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Santorum Calls Democrats 'Anti-Science'
ndogg writes with news that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has counterattacked those critical of conservative views on science, saying that they're 'anti-science' themselves. From a CBS report:
"In his remarks Monday, Santorum went beyond his usual discussion of the importance of increasing domestic energy production to deliver a blistering attack on environmental activists. He said global warming claims are based on 'phony studies,' and that climate change science is little more than 'political science.' His views are not 'anti-science' as Democrats claim, Santorum said. 'When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones. We are the ones who stand for science, and technology, and using the resources we have to be able to make sure that we have a quality of life in this country and (that we) maintain a good and stable environment,' he said to applause, and cited local ordinances to reduce coal dust pollution in Pittsburgh during the heyday of coal mining."
Santorum Calls Democrats 'Anti-Science'
Not only is he from the party that brought you Intelligent Design, he is the candidate that epitomizes anti-science.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
... how stupid America really is ...
Please don't feed the troll.
Santorum claiming that environmentalists are "anti-science" is like saying anti-rape activists are against sex. What a fucking lunatic, I can't believe this is the best the GOP can come up with. Are they sitting this one out or something?
Both political parties are willing to throw science under the bus when it suits their agendas. The more ideological the wing of the party, the more busses they find driving by.
By the same token, both parties are willing to embrace the infallibility of science, and the certainty of the consensus, when it validates what they already believe.
Science is in good company though; politicians will do the same with the Supreme Court, the Constitution, Religion, or anything else that they can get their hands on.
Santorum's claim to have come "from the coal fields" is a stretch - by two generations. He has never worked in a coal mine. His parents' professions were psychologist and nurse, and Santorum is a lawyer who has spent all of his adult life in politics.
By that measure, I come "from the shipyards of Baltimore." I'll have to remember that if I ever go into politics.
I find this new definition of political science funny. Politicized science is what he meant, I guess. All these fools should just admit that they like science and regulation when it supports their preconceived notions about how the world should work, and when science and regulation contradict those notions, science and regulation are evil.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I like Santorum. He says what modern Republicans are thinking, as wrong as that may be. He does not hide the crazy behind a manufactured persona like Romney. Ron Paul has too many heart felt beliefs that are antithetical to the GOP. Gingrich is a dishonest retread from a previous era, pushing the same failed policies.
But Ricky is a true reflection what Republicans are all about, and proud of it. If there is any justice, Rick will win the nomination where he faithfully campaign for what the GOP believes in.
The bible says that man has dominion over the earth, and it is ours to do with as we please. And it is immutable, so nothing we do can affect God's work:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
What a crock of shit. Santorum's "science" is nothing but avarice and ignorance.
Nothing more will need to be said!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
...considering it's coming from someone whose view of science is something that you believe on faith, ignore inconvenient research, and consider even the slightest doubt or margin of error that an opposing viewpoint has to completely debunk it. It's not science to believe that since you have 100% confidence in your faith-based theory that has no evidence, but you can imagine a miniscule source of error in an opposing theory, that the person with the fewest doubts "wins". But just try telling a "Creation Scientist" that...or someone who believes on faith that there is not any possibility that there is human-caused global climate changed. They hold their views on faith, their minds will not be changed no matter how much evidence they're presented with.
and cited local ordinances to reduce coal dust pollution in Pittsburgh during the heyday of coal mining."
A deregulationist citing the protection from local environmental regulations. That's rich.
The hypocrisy is double because Pittsburg is currently undergoing a massive battle over fracking regulations.
Pittsburg has banned fracking outright and PA Republicans were trying to pass a State law to nullify local regulations.
When that was deemed a politically untenable idea, they switched to a straight-jacket of State level regulations.
Read about it here: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/30/142948831/a-debate-over-who-regulates-gas-fracking-in-penn
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
In other news, the irony meter was destroyed in a freak explosion earlier today.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
It is rumored that if Santorum actually gets the nomination, the GOP will draft Gov. Christie of NJ for the Republican candidate. But he's one cannoli short of a heart attack, so not many will vote for him. Nobody wants Romney, either, because of Romneycare and the whole Mormon thing. And Paul, as much as he may appeal to some people, is one fall away from a hip replacement.
So here's an interesting fact? Jeb Bush and his father showed up at the Whitehouse back on the 27th of January for a long talk. (Oh, to have been a fly on THAT wall.) The other interesting thing is that Jeb's wife, Columba, has made it neuteringly clear that he's not available until 2016.
So! 3 completely unelectable candidates so far as the GOP is concerned. The party favorite-which is why they're sometimes known as the "Waiting For Jeb" party-isn't available either.
I'm going to guess that the "fix" is in, and Obama is going to be president for another term. Then after that, we'll have another Bush in the Whitehouse. So everything that's happening in this "election" is just a dog & pony show, just as it's always been.
