ad the landing been faked, Russia absolutely would have known; they would have distributed the proof far and wide to humiliate and one-up the Americans.
That's a very good point. While we don't have objective evidence, I think it's more than reasonable to expect they would have done exactly that.
When I trust it means I believe I know how something or someone will act - not that they/it are "on my side", just that I "believe" they are predictable. And yes - I have trouble determining what is currently a fact, and I suspect the few things I "completely trust" are the result of insufficient thought.
Good point. Trust doesn't necessarily mean they're "on your side", but can be "trusted" to act in a certain way... and often because it's in their own best interest.
Links 1 and 2 are to the same Twitter exchange, which has no comment by me about fraud except a mention that someone else had said fraud. No accusation of fraud by me, anywhere.
I stated Gavin Schmidt makes alarmist comments, but I certainly did not accuse him of fraud, or anyone else there.
Link 3 is more of the same... I quoted someone else who claimed there was some fraud, but I certainly did NOT say it myself... I didn't even say that I agreed with the fraud claim.
But don't worry, your "neither confirm nor deny that's me" trick still works just as well as it did for that kid hiding behind a pole. Or keep trying to pretend that your comments and tweets aren't littered with similar accusations of hoax/scam/dishonesty/etc.
Since you accused me of accusing others of fraud, but none of your three examples shows me calling ANYONE a fraud, I consider your public accusation to be libel. No tricks here, just the truth.
Maybe you ought to be careful who YOU accuse of doing things, eh?
They had the choice at the time the skill was dying out to recognize that it WAS still relevant and to make sure it propagated to the next generation
WHOOSH...
I already discussed this. You call it a "choice" but it really isn't... when you don't have a written language.
but they failed to see the coming crisis (gee, we don't actually know how to make these 'lighter' things and who knows when we'll get a new one) and so let the opportunity to head off losing fire as a tool pass them by.
No. You missed a big point of what I was saying. That was an example of how skills are not re-discovered so easily. It wasn't an example of how skills are typically lost. It often takes many generations from the time a skill is no longer needed until it's completely gone. So it ISN'T a "choice" being made by any particular group of people.
But of course we have books so we might not necessarily starve. So... do you even read the things you're replying to? I already covered those points.
Did your grandfather bother to teach you how to raise wheat or cattle? How to use a leather strop, or to cut stone or fell a tree without getting your head knocked off or back broken? Or to ride a horse, or build a timber-frame house?
If you live in a city, probably not. Guess what... those "choices", as you put it, could endanger you if city society broke down or some other other disaster came along. I guess we can blame you for that, should it ever arise, eh? Or maybe your grandfather would to "blame" for choosing to leave you to an untimely death?
I'll repeat: skills, once lost, are not regained by magic. People didn't automatically know how to change their lifestyles for the better, and skills, once lost, take time to develop... often many generations.
Your comment was perfectly clear, and I understand it just fine. But it's strange that it is written in a way that suggests you didn't actually think about a single thing I wrote.
Splitting up the responsibility seems like it would be infinitely more logical.
It seems to have escaped a lot of people here that regardless of what they think about his personality, he has done a great job of maintaining that kernel. I doubt most others have quite the same aptitude.
You're forgetting the context of GP comment I was replying to:
The NSA doesn't need a backdoor to hack US government databases. They have access to all that data anyway.
No, they don't.
Further, unless I am mistaken, your point is moot because the operation of the CIA that was hacking Congress... the one that was charged with spying on foreign embassies, etc.... is a joint operation with NSA.
That was the whole damned point of TFA! The human brain isn't equipped to deal with those sorts of problems until it is too late to actually prevent the problem.
No, it wasn't. Not even close. Try reading my comment again.
I was discussing "irrelevant" skills lost with time. When a group no longer needs a skill, it ceases to be taught, and gets lost. It takes a great deal of time and effort to re-gain that skill, which (depending on the particular skill) was probably developed over many generations. That isn't a cognitive failure; it's a consequence of not having the old knowledge written down in books.
That's nothing even remotely similar to the point of TFA. In fact, it contradicts TFA, because it implies that those primitive societies did not actually have a "choice".
By accident? You mean those in his list of names who actually did turn out to be Russian spies were just pulled at random out of the phonebook?
Your assertion about seemingly changed loyalties is circumstantial evidence only, and requires a lot of knowledge about an individual.
I didn't claim he was 100% accurate, or even anything close. He was certainly rabidly anti-Communist and got a lot of things wrong. But he was "vindicated" in that there WERE, in fact, Soviet spies in, and employed by, the US government at the time. And he named some of them.
The early books about "McCarthyism" actually got much of it wrong. No much blame to be laid, there, though, because they didn't have any evidence that he was right. The documented evidence about many of the named people did not surface until many years later.
