Yes...most of "you" do just abbreviate that as "Republicans." But then, in your world, "we" would be "Democrats."
Do you understand that for many people, and with good reason, Al Gore exemplifies the problem cited in the GP's post? But I suspect the GP was referring to a range of demagoguery that is ubiquitous among almost ALL politicians. And that would include many Democrats and many Republicans.
Do you understand what is meant when it is said that partisanism is corrosive? Dumb, unmoderated, seat-of-the-pants partisanism.
So whattaya think...are you guys over there going to be able to cope with changes in your environment, or are you going to fold? (I'll bet on adaptation.)
This will indeed cause certain people to "wonder". Especially people who do not have the faculties to properly understand the idiomatic uses of the English language
I possess faculties to understand idiomatic usage.
The fact is that climate modeling and prediction is built upon theories that are built upon other theories. Some of those theories are concrete and deterministic in nature, while others are much less certain and non-deterministic.
The emotional conundrum for so many climate scientists is their desire to express confidence and specificity in their conclusions. And yet, the accumulated uncertainty of the underlying theories naturally erodes the certainty of the conclusions.
Idiomatic usage comes to the rescue. The "trick" is to create a clear picture where things are not so clear.
The science is in the data, the correlations, and the known measures of error and noise. But the conclusions...them's a lot of politics. And idiom.
when you consider modern sports stadia the ability to cover an area say 1 km across doesn't seem out of place.
It appears that the largest enclosed stadium is the Rungrado May First Stadium in Pyong Yang North Korea. At 200,000 square meters, I'll estimate it to be 500 meters in diameter. Since large roofs tend to use elliptical surface designs, I'll use a surface area formula of about 3Pr2 (three-pi-radius-squared). So our new 1km roof, being twice the radius of North Korea's, would be approximately four times the size of the world's current largest roof.
So, yes, it wouldn't seem "out of place" for, say, a country willing to fund four times the economic nonsense of North Korea. (It is highly optimistic and speculative to believe that four times the surface area wouldn't require much more than four times the materials and cost.)
I especially liked this one:
As every engineer knows, if something can fail, it will.
Actually, what every engineer knows is that if something can fail, it might.
Interesting perspective on engineers, and engineering.
Try this one: Why should someone who doesn't have a job, and hence can't produce anything for society, not be given a job that will lead to them being a productive member of society?
Ummm...a syntactically correct question doesn't constitute a useful argument, no matter how well intentioned it may be. Instead of just floating the question, try to answer it, critically, in the context of a world with limited resources and many other important competing needs.
There's one big pie to be divided into pieces here, and it's not big enough to cover all our needs. So unless you're willing to cut somewhere to fund your aspirations, I'll consider you to be just one more voice from the MORE!-MORE!-MORE! crowd.
I regret how quickly we are moving toward the day when we will find that it really isn't as simple as printing more money. And you wonder where bubbles come from?
Sharing is when you give something of yourself. You mis-state the spirit of taking as if it is the spirit of giving.
At the root of every case of illegal content sharing is a breach of contract. To that you turn a blind eye.
It's not sharing. It's leaching.
Self-denial is a higher form. Less material. Steeped in respect. And now that you're "grown up" as you are, you're unlikely to find much value in that.
It's not piracy, it's sharing. Didn't your parents teach you to share?
Sure they did. So whenever the dorky kid in school brought in something really cool for Show-And-Tell, I'd grab it from him and share it with everybody else. (I always threw it back to him when I was done.)
My parents also taught me to ignore dorky kids who crouch in the corner crying.
He advances the same stupid argument as the grandparent's argument, his only difference being that he employs offensive cultural biases instead of popular ones. And I don't think you get the point: that so many popular environmental theories are steeped in cultural bias, falsely advanced as being products of good reason and science.
I had the same power concern and similar application/performance expectations. At the same time, I had a Windows desktop machine that was powered up 24x7 for other reasons. So I added some extra RAM to the Windows box, put VMWare Server (free as in beer) on it, and then installed my favorite Linux distro on the VM. My virtual Linux server works like a charm, and in a manner of speaking, consumes no electrical power. Highly recommended.
The clear implication is that the password was given well before December
Yes. But your inference that she did not receive consideration prior to that time is not supported by any evidence. You seem to have inferred this from the prosecution's absence of evidence of her having received prior payment.
