"take a look at death rates in the USA compared to countries with stricter gun control some time"
What's wrong with your argument is that it just seems so logical and obvious, that it MUST be true... and that is why it is so insidious. The problem is that as logical and obvious as it seems... it just isn't true. We now have close to 50 years of numbers surrounding various kinds of gun control in different areas all over the United States... and it just doesn't work.
Some years ago, Gary Kleck and John Lock, two liberal university students, undertook to do a study that would prove the "obvious": that more guns mean more death, and that gun control MUST work, because it's so logical. Fewer guns equal fewer shootings.
They gathered the most reliable statistics they could find from police departments all over the United States, and the Federal government as well.
When they completed their study, the results stunned them. Then they both went out and joined the NRA. (It's true, they did.)
That is still the largest and most comprehensive studies that has ever been done. Other studies have also been done since, in an attempt to disprove their findings... without success. And in the time since then, the statistics supporting private ownership of guns have gotten even better, not worse.
Gary Kleck is now a university professor in Florida, and he is still a liberal. When asked about gun control, however, he says "You can't argue with the facts."
John Lock continues to study and write about the subject.
"take a look at death rates in the USA compared to countries with stricter gun control some time"
You can PROVE what I told you yourself, "moron", by simply going to the Department of Justice's website and looking at the statistics.
The United States has been experimenting with one or another form of "gun control" now for many decades, and we have PROOF that it just doesn't work. This is not in dispute. The government's OWN figures demonstrate it very clearly.
That's because like most Americans, you probably don't understand the whole process very well. I have been studying American history for years now, in part because there is LOTS of important history that they just don't teach in public school.
"it's not freedom from the feds, it's just another form that can screw up and hurt the individual"
It *IS* "freedom from the feds". And no, the States CAN'T screw up just as badly, because they are closer to the people they serve. Sure some states will make mistakes, but they will see that other states are doing better because they didn't make the same mistakes, and they will correct themselves.
"you agree with me"
I agree with you if you were referring to the amendment process. But that's not what most people mean when they say the Constitution is a "living document". Usually what people mean when they say that, is that it is okay to "interpret" it in ways that are different from the original meaning.
As for federal vs state:
"Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste. --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Gideon Granger, 1800.
"guns in america result in just a lot of senseless death"
Absolute balderdash. The American Government's own statistics prove this to be false. The areas in America that have more guns suffer less crime, especially violent crime.
Further, over the last 20+ years, the crime rate in America has plummeted, while over the same period, per-capita gun ownership has gone UP!
"and if fascism comes to america, it won't be idiots in the countryside with guns saving us from it, they will be at the vanguard of the fascist takeover of our country, "
That would be quite impossible. Do you even know what fascism is? Do you know who Mussolini was?
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini.
Sorry, but a "corporate state" is NOT going to come from rural America.
"the safeguards of our democracy is civilized discourse"
Hahaha! Yeah, look at what all this "civilized discourse" has done to your Constitution rights over the last 12 years. What a laugh.
"you need more economic facts and less economic myths"
THAT much is true... but they aren't coming from you. And economic facts haven't been coming from our current government either. Nor (and this is easy to prove) have our economic problems been caused by Paul and people like him, for the simple reason that their ideas have not been followed by anybody in officialdom.
I just really have to wonder... how can you honestly blame our problems on people who are provably not responsible for them? That makes about as much sense as... well, as the rest of the things you have been saying.
"That is a nightmarish amount of fallacy for a single statement."
While I would tend to agree with you, I don't think saying so will do any good. I have tried to talk sense to that person before and it was like talking to a wall.
Although I see something below. I am tempted to try again anyway.
"... the constitution is a living breathing contract with the american people that should change over time..."
NO, it isn't, nor should it be.
There *IS* a way to change the Constitution, and that is called the Amendment process. Other than that, its meaning has not changed, despite power-grabs but the Supreme Court. Our Founders warned us against that very thing. (See Madison's Report of 1800.)
Another example:
"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." -- James Wilson
You can't just "interpret" a law to mean anything you feel like at the time. This defeats the entire purpose of having a law in the first place. If you can change it today, then somebody else can change it tomorrow, and it is pretty much guaranteed you won't like the result.
There is no such thing as a "living document" in law. It just doesn't happen. They don't exist.
If you want to change the Constitution, amend it, or get off the pot. The Supreme Court itself has not been immune to corruption in this regard (again, see Madison's Report). This is the entire basis for State nullification.
"Actually the replacement is not necessary so you are arguing a point that was never mentioned (very intentionally). The founding fathers had things thought out remarkably well. The US Government does not need to be remade in to something else, we simply need to revert back to our constitution and dismantle the executive orders and illegal acts that have been passed."
I agree with nearly all of what you say. Just a couple of minor quibbles:
"People claim to want it fixed, yet absolutely nothing is done to fix the problem. NAFTA has been expanded, even though it harms the economy. People then tend to fall back to "you are just a protectionist" argument... "
Arguably, GATT is considerably more harmful than NAFTA, although I believe they have both had a pretty solid negative impact.
