You're right that there's no such thing as too much speech. But, we have to temper that with some common sense. IMHO, the freedom of speech is essential because only by banging away at things in a free and open manner will we arrive at the Truth (yes, with a capital T). When you have valid viewpoints drowned out by incessant pap, you have to question whether society as a whole gains anything by having media outlets following each other over the proverbial cliff, into tabloid news (all Lewinsky/Condit/etc., all the time).
Another analogy: campaign finance reform. Speech, for the most part, has meaning -- we use it to encode & transmit thoughts; there is the form (phonology & syntax) and the meaning (semantics). Money has no meaning. When it's introduced into a debate, it's just a matter of who has more, not who has the better argument. It's sophistry without sophistication. We should encourage lively debate, not discourage it by providing the biggest megaphones to those with the most money.
And to try to despeately veer this back on-topic, this is what Normon Solomon is objecting to. We have people with the most money generating the most traffic. The semantics is lost behind a wall of homogeneity. And it's not a meritocracy, as some would have you believe: the big names are those that are firmly entrenched. So you have a situation developing on-line where a majority of people will not be exposed to the lively debate that a democracy is supposed to foster.
I think a lot of people here fail to get what the problem is. Noam Chomsky (and I'm sure a lot of people just groan at that name), said something to the effect of: The greatest way to keep youself in power is to create boundaries outside of which argument does not take place; but within those boundaries, permit all sorts of disagreement. This is what Solomon is foreseeing.
A parallel situation: the anti-abortion activists (and this is not intered to start an abortion thread) see as their new goal not to overturn Roe v. Wade but to make it so that even though abortion is perfectly legal, you can get one anywhere.
Any *ahem* yahoo can publish his/her own newspaper, but you will never influence the national dialogue with your little rag -- you are drowned out by the mainstream media. And I don't think anyone is happy with the current media situation. Again, this is what Solomon is warning us about -- the fact that web traffic goes to established players, not to the radical voices we think are available on the web.
Excellent point. I should have been more specific: interpretation is usually reserved for granting rights to someone, not taking them away. So, although voting was originally restricted to male landowners, the "right to vote" was seen as belonging to all American citizens; this extension of rights was seen as consistent with the spirit of the Constitution. And, in fact, you can't "grandfather" rights.
More generally, the idea behind a looser interpretation ('spirit of the law') isn't to surprise people, the argument is that the interpretation is and always was there. Just no one thought of it in the current way.
In short: Interpretation is limited to the words on the page. But that doesn't mean that the meaning of those words are inflexible; they can apply in different manners to different situations.
I see that you are a strict constructionist. There are two established ways of view the Constiuttion: (1) by the letter (as you advise) or (2) by the spirit (as I would advise). The Constitution says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
This has been read to say that the government can neither endorse nor prohibit religion. This has been read to say (reasonably, iun my estimation), that the government can't get involved in religious matters.
It is a longstanding tradition to interpret the meaning of the Constitution. This is what makes it great; it is a living document that is adaptable to our modern society. It was not written and then abandoned.
The problem with Bible clubs is not whether they can be held at the school (singling out a group for exclusion, esp. a religious one violates the First Amendment), nor whether the students can form these clubs (the courts have consistantly ruled that students have a right to express religious beliefs in school). The problem is that these clubs require teacher sponsors, and that's the barrier between church and state. A teacher in a public school is an agent of the government and can neither encourage or deny any religion. It gets really messy because if you are a student in Mrs. Christian's class, and Mrs. Christian hosts a school-sponsored Bible study, you may think that you need to attend the Bible study group in order to get a good grade. Coersion by the government. That's the mess that the Founding Fathers wanted to avoid (they were all Deists, by the way, not avidly religious guys).
Everyone overreacts to these Church/State issues. It's so darn messy. Basically any government entity has to step back and let everyone else speak, and make sure everyone has an equal voice. It's not easy to be the government in that situation, especially if you have your own strong set of beliefs.