He was right? So General Marshall was a Russian spy too? Charlie Chaplain?
He was right that there were Russian spies in, or employed by, the U.S. Government.
I didn't say he was perfect. But you claimed there were none, which is simply false. There were actually quite a lot of them as the Vernona project (intercepted Russian communications) confirmed, and many of them were people Joseph McCarthy had named in his list.
If we really "trusted nobody", then nobody would ever build another electronic device. Heck, we'd have to pretty much destroy all of them we've got in use already.
No. You're conflating two different ideas: deciding to take a calculated risk, vs trust. They are not the same things.
When you trust, you are assuming the other party is "on your side".
The CIA is US Intelligence, just as I said. It even has "intelligence" in its name. Maybe you meant your comment specifically about the NSA, but what applies to the CIA pretty much applies to them too.
And yes, Congress and members of Congress do have databases. And email archives. And other records.
If you would like to read more about the people McCarthy did in fact identify as spies (or Communist sympathizers), such as Annie Lee Moss, then you should research the Venona project, which gathered intelligence from the Russians. Among other things, they discovered that the Communist Party of the USA (in the McCarthy era) was "completely controlled by Moscow".
So, while popular books in past decades almost universally vilified McCarthy as a demagogue who was "just wrong", more recent historical research actually vindicates him. Surprise!
To be correct the spies would have had to be who he said they were instead of just the targets he picked to progress his political ambitions - thus he was WRONG.
Mary Jane Keeney, among actually a great many others. McCarthy singled her out himself, and her own diary proved that she was a spy for the Soviets. There are many other such examples I could list here if I wanted to take the time. Annie Lee Moss, who worked at the Pentagon, turned out to be a member of the Communist Party.
Many years later, "liberated" Russian records confirmed McCarthy's suspicions about others.
So no, McCarthy was not "wrong". Yes, there were Russian spies, and it's a matter of public record.
About the man himself, I have no opinion. He might have been an asshole. But I don't "support him out of loyalty to the party", because I'm not "supporting" him at all, nor am I even a member of his party.
I was just commenting that he did, in fact, turn out to be right. Whatever party he was in, and whatever else you may think of him.
To put it a different way: not teaching about other lifestyles probably WAS a choice... many previous generations back. When the problems actually arose, the knowledge was long gone. You don't get to blame the extant generation for something done by their many-times forefathers. The generation(s) facing the actual problem weren't "choosing" not to change. They didn't know how.
That S. American tribe certainly did have a choice.
Of course they did. But that's a completely separate issue. The point I was making was that isolated groups don't have access to outside technology and lifestyles... they probably DIDN'T know how to adapt, so continuing their lifestyle wasn't a "choice".
The bit about the S. American tribe was to illustrate how adaptive technologies are quickly lost once they're no longer needed... and once they're lost, they're lost. Without outside influence, they must be re-discovered, which can take a great deal of time.
The Easter Islanders had probably lost any knowledge of other ways of life many generations before their ecosystem was stressed.
Um, no. Don't you remember the revelation about US Intelligence spying on Congress? Intelligences doesn't (or at least isn't supposed to) have access to all databases.
That they were unable to read the clear signs that their future was limited is the POINT of TFA.
No, a large part of TFA's point was that it was a conscious CHOICE. However, there isn't any real evidence of that. It's merely assumption, and probably bad assumption.
If you don't know of, or understand, alternatives then you aren't making an informed "choice". They may have been fully aware of the fact that their food sources or habitat were being destroyed, but not known of any viable alternatives to their traditional lifestyle.
We see it all the time! For example, see Ray Mears' documentaries on primitive cultures and how in only about 1.5 generations, a S. American tribe UNlearned how to make fire without a Bic lighter. In exchange for their hospitality, HE taught THEM how to make fire in the bush using a fire drill.
No, TFA's discussion of historical "examples" appears to be made up from thin air.
Sadly, historians have been saying in the last decade or so that McCarthy was actually right.
That is to say, his motives and methods might have been overboard, but there were in fact "Communists" and Communist sympathizers in most levels of government. Several books have been written about it, complete with historical evidence.
I put "Communists" in quotes because that's what they called themselves, but they were really Socialists. They may have used the Communist name but there has never been a Communist society or economic system in the history of the world. Just bad Socialists.
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ad the landing been faked, Russia absolutely would have known; they would have distributed the proof far and wide to humiliate and one-up the Americans.
That's a very good point. While we don't have objective evidence, I think it's more than reasonable to expect they would have done exactly that.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Indeed, it is obvious that someone does not care about language. Whom shall we say it is?
... And here's one of those photographs.
And here is more corroboration.
Of course he's not suggesting that.
Here's what's completely ridiculous about the whole "fake Moon landing" thing:
In 1969, "special effects" that were convincing enough to have faked the whole thing would probably have cost more than 2 whole trips to the moon.
