html
Another link to google for is "nuclear waste recycle" (leave out the quotes) There are some links on a different form of recycling as well that I am not talking about. A better search might be "nuclear waste reprocessing" (again, don't use the quotes when searching google).
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Considering US Politics is one of the categories for the topic, I think that's pretty obvious. I apologize for forgetting that this article is about worldwide censorship of scientists... wait, no it's not. I don't understand why people feel the need to point out the range of the American political spectrum when it's obvious what the scope of the original comment was.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Yes! Thank you.
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you're absolutely right. unerring use and complete knowledge of standard english is much more important than the ideas it communicates.
That's right, just keep shooting the messenger. Just once I'd like to hear a conservative argue a point on the merits, rather than impugning the integrity of the source.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I'm reminded of how two local TV channels reported a commercial airliner crash:
ch.7: "In all its history, the DC-n has had only two crashes."
ch.9: "The DC-n has a history of crashes!!"
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"Two and two are four." "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder." (Quote from Orwell's 1984). A little scary how dead on he was.
Maybe you are confusing Galileo with Giordano Bruno who is often described as a martyr for heliocentrism even though there are no documents proving it.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
No mod points today, but mod points aren't enough praise for putting this so well anyway.
It's a shame that transparent piece of the "repetoire" needs to be rebutted afresh every day, isntead of being dispensed with trivially like the FAQ it is.
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Yes I do think the kids should be removed from the parents custody, and moved into foster care or the state's custody, or perhaps another relative who will love and care for the children. That is always a touchy subject, and is always hard emotionally on the kids, and people do not want to separate kids from their parents. It will also provide more work for department of children's services workers, who are already severly overworked. It is also hard on the kids to know that their parents do not love them, and they would rather smoke crack than provide dinner, and these kids do deserve a better loving home. The parents who abuse the system should first be given drug rehab to try to get them off the drugs (not cash to pay for rehab... I had a cousin who got a check every month to provide treatment for being an alcoholic, he went to free AA meetings and pocketed the cash to buy booze...) and an effort should be made to try and make them better people. If they still misuse the benefits and show no signs of trying to do better, than the kids definitely need placed in a different environment, and the idiot parents should get very little if any cash every month. Perhaps jail time for some more serious cases is certainly deserved as well. Maybe food delivered to their house instead of cash would solve some problems. While food stamps can be traded for drugs, and cash will always be abused, it would be very hard to barter a loaf of bread and some cheese for crack. I make no claims to have the perfect answer, but I do kow something major needs to be changed. There is far too much abuse of the welfare system now.
It doesn't, but it was never intended to.
Sure it was. It's just that it can't logically do so, so it tries with overwhelming "facts" (like the article against DHMO is full of facts, it's the presentation that gets you--this guy's presentation is nowhere near as good, but he tried the same basic method).
It does damage their credibility, however. No one should read the findings without understanding the bias of the people who did the research.
Yeah, the fact that they worked under a Democratic President for 8 of the last 15 years sure damages their credibility! Funny that that's actually as close to 50/50 as you can get in 1-year increments. How many years does that work out to if you extend it to 20 years?
The bias of the guy I was replying to is far more incriminating than that of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
You'll notice I never claimed anyone was biased, only that if a bias exists it should be well known.
Like hell you didn't. "It does damage their credibility, however." Your words, not mine.
Hitler and Mussolini were both elected. Fascism is corporate government. It's not just a terrible thing to say: it's a terrible situation we're in. You're obsessed with rhetoric, trying to preempt my arguments by anticipating your own worst tendencies, no doubt. But the facts are real, whether you deny them or not.
--
make install -not war
Why would enviromentalist be doing things that are harmfull? Could they be stupid or misguided? So I did some googling. It did not take long to figure out what these people really were about. It is actually kind of scary.
Please provide links and search terms. Please.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
1) So what, if you read the article you know that their funding is being drastically cut by the CURRENT administration.
2) Again, so what. Don't throw the word liberal around and think it's an insult. Here's a definition excerpt from dictionary.com
"Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded."
Maybe it's me but progress, tolerance, and broad-mindedness sounds like good traits.
3) No, that's not true. RTFA, most DID incur some sort of pressure. Whether it was an order, a 'veiled threat' or whatever, still presure.
And this whole liberal political agenda.. hm. Acording to the definition of liberal, that would mean they have a concience and think about the world around them. Doesn't sound bad to me.
The thing is, this is important. Pretty much every animal has a specific purpose. Like clearing out foliage, spreading seeds, keeping it's prey's numbers down. Without these animals doing their job, things get thrown out of whack. When nature gets unbalanced(i.e. species goes extinct) it makes life MUCH harder for us and eventually impossible. We need to protect the environment so we as a species will survive. Hm, sounds important.
