Yes, AC, I'm posting from an asylum. Because if I were seriously mentally ill, that would just be the pinnacle of amusing, and it's also true that people sectioned with serious mental illnesses get unsupervised access to the Internet. You're not only an ignorant fool, but shockingly cruel. What a horrible little man you are.
Once again you don't have a response to my argument, just more masturbation.
Your argument has been repeatedly countered with syllogism, example and reductio. As if I had accidentally stood a blind man in front of a beautiful painting, I must apologise: it is not that you do not want to see, but that you are unable.
Good old Thatcher, that libertarian man.
Here's a fair article summarising the hypocritical, simplistic nature of the average libertarian and pointing out his corporatist affinity to Thatcher and similar conservative men.
Haha, exclamation marks. Someone's angry. An ad hominem is the use of a criticism of the person to bolster an argument. I'm not doing anything of the sort. I'm pointing out why you're wrong and pointing out that you're an idiot. But your failure to understand this just goes toward confirming that you're a fool.
I'd love for you to point out where I said the government should serve the economy not the people though, that should be a laugh. I do argue that there is financial benefit from investing in science
Well, at least you've answered your own question correctly. Your argument is that government should invest in science because science makes money.
Amongst other famous libertarians you list Thatcher, Brown and Cameron? Really? Wow.
These men have all spouted the libertarian rhetoric of government upholding "freedom" while practicing the underlying libertarian conviction of government serving the economy. You've skipped the former smokescreen and are diving directly into the latter. You are a true blue libertarian.
But cutting back on a service that returns a net profit is stupid.
My turn to use overarching classifiers: humanity returns a net profit thus nothing humans do is wasteful. You are a genius, Sir.
You make a straw man and knock it down. [...] if only people had the sense to stop taking research funding years ago!
At least you announced the purpose of this paragraph. Not quite Oxbridge entrance essay quality, though.
Couldn't reach the dictionary with your stumpy little arms? [...] How do you manage to type on that keyboard of yours without your fingers sticking to it? [...] You puff up your faeces infested chest
Man, you are angry. It's hilarious. I'm linking your post around the office. Dude, you've made me laugh. And you're wrong.
It's not ad hominem to tell you why you're wrong and mention that you're also an idiot, you brow-beating troglodyte. You're possibly the most laughable excuse for an AC I've read on/., thus giving me some Monday afternoon entertainment. Even if you don't respond to this, I know you can't resist reading it, and you'll be spending the evening mulling over what a buffoon you've made of yourself. Fetch the ball, Spot, fetch!
You are also a libertarian, in the style of Thatcher, Brown and Cameron, because your actual belief (which libertarians usually mask with an ill-defined appeal to "freedom", but they all end up thinking like you) is that government is the servant of the economy rather than the people. Taxpayer money doesn't exist to give you loans so you can get richer, you corporatist cunt, and I don't care whether you claim to be a banker or a scientist.
Let me break it down for you into one simple question:
At the end of last financial year we had a debt of around £1,000,400,000,000.
So here's my proposal.
Tomorrow, we borrow £3,572,857,142,857.14.
And we give ALL that money to "science".
Debt solved.
Then we do it a second time to pay off interest.
What is wrong with this argument?
Hints: (1) No points for, "If only investors were as smart as me they'd do just this. The problem is that not everyone is as smart as I am." (2) I've already implied several answers in the posts above - see if you can stop your xkcd-like dreaming about being a scientist and spot 'em.
Although New Labour was as left wing as Bush, a degree of blame lies in the left for its weak idealism. Where was the mass backbench rebellion? How did so many frontbenchers who were flying the socialist flag in the '80s turn so aggressively blue? Why have left wing parties across Europe suffered a similar change?
New Labour didn't come about to defeat the Tories: they were already on their way out. Wasn't Blair's mischief with the Fabian society an almighty warning klaxon? How did he get all the way to leader and replace Clause IV with... nothing? Mind you, I ask a similar question of the Liberal Democrats: why the sudden sellout? Your negotiating power in forming and carrying on this coalition has been pathetic, and you have pushed precisely nothing significant. But at least the LDs can be forgiven, as they never really had an ideal. I can perhaps summarise their policy as, "Let people be vaguely free, expect where that leads to nastiness - where each party member gets to define what's freedom and what's nastiness."
