And in yet more news smug ignorant Slashdotters a little too eager to show off their self proclaimed intellectual superiority end up look like basement dwelling comic book guys when it comes commenting on anything outside of the world of computers.
Go read some 1900s literature and you are going to find out you're making exactly the same arguments against capitalism and for centralised planning that "some people" made 100 years ago when they were advocating the "perfect system" to allocate the worlds resources and industrial output according to societies needs without the dreadful waste and boom bust cycles that capitalism suffers.
Welcome to 1917! Things are going just swimmingly and the future looks bright for civilisation. The end of the corrupt wasteful capitalist model will make way for this new age of enlightened centralised resource and output allocation which is surely going to herald a golden age for mankind...
There's a quote about those ignorant of history by the way.
So the democrats have total control now, so why am I constantly hearing shrill screaming from "the left" about the evil republicans stopping the magical quarter billion person national health care and *never* hearing about the same type of "evil" democrats who are the *real people stopping it*.
If the democrats wanted it they could just vote for it. How does the average "left" wing supporters head not implode from the cognitive dissonance on display at the moment?
Anyway isn't attributing deficits to the President disengenous given the fact that it's the congress that manages the money...
Simply calling a group "fringe" does not make it so. Fringe relative to whom? Mainstream society is overwhelmingly skeptical, so if anything the pro global warming hug fests that one sees on echo chambers like this are the true fringe.
So you can categorically state that the models that so much of climate science are based on are completely immune to any real effects that this phenomenon has on the atmosphere and climate.
Right everybody that you don't agree with is a troll, how old are you?
Some of us like to talk about science I'm sorry if that wastes your precious time, apparently you just want to hear people agreeing with your shallow minded world view.
Also please let me know oh infinite well of knowledge, as I'm quite torn - is the chief research scientist with the CSIRO's division of atmospheric research before becoming the director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies and chief executive of the Antarctic Co-operative Research Centre a troll when he states:
"I made the error at the time of mentioning in a media interview -- reported extensively in The Australian on a slow Easter Sunday -- that there were still lots of doubts about the disaster potential of global warming. Suffice it to say that within a couple of days it was made clear to me from the highest levels of CSIRO that, should I make such public comments again, then it would pull out of the process of forming the new centre." The CSIRO, it turned out, was in the process of trying to extract many millions of dollars for further climate research at the time."
At one time scientific consensus was that washing your hands before operating was unnecessary and the man who suggested otherwise was turned into a pariah.
And that "Miasma" was the cause of tuberculosis despite hard evidence to the contrary.
Consensus means absolutely nothing if you are being rational about the matter.
You must have been overly educated if you believe Gordon Brown and his cohorts are not the real world implementation of modern social liberalism (as opposed to the fantasy that lives inside so many peoples heads).
And to be honest it *really* doesn't matter what Univerisities and academics and students claim is the perfect ideal in the class room and in papers. Over and over again the output of academia on any subject regarding political thinking bears absolutely no resemblance to what the ideal advanced by academia becomes when it *hits the real world*.
Maybe next time though they'll be far enough left for you? Hell go even further to the left and next time they'll meet your expectations and instead of 1 in 5 UK citizens working for the government, thought crime, open borders and and the state inserting itself absolutely between parents and middle class children they'll fully embrace the ultimate "necessary evil" to bring about a classless society?
I assume that's what you long for, they did try though - the current Labour government unfortunately they were just too soft to really bring it about...
Yes in the 60's and 70's at the height of the US manned space program there was no religion in US society and a temporary wave of Atheism swept the nation.
Or you're full of shit.
You Internet "Nu Atheists" are really starting to get annoying by the way, about as annoying as born again Christians the way you interject your (extraordinarily ignorant) personal rants against the other "team" into absolutely EVERYTHING to score some cheap points in your own mind.
Oh and by the way, if you don't want people lumping all atheists into a collective when attacking you (as you all seem to hate) it's best to not speak for all atheists as though you all *are* a collective when it suits you as you have done here.
Please someone deliver the west from the mindless, fanatical Christians and Internet Atheists...two sides of the same bent coin.
Maybe maybe not, my eight year old step-son can barely read and we certainly "give a shit" and have a reputation as being "pressure parents" by his teacher and principle. Apparently we care too much as we are desperately try to school him in the afternoons to at least give him a chance of getting an education and this is apparently a serious no-no. So instead of concentrating on fancy learnings such as being able to read, his class has spent 7 months concentrating on becoming correctly "socialised" part of that was a month on "sorry day" where they learned about the mystical and magical indigenous peoples of Australia and how evil all us whiteys are. Him especially given that his mother and him are English (Poor old pommies can't get a decent word spoken about them in State Schools now days).