Now unless you want some company to go into the profit-less business of doing these animals jobs which would be an enormous cost on taxpayers. Then we need to head this thing off and spend a lot less money keeping a balance with nature.
It IS possible for us to have our cities and co-exist with everything else. We do not need to clear every peice of land and the animals with it.
Bullish Machine Tzar
As a reptile keeper/breeder, I might have a little more insight into how USFW works than the average slashdotter. It is nothing like you think, with the DEA-style "raid and seizure" end weighing a lot more than the "save the wetlands" end. Of course, one of those is job security, while the other is charity. Maybe you wouldn't be suprised. At any rate, science is not the order of the day there...it's stings, raids, and justifying their existence.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
I don't understand why people feel the need to point out the range of the American political spectrum when it's obvious what the scope of the original comment was.
Maybe I'm not familiar with that group and I'd like clarification.
But don't let that stop you from making condescending, useless remarks. That is clearly much more constructive than awnsering the question. Yup yup yup.
You can't take the sky from me...
And see, this is what needs to be done, in America. Not necessarily what you propose, but the fact that we discussed the situation. I come from one side who doesn't want the welfare to be taken away entirely, which is the (false) label those in welfare reform receive, and you want it to save money, without being irresponsible. If people didn't saddle others with these ridiculous labels that have extremely negative connotations, our nation wouldn't be nearly as polarized today as it is. Initially, I would have said "yes, I disagree with eljasbo". After hearing your point, I admit there is definite potential, and if we (and others!) would only work together, we could come to a beneficial conclusion. But sadly, that isn't the way America seems to work, any longer. :(
ummm... that's Bataan Death March not Burmese Death March.
There is no reset button in life; however, there are bonus levels.
Yes, I have heard of eugenics. It was bad science. Eugenics has feck-all to do with global warming unless you think the science being published is bad science. If so, then refute the science.
Last time I checked Green Peace (among many others) were politcal groups. And a lot of scientists believe that more study is needed on global warming as well. Not to disprove that it is happening, but to find what all the causes of it is.GreenPeace? Way to derail the debate. I consider myself an environmentalist and even I think GreenPeace is loony. The vast amount of scholarly literature on global warming is not coming from GreenPeace. Look at the scientists who think global warming isn't happening or isn't a concern. The vast majority have industry ties. You'll be hard-pressed to find a respectable academic who denies global warming. There's a couple but they're vastly outnumbered.
There is way too much partisanship in the US now, and people are making stupid laws or saying totally incorrect 'facts' just to spite the other party. It is like high school drama on a much larger level. Being so far on either side that one automatically assumes the other side is wrong and dismissses their ideas without listening to them is just counter-productive. Neither the exterme left or the extreme right side is the way to go, and the solution lies in the middle somewhere. I wish the political people would realize that it is not an 'us vs. them' situation and we are all on the same team despite differences in opinion. Hopefully the leaders in the future will realize everybody needs to work together, and will put the petty differences aside to make real progress.
Fine... the point was that threat of lawsuit is not the reason companies act unethically, so pulling out this argument to justify it is misguided.
sig fault
As he pointed out, a Fascist government CAN be democratically elected.
Now it is time for YOU to show that YOU understand the terms YOU like to toss around.
#1. WHAT are the characteristics of a "Fascist" government. (No stupid examples such as "the Nazis were Fascist". State the specific characteristics that defined them as "Fascist".)
#2. HOW does it differ from other forms of government?
I'm going to bet that you can't do those. I'm going to say that because you've used those terms incorrectly so many times in the past.
I'd have to agree x 3 with you there. It really is a dangerous situation to be in, because it becomes that much easier to pull the wool over our collective eyes as we squabble back and forth like spoiled brats.
It's all about power.
If you have power at the state level, but not the federal level, you push State's Rights.
If you have power at the federal level, but not the state level, you push Federalism.
If you have neither, you talk about the corruption at those levels.
The Power is then used to push your ideological agenda (which may or may not be 100% coincident with your Party's agenda).
What is "bad" when "they" do it is "good" when "we" do it. No matter what "it" is. It's all about Power. How to get it, how to keep it and how to use it.
That's all fine and well. And the agency has every right to refuse the recommendations of it's scientists, however, it is an entirely different game when they use the threat of termination to make those scientists alter their conclusions so that the agency can hide the number of the times it's denying recommendations to mark a species as endangered.
I loathe this behaviour for it's craven cowardice and it's willfully reckless ignorance.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Have you considered the possibility that scientists are ignoring science to favor undue burdening of businesses?
Are you asserting that the scientists are skewing the data and that the politicians are seeing through that and correcting the scientists? Don't mix up the science, observations, data, analysis, extrapolation etc. with politics where you take the data and set policy.