Citizens supported these measures because they were supposed to bring "fair" trade... but there is nothing "fair" about them. In general, they guarantee the US a dis-advantage when trading with unequal economies. It isn't a level playing field, and putting in place laws and treaties that treat it as though it is, is a mistake.
"... without ever thinking about the duties a Government has to the people they Govern."
Do you honestly think that you could fight the U.S. government with any amount of weapons you as an individual, or even organized with your buddies, could ever accumulate?
And we are laughing right back. 300 MILLION people. At least 40% of those households have guns, and most of those have multiple guns. And those are just the legally-owned ones.
And put that up against a military in which each individual has vowed to protect the Constitution (NOT Congress or the President), and you have a pretty damned small army that would be doing any of the government's fighting for it, should that ever arise.
"would be "removed" before you ever got to the point where you could seriously fight the government. If you're lucky, that means you'd be shipped somewhere like Guantanamo Bay (or more likely, extraordinary rendered to some godforsaken hellhole where they torture people)."
The government isn't big enough. This isn't Nazi-era Germany. You don't have masses of people lining up to support a rabid leader... what you have in the U.S. is a population that is increasingly HATING its own government. It's not even remotely the same kind of situation.
Put all that together with the fact that Ron Paul received more campaign contributions from U.S. military members than Romney and Obama combined, and your thesis is nothing but a bad joke.
"To establish an ad hominem you would have to show that I dismissed the validity of an argument (or truth of a fact) based on a personal attribute of the "speaker.""
You are invalidly assuming what is meant by "the speaker". In essence, you are questioning the source based on where it happened to appear or who it happened to be hosted by, not the message itself or even the actual author.
You can pick nits until the sun gets cool, but this is still the essence of ad hominem.
"OK para-science or non-science then."
HAHAHAHAHA.
"If your term paper cites this source, as an authoritative source of the science (as opposed to say evidence on the pervasiveness of para-science), I will mark you down and I will in comments attempt to explain the appropriateness of your source"
BUT, dumbass (just my opinion), you DIDN'T EVEN EXAMINE THE ACTUAL SOURCE. You only examined the site it was posted on.
To show just how STUPID that position is, by analogy: I could post the Declaration of Independence on this website, or, let's say, Discovery.com, and you would ASSUME whether it was valid based on where you read it? After all, that IS what you wrote, several times now. Are you SERIOUSLY admitting to this?
"You have presented no evidence worthy of consideration"
You don't even know that, because by your own admission YOU DIDN'T EVEN LOOK.
And you know squat about the rules of scientific discussion. I did, in fact, present evidence. You refused to look at it. Therefor, in ANY discussion that can be said to follow the principles of science, you have waived any credibility in saying so. Dude... you CAN'T refuse to look at evidence then call that evidence invalid. That is the original meaning of "prejudice". You have pre-judged, without having seen the arguments.
"Seriously though, what you need to learn very quickly is to develop a good bullshit detector, which by your own admission you lack."
On the contrary, I possess a very good bullshit detector, which is the main reason I am replying here. It isn't in my own interest, because I don't really care about your BS, but rather in the interest of other readers, in the hope that they won't swallow any.
You write fairly well (that is the best compliment I can give you here), but according to science's own rules, there is no sense to your words.
Let me put this another way, since there is someone else here who seems to need to have things explained to him 5 or 6 different ways before it finally sinks in, so a couple of times is (relatively) a relief:
You have every right to consider the source and refuse to look at the evidence it is presenting.
However, once you have done that, you have voluntarily waived any credibility you may have had, when you try to argue against it.
But that's exactly what you did: you called it obvious "pseudo-science" based only on the website that hosts the article, without having seen the article itself.
Which means your judgment of "pseudo-science" need be given no credence.
"What was an ad hom? I'm passing no judgement on what Latour has written here, I just won't bother reading stuff (whatever position it is arguing) published on so ridiculous a forum."
Except that you did. You called it "obvious" pseudo-science and refused to read it... and that is precisely what ad hominem is all about. Or one of the things it is about, anyway.
"It's a skill that comes with experience."
It's BS that comes with stubbornness. Look, let me put it in plain words: you have every right to decide, based on the nature of the source, whether you want to listen to, or read, that source. Granted.
But having refused to look at the evidence, you have no pretense of having falsified it.
"I was asking you, by reference to similar pseudo-science, to prove that thermonuclear weapons do not exist. Are you up to it or not?"
This doesn't even qualify as straw-man argument. You refused to look at the actual evidence, ASSUMED it was invalid based on your personal impression (without having read it at all), and then ask me to compare it to some ridiculous proposition of your own.
Dude. Take a class in debate or logical argument. You are all over the place, and impress me not at all.
