Yes an intrinsic advantage like that. Unless you're very close to an airport noise is very rarely an issue and no different than having a railroad as a neighbor. Tall buildings are again only an issue if you're immediately adjacent to an airport. As for balloons, kites and model rockets..
No..you miss the point. You arbitrarily decided that it is ok for the Federal Government to steal my airspace and give it to your buddies in the airlines. Any talk of subsidies for Amtrak completely misses the mark, when you start rationalizing this massive theft of the people's rights. Republicans that think Amtrak is subsidized more than airlines need to be educated as to this, and Republicans that argue that this massive federal theft of my land is somehow justifiable are no different from the jackbooted thugs on the left wing.
For that matter, why is the FCC allowed to auction off spectrum that is also crossing my land? Wow, now the Feds are selling something that belongs to me, while at the same time, I'm actually not allowed to operate a radio transmitter on my land without their approval! I would certainly think a cell phone jammer should be legal on private property, but, its not..
My oh my, that's some free government you support. Really, Republicans don't believe in private property. They just want to steal different property than the Democrats...
That's not a subsidy it's an intrinsic advantage of air travel
An intrinsic advantage of air travel to have my sky ruined by contrails, or have loud planes flying overhead?
An intrinsic advantage to have the Feds legislate flying a model rocket with a decent engine, building a tall building, or flying a balloon, or a kite, or anything like that.
If you want to put the airlines on the same ground as the railways, then please, let the airlines pay for the land that they fly over, just like railways paid, and continue to pay, for the land that they use.
Granted, though that one time deal hardly qualifies as "repeatedly" and per passenger mile the worst excesses in corporate welfare in the airline industry can't come close to the subsidies that have kept Amtrak going since 1971
Um, obviously, you've forgotten about the FAA!!!! The FAA is paid for partially out of tickets, yes, but also enormously from gasoline taxes (you know, people that drive cars get to subsidize people that fly), and, get this, since 2000, has been paid for largely out of the general fund. I think the FAA costs more per year, as of now, then Amtrak is subsidized over a decade.
I have a better idea: how about we let rising fuel prices dictate what gets built? If rail is so much more efficient than air travel, then when JP1 is 20USD/gal we should see trains become more economical naturally, right?
Well, here's the thing. Aircraft get two big free subsidies:
a) airlines don't have to pay for the land they fly over. What if I don't want any aircraft flying over my house? That's my land that they are violating.
b) aircraft design is very heavily subsidized by the military. Everything in a commercial aircraft is deritative from bomber design.
c) US airlines are repeatedly bailed out by the government. Look at the how much money the taxpayers forked over to the airlines after 9/11.
Question: When was the last time anybody *actually* smuggled or even constructed a dirty bomb? Exactly. Just sounds like more "duct tape and bottled water" ignorant hysteria if you ask me. I'm all for being proactive, but let's tackle *real* problems that can be solved
Bingo... enough material to make a dirty bomb would require a lead container weighing a few hundred tons to avoid detection. Putting neutron detectors in critical points would do more for national security than asking everyone at the airport if they happen to be carrying an atomic bomb.
Also, most of the trackage in the US is owned by freight railroads (Union Pacific, BNSF, etc). Amtrak has to pay for the right to run trains on those rails. High-speed passenger trains require significantly higher quality/more expensive tracks than freight trains do, so Amtrak or the gov't would have to pay the freight railroads to upgrade the trackage. Sadly that's unlikely to happen soon
Well, I agree, and I think the ultimate answer is to nationalize the rails and treat them the same way the federal government treats interstates. Then you have a federal system for managing rail traffic, and make things accessible to all players. Once you have that, you put in track upgrades to take the pressure off of commuter traffic and also allow for tourism. If you had a modest subsidy for a national rail pass, the way Europe does, you could open up the interior of the country for greater tourism, and indeed, make America much more friendly to tourists. You don't need a bunch of 9/11 red tape hassles on a train...
Not Kerry. Carter. Same party. Same environmental policy. Different dumbass.
I agree, sorta. I'm a Republican and I can't stand Carter. He was certainly wrong about many things, and his killing of breeder reactors and fuel rod re-use was among them, however, he was also pretty darned right about promoting nuclear power.
When TMI happened, Carter went there, to illustrate that it was perfectly safe. At that moment, Republicans actually jumped the pro-nuclear boat and hopped onto the anti-nuclear bandwagon, and used the moment to show that Carter was being irresponsible, doesn't have a clue, even though Jimmy, as one of Rickover's boys, probably knew more about nuclear power than just about anyone. As a result of this moment of bipartisan acord between the loonie left and right, nuclear power was killed in America, and Reagan actually never advanced it.