The right are succeeding because they have no greater belief than Number One. Pragmatism is fine, cooperation is fine, compromise is fine, corruption is fine, as long as each player benefits in some way. The left have lost their ideals, divided and been conquered.
Thank you. Although I've tried to be nuanced about the particular responsibility of the scientist as a knowledgeable consumer of public money, this is what it comes down to.
It's agonising to read most responses being little more than, "Shut up, we scientists make money!" as if all branches of science were equal and quantifiable (i.e. short term, direct) profit was the purpose of science.
You sing like Brown 12 years ago. Perhaps you even worked with him. Debt is good, recession can be avoided, the relentless march of progress always reaps profit. You failed, you're wrong, get over it.
there is real money being generated as a result of scientific breakthroughs.
So what? Every discipline X makes "real money" somewhere, but that doesn't mean every endeavour which calls itself X is worth pursuing on economic (or other) grounds. Let me see how I can inform your difficult mind of the point:
We could fund some scientific trials of homeopathy and the exercise would be science, but it would be a waste of money.
You can invest $100 per year in me and perhaps I'll return $120. Or I could tell you that I'm burning $50 each year and, if you gave me $50 less, you'd be $70 better off per year rather than $20.
Hell, let's just go into debt by $100,000,000,000/year by ploughing around that amount into science. Science makes money so we're always going to get a positive return. I've just solved everything.
Go on then, give me an economist who predicted the internet.
Are you being deliberately dense? I argued that the assignment of money to science is traditionally not economic, yet you ask me to justify it on economic grounds. You're the only one here requiring a quantifiable positive RoI, like scientific research is some sort of business venture. I'm arguing that science is cultural and merely requires usefulness (from a particular philosophical PoV) and real, available money to fund.
You're mediocre, you sound like so many sophomoric libertarians on this site, and I've had enough of arguing with you.
Actually, there are no places for "average research scientists".
Take the set of all UK research scientists. Consider an average subset. This subset would not have the quickness of wit, consistent first-time accuracy and stress tolerance required to get a £1M+/year job in the City. Believing yourself to have the moral high ground does not automatically make you the brightest or the strongest.
Getting a research job in academia demands higher and higher qualifications as you go up the food chain. Excellent students become good relative to the grad student population, become average post-docs, etc.
This assertion is irrelevant. And, given politics and dependent on the discipline, is often not quite true. There's a whole lot of mundane, plodding and probably necessary work done by researchers of hard science and (esp.) its applications. Just because you have a PhD in x and n papers while the Nobel laureate down the corridor has a PhD in x and 10n papers, it doesn't mean you are 9n papers away from a similar prize.
Don't let that chip on your shoulder entirely block your sight, scientist-actor. Did you see any argument that spending on science is unnecessary, or just an argument against every faculty with a cap for its hand agreeing to be funded by non-existent money to prop up an unsustainable economy? Because I sure didn't argue the former.
Now you may want to go back and actually read the article you linked to. Its purpose is pretty much to argue that, while for some fields there is obvious monetary return on R&D, any quantification (including Mansfield's) relies on a host of assumptions and omissions. The general assignment of money to "science" is a political one, or sociological or philosophical or humanitarian if you prefer, not economic. This is OK as long as it happens with real money in a sustainable framework.
Giving the entirety of a hugely bloated academia non-existent money, including funding new research and training undergraduates on the path to being researchers, in the hope that some small percentage will in some way "return on investment", is unsustainable. Relying on academic R&D to keep the country alive is unsustainable. If you benefit from such funding, you are feeding from the trough and are part of the problem.