In a case like this, it would be LIKELY that early payments in the conspiracy, prior to triggering and ramp-up of the investigation, WOULD NOT BE KNOWN by the prosecution (and certainly would not be offered by the defense absent of some plea agreement). The woman demonstrated the presence of mind to conceal payments through cash-only transactions (as opposed to wire transfer), so her conspiracy includes money laundering.
I am NOT inferring that she DID receive prior consideration. But you ARE inferring that she DIDN'T. And that's more than a bit pollyannaish.
From TFA:
Sellmon also admitted to accepting $100 gift cards from Bansal while working at OCTO.
Note that she worked at OCTO in 2007, at least a year earlier. And also note that such gift cards are traceable, thereby allowing the prosecution to provide evidence of Sellmon having received prior consideration. But you seem to assert that she was oblivious to the motives behind those "gifts" as well.
I am now picturing two people on a stage. One is that woman, a Project Manager with years of experience as a government employee, looking you straight in the eye and saying that she had no idea that the passing of the password, the acceptance of the $2,000, the acceptance of the gift cards, constituted a serious ethical breach. And you turn to the audience and declare, "I believe her. I believe she is just stupid."
No offense intended...but whom do you think sounds kind of silly here?
How did you arrive at the belief that she had no expectation of reward when she gave away the password? I understand that the prosecutor did not present evidence to indicate that she did. But did I miss some other fact that would support your belief?
Please do note that I find any defensive remarks of the woman who accepted a $2,000 "gift" from a business associate to be less than credible. You may feel otherwise.
So she is primarily guilty of total stupidity rather than criminal intent.
It is interesting that you choose to attribute to stupidity that which is more easily attributed to greed.
Then, you imply that this person didn't receive "positive training in security," and that said lapse in training significantly contributed to the errant behavior.
Might you consider that a person whom you assert to be so stupid is unlikely to significantly benefit from security training?
Or might you be so intent upon advancing lame apologist theories of human behavior that you are willing to essentially disregard the easily observable presence of greed and lack of concern for community that are pervasive in the world in general, the U.S. in particular, and D.C. government to extreme.
Pick essentially maintained all disk data as hash tables. It had a variant of BASIC for coding apps, a central data dictionary, and a query language that facilitated reporting. It was reasonably functional for data processing, but neither radical nor particularly innovative (nor efficient for large tables).
MUMPS maintains all its disk resident data in a much more sophisticated and flexible data structure (sparse b-trees with asynchronous garbage collection), and has a surprisingly elegant application development language in which data (read: "globals") appear syntactically as variables.
Compared to Pick, MUMPS is a much more gleaming mesh of database/filesystem (and language).
Yes, I preferred the Bush strategy. Though it doused "objectionable" propaganda, it did not succeed at suppressing good ol' scientific findings. (And it's not clear to me that it was intended to do so.) Recent U.S. presidents have known very well the differences between science and politics. So though they may censor press releases and conference presentations, they do not censor the contents of scientific studies nor their findings. That's what's so beautiful about good science: it's way too narrow and modest to drive anything other than incremental improvements in understanding. A well-written study is, by itself, of little use to a politician. Politicians (a.k.a. political activists) have much more ambitious objectives to change the world in some mostly predetermined way; science only offers mechanisms by which to increase understanding of the world (and is somewhat less predisposed to outcome).
I sat yesterday morning at a table of random common people, some of whom had read the day's newspaper. Their understanding was that, much to the shock and dismay of scientists, a giant floating garbage island has been discovered that poses heretofore unrealized threats to life. They missed the points about the particulates. They read THE HEADLINES. They recalled THE DEAD MAMMALS. They understood that it is a 1,700 MILE FLOATING PATCH OF GARBAGE.
So they misunderstood the nature and degree of the problem, and in so doing, understood very well what this story intended them to understand. Idiots, you might say? Nope. Just ordinary people who got the gist of this story.
A conspiracy? I don't see one. This is just environmental politics. No conspiracy. Just a story intended to drive the electorate to support funding of additional research and political action intended to reduce messes such as this one. That's all. And to me, it's anything but evil.
Oh, and if the public has to be a little misinformed to drive action, well then, that's fair game. Yes? I mean it's fair game in environmental politics, in health care, in foreign policy, in war. It's fair game in the State Department, DOD, the Treasury, NOAA. It's a sea of politics where "spin" (a.k.a. misleading information) is justified by the outcome, yes? (Please do see my dripping sarcasm here.)