That is what is called an ad hominem argument, and it isn't a valid argument.
You can't just look at a website and judge the validity of what it has to say. You have to actually read it and refute what is written. Otherwise you're just blowing hot air.
Dr. Pierre Latour is a former NASA scientist. If you want to READ what he has to say, then argue about that, fine.
Line spacing is customizable, down to hundredths of an inch. If you need finer control than that, I admit that perhaps you need a different program.
The text sizing does leave a bit to be desired, seemingly limited to adjustments of only 0.1 points. But that may be something I haven't found yet, either.
This option is there, it is just not easy to find. It is also a little funky in the way it operates... but it IS present, and it DOES work. You can define any text color you want. Go to (in OS X), Preferences | LibreOffice | Colors, then Add, Modify, or Edit.
"Page Style sheets that are linked to each other."
This is in the Format | Page dialogue of Libre Office, in the "Organizer" tab. (I am using 3.5.0, which is not the most recent version.)
Advanced integrated bibliography handling.
Your use of the term "advanced" is ambiguous. It does do bibliographies. But without knowing what you mean by "advanced integrated", I have no way to really address your objection.
Related content management i.e. tying multiple documents together on different axis
Again, I'm not sure what you mean by "tying... together on different axis" means. Are you referring to Pivot Tables for spreadsheets? That feature is most definitely there. If that's what you meant, I don't understand why you think it's not. It has been part of the suite for quite a while.
Those things aren't at different places they just aren't there.
Yes, they are, as I have demonstrated. Except perhaps for the last item, because I am not sure what you meant by it. But if you meant what are commonly called Pivot Tables, yes that is there too.
As I said above the/. crowd tends to be ignorant of these sorts of advanced features because they aren't heavy office productivity users.
But the features you mentioned aren't missing. They are there.
I'm aware of their native versions. They are inferior to NeoOffice.
Maybe on your computer. I can't speak to your own personal difficulties. But when Open Office came out with their own OS X version, I immediately switched from NeoOffice, and I have had no trouble at all since. As mentioned, I am now running LibreOffice (because I was not about to give Oracle any support in that direction) and I have had exactly no troubles with that, either.
"In OO and LO float windows (ex style bars) float like they should in MS Windows not OSX, a partial port of the interface."
I have no idea what you are talking about. They "float" just fine for me, and dock when they are supposed to dock. Dockable windows is a per-program interface decision, and is not unique to either Windows or OS X. I just opened my Style bar and it behaves like pretty much any other floating OS X window that I have used. (The docking part being an option, as I mentioned. You don't have to use it.)
"Why do you think that back when people got Microsoft Works often for free they still bought Office?"
Jeez, dude, you're talking about like 10-12 years ago. Where have you been?
In all honestly, I don't know what you're objecting to. The features you claim are "missing" are right there... just, as I said, maybe not where you are expecting to find them (if I understood what you meant in your descriptions). The glitches you complain about, I have not had. So... our personal experiences have been different, I can accept that. But I do not agree with your "feature" arguments.
"I linked to libel laws in response to your comment:..."
And just in case you fail to understand the comments I just made above, as you have so thoroughly failed to comprehend so many of my other comments, I will sum it up for you here in fewer, simpler words:
The fact that I opined that you were screwing up and were likely to get sued, DOES NOT equal a "threat" to sue you myself!!!
This is one of the things you have failed to get straight: you seem to have trouble distinguishing between what people actually state, and your interpretation or inferences about what they state.
There is a difference. In your case, and in my opinion, that difference is large.
"I linked to libel laws in response to your comment:..."
You think I didn't already see that?
This comment (and I will repeat it here myself):
"This high-schooler somehow thinks he/she can protect him/her self from libel and copyright by stating on the blog that âoesomeoneâ said something, while still partially quoting said âoesomeoneâ. And then even including a link to the original exchange. Haha. If I were this person, and possessed some intelligence, I would shut this site down. Sadly, it is looking more like he/she is going to end up in Litigation Land."
... stated my honest opinion at the time: your arguments were below the quality of a decent high-school debate, and that if you keep presenting things on your blog in the manner in which you have, then you are likely to get sued (the reference to "litigation land").
But as I also clearly stated: *I* was not threatening to do so. I told you in very clear English, where everybody could see it, that under current circumstances I had no reason to try to sue you.
Correction: formatting error due to Slashdot's Neanderthal character-handling:
"... because the energy of the "back radiation" is then less than T."
Therefore the "back radiation" (which we know to be of a different nature and magnitude than "backscatter") cannot be absorbed by the ground, to cause surface temperature increase. It is physically impossible.
"But not necessarily through the use of back-radiation in the model, although frankly I don't care for it either simply because it is so open to pointless argument. "
That is a non-response and deserves no answer.
"Sky Dragon is Olsen"
NO... I specifically linked to an article by Pierre LaTour. The fact that it happens to be posted on the Sky Dragon site is incidental, and the article does not rely upon or even mention Olsen. Any argument of that sort is nothing but ad hominem. Surely you know what that is.