Reading, writing and maths are side issues.
We've gone in and had the long meetings with teacher and principle where they speak to us in a most condesending manner and apparently we're just over reacting and putting to much pressure on him (them) expecting a boy who's about to turn 9 to be able to read such complex things as road signs and labels...
So if we're the only people telling him he needs to be able to read, and we only see him for a couple of hours a day and he spends 6-7 hours with people and a system that doesn't care whether he can or can't...rationally why would he want put in 100% to learn?
The school system acts like little more than a large daycare for him, at school he plays and they do not discipline at all, even the teacher raising her voice is not OK according to a pamphlet on the wall in his class room that I read (There's no such thing as a naughty child it starts). Him and his mates wander around the classroom and school as they wish, I beg them to ring me if such things occur and I'll go in and deal with him if they're so incapable of telling a little boy to sit his arse down with the barest of hints of authority but they never do.
And no we're not a poor welfare family and he's not off the rails he's an exremely polite, well mannered boy doing what any 8 year old will do if there's no enforced boundary's. And of course the worst thing is the dual life that he has to lead, where at home there's structure and expectations, rewards and discipline and at school there's hedonism.
The length of compulsory government education for children has steadily increased since it began as it was always the intention of the creators and maintainers of it to remove the task of raising children from parents to the child rearing "experts" (aka themselves). This in their own words was to ensure that children were moulded to requirements of industry and enlightened society without parents interfering and undoing all their hard work.
That is not in anyway a secret to anyone who has a cursory knowledge of the history of Compulsory Education.
Not to mention most of primary school now is purely social indoctrination and almost no hard academics is taught until fourth grade.
If you believe students are learning more than they did 50 years you're living in an *absolute* fantasy land.
The fourth grade curriculum had children reading and understanding Shakespeare and de-constructing poetry. Being able to do advanced multiplication and division in their heads was compulsory (my mums books from primary school look just like my high school books, my eight year old boys third grade books look like my kindergarten books). The school system educates children just fine by the way, you just have to understand what exactly it is that they are being taught.
In the early 1900's most western scientists and intellectuals subscribed completely and totally to Eugenics not only as a method of "improving" the human race but as a method of controlling populations, the lower classes and population growth due to the problems of "over production" and over population.
It was only the Nazis open and unapologetic implementation of the idea that put a lid on it in the west (for awhile).
Fun fact: Nazi scientists used American scientific research into forced sterilization as a platform for which they based their own policy off. America was the first western country in the world to forcefully sterilize an individual based on Eugenics, not Germany (as many believe).
This sort of talk is not really welcome around these parts unfortunately...
The problem is he could name three and it wouldn't matter who they were as you would immediately dismiss them as it's become an emotional issue to you, so I hate to say it but your as bad as the parent.
You've invested in the theory emotionally as has he and so you neither of you can be counted on to be rational about it.
Not to mention appealing to consensus is a really shitty way to "win" a debate.
It wasn't long ago that the UK Royal Society were in consensus that tuberculosis outbreaks were caused by dirty air and motivated by egos and politics refused to accept solid evidence to the contrary while offering ridiculous (and expensive) solutions for years while thousands died.
Arguing consensus opens a whole can of worms on many of the "known and widely held consensus ideas" that turned out to be obviously and ridiculously wrong. So best not to do it.
And I'll answer this for him "3. What's it to you? Why does it bother you so that people are worried about this and want to do something about it? Why are you so determined to stop them doing so?"
Powerful people are trying to fundamentally change the way we live. Not to mention suggesting dangerous "solutions" like the one in the article. It's perfectly rational to be concerned and sceptical when a handful of people start telling everyone they have to accept a whole new way of thinking especially when many many of the loudest proponents of the new way of thinking come with quite a bit of political baggage.
And when the supporters of the "new way of thinking" are as emotionally attached to the idea as many tend to be you get a natural negative reaction from many as science is meant to be about facts and hard evidence, not emotion...
You're a quick to throw your hat in the ring for people you don't even know aren't you QuantumG.
150 years ago The UK Royal Society (the very same organisation of "very smart people") completely ignored the hard science behind the theory that tainted water was causing the tuberculosis outbreaks in London and instead prefered to push forward with their own poorly based pet theory that it was the "miasma" causing it. Tens of thousands of pounds were spent on completely useless "solutions" that the best minds of the UK Royal Society could come up with such as burning carts of Sulphur through the streets.