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Eh? A popular GOP politician, possibly the party's presidential candidate, make an absurd comment about science. Hence, it belongs on slashdot. You know, news for nerds and stuff that matters?
I'm sure many here would dread Santorum getting in to the whitehouse based on his science cred alone. That makes it somewhat relevant.
( beck is a nut, btw. If you can't see the distinction between slashdot and beck...well, you might be standing too close to that particular fire )
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
It's good to see a heavyweight intellectual like Rick Santorum weighing in on a complex environmental question. I think we can call "problem solved" on this one.
Somebody ought to ask Rick about global overpopulation. I bet he could solve that problem too! He'll just say "It's God's will. There's no overpopulation." Another problem solved.
Maybe Rick can solve all our complicated problems for us--so we don't have to think at all!!
To begin: I would like to hear Santorum's definition of "science". How would he describe science, its methods, and its purpose? That should be good for a few yuks.
His opinion might fit perfectly with his understanding of science.
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
The Laffer curve is a theoretical idea. The data does not back it (or at least a very weak correlation). I looked at multiple Keynes-like stimuluses by inspecting the unemployment numbers with my own eyes, and stimuluses appear to help more often than not. There is usually a bulge of improvement within about 4 months after the stimulus starts to flow that lasts until about a year after the stimulus ends. If Laffer works, show us the data.
Table-ized A.I.
Calling someone "anti-science" because they advise restraint when using up natural resources and changing the environment, is like calling someone "anti-capitalist" if they refuse to spend all their money and go into debt.
Huh...I think I just figured out Republican fiscal policy.
Everyone, listen. I can explain this, as I have a degree in "political science". Through careful observation of the political cycle, we have learned that there is a percentage of the voting populace who know very little, who get confused by information, but have mutated to hold a few beliefs very, very, strongly. They have adapted from being ignored by the majority of Americans, who don't hold those single beliefs as strongly. At each extreme of each party, these single belief mutants compensate by participating very early in the election cycle, to try to kill off the common sense bearing candidates, much as a new male lion kills off the progeny of the previous pride leader. As the common sense candidates are killed off by filicide earlier and earlier in the caucus cycle, the remaining candidates evolve to express the same strong opinions of the early influencers. The majority responds by electing the opposite party (House ore Senate) from the executive party in order to balance out the risk of extreme legislation taking place. Some candidates try to survive the cull by camouflaging their beliefs (flip flopping), or allowing their own core beliefs to evolve very rapidly to meet the polling environment. It's all normal, move along, nothing to see here.
Gently reply
With all of these politicians, I'm never sure if they actually are so ignorant to reject science out of hand, or if they are so self-serving that they simply lie about what they actually believe in order to win votes from people who really are ignorant. I tend to think it's the latter, and that that is more despicable.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Democrats don't deny the Laffer curve, we deny the claim by Republicans that we're on the right side of the curve. I would actually say that Republicans don't seem to believe in the Laffer curve - it seems more like they believe in a straight line where tax revenue increases whenever you lower taxes, no matter where you're currently at. Why do I say that? Because Republicans are constantly complaining about wanting to lower taxes, but by historical standards, the US currently has one of the lowest tax rates of the past 80 years.
Any failing system can be made to look like a success by spending money just as a stone can be made to fly by throwing it in the air.
When the stone strikes earth you'll just say I didn't throw it hard enough... for the purposes of ideology lets ignore orbit... which isn't flying anyway.
Try it... find a crack head... an actual crack head... ideally he should be in withdraw but not cleaning himself up. Just shivvering and the picture of a human mess.
Then give him a billion dollars to start an industrial concern. People will get employed. There will be activity.
But there will also be a strong burn rate. And at some point he'll have eaten through that billion dollars. At which point the activity will slack of.
Solution?
Give him more money, right? Rinse repeat.
The japanese did a similar thing in the 90s by pumping cheap credit into failed japanese businesses. They were called the Zombie corporations because they were dead but kept alive by the debt. People like you, argued that if they were just given enough money they'd come back to life. They never did. Japan went through a prolonged recession for no reason.
You base your position on the post WW2 growth of the US economy and basically nothing else. What you ignore is that europe and asia were destroyed by that war where as the US was not. So why did the US enjoy decades of undisputed trade dominance? BECAUSE WE BLEW UP EVERYONE ELSE"S FACTORIES!!! It's kind of obvious isn't it?
You can run up all the debt you like, the chinese will still be there eating your margins. If you want to repeat the post WW2 economy then you're going to need to blow up china's factories. Game for WW3?
No? Then maybe we should try something else that also works.
I don't think you'll do it... because you're ideological and your ideology simply doesn't believe in these things. But the universe doesn't care what you believe... it is what it is...
Cheers.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Nobody on the left has a bold scientific vision
The left? I thought you were talking about Democrats?