"Nobody sane actually argues that the GHE is a cold system "warming" a warmer system, nor is that what climate models implement."
On the contrary, as Spencer points out in his article (to which LaTour's article is a rebuttal, and which I did recommend you red first):
"This back radiation is a critical component of the theoretical explanation for the Greenhouse Effect. "
And if you read on, the back radiation he mentions is clearly the same as that being addressed by LaTour.
Please, if you will (as I originally pointed out): explain to me where these CO2 warming models do not rely on back radiation. All of those of which I am familiar do.
"As for back radiation, downwelling radiation, scattered radiation, blackbody radiation, emissivity and Kirchoff's law, extinction and optical path -- as far as the actual processes involved are concerned there isn't a huge difference between one kind of optical scattering and another, not at the molecular scale."
COMPLETE nonsense. While Spencer does not address the molecular or atomic scale, LaTour does. This is a bald (and rather bold) statement with no support; it is not a refutation.
"As for Rayleigh scattering not being "back radiation" -- I was merely offering that as an example of how molecules can and do reflect and scatter photons in a way that varies with frequency."
Of course they do, but that was not the subject under discussion. "Back radiation" has a very specific meaning in this context, which I was careful to point out.
"... reflect some fraction of the otherwise outgoing energy in those bands towards the source quite independent of the relative temperature of the source that is radiating."
Again, of course, but again: that is not the subject under discussion. It is the ABSORPTION of the radiation, not the emission of it, that is the relevant topic here. You cannot get temperature rise without absorption.
"Call it "back radiation" or not, call it whatever you like, but it is a term that acts as a differential gain in the heat balance of the ground, at least if you believe in Maxwell's equations and that the power incident on a surface is the flux of the Poynting vector through the surface. "
Again, not true, as shown by LaTour. A radiating body will only absorb radiation that is > T (its own radiative energy). When a radiative body radiates, and that radiation is absorbed and re-radiated by, say, a water molecule, some energy is inevitably given up in the process (this is simple thermodynamics).
So when the ground radiates, and its radiation is absorbed by water vapor, and re-radiated, it is always (it must be, according to elementary physics) at lower energy than the original radiation. THEREFORE, the ground cannot re-reabsorb it, because the energy of the "back radiation" is then
That is the "nutshell" summary of LaTour's argument; he gives it much more thorough treatment than I do here.
"On top of atmosphere models looking down (which is what I personally prefer when trying to convince people that do not want to 'believe' in the GHE because the
And yet another brief reply to another ridiculous portion of Khayman80's post:
... it is generally considered to be "fair use" to record something that is happening in public and not being charged for. There is a gray area, to be sure, but I think political speeches rightfully belong on the "fair use" side of the line. [Jane Q. Public, 2011-08-29] [slashdot.org]
... There is no justice involved in trying to hold a copyright on a speech that was given in PUBLIC, and broadcast to the public, almost 5 decades ago.... I think we have to draw the line and say that public political speech, that wasn't done as a "performance" for profit, is public domain. [Jane Q. Public, 2011-08-29,30]
First, as I have pointed out earlier, I never "threatened" (your word) to sue you anyway. I did the opposite: I specifically stated that I was NOT going to sue you.
But second -- and this is most laughable of all -- YOU link to information about "libel", but you obviously don't understand the first things about it yourself. You demonstrate as much by somehow equating fair use of recordings of public figures with online libel. They haven't the slightest things to do with one another. As you further demonstrate, frequently, on your blog.
But that's just a comment about your behavior. No "threat" intended or implied. I'll let somebody else nail you for it, as they surely will if you keep it up.
"It's interesting that less than two hours after you noted [dumbscientist.com] that I had the integrity to link to the originals, you made a screenshot without a link to the originals and claimed it was "in exactly the same spirit" and "no more out of context than anything he has stated.""
What a completely ridiculous assertion. As you admit yourself, just prior to that WE HAD BEEN DISCUSSING THE CONTEXT in that very same thread, on the very same page. Anybody who saw that was EXTREMELY likely to have read prior parts of the discussion, in which the context was clearly spelled out. If they didn't, then they don't have a claim of "out of context" anyway.
That is far, far different from pulling something out of another thread, on another page, out of context. If you think they are the same things or even comparable, you have a lot to learn. But I suspect you really don't understand that difference, because I see you have done it on your blog, very often.
You are trying to compare apples and oranges and call it valid. Just another example of your foolish argument style. You would have been booted with prejudice from my high-school debate team.
Slashdot Mirror
"take a look at death rates in the USA compared to countries with stricter gun control some time"
What's wrong with your argument is that it just seems so logical and obvious, that it MUST be true... and that is why it is so insidious. The problem is that as logical and obvious as it seems... it just isn't true. We now have close to 50 years of numbers surrounding various kinds of gun control in different areas all over the United States... and it just doesn't work.