Thousands of people died because the "very smart people" wouldn't listen to an independant scientist with solid scientific evidence supporting his theory that only people drinking from certian water fountains were dying, because I'm sure as far as they were concerned, they were the "very smart people" and he wasn't.
"Very smart people" were also of the opinion that asbestos was a great material to build millions of houses out of and lead pipes were a great idea to carry water in and DDT was perfectly safe to spray all over food to be ingested by humans.
Elevating any human simply because of the Bureaucracy that they belong to is the height of naive, stunted and ignorant thinking.
They have no *clue* what the real unintended consequences of their suggestions are, nobody does and as history has shown, many scientists (especially career government and corporate scientists) are willing to use the rest of us as guinea pigs in ill thought out experiments to further pad their own careers and egos.
Convict ships used to take six months at sea to travel from England to Australia and no the convicts weren't allowed off at the distant supply harbours.
The first attempts to cross the Arctic and Antarctic required more mental strength than you suggest would be needed for mars mission. Considering that they were in pretty much imminent danger at all times and had absolutely *no* technology to help do it or even know where they were to any great degree.
Some of the comments on here are very telling of what the western middle class has become. Just because you can't imagine having the mental and physical strength to survive life outside your safe, over privileged looked after cradle to grave existence doesn't mean it isn't possible. And compared to the feats of men of history, sitting in a comfortable capsule with new tech to keep you entertained, being able to speak to your loved ones and teams of specialists daily and having plenty of food is so far from being comparable to say crossing a desert or the arctic by foot pulling a four hundred kilo wooden boat full of supplies for six months or being lost at sea for months as to almost be a joke.
Asia is going to absolutely *dominate* the west over the next few years if this attitude continues.
They would take masses of seeds with them, large greenhouses and humidifiers to draw water out of the extremely humid mars night air and store it. Once they have one successful crop (as little as three months or less) they can harvest the seeds and the food and they're self sustained for another season.
Food and water taken care of.
This stuff is hardly rocket science and you can really tell the people who have no idea how food comes to be when this topic comes up...
The bigger problem is the lack of medical technology they would have in case of a disease or emergency (heart attack, stroke, etc), not food or water.
You can really tell the institutionalised city dwellers when it comes to these sorts of topics. You don't *need* a huge monolithic society to feed a few people. All you need are minerals, carbon dioxide, sunlight and water and you can grow food hydroponically.
Once you have a reliable food source you have the beginnings of a colony.
Mars has extremely humid air at night (nearly 100%), that humidity can be drawn out and turned into water which can the be used to water plants.
Plants for food, plants for oxygen.
Once you have oxygen "generators" (plants) in large greenhouses you can start to expand the colony, you can compress the air and use it to power simple and reliable air tools and equipment.
So the first pioneers would be there working hard to setup viable hydroponic systems for food and oxygen. Once they have that then more people can come, each person brings with them a skill and equipment to expand the colony on a self sustaining basis. The ultimate goal would be to become self sufficient at creating fuel for ships to reduce the cost in sending ships and mass exploration for minerals in the hope of setting up small scale mining and casting operations so they can make their own tools and repair their equipment.
Once you're at that point life is not so dire for the colony with food, water, self sustaining oxygen and metals to make repairs and start creating some tools and equipment and resources to further expand.
The colonists don't need to fabricate CPUs on mars or LCD screens or sensitive equipment, they just need basic 20th century tech most of which can easily be created if they take an arc and mig welder, oxy-set, lathe, press and other tools. With that they can create any tech they need to survive and expand.
Sorry but he *is* a socialist, in fact given socialisms now solid one hundred year track record he is the perfect REAL socialist. What I mean by that is not the socialist that only exists in the minds of sheltered academics and western middle class over priviliged youth but the real rubber hits the road meat space traditional Socialist. He and all those who have come before him that have followed the "socialist playbook" to a tee where the middle class agitates the lower class to help stage a revolution against the upper class have *always* followed immediately by re-distributing the upper classes wealth and power to themselves and left the lower classes where they are (or worse off). They then immediately institute "temporary" totalitarianism to prevent the "counter revolution"...powers which then never go away. In dozens of countries time and time again it has played out in exactly the same way every.single.time.
That is the real outcome of the extreme lefts high minded ideal, not the fantasy that they have in their heads of some utopia but state power and thuggery in the hands of a few. It happened in Russia to Trotsky and the "high minded" supporters of equality, it happened in Spain just before the Fascists arrived, it happened in Cuba, China and now Venezuela. Just like Fascism is the real world outcome of the far rights fantasy of utopia, State Totalitarianism is the real world outcome of the far lefts. As with any ideology, it only works in moderation along side other systems of organisation based on the people within the society.