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Whatever the bible says about life, the universe, and everything, it is most assuredly NOT a theory in the true scientific sense. It a mix of myths and goatherder tales and is no different in that regard than creation myths from native americans, the incas, or any other religion.
I take a more extreme view of faith as a form of solipsism. If you fully separate faith from science, faith becomes an entirely personal matter: you can only gain faith by some kind of mysterious internal light inaccessible to the methods of science. OK, fine. From this view there's no reason not to believe that God created the universe five minutes ago, exactly as we recall it to have been five minutes ago, replete with another 13.7 billion years of back story (which can be boiled down rather succinctly to the big bang, QED, and self-organizing primordial goo--for which the exact mechanism in the last case remain a trifle mysterious). For some reason, God loves the evolutionary back story. No creation is complete without one. Either way, evolution is the minimum description length account of what we observe as the history of the universe in rocks and oceans and nebulae. This is true whether or not evolution actually happened. Even if God created the earth and human kind a mere 10,000 years ago evolution is still the minimum description of what we observe in the fossil record and the genetic heritage of life (an exploding data set which poses a looming and insurmountable challenge to 10,000 year literalism).
If you feel the illumination of faith from within, you can show it by how you choose to live. If you inner glow so moves you, you can reflect honour on the divine creator by living your life to a high moral standard however you perceive this.
Where I tend to draw the line is when two people get together who each feel an inner glow, who then compare notes and decide that they believe in the same divine spirit. This consensus is not achieved through a scientific process. Faith is not amenable to science. How do you really know you believe in the same deity as anyone else?
Here's how the slight of hand works in organized religion. You posit a sacred text, and then attribute authorship of the sacred text to a unique and singular deity. Yesterday's TED talk on the Cyrus Cylinder shows the Book of Isaiah attributing to Jehovah what had previously been attributed to the Babylonian god Marduk. One story, multiple originating deities. Fancy that.
I have a lot of problems when a group of 100 million people go around absolutely secure in the belief that they feel within themselves a sliver of the same divine flame, when most of them can't even agree on the right way to tie your shoe.
Santorum, to his credit, is not so secure: he views the Democrats as hewing to the wrong Christian god. Now let's repeat this bisection step until every believer is a faith until himself or herself. Faith as a personal matter. Wonderful.
I have no real problem with faith, but I have a deep problem with the aggregation of faith. Let's suppose Obama believes that he and Santorum both believe in the same god, but Santorum disputes this. How is such a discrepancy resolved? Remember, you can't use science. Faith is not amenable to science (or it wouldn't be faith). I guess you need a prophet of especially reliable connection to the Big One. Shades of Russell's type theory. And we agree on the nature of this prophet exactly how? Are we back to the aggregation of unique inner glows? I thought so.
There's no conflict between science and faith as such, but there is a conflict between science and the aggregation of faith (for some reason, faith tends to aggregate along racial lines, and never takes the last critical step to one world religion).
Message to Santorum: if you want to dis-aggregate the Christian granfalloon, by all means fill your boots.
start his comments in the subject line and end them in the comment block.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
You have absolutely no idea how your comments shows you to be not just extreme left, but idiotically extreme left, do you?
You remind me of a girl I knew who thought that GWB was going to declare martial law to prevent his leaving office and had nightmares that she was going to be taken aside in an airport, tortured, and sexually assaulted because she wrote a blog post.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
No, it didn't work. Look, I have no problem with pumping a little money in to get an engine to turn over... the spark plug that fires the engine is fine.
But this isn't a spark plug issue... you're spending good money to fund systems that are running at a net loss.
it's like those fusion energy projects where they pour 10 megawatts of power into some chamber to get a self sustaining fusion reaction going. That's fine as a experiment. hell, maybe they'll get it working some day. But it isn't something you could use to actually power the grid.
Why? Because the net output from those reactors is always something like 9.5 megawatts... about .5 megawatts less then was put into them.
Look at your stimulus programs and see how much money was put in and how many jobs were saved.
In one estimate it was over 500,000 thousand PER JOB. In most cases it would have been more efficient to simply give each of those people half a million dollars.
Worse, it isn't even Keynesian. Keynesian economics requires that the stimulus money go to NEW and UNPLANNED projects that wouldn't have happened at all with or without the recession.
So for example, if you sent a manned mission to mars that would be Keynesian because it wasn't something we were going to do. But instead most of the money went to state budgets to retain EXISTING workers or to pay for projects that were ALREADY going to happen such as paving roads.
That isn't Keynesian. That's just a bailout with no particular plan. If you want a Keynesian stimulus package then you need to fund totally new projects and hire people that are NOT CURRENTLY EMPLOYED. You have to hire as many unemployed workers as possible.