Unlike walking down the street, you need to be licensed to drive a car. If you fail basic requirements, you can't drive. So if I'm blind, I can't drive a car (I can, however, walk down the street and the government has to make certain reasonable adjustments to the public ways so that I can walk down the street). The only reason that it seems like you have a right to fly is that the airline companies WANT you to fly. They want your money. The power we possess to compel airlines to treat customers with some degree of dignity lies in the power of the almighty dollar, not in a fundamental right to fly on an airplane. (Also note that we use these means of transportation because they exist, not because it's in the Constitution that they should be created and free for use by anyone)
As for your argument that you don't have a right to walk down every street, you're absolutely right. But the state prohibits you from walking on a highway for two reasons: (1) you'll probably get killed, and (2) there are surface streets that you CAN walk on that will take you to the same location. Walking on the highway doesn't make it any faster.
Embryonic stem cells are fundamentally different from adult or placental stem cells.
Research so far indicates that the plasticity of embryonic stem cells is much greater than adult cells. That's why the research community wants to investigate embryonic stem cells.
Bush's decision basically says that the government will only fund research on the 60 existing embryonic lines. According to this article, some of those cell lines are privately owned; it's not clear if there will be general access to those lines. Now, 60 is not a lot of variation to work with. When doing research of this type, you need a large genetic pool to work with. This fundamentally reduces that pool. Bush's decision has bound the hands of scientists looking for cures to horrifyingly deadly diseases.
For those of you who would argue that these embryos are children that need to be protected, check out David Corn's article about that viewpoint.
First of all, the parent to this is a troll. Second, the excellent reason for having government funded research is to allow no-strings-attached publication of results. I work for a company that forces its employees to send all papers for publication through the legal department. Privately funded research has the spectre of censorship and active supression of results hanging over it.
First, let me say that I honestly love the responses here. I've had to really think about what the heck to say to the issues that people raised here.
Okay, surveillance of baggage and cars and whatnot could be considered a different set of circumstances. You don't have the RIGHT to drive a car, you don't have the RIGHT to fly on a plane. But you do have the right to walk down the street. Once you enter some kind of private venue, you lose certain rights (at least as far as I know). Which means casinos et al should probably be considered under a different set of rules than a public street.
Although one is able to walk unhindered down the street with the cameras and face-rec software buzzing away, it is disturbing that we would allow ourselves to be constantly watched. (I'm trying to avoid the slippery slope argument into 'misuse of the technology' because I think, on its face, the use of this technology undermines our basic right to a presumption of innocence).
My core idea is this: every time that camera looks at you, it attempts to match you to a criminal face. That's 24/7, every time you walk by that camera. To me, that is analogous to having to verify that you are not a criminal to a police officer every day. Rather than having the freedom to meander down the street (relatively) care-free, we have to be aware that we are always being examined to see if we are a criminal. This, to me, is the antithesis of a free and democratic society
Simply because you can initialize a bool with the value 'true' doesn't undermine my argument that face-recognition systems presume guilt. The mere fact that the system chose me to compare against its database shows that I am presumed to be in this database. When humans do this task, they have a mental image that they are matching against real-world faces, not vice-versa.
There is no reason for the system to look at me. If I were in the midst of committing a crime, that would be something different. Since I'm not doing anything wrong, I should be protected by the shield of 'presumed innocence'.
I'm sure that the process was something like this:
First, woman calls police saying man is ex that owes $$
Next, police use FACIAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE to check the man's face against drivers's license database
Using the information obtained from his driver's license, the police talk to the man (after all, he could be using an alias, so they have to check him out)
To make the situation analogous, it would be that every time you walked down the street, you'd get fingerprinted and checked. That seems like a VERY BAD situation
I'll ignore the gratuitous ACLU swipe and the troll-like use of "Barf me".
I may not have a right to privacy in public, but I have the right to an assumption of innocence until proven otherwise. Cops on the beat can make a mistake identifying someone. This is not a problem. No real harassment, just a case of mistake identity. These things are the equivalent of having checkpoints out on the street where you have to prove you're innocent. I refuse to put up with that.