As the most successful countries show the best recipe seems to be a dash of socialism here, a pound of capitalism there and everything in moderation.
My step son does (goes to public school) he's eight years old in third grade and goes to school to play fun exciting games and get stickers for writing one broken sentence and then comes home in the afternoon to learn.
His mother and I have butted head *numerous* times with his teacher, counselors (counselors in primary school...why?) and principle a few times about the fact that he and half is class are functionally illiterate and the school doesn't seem to be in the least bit concerned about it. This is after we pulled him out of another public school because of the same problem. That is no interest in teaching children to read, write and do maths. It's *all* "social" and not even what I would call "social" as some of the things they learn are decidedly anti-social.
Apparently social skills and self-esteem building are more important than the fact that he can't read books that me and his mother could read in first grade. We do our best with him but given that we only have him for two hours a night and are already considered "overly strict" and "pressure" parents by his school for trying to teach him ourselves (reading, writing and maths) for a few hours on afternoons and weekends there's not much else we can do as long as he's in that system.
He'll be out of the public system at the end of this year though. After spending his summer holidays with a tutor he'll be going straight into a private school to repeat the third grade.
So I'm with you my own children (18 months and six months) will *never ever* see the inside walls of a public school building. As it is I'm already responsible for one damaged child because of the mistake of trusting the state school system.
I weep for this generation of public school children - the first in some larger untested social experiment.
I've heard it mentioned dozens of times before over the last 6 or so years on the Internet but always ignored it as conspiracy rantings. I finally took the time to read John Taylor Gattos "Underground History of American Education" and when I was done walked around in a dazed stupor for a few weeks at the scope of the education "system" and the people and utopian (distopian?) ideals that have gone into building it over the last 100 years.
I dare anyone with a child to read it and not feel sick with the new understanding history and ideals behind the system that they're sending their kids into that that book brings.
A choice quote from the first mission statement of Rockefeller's General Education Board one of the biggest movers in the creation of mass government schooling:
"In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way."
There's a thing that just about everyone (in good faith for the most part) seem to completely forget or not even understand when they're comparing their small nation states to the "American Government".
The American Federal Government is a government presiding over a quarter of a billion people in 52 mostly autonomous separate states. Canada, Australia and all the "European" countries when compared alone to the United States is an absolutely *retarded* comparison to make.
The only honest and correct comparison would be to say if the *European Union* stated that it was going to take over all of it's member nations health care and run them from Brussels. If (and when - sorry Europe it's inevitable) it does say that watch the about face the French, English and Danish who constantly belittle America on these boards because it's citizens don't want their corrupt out of touch central Bureaucracy running their health services suddenly become small local government federalists when *their* huge unresponsive central bureaucracy decides it's going to start nationalising things. Hell the Danes and British wouldn't even accept the official *currency* of the EU government but they then turn around and belittle Americans for not wanting to accept the central government nationalizing their healthcare! I'd like to see what the Brits would say if the EU said it was taking over the NHS!
There really needs to be some real world reality brought into this "debate".
And as the American Left is so fond of reminding the Internet, California is the third largest economy in the world...so why is it that the "liberal" state of California can't provide their own state run healthcare to their own citizens?
Could it be because the "liberal" Californian government is *completely broke* and had to resort to issuing IOUs to pay for things? Perhaps there's a reason for that...
Finlands government collabarated with the Nazis and handed over hundreds of its Jewish citizens to the Gestapo in order to curry favour with the Nazi government in the face of war with Russia.
I bet those hundreds of Finnish Jews wished Finland had a little less of a "flexible" rule of law and a US or British style Bill of Rights and Constitution when their lives were being used as political currency by the ever enlightened Finnish government..
Oh well, maybe next time your enlightened government will "interpret" the law for a better outcome for *all* of its people...
Pretty convenient "improvisation" that just happened to suit the pundits that were ranting and raving as the footage was shown about racist WHITE people taking guns to these events because the president is black...while displaying an assault rifle being held by a *black* guy who had also been interviewed by their own reporter but the fact that he was black conveniently "improvised" out.
I wonder if you were so forgiving when Fox and the right were trying to pull the exact same sort of "sloppy editing" during the last eight years.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me tell you a little ugly truth about about docks, dock workers unions and the mafia...
And in yet more news smug ignorant Slashdotters a little too eager to show off their self proclaimed intellectual superiority end up look like basement dwelling comic book guys when it comes commenting on anything outside of the world of computers.
More at 11.
LOL!