Some years ago, Gary Kleck and John Lock, two liberal university students, undertook to do a study that would prove the "obvious": that more guns mean more death, and that gun control MUST work, because it's so logical. Fewer guns equal fewer shootings.
They gathered the most reliable statistics they could find from police departments all over the United States, and the Federal government as well.
When they completed their study, the results stunned them. Then they both went out and joined the NRA. (It's true, they did.)
That is still the largest and most comprehensive studies that has ever been done. Other studies have also been done since, in an attempt to disprove their findings... without success. And in the time since then, the statistics supporting private ownership of guns have gotten even better, not worse.
Gary Kleck is now a university professor in Florida, and he is still a liberal. When asked about gun control, however, he says "You can't argue with the facts."
John Lock continues to study and write about the subject.
"take a look at death rates in the USA compared to countries with stricter gun control some time"
You can PROVE what I told you yourself, "moron", by simply going to the Department of Justice's website and looking at the statistics.
The United States has been experimenting with one or another form of "gun control" now for many decades, and we have PROOF that it just doesn't work. This is not in dispute. The government's OWN figures demonstrate it very clearly.
"i never understood the idea of state's rights. "
That's because like most Americans, you probably don't understand the whole process very well. I have been studying American history for years now, in part because there is LOTS of important history that they just don't teach in public school.
"it's not freedom from the feds, it's just another form that can screw up and hurt the individual"
It *IS* "freedom from the feds". And no, the States CAN'T screw up just as badly, because they are closer to the people they serve. Sure some states will make mistakes, but they will see that other states are doing better because they didn't make the same mistakes, and they will correct themselves.
"you agree with me"
I agree with you if you were referring to the amendment process. But that's not what most people mean when they say the Constitution is a "living document". Usually what people mean when they say that, is that it is okay to "interpret" it in ways that are different from the original meaning.
As for federal vs state:
"Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste. --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Gideon Granger, 1800.
"guns in america result in just a lot of senseless death"
Absolute balderdash. The American Government's own statistics prove this to be false. The areas in America that have more guns suffer less crime, especially violent crime.
Further, over the last 20+ years, the crime rate in America has plummeted, while over the same period, per-capita gun ownership has gone UP!
"and if fascism comes to america, it won't be idiots in the countryside with guns saving us from it, they will be at the vanguard of the fascist takeover of our country, "
That would be quite impossible. Do you even know what fascism is? Do you know who Mussolini was?
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini.
Sorry, but a "corporate state" is NOT going to come from rural America.
"the safeguards of our democracy is civilized discourse"
Hahaha! Yeah, look at what all this "civilized discourse" has done to your Constitution rights over the last 12 years. What a laugh.
"you need more economic facts and less economic myths"
THAT much is true... but they aren't coming from you. And economic facts haven't been coming from our current government either. Nor (and this is easy to prove) have our economic problems been caused by Paul and people like him, for the simple reason that their ideas have not been followed by anybody in officialdom.
I just really have to wonder... how can you honestly blame our problems on people who are provably not responsible for them? That makes about as much sense as... well, as the rest of the things you have been saying.
"That is a nightmarish amount of fallacy for a single statement."
While I would tend to agree with you, I don't think saying so will do any good. I have tried to talk sense to that person before and it was like talking to a wall.
Although I see something below. I am tempted to try again anyway.
"... the constitution is a living breathing contract with the american people that should change over time..."
NO, it isn't, nor should it be.
There *IS* a way to change the Constitution, and that is called the Amendment process. Other than that, its meaning has not changed, despite power-grabs but the Supreme Court. Our Founders warned us against that very thing. (See Madison's Report of 1800.)
Another example:
"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." -- James Wilson
You can't just "interpret" a law to mean anything you feel like at the time. This defeats the entire purpose of having a law in the first place. If you can change it today, then somebody else can change it tomorrow, and it is pretty much guaranteed you won't like the result.
There is no such thing as a "living document" in law. It just doesn't happen. They don't exist.
If you want to change the Constitution, amend it, or get off the pot. The Supreme Court itself has not been immune to corruption in this regard (again, see Madison's Report). This is the entire basis for State nullification.
"Actually the replacement is not necessary so you are arguing a point that was never mentioned (very intentionally). The founding fathers had things thought out remarkably well. The US Government does not need to be remade in to something else, we simply need to revert back to our constitution and dismantle the executive orders and illegal acts that have been passed."
Yay! Mod up.
"People claim to want it fixed, yet absolutely nothing is done to fix the problem. NAFTA has been expanded, even though it harms the economy. People then tend to fall back to "you are just a protectionist" argument ... "
Arguably, GATT is considerably more harmful than NAFTA, although I believe they have both had a pretty solid negative impact.