I DON'T WANT BULLSH_T COMING OUT OF NOAA.
And in arguing this simple point, I have to put up with arguments based on half-cocked presumptions of "whose side" I'm on and what my "real" motives are. Why is that? It is because most people are only offended by misinformation that counters their political preferences. That, they call "lies." But when misinformation supports their political preferences, well, that they call "spin" and forgive with vacuous rationalizations that allude to "the practical realities of what it takes to get things done."
Practical shmactical. Misinformation is not the stuff of science. It should not be the stuff of NOAA. Leave other agencies to do that "practical" crap of which we speak.
NOAA should be a bastion of Science (i.e. the practice of the scientific method and the prevailing good practices associated therein). For the most part, I believe it has been. And all the people arguing against me here agree with these points. So where's the disagreement? It emanates from NOAA having propagated a poorly constructed, pretty much bullsh_t statistic: 100,000 mammals killed per year by ocean debris. (Yes, if you read the NOAA wording carefully, they successfully propagated this "fact" while covering their asses with qualifying clauses that are quite expectantly ignored and dropped during the course of dissemination.) I know very well from the quality of the construction of your posting that you also know that's a B.S. number. And yet, because it's part of a propaganda campaign that I suspect somehow supports your notion of goodness, you choose to turn a blind eye to the incorrectness of this incidental bit of spin, this unimportant statistic.
NOAA should not be a propaganda tool. Alas, it sometimes is. So we should advise people to view statistics issued by NOAA with a due amount of skepticism. Should we not?
The answer is: we don't know. But NOAA published a B.S. number that hit every major news source in the U.S., and will hereafter be referenced and repeated as fact, because *NOAA* said it. You appear quite comfortable with that. I would guess it suits your politics. It is not, however, the stuff of science.
As for all that rubbish in your second paragraph, those are your demons, not mine.
Seeing no evidence of disagreement between us here, I'll guess that I made the mistake of touching one of your Sacred Cows.
You may understand my very simple point if you'll try to honestly answer this question (and reconcile it against the story here): How many marine mammals are killed each year by ocean debris?
Science is a methodology, not on organization acronym.
Yes!
I believe that NOAA's credibility is derived from the credibility of the methodology, and the degree to which the organization exploits the methodology through its disciplined application.
I did put some effort into understanding NOAA's role in this campaign, and apparently, a good deal more than you did. See NOAA here where the agency explains how it got from the "50,000 to 90,000" quote to their "100,000" propaganda number. Interestingly, if you had indeed taken the time to do exactly as you suggested, i.e. to google "NOAAA 100000", you would have seen this reference as the third link down. I took a much lengthier route, not looking to prove or disprove anything, but simply to understand the basis of the 100,000 estimate.
As NOAA's explanation indicates, they took the only loosely related range of "50,000 to 90,000", and from there, the 100,000 number emerges without further explanation. Your metaphorical characterization exactly matches my thinking when I saw it: they pulled it out of their asses.
I have high regard for the scientists of NOAA and their work products. I say this with great sincerity, and not to patronize your point. But in stark contrast with the genuinely authoritative works of NOAA, there are the political ways in which Presidential administrations and non-scientifically motivated high-level administrators of NOAA use its good name to advance political positions. In doing so, they besmirch NOAA's well-deserved reputation for good science, and cause people like me to use quotes around the word "authoritative" when describing the agency's "work" such as this. The politicians are simply taking NOAA's well-earned trust for a lowly political joy ride.
It occurs to me that I prefer the Bush administration's strategy of suppressing publication of NOAA work products that they found objectionable. If this ocean debris campaign is any indication of the Obama administration's approach, it looks like they will be using the NOAA moniker to publish political opinions as if they are the science of NOAA. This latter approach will be much more damaging to NOAA's scientists; it blatantly misrepresents their voices instead of just making it more difficult for them to be heard.
So garbage is not randomly distributed throughout the oceans, but not surprisingly, it collects in areas of significantly increased density due to prevailing currents. How dense? Not dense enough to be visible to the casual onlooker. Only dense enough to be identified through careful study. So is that the story here?
No. The truth isn't good enough for a story. The truth isn't good enough to drive political action. So "scientists" lend their names to "authoritative" agencies like NOAA to come up with the story of a 1,700 mile "patch" of garbage. Alternatively (and dramatically), it has been called a "flotilla".