Go read some 1900s literature and you are going to find out you're making exactly the same arguments against capitalism and for centralised planning that "some people" made 100 years ago when they were advocating the "perfect system" to allocate the worlds resources and industrial output according to societies needs without the dreadful waste and boom bust cycles that capitalism suffers.
Welcome to 1917! Things are going just swimmingly and the future looks bright for civilisation. The end of the corrupt wasteful capitalist model will make way for this new age of enlightened centralised resource and output allocation which is surely going to herald a golden age for mankind...
There's a quote about those ignorant of history by the way.
WindBourne I've been on this site for many years and you are most definately *not* a Libertarian, you are a Social Democrat through and through.
Stop talking out of your bum it cheapens us all.
So the democrats have total control now, so why am I constantly hearing shrill screaming from "the left" about the evil republicans stopping the magical quarter billion person national health care and *never* hearing about the same type of "evil" democrats who are the *real people stopping it*.
If the democrats wanted it they could just vote for it. How does the average "left" wing supporters head not implode from the cognitive dissonance on display at the moment?
Anyway isn't attributing deficits to the President disengenous given the fact that it's the congress that manages the money...
Simply calling a group "fringe" does not make it so. Fringe relative to whom? Mainstream society is overwhelmingly skeptical, so if anything the pro global warming hug fests that one sees on echo chambers like this are the true fringe.
Whether you like it or not.
Just calling it how I see it btw.
So you can categorically state that the models that so much of climate science are based on are completely immune to any real effects that this phenomenon has on the atmosphere and climate.
Right everybody that you don't agree with is a troll, how old are you?
Some of us like to talk about science I'm sorry if that wastes your precious time, apparently you just want to hear people agreeing with your shallow minded world view.
Also please let me know oh infinite well of knowledge, as I'm quite torn - is the chief research scientist with the CSIRO's division of atmospheric research before becoming the director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies and chief executive of the Antarctic Co-operative Research Centre a troll when he states:
"I made the error at the time of mentioning in a media interview -- reported extensively in The Australian on a slow Easter Sunday -- that there were still lots of doubts about the disaster potential of global warming. Suffice it to say that within a couple of days it was made clear to me from the highest levels of CSIRO that, should I make such public comments again, then it would pull out of the process of forming the new centre." The CSIRO, it turned out, was in the process of trying to extract many millions of dollars for further climate research at the time."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,26056202-5013596,00.html
At one time scientific consensus was that washing your hands before operating was unnecessary and the man who suggested otherwise was turned into a pariah.
And that "Miasma" was the cause of tuberculosis despite hard evidence to the contrary.
Consensus means absolutely nothing if you are being rational about the matter.
You must have been overly educated if you believe Gordon Brown and his cohorts are not the real world implementation of modern social liberalism (as opposed to the fantasy that lives inside so many peoples heads).
And to be honest it *really* doesn't matter what Univerisities and academics and students claim is the perfect ideal in the class room and in papers. Over and over again the output of academia on any subject regarding political thinking bears absolutely no resemblance to what the ideal advanced by academia becomes when it *hits the real world*.
Maybe next time though they'll be far enough left for you? Hell go even further to the left and next time they'll meet your expectations and instead of 1 in 5 UK citizens working for the government, thought crime, open borders and and the state inserting itself absolutely between parents and middle class children they'll fully embrace the ultimate "necessary evil" to bring about a classless society?
I assume that's what you long for, they did try though - the current Labour government unfortunately they were just too soft to really bring it about...
Yes in the 60's and 70's at the height of the US manned space program there was no religion in US society and a temporary wave of Atheism swept the nation.
Or you're full of shit.
You Internet "Nu Atheists" are really starting to get annoying by the way, about as annoying as born again Christians the way you interject your (extraordinarily ignorant) personal rants against the other "team" into absolutely EVERYTHING to score some cheap points in your own mind.
Oh and by the way, if you don't want people lumping all atheists into a collective when attacking you (as you all seem to hate) it's best to not speak for all atheists as though you all *are* a collective when it suits you as you have done here.
Please someone deliver the west from the mindless, fanatical Christians and Internet Atheists...two sides of the same bent coin.
Maybe maybe not, my eight year old step-son can barely read and we certainly "give a shit" and have a reputation as being "pressure parents" by his teacher and principle. Apparently we care too much as we are desperately try to school him in the afternoons to at least give him a chance of getting an education and this is apparently a serious no-no. So instead of concentrating on fancy learnings such as being able to read, his class has spent 7 months concentrating on becoming correctly "socialised" part of that was a month on "sorry day" where they learned about the mystical and magical indigenous peoples of Australia and how evil all us whiteys are. Him especially given that his mother and him are English (Poor old pommies can't get a decent word spoken about them in State Schools now days).