In the United States, there is a presumption of innocence. Face-recognition systems assume the opposite: you are a wanted criminal and only a null result on their database search proves you are NOT, in fact, a criminal. It's hard for us to be critical of these systems because, superficially, we don't want the bad people to get away. The pro-surveillance arguement is something like: "Well, if you haven't done anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear". But it's not that simple: I have a right to expect that I am assumed to be an innocent civilian until proven otherwise. I should not have to prove my innocence on a daily basis. These things should be ruled unconstitutional.
SpeechWorks is a commecial company bringing AT&T Labs's TTS stuff to the marketplace. They're currently offering Speechify, which is a slightly older version of the AT&T Labs system. A demo is here. Can anyone tell the difference?
I've said this before here, I think: the problem is that the web is non-linear and, to a certain extent, mutable to each user (look at the programs that are out there to kill banner ads and pop-ups). You can't do that with a magazine or newspaper. TV is a linear stream, you can't skip ahead, so you're forced to suffer through an endless stream of car commericals and spots for the newest reality TV show. With newspapers, it's a bit different, but you still get big, glossy pictures every other page. The look and feel is different from browsing.
What to do? You can't do this pop-up crap, since it drives everyone bonkers. You shouldn't be doing flash ads as the intro to your site, since people are already waiting to download the page. Waiting for a flash animation will just irritate people more. (Who wants to wait longer to hear about Jim Beam?) People are used to getting their web content for free, so shifting to pay sites would be difficult at best (leaving aside people reposting material at free sites and whatnot).
My own personal view is that the web should be looked at as a gigantic public library. Largely, websites, especially news sites like cnn.com and the New York Times are reposting stories that they already have. These are materials that have already been created. Much like a library has copies of the daily news, so should the web. The drawback is that it's not free or even cheap to get a site up, running and maintained (as many readers probably know firsthand). So, do we put a tax on net access and use that to subsidize website creation, mitigating the need for ads? Or a central federal repository for information? I don't know...
One thing that seems to be happening is a kind of "mathematics of altruism," where someone creates a website and makes it publicly available with the expectation that a second person will create a different site of interest to the first, and so on. Of course, a majority of people don't have either web access or 1337 skillz to make a website. So the number of sites of interest is small at best, and those require lots of maintenence.
I certainly have no idea about the best way to go about this. I know that my gut tells me the web should be free.
Man, the X-Files have been sucking for the past 2 years. First, they choose Robert Patrick over Bruce Campbell. Now this.
What happened to episodes like "The Great Mutado"?
Looks like the downward trend continues. (No offense meant to the Xena fans).
I'll probably get flamed for this, but I thought Learning Perl was the best intro to programming I've ever read. It gets your hands dirty immediately, programming from the very first chapter, and it's very accessible, especially for a non-techie like me.
Few things:
(1) Put your money where your mouth is. Cite reports saying global warming is not occuring. Here's the catch: the report(s) must be from independant sources, like the National Academy of Sciences, &c. The last thing anyone wants to see is a report sponsored by ExxonMobil.
(2) I, too, feel that profanity is unneccessary, but after reading these posts, I'm literally shaking with anger. It's understandable and forgivable. Let's all try to restrain ourselves
(3) The argument "We need more research" is ludicrous. It's like seeing smoke pouring from your house and not calling the fire department. "Well, it could be on fire, but I better look into it some more...". The evidence this parent comment cites is more than enough reason to start on a path of less destruction
(4) All science is theory. All that one can do is take observable phenomena and draw conclusions based on those data. Theories try to explain the WHY of natural phenomena, and based on the WHY, we can make predictions. Listen, I can say that the sun will rise tomorrow, but there is no way to be absolutely sure of that. We have a certain cosmological theory that make predictions as to the relative positions of the sun and Earth at certain spatiotemporal locations which enables me to say things like "Tomorrow the sun will rise". Based on observable data, a majority of scientists have concluded that global warming is occuring. Rather than debate whether or not it is, let's take a modified version of "Pascal's Wager": If global warming is happening, and we do something to stem the tide, then we'll do okay. If it is happening and we do nothing, we're fscked. Alternatively, if there is no warming effect, by doing nothing we'll be all set, and if we modify our behavior (switching to renewable, non-polluting energy), we're still all set. To cover our bases, therefore, we should begin the process of moving to non-polluting energy. In other words, choose the path of acting to prevent global warming even if it turns out to be a non-threat.