Yes, there's "a lot" of garbage in the ocean. And, it's a "big" ocean. Look carefully and you'll see that these stories don't do much to help you gauge what this "patch" really is.
"It's pretty shocking," said Miriam Goldstein.
"We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," said Tony Haymet.
Thank you, researchers Goldstein and Hayment, for your contributions.
Look carefully through the photographs surrounding this story. Look for the 1,700 mile flotilla of garbage. By my understanding, this thing is a whole lot less dense than the stories would have you believe.
Here's a good one that I tried to track down:
"...one paper cited by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates 100,000 marine mammals die trash-related deaths each year."
This little "factoid" apparently comes from a non-peer-reviewed paper (page 270 here) published in 1985 that cites another un-reviewed paper in 1984 (can't find this one...Fowler) that estimated that 50,000 seals had died that year due to "entanglement" primarily in nets, as best I can tell. There's no more on methodology for determining that number, nor how it should be related to overall mammal population and more general "ocean debris."
Judge the quality of the "science" here for yourself. If you're a critical thinker, it should be apparent that this isn't science at all...it's just another story of human waste.
Correct on all fronts. So why would you suggest that the FTC would limit its authority to fall within a scope not [yet] proscribed by the Court? The fact that the Court hasn't ruled on some point doesn't in itself make that point a "legal sinkhole." I again cite a long and unchallenged history of allowing that parties may be prevented from making unwanted telephone calls to people WITHOUT REGARD TO CONTENT. Your [repeated] citation of the Court's willingness to allow limitations on commercial speech is [strangely] irrelevant here. What is the basis of your implication that the FTC has cause to be fearful? Is it just some vague notion of the Court's regard for "the whole free speech thing" (which heretofore the Court has tacitly chosen to disregard in the case of phone calls)? DO YOU HAVE ANY SPECIFIC BASIS for believing the Court is likely to support a change in public policy that will preclude such unfettered regulation of phone calls?
Actually, they might be trying to work within the framework of previous SCOTUS rulings regarding the regulation of commercial free speech as opposed to non-commercial free speech.
Can you cite a SCOTUS ruling that indicates that free speech rights entitle you to make calls into people's homes? I am not aware of such, and I think it would be a stretch. Rights to privacy, though inferred, offer a competing balance and are well-supported by the Court.
Note that current anti-harassment laws criminalize repeated unwanted phone calls from a given party, regardless of their content, and have long stood without constitutional challenge.
Your suggestion that the government's motive is to act within the framework of the Constitution is as dubious as it is imaginative. If you are at all convinced that your theory is the genuine reason, then you probably have an alternative unstated reason that is driving such a delusional suggestion.
I think a prerecorded message is analogous to either a bullhorn or a prerecorded television ad.
Neither bullhorn nor TV ad are allowed to enter into my home without my consent. It is practical for me to leave off (or to not have) a TV. But a phone provides essential services (including emergency services) that cannot function if it is turned off. The bullhorn, actually, can be annoying by coming through my window, but in fact, the state has retained latitude to regulate that problem through noise control regulations and requirements of permit for public demonstration.
The allowance of political calls (under the guise of free speech) simply reflects legislative selfishness...a willingness to enforce just behavior upon all but themselves. It reflects the self-serving, less-than-high ethics that characterizes all but the fewest of politicians. They rationalize it away under a Greater Good theory, in this case some abstract virtue of greater public participation in politics. But that's just a cover fib, their real motive being to avail themselves of political advantage through any and all legal means. If you want to see how much they care about public participation, check their records on trying to help people of opposing parties to participate in politics.
Try to find out why the most up-to-date opinion that now guides U.S. law has diverged from your own opinion. (All opinions are not equal.)
Your opinion of the word "militia", an opinion held by many, is patently wrong. You can't possibly grasp the substance of the Second Amendment while holding your [mis]interpretation of that word. It's not surprising that your perspective is based on that misinterpretation.
Time for you to return to school, my friend (if you are intent upon having informed opinions.)
I, too, carried your misunderstanding of the term "militia". At the time of the writing of the constitution, the militia was, in fact, all able-bodied men.