Reading, writing and maths are side issues.
We've gone in and had the long meetings with teacher and principle where they speak to us in a most condesending manner and apparently we're just over reacting and putting to much pressure on him (them) expecting a boy who's about to turn 9 to be able to read such complex things as road signs and labels...
So if we're the only people telling him he needs to be able to read, and we only see him for a couple of hours a day and he spends 6-7 hours with people and a system that doesn't care whether he can or can't...rationally why would he want put in 100% to learn?
The school system acts like little more than a large daycare for him, at school he plays and they do not discipline at all, even the teacher raising her voice is not OK according to a pamphlet on the wall in his class room that I read (There's no such thing as a naughty child it starts). Him and his mates wander around the classroom and school as they wish, I beg them to ring me if such things occur and I'll go in and deal with him if they're so incapable of telling a little boy to sit his arse down with the barest of hints of authority but they never do.
And no we're not a poor welfare family and he's not off the rails he's an exremely polite, well mannered boy doing what any 8 year old will do if there's no enforced boundary's. And of course the worst thing is the dual life that he has to lead, where at home there's structure and expectations, rewards and discipline and at school there's hedonism.
It's not as cut and dried as you may think.
The length of compulsory government education for children has steadily increased since it began as it was always the intention of the creators and maintainers of it to remove the task of raising children from parents to the child rearing "experts" (aka themselves). This in their own words was to ensure that children were moulded to requirements of industry and enlightened society without parents interfering and undoing all their hard work.
That is not in anyway a secret to anyone who has a cursory knowledge of the history of Compulsory Education.
Not to mention most of primary school now is purely social indoctrination and almost no hard academics is taught until fourth grade.
If you believe students are learning more than they did 50 years you're living in an *absolute* fantasy land.
The fourth grade curriculum had children reading and understanding Shakespeare and de-constructing poetry. Being able to do advanced multiplication and division in their heads was compulsory (my mums books from primary school look just like my high school books, my eight year old boys third grade books look like my kindergarten books).
The school system educates children just fine by the way, you just have to understand what exactly it is that they are being taught.
Understanding starts here: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
Don't you try and bring moderate rational talk into a "debate" where two fanatics are screeching at one another.
You'll spoil the show.
That's not a new religion.
In the early 1900's most western scientists and intellectuals subscribed completely and totally to Eugenics not only as a method of "improving" the human race but as a method of controlling populations, the lower classes and population growth due to the problems of "over production" and over population.
It was only the Nazis open and unapologetic implementation of the idea that put a lid on it in the west (for awhile).
Fun fact: Nazi scientists used American scientific research into forced sterilization as a platform for which they based their own policy off. America was the first western country in the world to forcefully sterilize an individual based on Eugenics, not Germany (as many believe).
This sort of talk is not really welcome around these parts unfortunately...
The problem is he could name three and it wouldn't matter who they were as you would immediately dismiss them as it's become an emotional issue to you, so I hate to say it but your as bad as the parent.
You've invested in the theory emotionally as has he and so you neither of you can be counted on to be rational about it.
Not to mention appealing to consensus is a really shitty way to "win" a debate.
It wasn't long ago that the UK Royal Society were in consensus that tuberculosis outbreaks were caused by dirty air and motivated by egos and politics refused to accept solid evidence to the contrary while offering ridiculous (and expensive) solutions for years while thousands died.
Arguing consensus opens a whole can of worms on many of the "known and widely held consensus ideas" that turned out to be obviously and ridiculously wrong. So best not to do it.
And I'll answer this for him "3. What's it to you? Why does it bother you so that people are worried about this and want to do something about it? Why are you so determined to stop them doing so?"
Powerful people are trying to fundamentally change the way we live. Not to mention suggesting dangerous "solutions" like the one in the article. It's perfectly rational to be concerned and sceptical when a handful of people start telling everyone they have to accept a whole new way of thinking especially when many many of the loudest proponents of the new way of thinking come with quite a bit of political baggage.
And when the supporters of the "new way of thinking" are as emotionally attached to the idea as many tend to be you get a natural negative reaction from many as science is meant to be about facts and hard evidence, not emotion...
You're a quick to throw your hat in the ring for people you don't even know aren't you QuantumG.