The US Rail system needs a track upgrade. The east coast is going from horrible to better, but beyond the great divide, track conditions are apalling. Seems to me the best way to go would be to get more track certified for 120-150mph runs in the northeast corridor, and that would take the demand off of congested airports, and would certainly be more fuel economical.
Riiiiight... because once they have this in place, they`ll stop spying on your phone calls right? I mean.. thats what it's for isn't it.. if no nukes/bombs can get into the country then we don't need to spy on our citizens because nobody has bombs right?!.. No ofcourse it's wrong, the Orweillian state will such continue growing uncontrollably
The hope is that Orwellian states are invariably made up of stupid people that don't give a shit.
So when you indicate that scientists should not be in position to judge the credibility of people, who should? Do you now suggest that scientists should believe that God exists, solely because a lot of people with credibility do so? Or that aliens exist, because some pilots and a bunch of other folks say so? And as a scientist, would you actually consider to allow yourself not to judge people when you're doing your job? Explain to us all how that would work, because I am curious.
Maybe the pilots did see a UFO? They were in the plane. The scientists weren't. That's how the public sees it. Plus, at least in terms of early NASA UFO sightings, the astronauts WERE scientists. They were all guys with Phds, for the most part. So...what do you do then?
Aliens can't be falsified, so scientists shouldn't even be weighing in on that, any more than they should weigh in on God or Ghosts. Sure, you could technically be right, but, if a UFO or God ever did show up, you'd be wrong, so, why even risk the hit. Stick to what can actually be measured, instead of trying to argue against something simply because it can't.
The correct answer, for scientists is, "Aliens, God, Bigfoot, I think its all ridiculous, and, if someone showed me an alien or a bigfoot or God, I might believe, but, I don't. However, with that said, I can't say that someone who saw a bigfoot didn't, because, I wasn't there." Then you can lead off with, well, Bigfoot might have cured Joe's cancer, but, I'm working on a cure for everyone that will cost $2. Or, whatever. The benefit of science is its utility, and I've found that Bigfoot isn't very useful.
Due to whatever reason, the general public will only see this as the government hard at work on protecting us. Successes like this lend credibility to the administration across the board
See, I don't think that at all. I think people will be like, geez, why do I have to do all of this search crap, when all ya need to do is buy a scanner. Really, the RADAR gun used by police to catch speeders is the appropriate metaphor.
Don't get me wrong being able to detect a nuke is a good thing. However, to me this seems to fit right in along with the whole security theater schtick that the government is pulling. Throw out some nifty vaporware. Have some conveniently thwarted plots and you have a carte blanche to do whatever you want with personal liberty.
Well, the whole point of having devices like this, is that, if you can directly detect somebody trying to smuggle in a nuke or even a backpack bomb, you don't need to spy on the whole country because you are afraid someone might.
Advances such as these should be trumpeted, as much as possible, to indicate that we don't need to have our civil liberties trampled in order to defend ourselves. That is, defending against terrorism is something for grad students to work on with big defense grants, not, a bunch of jackasses that want to play rent-a-cop at the CIA.
For the most part, the 84,000 dead in Iraq, even if you accept the statistic, is because of Iraq on Iraq violence. However, in the grim game of accounting lives, the 84,000 dead in Iraq due to the war is a much smaller toll than the sanctions had caused before. What people do not get is that sanctions are an act of war, and if you are going to engage in a war, it is better to be quicker about it, then longer.
You need to lay off of the kool-aid and reconsider: where does the money go? The invasions under Dubya have been bleeding holes in the Federal reserve
What kool=aid? I'd ask the question, what good is NATO?
I swear, one Sunni village in Iraq has probably done more to fight America's enemies than all of Europe combined. Instead of all of this antagonism with Iran, why not ally with them? It's not like the United States doesn't have a conservative religious group of its own, and, while they are obviously anti-muslim, they are probably even more anti-european, and, the idea of allying with the mideast, doing some sort of a free trade pact, backing out of NATO in favor of the M.E., makes a good deal of sense.
If you invoked Article 5 with an Islamic country, and had some cleric bless it, you'd get guys that would fight. On the other hand, Europe will never fight, so what's the point of being in a military alliance with a continent that will never even step into the ring. Plus, there's a billion muslims and rising, and Europe's population is declining.