I am not arguing that the work of academics needs to have an obvious short-term or long-term profit motive. I am not arguing that every branch of academia even needs to break even over some timespan by some measure: for example, everyone benefits from philosophy and PPE is a popular subject for the UK's up-and-coming leaders, but it is very difficult to measure the real economic output of education and research in philosophy. What I am arguing for is:
The stopping of government funding (except, perhaps, for life-critical services) using money which does not exist; as part of this:
The reversal of the trend to bloat academia to cover 50% of school-leavers, rather than the proportion of school leavers interested in and ready for higher academic education.
You might want to note that what I'm suggesting as a fix is to rely more heavily on the high tech industries.
Hehe, this was precisely Thatcher's argument in the 80s: the UK doesn't need a large manufacturing base, just a small amount of highly efficient high-tech manufacturing driven by blah blah blah. Didn't work the first time round, either, but it's funny to hear the new breed of self-interested academics singing her tune.
Once you cut out the infinite pot of funding for defence applcations (and good luck with that, if we go down your route), a country can only take itself so far relying on the poorer working conditions of the soon-to-be-as-advanced yellows/browns for what it once built itself to survive. You can only go so far by hoarding and selling ideas and services where catch-up is frequently just a matter of teaching the natives English - the 20th century made its verdict and it turns out there's nothing inherently superior about the Anglo-Saxon brain.
Competing in the world is one thing, sustaining yourself - as China will teach us - is quite another.
The country's debt was increased for scientists to do research. Scientists accepted the grant which would increase the debt, where grants were disproportionately frequently for research related to offence^Wdefence applications. Surely you are not making the "not my department" argument?
It is ridiculous for someone who has spent the last 10 years receiving non-existent money in an unsustainable framework for Higher Education to complain that his funding will be cut.
You know who brought the boom in the first place, which made insane borrowing appear possible and funded the extravagant boom investments? The same bankers you hate but forced upon the country because you (as a nation) decided in the '80s but it doesn't really matter what else the UK produces as long as the City makes an efficient headquarters for global slavedriving.
Blaming the bankers while you continue to thrive within the model which relies upon them will not fix anything.
Yes, everyone receiving non-existent funding from government is to blame. I am particularly unimpressed by universities because they comprise people who should know better.
You might want to actually read the first article you linked to: it is mostly about domestic universities selling profit-making educational services to international students, particularly in China: a close relation was director of a London University faculty and he was frequently sent on trips to court the emerging Chinese middle class while funding remained short for domestic students.
The teaching and student unions are fairly pathetic compared to 30 years ago, since the old militants have mostly retired and current students and new teachers are mostly about career building. Wow, a warning at the beginning of 2010! Perhaps the sustainability of a model which turns universities into training shops / unemployment figure adjusters for almost 50% of the population should have been aggressively and directly fought since the 1980s.
If you have a science education good enough to do real research, then you could also get at one of the huge banks as a trader for something like 20 times the income.
That's a myth. There are way more places for average research scientists than $1M/year bankers. The latter is think-continuously-on-your-feet hard and hugely stressful, and demands the sort with a 1st in the Cambridge maths tripos, not a 2:1 from Warwick.
Yes, smarter people can and do have the power to cause more damage, but don't do a US "at least we torture less than North Korea!" and complain that scientists are not to blame just because they are not bankers. Also, pay more attention to where a bulk of research grants come from: see all that defence spending?
And it is precisely this sort of "the government should have taken care of it for me, I'm just an innocent [job] feeding from the country's teat" irresponsibility that caused the problem in the first place. Where [job] is anything from banker to scientist.
The University/research system is effectively a branch of government. It is responsible as much as any other branch for obtaining non-existent sources of funding. Stop blaming other people.
Indeed. The scientists who are up in arms now were spending the last decade happily receiving government grants, and are also well aware of the bottomless trough that they could eat from if their research was remotely related to defence. While the average new graduate student might not have had much power or awareness, each academic must understand that he is jointly to blame for if he did not object to the problem while it was being caused, instead benefiting from it.
While I was one of the powerless junior Chicken Littles, I'm happy to share some of the blame for not shouting louder.
Why weren't you doing anything over the last decade while the government was intentionally building up a deficit? Where do you propose that the cuts be made, if not to your department? Alternatively, what other revenue sources do you suggest?