If the politicians are saying no to the recomendations of the scientists then that is fine. But that is not what the article is saying. To extend your analogy: I don't want to spend $$ on an expensive fire escape that my wife wants based on the recomendation of a fire marshall so I (being on the town board) tell the fire marshall to change his recomendation or else. That is not an honest or wise approach to making decisions that affect lives or (in the case of environmental science) the future quality of life.
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
And why are only these two standpoints ever mentioned?
Are there only two parties? What if I'm not satisfied with those two? Am I allowed to start my own party?
The problem with the US's political parties is the existence of the electoral college. The President -- head of the executive branch of government (which is currently arguably the most powerful branch) -- is elected through the electoral college, a system by which each state selects a group of electors to go and cast votes for President on behalf of the people. In 48 out of 50 states, all electors go to whichever candidate gets the most votes in that state. An in-depth history is here.
The country can only support two viable parties as a mathematical consequence. If a third party gains a significant share of the vote (say 5% or more), it will sap strength from the party whose views are closest to theirs in a Presidential like the Reform party did to the Republicans when Clinton was elected and like the Green Party did to the Democrats when Bush was elected. This causes people who may like a third party candidate better to vote with the lesser of two evils instead to prevent the worst-case scenario. As a result, no third party ever gains enough political clout and campaign financing to compete.
There have been few exceptions to this and all have been as a result of the death of one of the two major parties. Here's a nice webpage showing the history of the two major US political parties and how they grew and shifted. Third parties as you can see are pretty ephemeral in the US, and major parties only survive a split by having eliminated the competition or by rejoining.
The electoral college also has a few other effects on American politics. Since almost all states have an all-or-nothing approach to portioning out votes, there are only a few states in each election that can swing either way, which are called swing states. In 2000, it was said that Bush won by only a few hundred votes (despite losing the national popular vote) by winning that margin in the swing state of Florida. In this past election, Ohio was the deciding state. Republican sentiment typicall has strongest sway in rural and suburban areas while Democratic sentiment has strongest sway in urban and coastal areas. If you're a liberal in Atlanta, Georgia or a conservative in northern California, your vote doesn't mean jack except for your House and state government officials despite the fact that most of your neighbors agree with you. Presidential and Senate votes are going to be dominated by the rest of the state. Also, thanks to the small state-large state compromise behind the way that electoral seats are proportioned out, states with low population density have more say than they would if seats were based purely on population.
Personally, I think the electoral college should be abolished. It promotes political stagnation, unfairly rewards small population states, and is obsolete for many of the purposes it was intended for. Third parties will never stand a chance so long as it exists, which has made both parties corrupt and complacent.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
That's the best you can do? Man, I really expected better.
You KNOW the US isn't fascist, but you can't bring youself to admit you fucked up. It's ok, we've seen people like you before.
Now I know to ignore you, because you're just another blowhard who like to make shit up.
A troll in other words. Good luck with your sad, cynical, pathetic life. I hope the fascits get you.
And you never proved me wrong, but rather, proved my point, that you are completely incapable of acknowledging that I may have a point. Again, sad but not unexpected.
Makes me want to reach for my copy of Dune. Something about politics and religion riding in the same cart....
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
not spirituality, just misguided religion.
Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?
It's amazing that because of your bias, you can assume I misread the post.
"No, that is NOT propaganda"
Hmm, that's funny. It seems that of the 10 people I asked, 10 disagreed. I work in a SCHOOL, where Bush is directly next to satan in the heirarchy, but they ALL agreed with me. Is it just possible that maybe YOU fucked up? MAYBE you're wrong. Everyone I talk to seems to think so.
I tried twice to have a reasonable conversation with you, but you ignore the facts, or lie about them, in order to try to one up me. Have an unbiased observer read your posts and mine.
Then accept it when they tell you you're being an ass, that you can't get the main idea of a post, and that you are a liar.
Then apologize.
Yes, but do they enjoy it? Sorry, just had to. haha, i grew up sometimes not eating all day long, and i savored every meal.
A poor analogy.
The scientists are not the ones making policy. In a correct analogy, someone is bribing/threatening the fire marshall to lie to you about his findings.
Good luck when your house burns down.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
Ok, one thing. You are a liar.
Claiming I IMPLIED bias is not the same as saying they were biased. More importantly, I was clarifying someone elses point.
I understand you disagree with what you think I believe.
BUT STOP FUCKING LYING.
If I say something I'll own up to it. Stop attempting to infer what you believe I must think. You don't know anyhting about me, and LYING about what I said is just a shitty thing to do.
Disagreeing is no excuse for being a liar.
And if the DC-n crashed thirty percent of the time, would the media be sensationalist to report a history of crashes?
Not only sensational. I'm rusty on my statistics, but isn't 15% considered "significant".
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
Since when does a language communicate "ideas"? If I can communicate an idea in English, exactly why can I not communicate the _exact_ same idea in Spanish?