Point is, how can you as a scientist tell who's who?
Your argument has the premise that scientists are the people whose job it is to separate fact from fiction. By allowing them to accept or reject what the sailors say, you argue that scientists should be in a position to judge the credibility of other people, and, in fact, in today's society, they are. However, what's happened here is that you have two groups of people, scientists and sailors, and ultimately, the sailors were right, and the scientists wrong. Thus, in the public eyes, the eyes of everyone else, your very claim that scientists have this job of distilling knowledge is severely undermined. Were this an isolated case, sure, scientists would probably not be hurting too much. However, the person lay reported exception to the opinion of the academic community is increasingly the normal event, thus, its reasonable in the eyes of the world to not trust scientists at all, except in the very narrow role of producers of "better" consumer products.
Well then the hell with our so called allies then. The whole lot of them are worthless. You know, really, the whole US position in the middle east is designed to protect the southern flank of NATO, and really has no geopolitical value to the USA. The USA has enough coal and enough land and enough existing oil reserves to put together a completely energy independent strategy. Europe cannot. After 50 years of hearing that the EU does not want the USA as an ally, I'm inclined to say go right the hell ahead, let's have the USA quit NATO, go energy independent, and let the EU go to hell.
At this point, Iraqi Sunnis are a better ally to the United States than any European Nation, as at least they fight. Perhaps instead of the USA being opposed to Islamic states, the USA should be allied to them, and just dump Europe once and for all.
You do realize that eyewitness accounts are among the least reliable types of evidence, right?
Science is nothing more than eyewitness accounts. You claim to witness something, then, I can witness it too. In the best and strongest case, you create a model that will allow others to predict what they will witness, then, below that, you can just give a set of procedures to witness something, and finally, you can say that you witnessed something and then make up a story about it.
Ultimately, the whole academic process exists to create a set of witnesses that are ethical, reliable, and knowledgable enough to describe what they have witnessed, and hopefully, insightful enough to do understand what others have witnessed. So, my criticism isn't to say that we should go back to (insert favorite holy book). It is to say that we need to monitor how good our science actually is, not by deluding ourselves into thinking that technological progress is the exclusive benchmark, but, as a function of, how much do we trust these people to be supreme witnesses. Right now, from the public perspective, its not as much as one might think, and that's really why superstition is making a comeback.
And don't forget evolution! Those scientists, with all their theories, undermining honest God-fearing values! Have they ever seen anything evolve? No!
This isn't about saying that science should be replaced by religion. It is about saying that science should not become a religion, and, in this case, it was a religion about wave theory that hindered science. Had someone gotten off their ass, gotten onto a boat, and looked for some of these rogue waves, instead of just saying that it was impossible, then, we might have had something. The failure here is the same failure that science accusses religion of. You have a prescribed belief that is so overwhelming that no one even bothered to investigate a possible contradiction, dismissing it as so much sailor stories.
Ironically, it was those sailor's stories that described things disappearing over the horizon, that lent weight towards the idea of the earth being round, instead of flat.
Beancounters: "Do you have any scientific basis for that recommendation?"
Engineers: "Well, no, but we heard this old sailor telling stories one day..."
Realistically, its more like this:
Sailor: "A giant wave knocked off the bow of my ship." Engineer: "Sorry, but that wave couldn't have existed, because my computer model didn't predict it.
Would saying "ok, I believe you" without any evidence or understanding actually have saved any of the lives lost?
Why do you need a scientist to prove something exists? Really, I would the burden on science would be to prove that it doesn't exist. That's one thing that's lost in this process. A scientist tells me that I didn't see a rogue wave, when I saw it, then, he needs to prove that it doesn't exist. Really, its the same sort of thinking over and over again... there's a theory, says something couldn't happen, and woops suddenly we find out that all of these people that were discredited were actually right.
There's no data on how many of these ships actually sunk from a super wave. In fact, the number could be so small that it's not even worth our time. More importantly, most of these accidents happen to really old boats.
Last but not least, there are many eyewitnesses who claim to have spotted UFOs, been exposed to abductions, seen the Loch Ness monster and whatnot. You need credible evidence before you start spending billions of dollars on altering ship designs..
I would think sailors would be credible. That's the thing. You put sailors into same camp as UFO believers, but really, they are subject matter experts when it comes to the water. Really, that someone never went and bothered to really check the sailor's claims of giant waves for decades just tells me that "credible evidence" as you call it is just an excuse for laziness in the discipline.