The main reason that I wouldn't pay for online content is that I tend to view the internet as a public library -- a resource that's freely available. In addition, there seems to be a kind of 'social contract' aspect to the net, with the understanding that by setting up your own website, it will encourage others to do the same. If you make your site free, so will others.(Not that I have a website...)
I think most people also have difficulty realizing that websites are actually servers that require maintenence, electricity, &c. It's just a magical electronic universe with goatse.cx for everyone...
Final thought: The net isn't linear, like a radio or tv signal -- you can't insert commercials into the feed every 15 minutes and still keep the viewer's attention (despite X10's best efforts). The whole commercial paradigm has to be rethought. (well, duh.)
Okay, IANAB(iologist), but neither side of the biotech debate seems to be getting things quite right. Reactionaries against GMOs use ignorant slogans like "Get your DNA out of my food". Biotech pushers use questionable logic like "Well, you've eaten it for this long, it can't be bad for you!" Here's the thing: Mutated DNA is not going to screw you up if you eat it. Short-term effects are negligable, unless you start introducting pesticide-producing capabilities, which we'll leave aside for the moment.
The problem with bio-engineering is this: The action of changing an organism in an ecosystem affects the entire ecosystem. It's the same as the analogy of the ol' butterfly flapping its wings in SoCal and causing tsunamis in Japan. Genetically modifying a plant that has natural predators will induce the predators to adapt or die. If they die, then their predators are forced to adapt or die, and so on.
In short (too late!), we must take the long view on this issue, not be afraid of the progress of science, nor over-confident in her abilities to predict the future.
The first showing, in Los Angeles, has already sold out (not surprisingly). John Cleese and Eric Idle will be making personal appearences there, at the NuArt Theater.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right that there's no such thing as too much speech. But, we have to temper that with some common sense. IMHO, the freedom of speech is essential because only by banging away at things in a free and open manner will we arrive at the Truth (yes, with a capital T). When you have valid viewpoints drowned out by incessant pap, you have to question whether society as a whole gains anything by having media outlets following each other over the proverbial cliff, into tabloid news (all Lewinsky/Condit/etc., all the time).
Another analogy: campaign finance reform. Speech, for the most part, has meaning -- we use it to encode & transmit thoughts; there is the form (phonology & syntax) and the meaning (semantics). Money has no meaning. When it's introduced into a debate, it's just a matter of who has more, not who has the better argument. It's sophistry without sophistication. We should encourage lively debate, not discourage it by providing the biggest megaphones to those with the most money.
And to try to despeately veer this back on-topic, this is what Normon Solomon is objecting to. We have people with the most money generating the most traffic. The semantics is lost behind a wall of homogeneity. And it's not a meritocracy, as some would have you believe: the big names are those that are firmly entrenched. So you have a situation developing on-line where a majority of people will not be exposed to the lively debate that a democracy is supposed to foster.
I think a lot of people here fail to get what the problem is. Noam Chomsky (and I'm sure a lot of people just groan at that name), said something to the effect of: The greatest way to keep youself in power is to create boundaries outside of which argument does not take place; but within those boundaries, permit all sorts of disagreement. This is what Solomon is foreseeing.
A parallel situation: the anti-abortion activists (and this is not intered to start an abortion thread) see as their new goal not to overturn Roe v. Wade but to make it so that even though abortion is perfectly legal, you can get one anywhere.
Any *ahem* yahoo can publish his/her own newspaper, but you will never influence the national dialogue with your little rag -- you are drowned out by the mainstream media. And I don't think anyone is happy with the current media situation. Again, this is what Solomon is warning us about -- the fact that web traffic goes to established players, not to the radical voices we think are available on the web.
Excellent point. I should have been more specific: interpretation is usually reserved for granting rights to someone, not taking them away. So, although voting was originally restricted to male landowners, the "right to vote" was seen as belonging to all American citizens; this extension of rights was seen as consistent with the spirit of the Constitution. And, in fact, you can't "grandfather" rights.