Even a new war would be more Keynesian then what Obama did. Just pick some random country and attack it. Recruit a million people into the army... and have fun.
that was Keynes's argument. Your belief that you can just make everything work by throwing money at it isn't even Keynesian... it's just irresponsible.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm not quite sure what your point is. Net efficiency isn't the primary goal: it's too help people get and retain jobs during difficult times.
Your viewpoint seems like it would be better to let a person suffer with a broken arm for another 3 hours because a cheaper shipment of arm splints is coming in 3 hours.
Put another way, $75 during bad times is often much more "useful" than $100 during good times. You are thinking like an engineer here instead of factoring in human emotions and suffering.
A future generation may have a smaller party during future boom-times because of a stimulus, and to me that's a worthwhile trade-off.
Those are the high-end side of estimates. And in part that's what Obama actually did by lengthening unemployment benefits, which the GOP complained about. Multiple techniques were used to avoid mucking up any one sector.
Table-ized A.I.
Who cares what the bible has to say?
Actually, a whole bunch of people here brought it up. God forbid that someone actually defends themselves. Seriously, how long do you expect to call someone an idiot before someone tries to set the record straight.
So what do you do? You try to belittle the guy. You are an asshole trying to be a bully.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The Republicans held a gun to the country's head, in the form of forcing a default if they didn't get their way, and demanded trillions of dollars in budget cuts or else!. And so the budget gets cut, and you blame Obama. What a gullible fool you are.
They generally think they're shrinking government and giving the economy a chance to grow.
The problem is, the're DEAD WRONG!
By refusing to either (a) collect revenues that cover the government's obligations, or (b) do the hard work to convince anyone to actually reduce those obligations, they sentence this nation to drown in a vast pit of debt.
Idiots.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And King Canute led the court to the sea, commanded the tide to turn back and it did not. He then turned to the onlookers and said what could be translated into modern terms as "can you stupid fuckers see now that you can't do everything just by talking about it?"
It's depressing that the "we can define our own reality" bullshit has crept in so far. The only way to directly change physical things is to do physical things
As would Orwell.
Attack your opponent with what your opponent should be attacking you on.
Turn the truth and the meanings of words completely around.
It goes so far beyond lying that I'm not sure that there's a word for it outside of a Newspeak dictioary.
Check your premises.
And quite often, when covering the US elections, the reporter finds a homeless person waving a flag for a Republican candidate who wants to use the homeless for fuel. There are an amazingly high number of dumb people among the poor and dumb people really believe it that THEY can make it rich someday... quite why when you are rich you need to worry about a few millions more or less in taxes is beyond me (and also beyond a rich guy like Buffet) but the poor believe it. There is an incredibly large group who believes that a certain politician making more then 100k a year is ready for the poor house if his taxes go up a bit.
Voters are dumb. There is a reason the people who introduced democracy never intended for everyone to be a voter. Not the Greeks and not the Americans. Votes were once restricted to people who could at least be presumed to have more then two braincells to rub together. In modern times... well that homeless guy can vote...
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Oh, by "we" I meant the allies collectively. But if you like... the war did it.
Point is that the US had a vast industrial base that was untouched by the war. The only large industrial base in the world that was intact. So why did our business boom? Gee... well, they weren't going to buy from the germans because they were smashed and/or now Soviet citizens. They weren't going to buy from the Japanese as you pointed out... because we nuked them. The Germans pretty much took care of the English industrial base. To say nothing of all the little rebellions and collapses in the old European imperiums... both England and France lost much of their imperial holdings as a result of the war and that meant that resources that once flowed to europe flowed instead to anyone offering the best price. At the time, that was often the US since we could actually do something with it... turn it into a product... etc.
I really hope the US isn't nostalgic for the post war era. It sounds like a lot of people are... or look back to it as an example. It was a nice time for the US but it was made possible in large part by everyone else having their industrial base wiped out.
It's sort of like shooting everyone in the knee or if you prefer "someone" shooting everyone in the knee... except you... and then patting yourself on the back for beating them all in sprint races.
I suppose we could have "someone" shoot everyone else in the knees again... Probably would help US industry out...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Most anti-global warming folks I know don't deny the existence of warming. They oppose the consensus in some subset of the following ways:
1. Warming is happening, but rather than it being caused entirely by human activity it's at least partly the result of natural processes.
2. Projections of future temperatures are much less reliable than currently thought.
3. Projections of the negative effects of potential future temperature increases are exaggerated.
4. Efforts currently being discussed to curb the activities alleged to contribute to warming would be spectacularly expensive.
5. Efforts currently being discussed to curb the activities alleged to contribute to warming would be only minimally effective at achieving that goal.
6. Warming is happening and is caused at least in part by human activity but given #3-5 above it would actually cause more human suffering to curb the activities alleged to contribute to warming than it would to continue with the status quo.
Besides: is it really much worse to deny the existence of a thing than to insist on the existence of something which, in fact, does not exist?