150 years ago The UK Royal Society (the very same organisation of "very smart people") completely ignored the hard science behind the theory that tainted water was causing the tuberculosis outbreaks in London and instead prefered to push forward with their own poorly based pet theory that it was the "miasma" causing it. Tens of thousands of pounds were spent on completely useless "solutions" that the best minds of the UK Royal Society could come up with such as burning carts of Sulphur through the streets.
Thousands of people died because the "very smart people" wouldn't listen to an independant scientist with solid scientific evidence supporting his theory that only people drinking from certian water fountains were dying, because I'm sure as far as they were concerned, they were the "very smart people" and he wasn't.
"Very smart people" were also of the opinion that asbestos was a great material to build millions of houses out of and lead pipes were a great idea to carry water in and DDT was perfectly safe to spray all over food to be ingested by humans.
Elevating any human simply because of the Bureaucracy that they belong to is the height of naive, stunted and ignorant thinking.
They have no *clue* what the real unintended consequences of their suggestions are, nobody does and as history has shown, many scientists (especially career government and corporate scientists) are willing to use the rest of us as guinea pigs in ill thought out experiments to further pad their own careers and egos.
Convict ships used to take six months at sea to travel from England to Australia and no the convicts weren't allowed off at the distant supply harbours.
The first attempts to cross the Arctic and Antarctic required more mental strength than you suggest would be needed for mars mission. Considering that they were in pretty much imminent danger at all times and had absolutely *no* technology to help do it or even know where they were to any great degree.
Some of the comments on here are very telling of what the western middle class has become. Just because you can't imagine having the mental and physical strength to survive life outside your safe, over privileged looked after cradle to grave existence doesn't mean it isn't possible. And compared to the feats of men of history, sitting in a comfortable capsule with new tech to keep you entertained, being able to speak to your loved ones and teams of specialists daily and having plenty of food is so far from being comparable to say crossing a desert or the arctic by foot pulling a four hundred kilo wooden boat full of supplies for six months or being lost at sea for months as to almost be a joke.
Asia is going to absolutely *dominate* the west over the next few years if this attitude continues.
They would take masses of seeds with them, large greenhouses and humidifiers to draw water out of the extremely humid mars night air and store it. Once they have one successful crop (as little as three months or less) they can harvest the seeds and the food and they're self sustained for another season.
Food and water taken care of.
This stuff is hardly rocket science and you can really tell the people who have no idea how food comes to be when this topic comes up...
The bigger problem is the lack of medical technology they would have in case of a disease or emergency (heart attack, stroke, etc), not food or water.
You can really tell the institutionalised city dwellers when it comes to these sorts of topics. You don't *need* a huge monolithic society to feed a few people. All you need are minerals, carbon dioxide, sunlight and water and you can grow food hydroponically.
Once you have a reliable food source you have the beginnings of a colony.
Mars has extremely humid air at night (nearly 100%), that humidity can be drawn out and turned into water which can the be used to water plants.
Plants for food, plants for oxygen.
Once you have oxygen "generators" (plants) in large greenhouses you can start to expand the colony, you can compress the air and use it to power simple and reliable air tools and equipment.
So the first pioneers would be there working hard to setup viable hydroponic systems for food and oxygen. Once they have that then more people can come, each person brings with them a skill and equipment to expand the colony on a self sustaining basis. The ultimate goal would be to become self sufficient at creating fuel for ships to reduce the cost in sending ships and mass exploration for minerals in the hope of setting up small scale mining and casting operations so they can make their own tools and repair their equipment.
Once you're at that point life is not so dire for the colony with food, water, self sustaining oxygen and metals to make repairs and start creating some tools and equipment and resources to further expand.
The colonists don't need to fabricate CPUs on mars or LCD screens or sensitive equipment, they just need basic 20th century tech most of which can easily be created if they take an arc and mig welder, oxy-set, lathe, press and other tools. With that they can create any tech they need to survive and expand.
Sorry but he *is* a socialist, in fact given socialisms now solid one hundred year track record he is the perfect REAL socialist. What I mean by that is not the socialist that only exists in the minds of sheltered academics and western middle class over priviliged youth but the real rubber hits the road meat space traditional Socialist. He and all those who have come before him that have followed the "socialist playbook" to a tee where the middle class agitates the lower class to help stage a revolution against the upper class have *always* followed immediately by re-distributing the upper classes wealth and power to themselves and left the lower classes where they are (or worse off). They then immediately institute "temporary" totalitarianism to prevent the "counter revolution"...powers which then never go away. In dozens of countries time and time again it has played out in exactly the same way every.single.time.