More generally, the idea behind a looser interpretation ('spirit of the law') isn't to surprise people, the argument is that the interpretation is and always was there. Just no one thought of it in the current way.
In short: Interpretation is limited to the words on the page. But that doesn't mean that the meaning of those words are inflexible; they can apply in different manners to different situations.
This has been read to say that the government can neither endorse nor prohibit religion. This has been read to say (reasonably, iun my estimation), that the government can't get involved in religious matters.
It is a longstanding tradition to interpret the meaning of the Constitution. This is what makes it great; it is a living document that is adaptable to our modern society. It was not written and then abandoned.
The problem with Bible clubs is not whether they can be held at the school (singling out a group for exclusion, esp. a religious one violates the First Amendment), nor whether the students can form these clubs (the courts have consistantly ruled that students have a right to express religious beliefs in school). The problem is that these clubs require teacher sponsors, and that's the barrier between church and state. A teacher in a public school is an agent of the government and can neither encourage or deny any religion. It gets really messy because if you are a student in Mrs. Christian's class, and Mrs. Christian hosts a school-sponsored Bible study, you may think that you need to attend the Bible study group in order to get a good grade. Coersion by the government. That's the mess that the Founding Fathers wanted to avoid (they were all Deists, by the way, not avidly religious guys).
Everyone overreacts to these Church/State issues. It's so darn messy. Basically any government entity has to step back and let everyone else speak, and make sure everyone has an equal voice. It's not easy to be the government in that situation, especially if you have your own strong set of beliefs.
Check out Americans United for Seperation of Church and State. They're good people.
Unlike walking down the street, you need to be licensed to drive a car. If you fail basic requirements, you can't drive. So if I'm blind, I can't drive a car (I can, however, walk down the street and the government has to make certain reasonable adjustments to the public ways so that I can walk down the street). The only reason that it seems like you have a right to fly is that the airline companies WANT you to fly. They want your money. The power we possess to compel airlines to treat customers with some degree of dignity lies in the power of the almighty dollar, not in a fundamental right to fly on an airplane. (Also note that we use these means of transportation because they exist, not because it's in the Constitution that they should be created and free for use by anyone)
As for your argument that you don't have a right to walk down every street, you're absolutely right. But the state prohibits you from walking on a highway for two reasons: (1) you'll probably get killed, and (2) there are surface streets that you CAN walk on that will take you to the same location. Walking on the highway doesn't make it any faster.
Embryonic stem cells are fundamentally different from adult or placental stem cells. Research so far indicates that the plasticity of embryonic stem cells is much greater than adult cells. That's why the research community wants to investigate embryonic stem cells.
Bush's decision basically says that the government will only fund research on the 60 existing embryonic lines. According to this article, some of those cell lines are privately owned; it's not clear if there will be general access to those lines. Now, 60 is not a lot of variation to work with. When doing research of this type, you need a large genetic pool to work with. This fundamentally reduces that pool. Bush's decision has bound the hands of scientists looking for cures to horrifyingly deadly diseases.
For those of you who would argue that these embryos are children that need to be protected, check out David Corn's article about that viewpoint.
First of all, the parent to this is a troll. Second, the excellent reason for having government funded research is to allow no-strings-attached publication of results. I work for a company that forces its employees to send all papers for publication through the legal department. Privately funded research has the spectre of censorship and active supression of results hanging over it.
First, let me say that I honestly love the responses here. I've had to really think about what the heck to say to the issues that people raised here.
Okay, surveillance of baggage and cars and whatnot could be considered a different set of circumstances. You don't have the RIGHT to drive a car, you don't have the RIGHT to fly on a plane. But you do have the right to walk down the street. Once you enter some kind of private venue, you lose certain rights (at least as far as I know). Which means casinos et al should probably be considered under a different set of rules than a public street.
Although one is able to walk unhindered down the street with the cameras and face-rec software buzzing away, it is disturbing that we would allow ourselves to be constantly watched. (I'm trying to avoid the slippery slope argument into 'misuse of the technology' because I think, on its face, the use of this technology undermines our basic right to a presumption of innocence).