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Bugger all.
As I said before, I've no idea where the myth came from that volcanoes are a primary contributor to greenhouse gasses. It simply isn't true. I'm sure certain people wish it were true, and that explains why they keep repeating the myth, but it is NOT TRUE.
Come to think of it, an immense intelligence might well take great pleasure (and not humanly incomprehensible pleasure either--do people not take pride in their art?) in getting/making all the details right.
Of course, that God would hardly match the surly image many established churches paint of God. The parts in the bible that essentially say "worship me or be damned" might also be rubbish. After all, if he gave us all those nice reasons to disbelieve in him, why would he be angry about it?
Come to think of it, I would not have problems with such a god, but the devout groups that usually proclaim things like "the earth is only 5000 years old" might have problems. If said joking God would suddenly reveal himself, their view of life might be shaken much harder than mine.
C - the footgun of programming languages
The article says, "The survey of the agency's scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate..."
That means 420 responded. If 200 claim they are being coerce, that is a rather more significant percentage than I expected.
A previous commenter said that since only 200 claimed this coercion, the majority were NOT coerced. Looks to me like the significant figure here is that 48% of this group of scientists are claiming they have been pressured to change results. That is pretty significant in my view.
p.s. Upon further reflection, to be fair, 48% IS a minority so I suppose the pro-Bush crowd can still path themselves on the back and claim their version of the moral high ground. At this rate, the U.S. will soon enough be drilling for oil without restraint, be pro-life while killing thousands of non-americans, be purging "closed minded" evolutionists from our public school faculties and teaching our children that dinosaurs are, in fact, Jesus Horses (hee, hee... I love that one. Courtesy John Stewart). Yee haw. Go U.S.A.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Who the hell modded you insightful??
Politics should not trump the science. If people need to eat, and the findings get in the way of that, then OK, we should feed people. But you don't lie about the science to fit the situation. If there is a problem with the law that it makes things unnaturally hard, that is one thing, you don't cover up the truth of the matter to do it though.
This is the real "junk-science".
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
What's your point? That the US government isn't fascist? How do you account for its corporate government, which is fascism? And that the most famous fascists, and many of the less famous, were elected - contrary to your defense of our "elected" government. Please do ignore me. It's the only way people like you - Bush apologists, fascism deniers, name callers - have to deal with reality. When you get too caught up in engaging reality itself, you get smacked down by people like me, with clues, who know how to use them.
--
make install -not war
Nope, but in this case, it was a total of 6 or 7 crashes for all the hundreds of DC-n (I forget which model) over 30+ years of service. So yes, the second station was just sensationalizing (which was par for the course for them -- they do that with *everything*, which is why I stopped watching their news entirely).
If one pedestrian got accidentally hit by a car, instead of saying just that, their notion of reporting would have been "People are being run down on the streets of Los Angeles!!"
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
You asked 10 people in a school what they thought about a pithy thread on slashdot? They probably just said what you wanted to hear so they could get on with their real work.
Do people agree with you a lot? Very quickly? Do they seem hurried when they do it?
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Republicans essentially stand for lowering taxes, decreasing the size/amount of government and government regulation, etc, etc.
It's been a very long time since the Republicans have done any of those things in earnest. Even Bush's allegedly tight budget proposal this year is actually 7% higher than last year's.
Neither major party is interested in shrinking the government. They are the government. And therein lies the problem.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." - Lord Acton
Well, were do you get your cheap labor if every poor kid can get some education. Hence the need to outsource.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Ahh, but any good religious nutter (of the Christian kind) will tell you they wouldn't show the Horned Hand at their inauguration. Ohh well, he got re-elected, no need to pamper them anymore.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Ok, one thing. You are a liar.
Claiming I IMPLIED bias is not the same as saying they were biased. More importantly, I was clarifying someone elses point.
You said, "It does damage their credibility, however".
What's the "it" you are referring to? Is it not "their bias"? Before you try to weasel by saying the "it" was the original post, recall that the original post was about... their bias! Also, your post was entirely about... bias and that it affects their credibility! So taken in context, what else are you referring to?
You also weren't merely "clarifying" someone else's words. You were taking his stance. Why do I say this? Because you said, "It does damage their credibility, however." I bolded the word that illustrates my point.
You are a fool, and I'm not going to give you a pass on your linguistic idiocy. Saying something indirectly is still saying it.
Imagine you point to a orange house and say, "go into the red house." You are saying the orange house is red, even though you didn't say the words, "that house is red." You can't claim you didn't say it was red when I point out it's actually orange. Likewise, you did not say, "the original poster's claim was true," you did make a statement which implies it. Clarify your words if that's not what you meant, but don't blame me for understanding what the words you wrote mean.
BUT STOP FUCKING LYING.