Citizens supported these measures because they were supposed to bring "fair" trade... but there is nothing "fair" about them. In general, they guarantee the US a dis-advantage when trading with unequal economies. It isn't a level playing field, and putting in place laws and treaties that treat it as though it is, is a mistake.
"... without ever thinking about the duties a Government has to the people they Govern."
There. Fixed that for you.
China has BEEN #1... although that was a long time ago, before they populated themselves into near-starvation.
They don't have a "turn" coming. They had one already, and they wasted it.
"... unlike the police, who swear no such oath..."
Many local police forces don't swear to uphold the Constitution. But most Sheriffs and Sheriff's Deputies do.
Do you honestly think that you could fight the U.S. government with any amount of weapons you as an individual, or even organized with your buddies, could ever accumulate?
And we are laughing right back. 300 MILLION people. At least 40% of those households have guns, and most of those have multiple guns. And those are just the legally-owned ones.
And put that up against a military in which each individual has vowed to protect the Constitution (NOT Congress or the President), and you have a pretty damned small army that would be doing any of the government's fighting for it, should that ever arise.
"would be "removed" before you ever got to the point where you could seriously fight the government. If you're lucky, that means you'd be shipped somewhere like Guantanamo Bay (or more likely, extraordinary rendered to some godforsaken hellhole where they torture people)."
The government isn't big enough. This isn't Nazi-era Germany. You don't have masses of people lining up to support a rabid leader... what you have in the U.S. is a population that is increasingly HATING its own government. It's not even remotely the same kind of situation.
Put all that together with the fact that Ron Paul received more campaign contributions from U.S. military members than Romney and Obama combined, and your thesis is nothing but a bad joke.
"To establish an ad hominem you would have to show that I dismissed the validity of an argument (or truth of a fact) based on a personal attribute of the "speaker.""
You are invalidly assuming what is meant by "the speaker". In essence, you are questioning the source based on where it happened to appear or who it happened to be hosted by, not the message itself or even the actual author.
You can pick nits until the sun gets cool, but this is still the essence of ad hominem.
"OK para-science or non-science then."
HAHAHAHAHA.
"If your term paper cites this source, as an authoritative source of the science (as opposed to say evidence on the pervasiveness of para-science), I will mark you down and I will in comments attempt to explain the appropriateness of your source"
BUT, dumbass (just my opinion), you DIDN'T EVEN EXAMINE THE ACTUAL SOURCE. You only examined the site it was posted on.
To show just how STUPID that position is, by analogy: I could post the Declaration of Independence on this website, or, let's say, Discovery.com, and you would ASSUME whether it was valid based on where you read it? After all, that IS what you wrote, several times now. Are you SERIOUSLY admitting to this?
"You have presented no evidence worthy of consideration"
You don't even know that, because by your own admission YOU DIDN'T EVEN LOOK.
And you know squat about the rules of scientific discussion. I did, in fact, present evidence. You refused to look at it. Therefor, in ANY discussion that can be said to follow the principles of science, you have waived any credibility in saying so. Dude... you CAN'T refuse to look at evidence then call that evidence invalid. That is the original meaning of "prejudice". You have pre-judged, without having seen the arguments.
"Seriously though, what you need to learn very quickly is to develop a good bullshit detector, which by your own admission you lack."
On the contrary, I possess a very good bullshit detector, which is the main reason I am replying here. It isn't in my own interest, because I don't really care about your BS, but rather in the interest of other readers, in the hope that they won't swallow any.
You write fairly well (that is the best compliment I can give you here), but according to science's own rules, there is no sense to your words.
"It's a skill that comes with experience."
Let me put this another way, since there is someone else here who seems to need to have things explained to him 5 or 6 different ways before it finally sinks in, so a couple of times is (relatively) a relief:
You have every right to consider the source and refuse to look at the evidence it is presenting.
However, once you have done that, you have voluntarily waived any credibility you may have had, when you try to argue against it.
But that's exactly what you did: you called it obvious "pseudo-science" based only on the website that hosts the article, without having seen the article itself.
Which means your judgment of "pseudo-science" need be given no credence.
"What was an ad hom? I'm passing no judgement on what Latour has written here, I just won't bother reading stuff (whatever position it is arguing) published on so ridiculous a forum."
Except that you did. You called it "obvious" pseudo-science and refused to read it... and that is precisely what ad hominem is all about. Or one of the things it is about, anyway.
"It's a skill that comes with experience."
It's BS that comes with stubbornness. Look, let me put it in plain words: you have every right to decide, based on the nature of the source, whether you want to listen to, or read, that source. Granted.
But having refused to look at the evidence, you have no pretense of having falsified it.
"I was asking you, by reference to similar pseudo-science, to prove that thermonuclear weapons do not exist. Are you up to it or not?"
This doesn't even qualify as straw-man argument. You refused to look at the actual evidence, ASSUMED it was invalid based on your personal impression (without having read it at all), and then ask me to compare it to some ridiculous proposition of your own.