It's too easy to rely on self-affirming, second-rate opinions about the second amendment instead of taking the time to read a first-rate scholarly work such as an actual Supreme Court opinion. Scalia's opinion for the majority upholding second amendment rights (and striking down D.C.'s attempt at a total gun ban) is beautifully informative about the second amendment right, its purpose and importance. It is also quite readable. My understanding of the second amendment changed dramatically after reading it.
Or, you could continue to swallow arguments that, rather than inform, simply reinforce your status quo.
(P.S. In case you are scared of the opinion, be aware that it ends with Scalia pointedly affirming the reasonableness of the State implementing gun control regulations.)
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. Good citation of point. Thanks.
Yes...most of "you" do just abbreviate that as "Republicans." But then, in your world, "we" would be "Democrats."
Do you understand that for many people, and with good reason, Al Gore exemplifies the problem cited in the GP's post? But I suspect the GP was referring to a range of demagoguery that is ubiquitous among almost ALL politicians. And that would include many Democrats and many Republicans.
Do you understand what is meant when it is said that partisanism is corrosive? Dumb, unmoderated, seat-of-the-pants partisanism.
So whattaya think...are you guys over there going to be able to cope with changes in your environment, or are you going to fold? (I'll bet on adaptation.)
I possess faculties to understand idiomatic usage.
The fact is that climate modeling and prediction is built upon theories that are built upon other theories. Some of those theories are concrete and deterministic in nature, while others are much less certain and non-deterministic.
The emotional conundrum for so many climate scientists is their desire to express confidence and specificity in their conclusions. And yet, the accumulated uncertainty of the underlying theories naturally erodes the certainty of the conclusions.
Idiomatic usage comes to the rescue. The "trick" is to create a clear picture where things are not so clear.
The science is in the data, the correlations, and the known measures of error and noise. But the conclusions...them's a lot of politics. And idiom.
This was good.
It appears that the largest enclosed stadium is the Rungrado May First Stadium in Pyong Yang North Korea. At 200,000 square meters, I'll estimate it to be 500 meters in diameter. Since large roofs tend to use elliptical surface designs, I'll use a surface area formula of about 3Pr2 (three-pi-radius-squared). So our new 1km roof, being twice the radius of North Korea's, would be approximately four times the size of the world's current largest roof.
So, yes, it wouldn't seem "out of place" for, say, a country willing to fund four times the economic nonsense of North Korea. (It is highly optimistic and speculative to believe that four times the surface area wouldn't require much more than four times the materials and cost.)
I especially liked this one:
Actually, what every engineer knows is that if something can fail, it might.
Interesting perspective on engineers, and engineering.
Try this one: Why should someone who doesn't have a job, and hence can't produce anything for society, not be given a job that will lead to them being a productive member of society?
Ummm...a syntactically correct question doesn't constitute a useful argument, no matter how well intentioned it may be. Instead of just floating the question, try to answer it, critically, in the context of a world with limited resources and many other important competing needs.
There's one big pie to be divided into pieces here, and it's not big enough to cover all our needs. So unless you're willing to cut somewhere to fund your aspirations, I'll consider you to be just one more voice from the MORE!-MORE!-MORE! crowd.
I regret how quickly we are moving toward the day when we will find that it really isn't as simple as printing more money. And you wonder where bubbles come from?
Sharing is when you give something of yourself. You mis-state the spirit of taking as if it is the spirit of giving.
At the root of every case of illegal content sharing is a breach of contract. To that you turn a blind eye.
It's not sharing. It's leaching.
Self-denial is a higher form. Less material. Steeped in respect. And now that you're "grown up" as you are, you're unlikely to find much value in that.
<child
Sure they did. So whenever the dorky kid in school brought in something really cool for Show-And-Tell, I'd grab it from him and share it with everybody else. (I always threw it back to him when I was done.)
My parents also taught me to ignore dorky kids who crouch in the corner crying.
My world is good.
He advances the same stupid argument as the grandparent's argument, his only difference being that he employs offensive cultural biases instead of popular ones. And I don't think you get the point: that so many popular environmental theories are steeped in cultural bias, falsely advanced as being products of good reason and science.
I had the same power concern and similar application/performance expectations. At the same time, I had a Windows desktop machine that was powered up 24x7 for other reasons. So I added some extra RAM to the Windows box, put VMWare Server (free as in beer) on it, and then installed my favorite Linux distro on the VM. My virtual Linux server works like a charm, and in a manner of speaking, consumes no electrical power. Highly recommended.