I haven't. You have, however.
Are you a lawyer by trade? Or just a lying, whining little bitch by nature?
I really think I understand what you mean, but frankly, i cannot help but reading "I sure as hello _don't_ want to change so I'll make any excuse I can for doing nothing".
I don't mind change. I just see the environment and social order, morality, the economy and form of government as different issues.
It's fine to dislike a large part of the environmental movement, ignorant to dismiss all of it (you don't know enough to make such a blanket statement about it), and stupid to use it as an excuse for doing nothing.
Actually, I do know enough to make the statement. I'd rather see humanity extinct than give up freedom. Fixing the envionment doesn't require changing to a socialist government or taking rights from anyone.
-- $G
No, being a human qualifies them to speak on political pressure in government conservation sciences.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
ideas are communicated by way of language, but, of course, all such communications are approximate. are you suggesting that no communication at all is possible?
But those are basically constant, and global warming strongly correlates with CO2 production by humans. So if you wanted to make the world cooler, would you a) reduce CO2 production, or b) shut down some volcanoes?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Is it trite hollywood "left-wing lite" tripe to report that scientist are being forced to change their findings? Where in the article was this hand-wringing you speak of?
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
President.
;)
House and Senate show similar trends, but not as pronounced. Actually, the worst possible scenario is for one party (either party) to control both, which supports my own pet hypothesis that a gridlocked legislature benefits everyone
Various people have been taking a close look at the historical data over the last year or so, and there were a few stories on slashdot about it maybe 6 months ago. I used to have a great link that laid everything out quite clearly, but I lost it during my recent move. The data is all publically available.
Anyway, from memory, looking at the averages over the last century or so (or as far back as information was available), here's how it plays out:
GDP average annual growth was over 5% under Dems, about 1.6% under GOP.
Dow-Jones average annual growth was about 12.5% under Dems, and about 8% under GOP.
S&P500 average annual growth was about 13.5% under Dems, 8% under GOP.
Jobs: the worst Democrat was better than the best Republican, and not by a small amount IIRC.
Spending: Republicans spend more, even if we ignore defense spending (which is indeed lower under Democrats).
Taxes on average were lower under Republicans, but only by about 0.5%
Average individual income over the last century was slightly higher under GOP, but if we only look at the years since Reagan took office the Dems claim this one as well.
Anyway, a quick googling didn't turn up the page I was looking for (at least not in the top results), but I did find this interesting discussion which IMO does a good job of putting it all into perspective, and especially with regards to the fatal flaws in supply-side economics.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
People need to work; people need to eat. Sometimes commerce should trump the conclusions of "science."
You won't see me hugging any trees or out on a Greenpeace ship saving the pygmy shrimp, but I simply can't agree with your statement or let it stand without comment. It's completely bogus. That's the exact same statement every industry uses to continue destroying [insert natural resource of your choice here] in a non-sustainable way. "I need to make a living," they say, "I have a perfect right to fish out every fish in the sea until there aren't any left! Damn you fruity environmentalists!" Or "My family needs to eat, so I have a perfect right to clear-cut every forest in the world! Damn you hippie freaks and your environmental laws!" This is no exaggeration, I've seen people say things just like this.
The problem is that people needing to work and eat today always seems to take precedence over people needing to work and eat tomorrow. I don't care if your family depends on logging to make a living, if that logging is being done in a non-sustainable manner that is damaging the ecosystem for future generations. If people working and eating today comes at the price of no work and starvation for the next generation, you're doing something wrong.
If a scientist can show evidence that some chemical presents a certain level of danger to our ecosystem, or a process is non-sustainable, it should ALWAYS trump commerce, because what the hell is commerce going to do when they just go ahead and destroy the resource they are using to make money? We also have to live our day-to-day lives on this planet, not just work here.We have to eat the food that grows in the soil, and drink the water that comes from the available fresh water sources. Money doesn't matter if your drinking water gives your wife and kids cancer. There is no such thing as "disproportionate importance" when it comes to the environment. Either something is sustainable or it isn't. Either something pollutes in a way that the environment can't filter out, or it doesn't.
If a scientist was ignoring science just to destroy business, you could use the available evidence to discredit them, prove them wrong. But somehow I just don't see that happening much. Sure, there are some eno-nuts out there who don't give a shit about science, but greed ensures that the business end will almost always be the one in the wrong, not the scientists. The proof is in the pudding. The world already contains many cesspools of pollution of unbelievable proportions, making vast sections of land basically uninhabitable for the next thousand years.
Most of us really don't care what you do with the environment, as long as it is done in a way that's sustainable and doesn't irreversibly damage people or natural resources like drinking water. "People needing to work and eat" will never be an acceptable reason to destroy the life support system of the only known habitable planet in the universe. It's actually the strongest argument to favor the conclusions of science. No quotes.