Besides... the site has been photographed from orbit repeatedly since.
When I trust it means I believe I know how something or someone will act - not that they/it are "on my side", just that I "believe" they are predictable. And yes - I have trouble determining what is currently a fact, and I suspect the few things I "completely trust" are the result of insufficient thought.
Good point. Trust doesn't necessarily mean they're "on your side", but can be "trusted" to act in a certain way... and often because it's in their own best interest.
Links 1 and 2 are to the same Twitter exchange, which has no comment by me about fraud except a mention that someone else had said fraud. No accusation of fraud by me, anywhere.
I stated Gavin Schmidt makes alarmist comments, but I certainly did not accuse him of fraud, or anyone else there.
Link 3 is more of the same... I quoted someone else who claimed there was some fraud, but I certainly did NOT say it myself... I didn't even say that I agreed with the fraud claim.
But don't worry, your "neither confirm nor deny that's me" trick still works just as well as it did for that kid hiding behind a pole. Or keep trying to pretend that your comments and tweets aren't littered with similar accusations of hoax/scam/dishonesty/etc.
Since you accused me of accusing others of fraud, but none of your three examples shows me calling ANYONE a fraud, I consider your public accusation to be libel. No tricks here, just the truth.
Maybe you ought to be careful who YOU accuse of doing things, eh?
They had the choice at the time the skill was dying out to recognize that it WAS still relevant and to make sure it propagated to the next generation
WHOOSH...
I already discussed this. You call it a "choice" but it really isn't... when you don't have a written language.
but they failed to see the coming crisis (gee, we don't actually know how to make these 'lighter' things and who knows when we'll get a new one) and so let the opportunity to head off losing fire as a tool pass them by.
No. You missed a big point of what I was saying. That was an example of how skills are not re-discovered so easily. It wasn't an example of how skills are typically lost. It often takes many generations from the time a skill is no longer needed until it's completely gone. So it ISN'T a "choice" being made by any particular group of people.
But of course we have books so we might not necessarily starve. So... do you even read the things you're replying to? I already covered those points.
Did your grandfather bother to teach you how to raise wheat or cattle? How to use a leather strop, or to cut stone or fell a tree without getting your head knocked off or back broken? Or to ride a horse, or build a timber-frame house?
If you live in a city, probably not. Guess what... those "choices", as you put it, could endanger you if city society broke down or some other other disaster came along. I guess we can blame you for that, should it ever arise, eh? Or maybe your grandfather would to "blame" for choosing to leave you to an untimely death?
I'll repeat: skills, once lost, are not regained by magic. People didn't automatically know how to change their lifestyles for the better, and skills, once lost, take time to develop... often many generations.
Your comment was perfectly clear, and I understand it just fine. But it's strange that it is written in a way that suggests you didn't actually think about a single thing I wrote.
Why do you insist on accusing scientists of fraud? What is your purpose? It certainly isn't a friendly purpose. That much is obvious.
Remind us all again: who did I accuse of "fraud"? What were my exact words, and in what context?
Splitting up the responsibility seems like it would be infinitely more logical.
It seems to have escaped a lot of people here that regardless of what they think about his personality, he has done a great job of maintaining that kernel. I doubt most others have quite the same aptitude.
The NSA doesn't need a backdoor to hack US government databases. They have access to all that data anyway.
No, they don't.
... is a joint operation with NSA.
Further, unless I am mistaken, your point is moot because the operation of the CIA that was hacking Congress... the one that was charged with spying on foreign embassies, etc.
So I think you're nitpicking a bit too much.
That was the whole damned point of TFA! The human brain isn't equipped to deal with those sorts of problems until it is too late to actually prevent the problem.
No, it wasn't. Not even close. Try reading my comment again.
I was discussing "irrelevant" skills lost with time. When a group no longer needs a skill, it ceases to be taught, and gets lost. It takes a great deal of time and effort to re-gain that skill, which (depending on the particular skill) was probably developed over many generations. That isn't a cognitive failure; it's a consequence of not having the old knowledge written down in books.
That's nothing even remotely similar to the point of TFA. In fact, it contradicts TFA, because it implies that those primitive societies did not actually have a "choice".
Why do you insist on doing this? What is your purpose?
It certainly isn't a friendly purpose. That much is obvious.
McCarthy was correct pretty much by accident.
By accident? You mean those in his list of names who actually did turn out to be Russian spies were just pulled at random out of the phonebook?
Your assertion about seemingly changed loyalties is circumstantial evidence only, and requires a lot of knowledge about an individual.
I didn't claim he was 100% accurate, or even anything close. He was certainly rabidly anti-Communist and got a lot of things wrong. But he was "vindicated" in that there WERE, in fact, Soviet spies in, and employed by, the US government at the time. And he named some of them.