There are many possible answers, but pretending to be some sort of apolitical brain who just wants to do science is not going to help you get popular support. Do you object to useless war? Do you think that the government should take a greater proportion of nationally owned bank profits, reducing salaries of bankers? Do you think that more measures should be put in place to stop tax avoidance schemes (hello Ashcroft!)? In short, what is going to pay for you?
Wow, you are one of those people who just can't take it when you been shown wrong. As the other poster said last time I had the misfortune to have a discussion with you, stop moving the goalposts. Minard is an example of a timeline, possessing a superset of all the substantive properties of Munroe's diagram. You might as well argue that an iMac is not a PC because it only comes with an attached glossy monitor in one aspect ratio.
I think you may have trouble with characterisation of objects and matching of patterns. Have you considered studying more mathematics?
See the bottom of Minard? He's mapped between time and space on the horizontal for the return march, and added temperatures for each marked date. He could have done another at the top for the outward march, but this isn't as interesting (i.e. winter is not beating Napoleon logarithmically shitless yet) and he probably didn't want to clutter it. The diagram is just lovely.
Meanwhile, Munroe's may have involved a lot of grunt work (i.e. for once he's perhaps put in a full day's work to prepare the comic he supposedly works full time on), but in terms of form it's just the latest in a long line of similar diagrams and it's not a particularly sophisticated example either.
I just invented a windmill used to generate electricity. Its inspiration was xkcd 556.
Would it be arrogant to point out, like most responses, prior art for both the idea and deployment of wind turbines?
Also, everyone who has read or even heard of Don Quixote is aware that he tilted at windmills. If you have lived in Spain for any length of time the sight of windmills will bring Cervantes to mind automatically. It is not funny to simply put Don Quixote in a scene involving scary windmills, any more than it is funny to have Macbeth appearing in a Halloween scene just because he was under some witches' spell.
xkcdsucks and xkcdexplained are the only reasons to read xkcd. For this comic I recall thinking, "I wonder which one will mention Minard?" But xkcdsucks went one step further, noting that comic 540 (by its "Napoleon's forces" label) almost confirms that Munroe had previously seen Minard's excellent diagram.
Slashdot Mirror
Are the walls nice and padded for you?
Yes, AC, I'm posting from an asylum. Because if I were seriously mentally ill, that would just be the pinnacle of amusing, and it's also true that people sectioned with serious mental illnesses get unsupervised access to the Internet. You're not only an ignorant fool, but shockingly cruel. What a horrible little man you are.
Once again you don't have a response to my argument, just more masturbation.
Your argument has been repeatedly countered with syllogism, example and reductio. As if I had accidentally stood a blind man in front of a beautiful painting, I must apologise: it is not that you do not want to see, but that you are unable.
Good old Thatcher, that libertarian man.
Here's a fair article summarising the hypocritical, simplistic nature of the average libertarian and pointing out his corporatist affinity to Thatcher and similar conservative men.
Haha, exclamation marks. Someone's angry. An ad hominem is the use of a criticism of the person to bolster an argument. I'm not doing anything of the sort. I'm pointing out why you're wrong and pointing out that you're an idiot. But your failure to understand this just goes toward confirming that you're a fool.
I'd love for you to point out where I said the government should serve the economy not the people though, that should be a laugh. I do argue that there is financial benefit from investing in science
Well, at least you've answered your own question correctly. Your argument is that government should invest in science because science makes money.
Amongst other famous libertarians you list Thatcher, Brown and Cameron? Really? Wow.
These men have all spouted the libertarian rhetoric of government upholding "freedom" while practicing the underlying libertarian conviction of government serving the economy. You've skipped the former smokescreen and are diving directly into the latter. You are a true blue libertarian.
But cutting back on a service that returns a net profit is stupid.
My turn to use overarching classifiers: humanity returns a net profit thus nothing humans do is wasteful. You are a genius, Sir.
You make a straw man and knock it down. [...] if only people had the sense to stop taking research funding years ago!
At least you announced the purpose of this paragraph. Not quite Oxbridge entrance essay quality, though.