Yes. But your inference that she did not receive consideration prior to that time is not supported by any evidence. You seem to have inferred this from the prosecution's absence of evidence of her having received prior payment.
In a case like this, it would be LIKELY that early payments in the conspiracy, prior to triggering and ramp-up of the investigation, WOULD NOT BE KNOWN by the prosecution (and certainly would not be offered by the defense absent of some plea agreement). The woman demonstrated the presence of mind to conceal payments through cash-only transactions (as opposed to wire transfer), so her conspiracy includes money laundering.
I am NOT inferring that she DID receive prior consideration. But you ARE inferring that she DIDN'T. And that's more than a bit pollyannaish.
From TFA:
Note that she worked at OCTO in 2007, at least a year earlier. And also note that such gift cards are traceable, thereby allowing the prosecution to provide evidence of Sellmon having received prior consideration. But you seem to assert that she was oblivious to the motives behind those "gifts" as well.
I am now picturing two people on a stage. One is that woman, a Project Manager with years of experience as a government employee, looking you straight in the eye and saying that she had no idea that the passing of the password, the acceptance of the $2,000, the acceptance of the gift cards, constituted a serious ethical breach. And you turn to the audience and declare, "I believe her. I believe she is just stupid."
No offense intended...but whom do you think sounds kind of silly here?
Please do note that I find any defensive remarks of the woman who accepted a $2,000 "gift" from a business associate to be less than credible. You may feel otherwise.
It is interesting that you choose to attribute to stupidity that which is more easily attributed to greed.
Then, you imply that this person didn't receive "positive training in security," and that said lapse in training significantly contributed to the errant behavior.
Might you consider that a person whom you assert to be so stupid is unlikely to significantly benefit from security training?
Or might you be so intent upon advancing lame apologist theories of human behavior that you are willing to essentially disregard the easily observable presence of greed and lack of concern for community that are pervasive in the world in general, the U.S. in particular, and D.C. government to extreme.
Pick essentially maintained all disk data as hash tables. It had a variant of BASIC for coding apps, a central data dictionary, and a query language that facilitated reporting. It was reasonably functional for data processing, but neither radical nor particularly innovative (nor efficient for large tables).
MUMPS maintains all its disk resident data in a much more sophisticated and flexible data structure (sparse b-trees with asynchronous garbage collection), and has a surprisingly elegant application development language in which data (read: "globals") appear syntactically as variables.
Compared to Pick, MUMPS is a much more gleaming mesh of database/filesystem (and language).
Yes, I preferred the Bush strategy. Though it doused "objectionable" propaganda, it did not succeed at suppressing good ol' scientific findings. (And it's not clear to me that it was intended to do so.) Recent U.S. presidents have known very well the differences between science and politics. So though they may censor press releases and conference presentations, they do not censor the contents of scientific studies nor their findings. That's what's so beautiful about good science: it's way too narrow and modest to drive anything other than incremental improvements in understanding. A well-written study is, by itself, of little use to a politician. Politicians (a.k.a. political activists) have much more ambitious objectives to change the world in some mostly predetermined way; science only offers mechanisms by which to increase understanding of the world (and is somewhat less predisposed to outcome).
I sat yesterday morning at a table of random common people, some of whom had read the day's newspaper. Their understanding was that, much to the shock and dismay of scientists, a giant floating garbage island has been discovered that poses heretofore unrealized threats to life. They missed the points about the particulates. They read THE HEADLINES. They recalled THE DEAD MAMMALS. They understood that it is a 1,700 MILE FLOATING PATCH OF GARBAGE.
So they misunderstood the nature and degree of the problem, and in so doing, understood very well what this story intended them to understand. Idiots, you might say? Nope. Just ordinary people who got the gist of this story.
A conspiracy? I don't see one. This is just environmental politics. No conspiracy. Just a story intended to drive the electorate to support funding of additional research and political action intended to reduce messes such as this one. That's all. And to me, it's anything but evil.
Oh, and if the public has to be a little misinformed to drive action, well then, that's fair game. Yes? I mean it's fair game in environmental politics, in health care, in foreign policy, in war. It's fair game in the State Department, DOD, the Treasury, NOAA. It's a sea of politics where "spin" (a.k.a. misleading information) is justified by the outcome, yes? (Please do see my dripping sarcasm here.)
I DON'T WANT BULLSH_T COMING OUT OF NOAA.