Very interesting - thanks for the link, mate!
The Free desktop that Just Works
If you'd like to criticize the substance of their report, indicating what they did wrong and why their conclusions are flawed, that'd be a worthwhile contribution to the discussion.
How the hell do expect anyone to defend Bush that way?!?
The only way to do it is to kill the messenger.
You can't take the sky from me...
I think his point was that Clinton was not really distinguishable from a Republican.
I'm not sure I completely agree, but I can see his point.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
"Heck, you can't even get a Nobel prize in the physical sciences without being a liberal, everyone knows that."
If you didn't have the "in the physical sciences" qualifier, I'd have been forced to point out the proceedings for the 2002 Peace Prize, granted to Jimmy Carter, where the chairman of the committee, Gunnar Berg, stated:Such apparent motivations to "stick it to the US" have not been as visible in the science awards, but it seems that you can get a peace prize not for being Jimny Carter but for not being George W Bush.
This was reported in the Washington Times 12/17/01
.
I remember reading the original there, but it seems to have expired. Some googling for: fish game washington fur dna lynx wenatchee
What happened: They took fur from a captured lynx and planted it in a few different parks to show proof that endangered lynx were in the parks. This would have closed the parks to most recreation (fishing, hunting, mountain biking, motorcycling). They were found out by DNA testing
Things have turned the other way. I'm not sure which is worse.
Who said anything about that particular article? GP post got modded flamebait for pointing out that the LA Times is a lock-step mouthpiece for whatever is the latest Democratic party pablum, which is dumb because it's TRUE. The LA Daily News is the local rag for the Republican party pablum. There is no decent newspaper here. Just the way it is. (shrug) Not saying neither of them ever get anything right.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
> extremely leftist
ah yes, this is the american scale of left to right - where stalin and hitler are considered to be only slightly right of center and anything that the rest of the world would consider to be moderate or centrist is called "extreme left".
Check out the software and The paper. These were the basis for the Discover article the other respondent to you mentioned (in case you haven't been able to find it)
(Please note that I am not a political scientist,
political Scientist? is that an oxymoron?
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
Yes, but the Pope didn't make that statement until the 1990's. The other poster probably went to school before then.
A small Kansas meat packer that spent millions of dollars building a new feedlot, slaughterhouse, and meat packing facility was shut down by the Bush administration (FDA & USDA) because they wanted to test each and every cow before they were processed -- a testing regimen that would have garnered them most (if not all) of the export market to Japan and Korea. The attitude of the Bush administration would appear to be that small business interests that promote food safety must be suppressed in favor of the big corporate meatpackers that don't test.
got a credible link to back that up or am i to assume you are just talking out of your ass (newstarget and it's loads of incestuous links does not count as a credible source)
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Maybe you are an idiot.Again, who gives a shit what the people that YOU talk to think? Focus on the definitions.
Or do the definitions contradict your point? Yes? They do? Well then you're wrong and the people you talked to are wrong.You're the one who thinks that claiming that 10 anonymous people at some annoymous "school" say something has any meaning here.
Post the references that support your statement. It should be easy to find them since you work at a school.
Oh, you're the janitor at one of those "schools" for kids with "special needs", aren't you?
Why yes, I certainly see how the opinion of a janitor would be ranked higher than the regular definition of what "propaganda" is.
Here's a free clue, claiming that other, annonymous, people agree with you is NOT furthering your case. It is only showing how idiotic and un-informed you are for believing that it does.
And "liar" has to do with telling "lies". Not with "you can't get the main idea of a post, and that you are a liar". Find where I told a lie and link to it.
Otherwise, "liar" will be added to the list of words you do not understand (along with "propaganda" and "fascist").
So you're an idiot. Be happy. You've found a slot in life as the janitor of a "school" for kids with "special" needs. At least there you can pretend that you're smart.
Because the Spanish syntax and vocab may not allow you to do so.
That was classic intercourse!
If you think you know enough to outright dismiss a diverse movement consisting of millions of individuals and thousands of independant organizations all over the world as socialist, you really are ignorant.
Until you answer the question of _how_ you propose to save the environment without sacrificing an inch of your (admirable) political ideals you only look like so much of an hypocrit.
-
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Let me put it to you this way. How would you feel if these sorts of things were going on with American detainess in some future war? We'd all be outraged and appalled, and we'd quickly point to the barbarism of the captors.
It's also important to note that the US military knows full well what the definition of "torture" is and that several of the things that went on in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo fit the international definitiion of "torture." That is precisely why our new Attorney General, the man who is supposed to be the highest officer of the law in the US, spent so much effort coming up with creative legal interpretations of the law. He, and the Administration, knew that they wanted to torture people, and they wanted a legal loophole to exploit.