The early books about "McCarthyism" actually got much of it wrong. No much blame to be laid, there, though, because they didn't have any evidence that he was right. The documented evidence about many of the named people did not surface until many years later.
He was right? So General Marshall was a Russian spy too? Charlie Chaplain?
He was right that there were Russian spies in, or employed by, the U.S. Government.
I didn't say he was perfect. But you claimed there were none, which is simply false. There were actually quite a lot of them as the Vernona project (intercepted Russian communications) confirmed, and many of them were people Joseph McCarthy had named in his list.
If we really "trusted nobody", then nobody would ever build another electronic device. Heck, we'd have to pretty much destroy all of them we've got in use already.
No. You're conflating two different ideas: deciding to take a calculated risk, vs trust. They are not the same things.
When you trust, you are assuming the other party is "on your side".
Yep, that's what almost every library does, and for that very reason.
Back then, it wasn't a common practice. It was a pretty radical idea. The city even had a meeting to discuss dismissing her.
Besides, that was the CIA -- not the NSA.
The CIA is US Intelligence, just as I said. It even has "intelligence" in its name. Maybe you meant your comment specifically about the NSA, but what applies to the CIA pretty much applies to them too.
And yes, Congress and members of Congress do have databases. And email archives. And other records.
If you would like to read more about the people McCarthy did in fact identify as spies (or Communist sympathizers), such as Annie Lee Moss, then you should research the Venona project, which gathered intelligence from the Russians. Among other things, they discovered that the Communist Party of the USA (in the McCarthy era) was "completely controlled by Moscow".
So, while popular books in past decades almost universally vilified McCarthy as a demagogue who was "just wrong", more recent historical research actually vindicates him. Surprise!
To be correct the spies would have had to be who he said they were instead of just the targets he picked to progress his political ambitions - thus he was WRONG.
Mary Jane Keeney, among actually a great many others. McCarthy singled her out himself, and her own diary proved that she was a spy for the Soviets. There are many other such examples I could list here if I wanted to take the time. Annie Lee Moss, who worked at the Pentagon, turned out to be a member of the Communist Party.
Many years later, "liberated" Russian records confirmed McCarthy's suspicions about others.
So no, McCarthy was not "wrong". Yes, there were Russian spies, and it's a matter of public record.
About the man himself, I have no opinion. He might have been an asshole. But I don't "support him out of loyalty to the party", because I'm not "supporting" him at all, nor am I even a member of his party.
I was just commenting that he did, in fact, turn out to be right. Whatever party he was in, and whatever else you may think of him.
To put it a different way: not teaching about other lifestyles probably WAS a choice... many previous generations back. When the problems actually arose, the knowledge was long gone. You don't get to blame the extant generation for something done by their many-times forefathers. The generation(s) facing the actual problem weren't "choosing" not to change. They didn't know how.
That S. American tribe certainly did have a choice.
Of course they did. But that's a completely separate issue. The point I was making was that isolated groups don't have access to outside technology and lifestyles... they probably DIDN'T know how to adapt, so continuing their lifestyle wasn't a "choice".
The bit about the S. American tribe was to illustrate how adaptive technologies are quickly lost once they're no longer needed... and once they're lost, they're lost. Without outside influence, they must be re-discovered, which can take a great deal of time.
The Easter Islanders had probably lost any knowledge of other ways of life many generations before their ecosystem was stressed.
Or, here, you get to pay $500 for the minimum 20 down 5 up "business" connection.
AND, they won't even rent you a fixed IP without one.
Um, no. Don't you remember the revelation about US Intelligence spying on Congress? Intelligences doesn't (or at least isn't supposed to) have access to all databases.
That they were unable to read the clear signs that their future was limited is the POINT of TFA.
No, a large part of TFA's point was that it was a conscious CHOICE. However, there isn't any real evidence of that. It's merely assumption, and probably bad assumption.
If you don't know of, or understand, alternatives then you aren't making an informed "choice". They may have been fully aware of the fact that their food sources or habitat were being destroyed, but not known of any viable alternatives to their traditional lifestyle.
We see it all the time! For example, see Ray Mears' documentaries on primitive cultures and how in only about 1.5 generations, a S. American tribe UNlearned how to make fire without a Bic lighter. In exchange for their hospitality, HE taught THEM how to make fire in the bush using a fire drill.
No, TFA's discussion of historical "examples" appears to be made up from thin air.
Sadly, historians have been saying in the last decade or so that McCarthy was actually right.
That is to say, his motives and methods might have been overboard, but there were in fact "Communists" and Communist sympathizers in most levels of government. Several books have been written about it, complete with historical evidence.
I put "Communists" in quotes because that's what they called themselves, but they were really Socialists. They may have used the Communist name but there has never been a Communist society or economic system in the history of the world. Just bad Socialists.