And in arguing this simple point, I have to put up with arguments based on half-cocked presumptions of "whose side" I'm on and what my "real" motives are. Why is that? It is because most people are only offended by misinformation that counters their political preferences. That, they call "lies." But when misinformation supports their political preferences, well, that they call "spin" and forgive with vacuous rationalizations that allude to "the practical realities of what it takes to get things done."
Practical shmactical. Misinformation is not the stuff of science. It should not be the stuff of NOAA. Leave other agencies to do that "practical" crap of which we speak.
NOAA should be a bastion of Science (i.e. the practice of the scientific method and the prevailing good practices associated therein). For the most part, I believe it has been. And all the people arguing against me here agree with these points. So where's the disagreement? It emanates from NOAA having propagated a poorly constructed, pretty much bullsh_t statistic: 100,000 mammals killed per year by ocean debris. (Yes, if you read the NOAA wording carefully, they successfully propagated this "fact" while covering their asses with qualifying clauses that are quite expectantly ignored and dropped during the course of dissemination.) I know very well from the quality of the construction of your posting that you also know that's a B.S. number. And yet, because it's part of a propaganda campaign that I suspect somehow supports your notion of goodness, you choose to turn a blind eye to the incorrectness of this incidental bit of spin, this unimportant statistic.
NOAA should not be a propaganda tool. Alas, it sometimes is. So we should advise people to view statistics issued by NOAA with a due amount of skepticism. Should we not?
Sheesh. This is so freakin' depressing.
The answer is: we don't know. But NOAA published a B.S. number that hit every major news source in the U.S., and will hereafter be referenced and repeated as fact, because *NOAA* said it. You appear quite comfortable with that. I would guess it suits your politics. It is not, however, the stuff of science.
As for all that rubbish in your second paragraph, those are your demons, not mine.
Seeing no evidence of disagreement between us here, I'll guess that I made the mistake of touching one of your Sacred Cows.
You may understand my very simple point if you'll try to honestly answer this question (and reconcile it against the story here): How many marine mammals are killed each year by ocean debris?
Yes!
I believe that NOAA's credibility is derived from the credibility of the methodology, and the degree to which the organization exploits the methodology through its disciplined application.
I did put some effort into understanding NOAA's role in this campaign, and apparently, a good deal more than you did. See NOAA here where the agency explains how it got from the "50,000 to 90,000" quote to their "100,000" propaganda number. Interestingly, if you had indeed taken the time to do exactly as you suggested, i.e. to google "NOAAA 100000", you would have seen this reference as the third link down. I took a much lengthier route, not looking to prove or disprove anything, but simply to understand the basis of the 100,000 estimate.
As NOAA's explanation indicates, they took the only loosely related range of "50,000 to 90,000", and from there, the 100,000 number emerges without further explanation. Your metaphorical characterization exactly matches my thinking when I saw it: they pulled it out of their asses.
I have high regard for the scientists of NOAA and their work products. I say this with great sincerity, and not to patronize your point. But in stark contrast with the genuinely authoritative works of NOAA, there are the political ways in which Presidential administrations and non-scientifically motivated high-level administrators of NOAA use its good name to advance political positions. In doing so, they besmirch NOAA's well-deserved reputation for good science, and cause people like me to use quotes around the word "authoritative" when describing the agency's "work" such as this. The politicians are simply taking NOAA's well-earned trust for a lowly political joy ride.
It occurs to me that I prefer the Bush administration's strategy of suppressing publication of NOAA work products that they found objectionable. If this ocean debris campaign is any indication of the Obama administration's approach, it looks like they will be using the NOAA moniker to publish political opinions as if they are the science of NOAA. This latter approach will be much more damaging to NOAA's scientists; it blatantly misrepresents their voices instead of just making it more difficult for them to be heard.
So garbage is not randomly distributed throughout the oceans, but not surprisingly, it collects in areas of significantly increased density due to prevailing currents. How dense? Not dense enough to be visible to the casual onlooker. Only dense enough to be identified through careful study. So is that the story here?
No. The truth isn't good enough for a story. The truth isn't good enough to drive political action. So "scientists" lend their names to "authoritative" agencies like NOAA to come up with the story of a 1,700 mile "patch" of garbage. Alternatively (and dramatically), it has been called a "flotilla".
Yes, there's "a lot" of garbage in the ocean. And, it's a "big" ocean. Look carefully and you'll see that these stories don't do much to help you gauge what this "patch" really is.