You can say whatever you want about this being a new war, a different kind of war, a war without end, etc. But America did not resort to systematic torture in WWII, even in the midst of tremendous, wide-scale mechanized warfare. We engaged in a fair number of violations of the Geneva and Hague Conventions during the Vietnam War, and that certainly didn't win any hearts and minds.
To me this is not just about whether something is torture or isn't torture. The semantics of it don't matter if the result is the same: Iraqis see it as barbaric and evil, and people around the world look at it the same way. It is unsettling that our national leaders (in particular our Secretary of Defense) have such a one-dimensional view of the global fight against Islamic terrorists that they established such a counterproductive system for dealing with detainees.
The bottom line is that Abu Ghraib has made the fight in Iraq and around the world much more difficult, by further radicalizing Islamic populations and weakening support among our allies.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Better not move too fast... You might miss something important. http://www.newpath4.com/forsalespacecraftenginecon stantpowertheory.htm
Interesting indeed :) thanks for the links.
You, for one, need to correct that to:
"welcome our new, censored, creationist-supporting, theocratic 'scientists'".
OK?
Alcaide's Cafe,
Since we all know the world is going to end come Y2k, I see no reason why scientists should be allowed to do anything but cut purple diamonds for public transmigration. Who wants to waste time scientificing?
Don't you mean.. BIZZARO!
You can write in "Micky Mouse" on the ballot if it really struck your fancy.
The trouble is, he won the Congress in 1998.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Until you answer the question of _how_ you propose to save the environment without sacrificing an inch of your (admirable) political ideals you only look like so much of an hypocrit.
I'm not about to say that I know how to fix the environment -- like you actually do. Why so eager to see me sacrifice and give up what I have? Why so quick to call names like hypocrite? Arrogance -- especially since I did not.
Thank you for making my point so eloquently. If those who really wanted to save the environment weren't so eager to people give up "admirable" ideals like freedom... then you could bring a consensus together and get the things done that need to be.
Right now the environment movement is a trojan horse carrying a payload of the worst sort of socialism and statism. Fix that, get the socialist wackos out of the driver's seat, and you can easily get us conservatives to come right along and actually save the earth. But never at the price of liberty.
-- $G
Note how five completely distinct species are discovered every time California attempts to build a power plant, always conveniently existing only in the spot that the plant would occupy. Scientists are no more immune to external agendas than anyone else. That's what the peer review system is for. And "unprecedented" statements are generally incorrect: off the top of my head, Theodore Roosevelt's administration did a lot more "monkeying around with government agencies, especially over environmental concerns" than any current administration could probably accomplish.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Note how five completely distinct species are discovered every time California attempts to build a power plant, always conveniently existing only in the spot that the plant would occupy.
? co ntentid=2759
I take it you can back this up? It's not that I don't trust you, but because ancedotal evidence is the bane of public discourse, to such a degree, so many times have I heard agenda'd, "Did you know?" style factoids that turn out to be false later, that I tend to discount them out-of-hand these days.
I did quickie Google News searches for:
California species "power plant"
California species "power plants"
Neither turned up large numbers of hits (9 for the first, 24 for the second), so I'm afraid if I'm going to believe you you're going to have to provide a link I can follow, or at least the name of an article, that I can get sufficently clued-in by.
Scientists are no more immune to external agendas than anyone else. That's what the peer review system is for.
I dispute this, the scientific process, if accurately followed, works against agendas. That's not to say you receive a free halo and wings when you get your doctorate, and there are certainly junk scientists out there, but the whole point of science is to discover things through observation instead of preconcieved notions.
I think what a lot of conservatives hate is that the views that tend to be held by a lot of scientists might actually have gotten to that place by holding merit, and that the procedures used to erect them are difficult to tear down logically (because science is nothing if not logical). Which may explain why there are so many unusually defensive posts in this discussion.
And "unprecedented" statements are generally incorrect: off the top of my head, Theodore Roosevelt's administration did a lot more "monkeying around with government agencies, especially over environmental concerns" than any current administration could probably accomplish.
1. You have to go that far back for a counter-example?
2. Actually I'm absolutely sure the current administration could do a lot more monkeying around. For starters, there's a lot more agencies that must be monkeyed with.
3. Conservation was less a matter of science back in those days, as demonstrated by the rapid decline of the Passenger Pigeon not long before.
4. In any case, you're going to have to back that up as well I'm afraid. A quicky Google search turned up these sites:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tr/envir.html
(T. Roosevelt as environmentalist.)
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm
(Calls T. Roosevelt the nation's first conservationalist president.)
I wouldn't say those sites do much to support your argument, but maybe you're aware of something I am not; I didn't browse beyond the first page of results.
But you did say you wanted to "save the earth"? It's very easy to talk that talk, but as long as you're no even attempting to walk the walk, you're only so much hot air.