Couldn't reach the dictionary with your stumpy little arms? [...] How do you manage to type on that keyboard of yours without your fingers sticking to it? [...] You puff up your faeces infested chest
Man, you are angry. It's hilarious. I'm linking your post around the office. Dude, you've made me laugh. And you're wrong.
It's not ad hominem to tell you why you're wrong and mention that you're also an idiot, you brow-beating troglodyte. You're possibly the most laughable excuse for an AC I've read on /., thus giving me some Monday afternoon entertainment. Even if you don't respond to this, I know you can't resist reading it, and you'll be spending the evening mulling over what a buffoon you've made of yourself. Fetch the ball, Spot, fetch!
You are also a libertarian, in the style of Thatcher, Brown and Cameron, because your actual belief (which libertarians usually mask with an ill-defined appeal to "freedom", but they all end up thinking like you) is that government is the servant of the economy rather than the people. Taxpayer money doesn't exist to give you loans so you can get richer, you corporatist cunt, and I don't care whether you claim to be a banker or a scientist.
Let me break it down for you into one simple question:
At the end of last financial year we had a debt of around £1,000,400,000,000.
So here's my proposal.
Tomorrow, we borrow £3,572,857,142,857.14.
And we give ALL that money to "science".
Debt solved.
Then we do it a second time to pay off interest.
What is wrong with this argument?
Hints: (1) No points for, "If only investors were as smart as me they'd do just this. The problem is that not everyone is as smart as I am." (2) I've already implied several answers in the posts above - see if you can stop your xkcd-like dreaming about being a scientist and spot 'em.
At least we love peace and motherhood!
Although New Labour was as left wing as Bush, a degree of blame lies in the left for its weak idealism. Where was the mass backbench rebellion? How did so many frontbenchers who were flying the socialist flag in the '80s turn so aggressively blue? Why have left wing parties across Europe suffered a similar change?
New Labour didn't come about to defeat the Tories: they were already on their way out. Wasn't Blair's mischief with the Fabian society an almighty warning klaxon? How did he get all the way to leader and replace Clause IV with... nothing? Mind you, I ask a similar question of the Liberal Democrats: why the sudden sellout? Your negotiating power in forming and carrying on this coalition has been pathetic, and you have pushed precisely nothing significant. But at least the LDs can be forgiven, as they never really had an ideal. I can perhaps summarise their policy as, "Let people be vaguely free, expect where that leads to nastiness - where each party member gets to define what's freedom and what's nastiness."
The right are succeeding because they have no greater belief than Number One. Pragmatism is fine, cooperation is fine, compromise is fine, corruption is fine, as long as each player benefits in some way. The left have lost their ideals, divided and been conquered.
Thank you. Although I've tried to be nuanced about the particular responsibility of the scientist as a knowledgeable consumer of public money, this is what it comes down to.
It's agonising to read most responses being little more than, "Shut up, we scientists make money!" as if all branches of science were equal and quantifiable (i.e. short term, direct) profit was the purpose of science.
Your 'non-existent money' canard is pathetic
You sing like Brown 12 years ago. Perhaps you even worked with him. Debt is good, recession can be avoided, the relentless march of progress always reaps profit. You failed, you're wrong, get over it.
there is real money being generated as a result of scientific breakthroughs.
So what? Every discipline X makes "real money" somewhere, but that doesn't mean every endeavour which calls itself X is worth pursuing on economic (or other) grounds. Let me see how I can inform your difficult mind of the point:
Go on then, give me an economist who predicted the internet.
Are you being deliberately dense? I argued that the assignment of money to science is traditionally not economic, yet you ask me to justify it on economic grounds. You're the only one here requiring a quantifiable positive RoI, like scientific research is some sort of business venture. I'm arguing that science is cultural and merely requires usefulness (from a particular philosophical PoV) and real, available money to fund.
You're mediocre, you sound like so many sophomoric libertarians on this site, and I've had enough of arguing with you.
Actually, there are no places for "average research scientists".