My core idea is this: every time that camera looks at you, it attempts to match you to a criminal face. That's 24/7, every time you walk by that camera. To me, that is analogous to having to verify that you are not a criminal to a police officer every day. Rather than having the freedom to meander down the street (relatively) care-free, we have to be aware that we are always being examined to see if we are a criminal. This, to me, is the antithesis of a free and democratic society
Simply because you can initialize a bool with the value 'true' doesn't undermine my argument that face-recognition systems presume guilt. The mere fact that the system chose me to compare against its database shows that I am presumed to be in this database. When humans do this task, they have a mental image that they are matching against real-world faces, not vice-versa.
There is no reason for the system to look at me. If I were in the midst of committing a crime, that would be something different. Since I'm not doing anything wrong, I should be protected by the shield of 'presumed innocence'.
You would honestly like to live in a society where a police officer was stationed every 50 feet? Seems to be a scary place...
I'm sure that the process was something like this:
First, woman calls police saying man is ex that owes $$
Next, police use FACIAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE to check the man's face against drivers's license database
Using the information obtained from his driver's license, the police talk to the man (after all, he could be using an alias, so they have to check him out)
Anyone else know what's going on?
Ah, but your analogy is wrong.
To make the situation analogous, it would be that every time you walked down the street, you'd get fingerprinted and checked. That seems like a VERY BAD situation
I'll ignore the gratuitous ACLU swipe and the troll-like use of "Barf me".
I may not have a right to privacy in public, but I have the right to an assumption of innocence until proven otherwise. Cops on the beat can make a mistake identifying someone. This is not a problem. No real harassment, just a case of mistake identity. These things are the equivalent of having checkpoints out on the street where you have to prove you're innocent. I refuse to put up with that.
In the United States, there is a presumption of innocence. Face-recognition systems assume the opposite: you are a wanted criminal and only a null result on their database search proves you are NOT, in fact, a criminal. It's hard for us to be critical of these systems because, superficially, we don't want the bad people to get away. The pro-surveillance arguement is something like: "Well, if you haven't done anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear". But it's not that simple: I have a right to expect that I am assumed to be an innocent civilian until proven otherwise. I should not have to prove my innocence on a daily basis. These things should be ruled unconstitutional.
IANAL, of course
Someone else out there probably know better, but I believe that under NAFTA, DirecTV might be able to make some claims...
IANAL!!
can you imagine sitting on a train (bus, whatever) and listening to everyone yammer into their Palm Pilots? What a terrifying vision...
Of course, I haven't been on a public transportation system in like 4 months. Maybe it's like that already...
SpeechWorks is a commecial company bringing AT&T Labs's TTS stuff to the marketplace. They're currently offering Speechify, which is a slightly older version of the AT&T Labs system. A demo is here. Can anyone tell the difference?
I've said this before here, I think: the problem is that the web is non-linear and, to a certain extent, mutable to each user (look at the programs that are out there to kill banner ads and pop-ups). You can't do that with a magazine or newspaper. TV is a linear stream, you can't skip ahead, so you're forced to suffer through an endless stream of car commericals and spots for the newest reality TV show. With newspapers, it's a bit different, but you still get big, glossy pictures every other page. The look and feel is different from browsing.
What to do? You can't do this pop-up crap, since it drives everyone bonkers. You shouldn't be doing flash ads as the intro to your site, since people are already waiting to download the page. Waiting for a flash animation will just irritate people more. (Who wants to wait longer to hear about Jim Beam?) People are used to getting their web content for free, so shifting to pay sites would be difficult at best (leaving aside people reposting material at free sites and whatnot).
My own personal view is that the web should be looked at as a gigantic public library. Largely, websites, especially news sites like cnn.com and the New York Times are reposting stories that they already have. These are materials that have already been created. Much like a library has copies of the daily news, so should the web. The drawback is that it's not free or even cheap to get a site up, running and maintained (as many readers probably know firsthand). So, do we put a tax on net access and use that to subsidize website creation, mitigating the need for ads? Or a central federal repository for information? I don't know...