"The ultimate tradegy is not the action of the evil people But the inaction of the
good"
To refuse to take _any_ action to save the earth because there are others whose methods you don't approve of who shares that particular goal, is stupid. The "driver's seat" you talk about doesn't exist per se, it's not a real position held by real people. The "environmental movement" is not a homogenous group whose political opinions or agenda you can label. Some parts of it, sure. Large parts of it, possibly. All of it, no way.
The only way to get the socialist wacko's out of the drivers seat is to refuse them to hold it. The only people who can do that are people like you. The only way you can do that is by actually presenting an alternative set of policies which will achieve the goal of saving the earth without sacrificing your goals.
And in the event that that is impossible, and your political agenda in it's entierty (I refuse you to monopolize words like "freedom") turns out to be impossible to align with saving the earth, you have a problem. I have a hard time to accept the "goodness" of a political agenda which inevitabvly leads to the destruction of our habitable planet. But at the moment this problem is theoretical and you are in the position to change the perception. As long as you and refuse to do anything for reasons that are nothing but a bad excuses, the notion that conservatism and environmental responsibility are mutually exclusive will continue to look increasingly likely. And it's your fault, not the political wacko's.
-
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Or shorter:
"We will step up to the platter and do our part if YOU first stop the wackos"
Which sound like an excuse in the light of the fact that neither I nor anyone else actually CAN stop these wackos in a free country.
-
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
You're assuming every child has the capacity to make use of that education. That's what equal opportunity IS. You give everyone the same opportunity to succeed with the knowledge that, no matter what you do, they're still going to fuck up and throw away any chance of a good future. Don't worry, you'll still have your labor force.
Fourteen incidents in thirty years, precisely one of which resulted in actual damage to either humans or the landscape (two guys got irradiated, both survived). That's a pretty good safety record: it's better than the oil industry, for a start.
~cHris
Actually, the rapture was last Thursday.
Didn't ya'll get the memo?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
I dunno about you, but when you die during "questioning" it isnt because they were making you comfortable.
This has happened and is documented in Gitmo as well as prisions in Afganistan and Iraq.
Even worse, if we have an American citizen who we want tourtured we ship them to some other country who will do the dirty job for us.
America sure is standing for moral values and taking the higer ground in this.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
Bullshit.
Our speniding on "The WAR" isnt even in the budget, it's special additional appropriations. So people like you can go on and on about how little we spend on our defense.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
I think you will find many people are working jsut as hard as the guy you mention. Often they just ahve minimum wage jobs, and it's hard to support a family on that, what to speak of starting a business. IT can happen, but I think your friend had some good luck to end up where he has.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
I think the only problem I would have with this is sometimes the people that the kids get placed with are worse abusers then the bad home they are taken from. Until wwe can fix it and have some system to sniff out the abusers who try to get in, I am hesatent to suggest this as a good course of action.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
That is a fallacy. The fact that worse things have been done does not automatically make any lesser evil acceptable. The fact that people have been brutally murdered does not make it acceptable for me to commit an armed robbery, or even to speed. Those are not -as- bad of things to do, but they are still wrong.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
If one pedestrian got accidentally hit by a car, instead of saying just that, their notion of reporting would have been "People are being run down on the streets of Los Angeles!!"
Incorrect. The corrected analogy reads "If 30% of the pedestrians in Los Angeles got hit by a car, instead of saying just that, their notion of reporting would have been..."
Given that case, even though (in theory) it would be a minority of LA's population, would such a report be sensationalistic? That would be a massive, unprecedented number of people, even though technically a "minority." We're not talking about ONE PERSON here.
Of course, in the case of critical environmental research, it's not acceptable for them to even be pressuring ONE scientist in ONE case to alter findings for political reasons. A systematic abuse such as this is absolutely cause for outrage, and when a third of scientists are under such pressure, calling it a widespread problem is NOT sensationalism. We call cancer a widespread, far-reaching problem, but that doesn't mean over 50% of the US population has cancer.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
You didn't backtrack the thread far enough -- by the time we got to my analogy, we were talking not about the original article, but about sensationalist journalism in general.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Rednecks don't need religion to hate gays. The only reason the outrage was "sudden" was because somebody tried to get laws changed.
Lots of secular people care a great deal about homosexuality when we're talking about creating another group of Americans with differing sets of rights/penalties/privledges.
I think you are hearing what you want to hear when you claim that Bush invokes the Lord's name shamelessly in his speeches.
I just looked at his speech in January. I can only find three occurances of the word "GOD". The first is actually part of a quote from Abraham Lincoln. The second was in a line explaining that the path of freedom lies with the deeds of man. It specifically denies that the actions in Iraq were as a result of some devine directive. And the third reference was in a standard speech closing, "May God bless you and watch over America."
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"