Dude. Take a class in debate or logical argument. You are all over the place, and impress me not at all.
No, it's not obvious.
That is what is called an ad hominem argument, and it isn't a valid argument.
You can't just look at a website and judge the validity of what it has to say. You have to actually read it and refute what is written. Otherwise you're just blowing hot air.
Dr. Pierre Latour is a former NASA scientist. If you want to READ what he has to say, then argue about that, fine.
But until then, you have no argument to make.
I almost forgot to add:
Line spacing is customizable, down to hundredths of an inch. If you need finer control than that, I admit that perhaps you need a different program.
The text sizing does leave a bit to be desired, seemingly limited to adjustments of only 0.1 points. But that may be something I haven't found yet, either.
"Completely configurable line sizes and colours."
This option is there, it is just not easy to find. It is also a little funky in the way it operates... but it IS present, and it DOES work. You can define any text color you want. Go to (in OS X), Preferences | LibreOffice | Colors, then Add, Modify, or Edit.
"Page Style sheets that are linked to each other."
This is in the Format | Page dialogue of Libre Office, in the "Organizer" tab. (I am using 3.5.0, which is not the most recent version.)
Advanced integrated bibliography handling.
Your use of the term "advanced" is ambiguous. It does do bibliographies. But without knowing what you mean by "advanced integrated", I have no way to really address your objection.
Related content management i.e. tying multiple documents together on different axis
Again, I'm not sure what you mean by "tying... together on different axis" means. Are you referring to Pivot Tables for spreadsheets? That feature is most definitely there. If that's what you meant, I don't understand why you think it's not. It has been part of the suite for quite a while.
Those things aren't at different places they just aren't there.
Yes, they are, as I have demonstrated. Except perhaps for the last item, because I am not sure what you meant by it. But if you meant what are commonly called Pivot Tables, yes that is there too.
As I said above the /. crowd tends to be ignorant of these sorts of advanced features because they aren't heavy office productivity users.
But the features you mentioned aren't missing. They are there.
I'm aware of their native versions. They are inferior to NeoOffice.
Maybe on your computer. I can't speak to your own personal difficulties. But when Open Office came out with their own OS X version, I immediately switched from NeoOffice, and I have had no trouble at all since. As mentioned, I am now running LibreOffice (because I was not about to give Oracle any support in that direction) and I have had exactly no troubles with that, either.
"In OO and LO float windows (ex style bars) float like they should in MS Windows not OSX, a partial port of the interface."
I have no idea what you are talking about. They "float" just fine for me, and dock when they are supposed to dock. Dockable windows is a per-program interface decision, and is not unique to either Windows or OS X. I just opened my Style bar and it behaves like pretty much any other floating OS X window that I have used. (The docking part being an option, as I mentioned. You don't have to use it.)
"Why do you think that back when people got Microsoft Works often for free they still bought Office?"
Jeez, dude, you're talking about like 10-12 years ago. Where have you been?
In all honestly, I don't know what you're objecting to. The features you claim are "missing" are right there... just, as I said, maybe not where you are expecting to find them (if I understood what you meant in your descriptions). The glitches you complain about, I have not had. So... our personal experiences have been different, I can accept that. But I do not agree with your "feature" arguments.
"I linked to libel laws in response to your comment: ..."
And just in case you fail to understand the comments I just made above, as you have so thoroughly failed to comprehend so many of my other comments, I will sum it up for you here in fewer, simpler words:
The fact that I opined that you were screwing up and were likely to get sued, DOES NOT equal a "threat" to sue you myself!!!
This is one of the things you have failed to get straight: you seem to have trouble distinguishing between what people actually state, and your interpretation or inferences about what they state.
There is a difference. In your case, and in my opinion, that difference is large.
"I linked to libel laws in response to your comment: ..."
You think I didn't already see that?
This comment (and I will repeat it here myself):
"This high-schooler somehow thinks he/she can protect him/her self from libel and copyright by stating on the blog that âoesomeoneâ said something, while still partially quoting said âoesomeoneâ. And then even including a link to the original exchange. Haha. If I were this person, and possessed some intelligence, I would shut this site down. Sadly, it is looking more like he/she is going to end up in Litigation Land."
... stated my honest opinion at the time: your arguments were below the quality of a decent high-school debate, and that if you keep presenting things on your blog in the manner in which you have, then you are likely to get sued (the reference to "litigation land").
But as I also clearly stated: *I* was not threatening to do so. I told you in very clear English, where everybody could see it, that under current circumstances I had no reason to try to sue you.
Sheesh. Get it straight.
Correction: formatting error due to Slashdot's Neanderthal character-handling: "... because the energy of the "back radiation" is then less than T."
Therefore the "back radiation" (which we know to be of a different nature and magnitude than "backscatter") cannot be absorbed by the ground, to cause surface temperature increase. It is physically impossible.
Correction: formatting error due to Slashdot's Neanderthal character-handling. I don't know if this will work, either:
"... because the energy of the "back radiation" is then < T."