One thing that seems to be happening is a kind of "mathematics of altruism," where someone creates a website and makes it publicly available with the expectation that a second person will create a different site of interest to the first, and so on. Of course, a majority of people don't have either web access or 1337 skillz to make a website. So the number of sites of interest is small at best, and those require lots of maintenence.
I certainly have no idea about the best way to go about this. I know that my gut tells me the web should be free.
Man, the X-Files have been sucking for the past 2 years. First, they choose Robert Patrick over Bruce Campbell. Now this.
What happened to episodes like "The Great Mutado"?
Looks like the downward trend continues. (No offense meant to the Xena fans).
I'll probably get flamed for this, but I thought Learning Perl was the best intro to programming I've ever read. It gets your hands dirty immediately, programming from the very first chapter, and it's very accessible, especially for a non-techie like me.
Few things:
(1) Put your money where your mouth is. Cite reports saying global warming is not occuring. Here's the catch: the report(s) must be from independant sources, like the National Academy of Sciences, &c. The last thing anyone wants to see is a report sponsored by ExxonMobil.
(2) I, too, feel that profanity is unneccessary, but after reading these posts, I'm literally shaking with anger. It's understandable and forgivable. Let's all try to restrain ourselves
(3) The argument "We need more research" is ludicrous. It's like seeing smoke pouring from your house and not calling the fire department. "Well, it could be on fire, but I better look into it some more...". The evidence this parent comment cites is more than enough reason to start on a path of less destruction
(4) All science is theory. All that one can do is take observable phenomena and draw conclusions based on those data. Theories try to explain the WHY of natural phenomena, and based on the WHY, we can make predictions. Listen, I can say that the sun will rise tomorrow, but there is no way to be absolutely sure of that. We have a certain cosmological theory that make predictions as to the relative positions of the sun and Earth at certain spatiotemporal locations which enables me to say things like "Tomorrow the sun will rise". Based on observable data, a majority of scientists have concluded that global warming is occuring. Rather than debate whether or not it is, let's take a modified version of "Pascal's Wager": If global warming is happening, and we do something to stem the tide, then we'll do okay. If it is happening and we do nothing, we're fscked. Alternatively, if there is no warming effect, by doing nothing we'll be all set, and if we modify our behavior (switching to renewable, non-polluting energy), we're still all set. To cover our bases, therefore, we should begin the process of moving to non-polluting energy. In other words, choose the path of acting to prevent global warming even if it turns out to be a non-threat.
The main reason that I wouldn't pay for online content is that I tend to view the internet as a public library -- a resource that's freely available. In addition, there seems to be a kind of 'social contract' aspect to the net, with the understanding that by setting up your own website, it will encourage others to do the same. If you make your site free, so will others.(Not that I have a website...)
I think most people also have difficulty realizing that websites are actually servers that require maintenence, electricity, &c. It's just a magical electronic universe with goatse.cx for everyone...
Final thought: The net isn't linear, like a radio or tv signal -- you can't insert commercials into the feed every 15 minutes and still keep the viewer's attention (despite X10's best efforts). The whole commercial paradigm has to be rethought. (well, duh.)
Okay, IANAB(iologist), but neither side of the biotech debate seems to be getting things quite right. Reactionaries against GMOs use ignorant slogans like "Get your DNA out of my food". Biotech pushers use questionable logic like "Well, you've eaten it for this long, it can't be bad for you!" Here's the thing: Mutated DNA is not going to screw you up if you eat it. Short-term effects are negligable, unless you start introducting pesticide-producing capabilities, which we'll leave aside for the moment.
The problem with bio-engineering is this: The action of changing an organism in an ecosystem affects the entire ecosystem. It's the same as the analogy of the ol' butterfly flapping its wings in SoCal and causing tsunamis in Japan. Genetically modifying a plant that has natural predators will induce the predators to adapt or die. If they die, then their predators are forced to adapt or die, and so on.
In short (too late!), we must take the long view on this issue, not be afraid of the progress of science, nor over-confident in her abilities to predict the future.
The first showing, in Los Angeles, has already sold out (not surprisingly). John Cleese and Eric Idle will be making personal appearences there, at the NuArt Theater.