"It's pretty shocking," said Miriam Goldstein.
"We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," said Tony Haymet.
Thank you, researchers Goldstein and Hayment, for your contributions.
Look carefully through the photographs surrounding this story. Look for the 1,700 mile flotilla of garbage. By my understanding, this thing is a whole lot less dense than the stories would have you believe.
Here's a good one that I tried to track down:
This little "factoid" apparently comes from a non-peer-reviewed paper (page 270 here) published in 1985 that cites another un-reviewed paper in 1984 (can't find this one...Fowler) that estimated that 50,000 seals had died that year due to "entanglement" primarily in nets, as best I can tell. There's no more on methodology for determining that number, nor how it should be related to overall mammal population and more general "ocean debris."
Judge the quality of the "science" here for yourself. If you're a critical thinker, it should be apparent that this isn't science at all...it's just another story of human waste.
Correct on all fronts. So why would you suggest that the FTC would limit its authority to fall within a scope not [yet] proscribed by the Court? The fact that the Court hasn't ruled on some point doesn't in itself make that point a "legal sinkhole." I again cite a long and unchallenged history of allowing that parties may be prevented from making unwanted telephone calls to people WITHOUT REGARD TO CONTENT. Your [repeated] citation of the Court's willingness to allow limitations on commercial speech is [strangely] irrelevant here. What is the basis of your implication that the FTC has cause to be fearful? Is it just some vague notion of the Court's regard for "the whole free speech thing" (which heretofore the Court has tacitly chosen to disregard in the case of phone calls)? DO YOU HAVE ANY SPECIFIC BASIS for believing the Court is likely to support a change in public policy that will preclude such unfettered regulation of phone calls?
Can you cite a SCOTUS ruling that indicates that free speech rights entitle you to make calls into people's homes? I am not aware of such, and I think it would be a stretch. Rights to privacy, though inferred, offer a competing balance and are well-supported by the Court.
Note that current anti-harassment laws criminalize repeated unwanted phone calls from a given party, regardless of their content, and have long stood without constitutional challenge.
Your suggestion that the government's motive is to act within the framework of the Constitution is as dubious as it is imaginative. If you are at all convinced that your theory is the genuine reason, then you probably have an alternative unstated reason that is driving such a delusional suggestion.
Neither bullhorn nor TV ad are allowed to enter into my home without my consent. It is practical for me to leave off (or to not have) a TV. But a phone provides essential services (including emergency services) that cannot function if it is turned off. The bullhorn, actually, can be annoying by coming through my window, but in fact, the state has retained latitude to regulate that problem through noise control regulations and requirements of permit for public demonstration.
The allowance of political calls (under the guise of free speech) simply reflects legislative selfishness...a willingness to enforce just behavior upon all but themselves. It reflects the self-serving, less-than-high ethics that characterizes all but the fewest of politicians. They rationalize it away under a Greater Good theory, in this case some abstract virtue of greater public participation in politics. But that's just a cover fib, their real motive being to avail themselves of political advantage through any and all legal means. If you want to see how much they care about public participation, check their records on trying to help people of opposing parties to participate in politics.
Ah, yes. Everyone is entitled to their opinions.
Try to find out why the most up-to-date opinion that now guides U.S. law has diverged from your own opinion. (All opinions are not equal.)
Your opinion of the word "militia", an opinion held by many, is patently wrong. You can't possibly grasp the substance of the Second Amendment while holding your [mis]interpretation of that word. It's not surprising that your perspective is based on that misinterpretation.
Time for you to return to school, my friend (if you are intent upon having informed opinions.)
I, too, carried your misunderstanding of the term "militia". At the time of the writing of the constitution, the militia was, in fact, all able-bodied men.
It's too easy to rely on self-affirming, second-rate opinions about the second amendment instead of taking the time to read a first-rate scholarly work such as an actual Supreme Court opinion. Scalia's opinion for the majority upholding second amendment rights (and striking down D.C.'s attempt at a total gun ban) is beautifully informative about the second amendment right, its purpose and importance. It is also quite readable. My understanding of the second amendment changed dramatically after reading it.
Or, you could continue to swallow arguments that, rather than inform, simply reinforce your status quo.
(P.S. In case you are scared of the opinion, be aware that it ends with Scalia pointedly affirming the reasonableness of the State implementing gun control regulations.)