"But not necessarily through the use of back-radiation in the model, although frankly I don't care for it either simply because it is so open to pointless argument. "
That is a non-response and deserves no answer.
"Sky Dragon is Olsen"
NO... I specifically linked to an article by Pierre LaTour. The fact that it happens to be posted on the Sky Dragon site is incidental, and the article does not rely upon or even mention Olsen. Any argument of that sort is nothing but ad hominem. Surely you know what that is.
"Nobody sane actually argues that the GHE is a cold system "warming" a warmer system, nor is that what climate models implement."
On the contrary, as Spencer points out in his article (to which LaTour's article is a rebuttal, and which I did recommend you red first):
"This back radiation is a critical component of the theoretical explanation for the Greenhouse Effect. "
And if you read on, the back radiation he mentions is clearly the same as that being addressed by LaTour.
Please, if you will (as I originally pointed out): explain to me where these CO2 warming models do not rely on back radiation. All of those of which I am familiar do.
"As for back radiation, downwelling radiation, scattered radiation, blackbody radiation, emissivity and Kirchoff's law, extinction and optical path -- as far as the actual processes involved are concerned there isn't a huge difference between one kind of optical scattering and another, not at the molecular scale."
COMPLETE nonsense. While Spencer does not address the molecular or atomic scale, LaTour does. This is a bald (and rather bold) statement with no support; it is not a refutation.
"As for Rayleigh scattering not being "back radiation" -- I was merely offering that as an example of how molecules can and do reflect and scatter photons in a way that varies with frequency."
Of course they do, but that was not the subject under discussion. "Back radiation" has a very specific meaning in this context, which I was careful to point out.
"... reflect some fraction of the otherwise outgoing energy in those bands towards the source quite independent of the relative temperature of the source that is radiating."
Again, of course, but again: that is not the subject under discussion. It is the ABSORPTION of the radiation, not the emission of it, that is the relevant topic here. You cannot get temperature rise without absorption.
"Call it "back radiation" or not, call it whatever you like, but it is a term that acts as a differential gain in the heat balance of the ground, at least if you believe in Maxwell's equations and that the power incident on a surface is the flux of the Poynting vector through the surface. "
Again, not true, as shown by LaTour. A radiating body will only absorb radiation that is > T (its own radiative energy). When a radiative body radiates, and that radiation is absorbed and re-radiated by, say, a water molecule, some energy is inevitably given up in the process (this is simple thermodynamics).
So when the ground radiates, and its radiation is absorbed by water vapor, and re-radiated, it is always (it must be, according to elementary physics) at lower energy than the original radiation. THEREFORE, the ground cannot re-reabsorb it, because the energy of the "back radiation" is then
That is the "nutshell" summary of LaTour's argument; he gives it much more thorough treatment than I do here.
"On top of atmosphere models looking down (which is what I personally prefer when trying to convince people that do not want to 'believe' in the GHE because the
... it is generally considered to be "fair use" to record something that is happening in public and not being charged for. There is a gray area, to be sure, but I think political speeches rightfully belong on the "fair use" side of the line. [Jane Q. Public, 2011-08-29] [slashdot.org]
... There is no justice involved in trying to hold a copyright on a speech that was given in PUBLIC, and broadcast to the public, almost 5 decades ago. ... I think we have to draw the line and say that public political speech, that wasn't done as a "performance" for profit, is public domain. [Jane Q. Public, 2011-08-29,30]
First, as I have pointed out earlier, I never "threatened" (your word) to sue you anyway. I did the opposite: I specifically stated that I was NOT going to sue you.
But second -- and this is most laughable of all -- YOU link to information about "libel", but you obviously don't understand the first things about it yourself. You demonstrate as much by somehow equating fair use of recordings of public figures with online libel. They haven't the slightest things to do with one another. As you further demonstrate, frequently, on your blog.
But that's just a comment about your behavior. No "threat" intended or implied. I'll let somebody else nail you for it, as they surely will if you keep it up.
"It's interesting that less than two hours after you noted [dumbscientist.com] that I had the integrity to link to the originals, you made a screenshot without a link to the originals and claimed it was "in exactly the same spirit" and "no more out of context than anything he has stated.""
What a completely ridiculous assertion. As you admit yourself, just prior to that WE HAD BEEN DISCUSSING THE CONTEXT in that very same thread, on the very same page. Anybody who saw that was EXTREMELY likely to have read prior parts of the discussion, in which the context was clearly spelled out. If they didn't, then they don't have a claim of "out of context" anyway.
That is far, far different from pulling something out of another thread, on another page, out of context. If you think they are the same things or even comparable, you have a lot to learn. But I suspect you really don't understand that difference, because I see you have done it on your blog, very often.
You are trying to compare apples and oranges and call it valid. Just another example of your foolish argument style. You would have been booted with prejudice from my high-school debate team.