That is the real outcome of the extreme lefts high minded ideal, not the fantasy that they have in their heads of some utopia but state power and thuggery in the hands of a few. It happened in Russia to Trotsky and the "high minded" supporters of equality, it happened in Spain just before the Fascists arrived, it happened in Cuba, China and now Venezuela. Just like Fascism is the real world outcome of the far rights fantasy of utopia, State Totalitarianism is the real world outcome of the far lefts. As with any ideology, it only works in moderation along side other systems of organisation based on the people within the society.
As the most successful countries show the best recipe seems to be a dash of socialism here, a pound of capitalism there and everything in moderation.
My step son does (goes to public school) he's eight years old in third grade and goes to school to play fun exciting games and get stickers for writing one broken sentence and then comes home in the afternoon to learn.
His mother and I have butted head *numerous* times with his teacher, counselors (counselors in primary school...why?) and principle a few times about the fact that he and half is class are functionally illiterate and the school doesn't seem to be in the least bit concerned about it. This is after we pulled him out of another public school because of the same problem. That is no interest in teaching children to read, write and do maths. It's *all* "social" and not even what I would call "social" as some of the things they learn are decidedly anti-social.
Apparently social skills and self-esteem building are more important than the fact that he can't read books that me and his mother could read in first grade. We do our best with him but given that we only have him for two hours a night and are already considered "overly strict" and "pressure" parents by his school for trying to teach him ourselves (reading, writing and maths) for a few hours on afternoons and weekends there's not much else we can do as long as he's in that system.
He'll be out of the public system at the end of this year though. After spending his summer holidays with a tutor he'll be going straight into a private school to repeat the third grade.
So I'm with you my own children (18 months and six months) will *never ever* see the inside walls of a public school building. As it is I'm already responsible for one damaged child because of the mistake of trusting the state school system.
I weep for this generation of public school children - the first in some larger untested social experiment.
I've heard it mentioned dozens of times before over the last 6 or so years on the Internet but always ignored it as conspiracy rantings. I finally took the time to read John Taylor Gattos "Underground History of American Education" and when I was done walked around in a dazed stupor for a few weeks at the scope of the education "system" and the people and utopian (distopian?) ideals that have gone into building it over the last 100 years.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
I dare anyone with a child to read it and not feel sick with the new understanding history and ideals behind the system that they're sending their kids into that that book brings.
A choice quote from the first mission statement of Rockefeller's General Education Board one of the biggest movers in the creation of mass government schooling:
"In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way."
W.T.F
There's a thing that just about everyone (in good faith for the most part) seem to completely forget or not even understand when they're comparing their small nation states to the "American Government".
The American Federal Government is a government presiding over a quarter of a billion people in 52 mostly autonomous separate states. Canada, Australia and all the "European" countries when compared alone to the United States is an absolutely *retarded* comparison to make.
The only honest and correct comparison would be to say if the *European Union* stated that it was going to take over all of it's member nations health care and run them from Brussels. If (and when - sorry Europe it's inevitable) it does say that watch the about face the French, English and Danish who constantly belittle America on these boards because it's citizens don't want their corrupt out of touch central Bureaucracy running their health services suddenly become small local government federalists when *their* huge unresponsive central bureaucracy decides it's going to start nationalising things. Hell the Danes and British wouldn't even accept the official *currency* of the EU government but they then turn around and belittle Americans for not wanting to accept the central government nationalizing their healthcare! I'd like to see what the Brits would say if the EU said it was taking over the NHS!
There really needs to be some real world reality brought into this "debate".
And as the American Left is so fond of reminding the Internet, California is the third largest economy in the world...so why is it that the "liberal" state of California can't provide their own state run healthcare to their own citizens?
Could it be because the "liberal" Californian government is *completely broke* and had to resort to issuing IOUs to pay for things? Perhaps there's a reason for that...
(Not an American or a Conservative).
Finlands government collabarated with the Nazis and handed over hundreds of its Jewish citizens to the Gestapo in order to curry favour with the Nazi government in the face of war with Russia.
I bet those hundreds of Finnish Jews wished Finland had a little less of a "flexible" rule of law and a US or British style Bill of Rights and Constitution when their lives were being used as political currency by the ever enlightened Finnish government..
Oh well, maybe next time your enlightened government will "interpret" the law for a better outcome for *all* of its people...
"Improvised"
Pretty convenient "improvisation" that just happened to suit the pundits that were ranting and raving as the footage was shown about racist WHITE people taking guns to these events because the president is black...while displaying an assault rifle being held by a *black* guy who had also been interviewed by their own reporter but the fact that he was black conveniently "improvised" out.
I wonder if you were so forgiving when Fox and the right were trying to pull the exact same sort of "sloppy editing" during the last eight years.