Take the set of all UK research scientists. Consider an average subset. This subset would not have the quickness of wit, consistent first-time accuracy and stress tolerance required to get a £1M+/year job in the City. Believing yourself to have the moral high ground does not automatically make you the brightest or the strongest.
Getting a research job in academia demands higher and higher qualifications as you go up the food chain. Excellent students become good relative to the grad student population, become average post-docs, etc.
This assertion is irrelevant. And, given politics and dependent on the discipline, is often not quite true. There's a whole lot of mundane, plodding and probably necessary work done by researchers of hard science and (esp.) its applications. Just because you have a PhD in x and n papers while the Nobel laureate down the corridor has a PhD in x and 10n papers, it doesn't mean you are 9n papers away from a similar prize.
Don't let that chip on your shoulder entirely block your sight, scientist-actor. Did you see any argument that spending on science is unnecessary, or just an argument against every faculty with a cap for its hand agreeing to be funded by non-existent money to prop up an unsustainable economy? Because I sure didn't argue the former.
Now you may want to go back and actually read the article you linked to. Its purpose is pretty much to argue that, while for some fields there is obvious monetary return on R&D, any quantification (including Mansfield's) relies on a host of assumptions and omissions. The general assignment of money to "science" is a political one, or sociological or philosophical or humanitarian if you prefer, not economic. This is OK as long as it happens with real money in a sustainable framework.
Giving the entirety of a hugely bloated academia non-existent money, including funding new research and training undergraduates on the path to being researchers, in the hope that some small percentage will in some way "return on investment", is unsustainable. Relying on academic R&D to keep the country alive is unsustainable. If you benefit from such funding, you are feeding from the trough and are part of the problem.
I am not arguing that the work of academics needs to have an obvious short-term or long-term profit motive. I am not arguing that every branch of academia even needs to break even over some timespan by some measure: for example, everyone benefits from philosophy and PPE is a popular subject for the UK's up-and-coming leaders, but it is very difficult to measure the real economic output of education and research in philosophy. What I am arguing for is:
You might want to note that what I'm suggesting as a fix is to rely more heavily on the high tech industries.
Hehe, this was precisely Thatcher's argument in the 80s: the UK doesn't need a large manufacturing base, just a small amount of highly efficient high-tech manufacturing driven by blah blah blah. Didn't work the first time round, either, but it's funny to hear the new breed of self-interested academics singing her tune.
Once you cut out the infinite pot of funding for defence applcations (and good luck with that, if we go down your route), a country can only take itself so far relying on the poorer working conditions of the soon-to-be-as-advanced yellows/browns for what it once built itself to survive. You can only go so far by hoarding and selling ideas and services where catch-up is frequently just a matter of teaching the natives English - the 20th century made its verdict and it turns out there's nothing inherently superior about the Anglo-Saxon brain.
Competing in the world is one thing, sustaining yourself - as China will teach us - is quite another.
The country's debt was increased for scientists to do research. Scientists accepted the grant which would increase the debt, where grants were disproportionately frequently for research related to offence^Wdefence applications. Surely you are not making the "not my department" argument?
It is ridiculous for someone who has spent the last 10 years receiving non-existent money in an unsustainable framework for Higher Education to complain that his funding will be cut.
You know who brought the boom in the first place, which made insane borrowing appear possible and funded the extravagant boom investments? The same bankers you hate but forced upon the country because you (as a nation) decided in the '80s but it doesn't really matter what else the UK produces as long as the City makes an efficient headquarters for global slavedriving.
Blaming the bankers while you continue to thrive within the model which relies upon them will not fix anything.
Yes, everyone receiving non-existent funding from government is to blame. I am particularly unimpressed by universities because they comprise people who should know better.
You might want to actually read the first article you linked to: it is mostly about domestic universities selling profit-making educational services to international students, particularly in China: a close relation was director of a London University faculty and he was frequently sent on trips to court the emerging Chinese middle class while funding remained short for domestic students.
The teaching and student unions are fairly pathetic compared to 30 years ago, since the old militants have mostly retired and current students and new teachers are mostly about career building. Wow, a warning at the beginning of 2010! Perhaps the sustainability of a model which turns universities into training shops / unemployment figure adjusters for almost 50% of the population should have been aggressively and directly fought since the 1980s.
Refuse to accept funding based on non-existent government money, duh. See all the striking they're doing now? The right time was a decade ago.
I'm fairly sure whoever taught you reading comprehension has received too much government money :-).
If you have a science education good enough to do real research, then you could also get at one of the huge banks as a trader for something like 20 times the income.
That's a myth. There are way more places for average research scientists than $1M/year bankers. The latter is think-continuously-on-your-feet hard and hugely stressful, and demands the sort with a 1st in the Cambridge maths tripos, not a 2:1 from Warwick.
Yes, smarter people can and do have the power to cause more damage, but don't do a US "at least we torture less than North Korea!" and complain that scientists are not to blame just because they are not bankers. Also, pay more attention to where a bulk of research grants come from: see all that defence spending?
And it is precisely this sort of "the government should have taken care of it for me, I'm just an innocent [job] feeding from the country's teat" irresponsibility that caused the problem in the first place. Where [job] is anything from banker to scientist.
The University/research system is effectively a branch of government. It is responsible as much as any other branch for obtaining non-existent sources of funding. Stop blaming other people.
Indeed. The scientists who are up in arms now were spending the last decade happily receiving government grants, and are also well aware of the bottomless trough that they could eat from if their research was remotely related to defence. While the average new graduate student might not have had much power or awareness, each academic must understand that he is jointly to blame for if he did not object to the problem while it was being caused, instead benefiting from it.
While I was one of the powerless junior Chicken Littles, I'm happy to share some of the blame for not shouting louder.
Why weren't you doing anything over the last decade while the government was intentionally building up a deficit? Where do you propose that the cuts be made, if not to your department? Alternatively, what other revenue sources do you suggest?
There are many possible answers, but pretending to be some sort of apolitical brain who just wants to do science is not going to help you get popular support. Do you object to useless war? Do you think that the government should take a greater proportion of nationally owned bank profits, reducing salaries of bankers? Do you think that more measures should be put in place to stop tax avoidance schemes (hello Ashcroft!)? In short, what is going to pay for you?
my meandering, friendless, troubled, handicapped and isolated life
We get it, you like xkcd.
Wow, you are one of those people who just can't take it when you been shown wrong. As the other poster said last time I had the misfortune to have a discussion with you, stop moving the goalposts. Minard is an example of a timeline, possessing a superset of all the substantive properties of Munroe's diagram. You might as well argue that an iMac is not a PC because it only comes with an attached glossy monitor in one aspect ratio.
I think you may have trouble with characterisation of objects and matching of patterns. Have you considered studying more mathematics?
See the bottom of Minard? He's mapped between time and space on the horizontal for the return march, and added temperatures for each marked date. He could have done another at the top for the outward march, but this isn't as interesting (i.e. winter is not beating Napoleon logarithmically shitless yet) and he probably didn't want to clutter it. The diagram is just lovely.
Meanwhile, Munroe's may have involved a lot of grunt work (i.e. for once he's perhaps put in a full day's work to prepare the comic he supposedly works full time on), but in terms of form it's just the latest in a long line of similar diagrams and it's not a particularly sophisticated example either.
I just invented a windmill used to generate electricity. Its inspiration was xkcd 556.
Would it be arrogant to point out, like most responses, prior art for both the idea and deployment of wind turbines?
Also, everyone who has read or even heard of Don Quixote is aware that he tilted at windmills. If you have lived in Spain for any length of time the sight of windmills will bring Cervantes to mind automatically. It is not funny to simply put Don Quixote in a scene involving scary windmills, any more than it is funny to have Macbeth appearing in a Halloween scene just because he was under some witches' spell.
xkcdsucks and xkcdexplained are the only reasons to read xkcd. For this comic I recall thinking, "I wonder which one will mention Minard?" But xkcdsucks went one step further, noting that comic 540 (by its "Napoleon's forces" label) almost confirms that Munroe had previously seen Minard's excellent diagram.