The Model T was successful, but the line of thinking behind it ultimately screwed Ford. Read some industrial history. The early battles between Ford and GM were fascinating. Ford had a huge lead, and Henry kept thinking that the Model T was the "one car", and he never thought of improving it, just making it cheaper. So Henry kept getting the Model T cheaper and cheaper.
GM, on the other hand, went a bit upscale with Chevrolet. While the Model T was available just in black, you could get a Chevy in multiple colors. Soon, what happened was, there were enough used Chevys out there, so that, someone could, for the same price as a new Model T, get a used Chevy with a few extras, for the same price. And, if you wanted something really cheap, you could always get a used Model T. Both of those forces conspired to ultimately kill the Model T in the market place. Ford had to shut down production for a year to build a car that really could respond to Chevy, and did, but too late. Ford lost its lead to GM, and never regained it.
So yeah, Model T won the battle for Ford. But, GM ultimately won the war and the Model T was a big part of why GM won.
The subtext of this article is amazing. Basically, sailors have been out there getting killed by giant waves for decades, but a bunch of scientists decreed that such waves could not exist, and therefor, everything from safety standards, to engineering, to the ships themselves, were all designed in line with what was predicted, but not what was observed. During this entire time, numerous eye witness reports were ignored, and even the odd photograph was dismissed as a fluke.
I find it amazing that anyone would blindly trust an academic institution with any matter of policy, regarding climate, when, 2 ships a week have been sinking now for decades (on average), that, there's eyewitnesses that have said what caused these sinkings, and instead, ignored them. If there's a smoking gun that says that scientists find what they want to find, and its not necessarily the truth, then this is it, and the only way to save science is to demand that science must act scientific.
The thing is, Negroponte's $100 laptop suffers from the same flaw as Ford's Model T ultimately did. A used computer will probably give you more capability than a cheap new one. I think for $150, you could buy a notebook that's better than this "everyman's computer", and while you were at it, you could probably buy a used generator.
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Yes an intrinsic advantage like that. Unless you're very close to an airport noise is very rarely an issue and no different than having a railroad as a neighbor. Tall buildings are again only an issue if you're immediately adjacent to an airport. As for balloons, kites and model rockets..
No..you miss the point. You arbitrarily decided that it is ok for the Federal Government to steal my airspace and give it to your buddies in the airlines. Any talk of subsidies for Amtrak completely misses the mark, when you start rationalizing this massive theft of the people's rights. Republicans that think Amtrak is subsidized more than airlines need to be educated as to this, and Republicans that argue that this massive federal theft of my land is somehow justifiable are no different from the jackbooted thugs on the left wing.
For that matter, why is the FCC allowed to auction off spectrum that is also crossing my land? Wow, now the Feds are selling something that belongs to me, while at the same time, I'm actually not allowed to operate a radio transmitter on my land without their approval! I would certainly think a cell phone jammer should be legal on private property, but, its not..
My oh my, that's some free government you support. Really, Republicans don't believe in private property. They just want to steal different property than the Democrats...
ince the airlines actually operate at a profit they're even contributing to the US general fund subsidizing them via corporate taxes on that profit.
Dude, that's a silly argument. Airlines operate at a profit about as often as George Bush breaks 45% approval rating in the polls.
That's not a subsidy it's an intrinsic advantage of air travel
An intrinsic advantage of air travel to have my sky ruined by contrails, or have loud planes flying overhead?
An intrinsic advantage to have the Feds legislate flying a model rocket with a decent engine, building a tall building, or flying a balloon, or a kite, or anything like that.
If you want to put the airlines on the same ground as the railways, then please, let the airlines pay for the land that they fly over, just like railways paid, and continue to pay, for the land that they use.
Granted, though that one time deal hardly qualifies as "repeatedly" and per passenger mile the worst excesses in corporate welfare in the airline industry can't come close to the subsidies that have kept Amtrak going since 1971
Um, obviously, you've forgotten about the FAA!!!! The FAA is paid for partially out of tickets, yes, but also enormously from gasoline taxes (you know, people that drive cars get to subsidize people that fly), and, get this, since 2000, has been paid for largely out of the general fund. I think the FAA costs more per year, as of now, then Amtrak is subsidized over a decade.
I have a better idea: how about we let rising fuel prices dictate what gets built? If rail is so much more efficient than air travel, then when JP1 is 20USD/gal we should see trains become more economical naturally, right?
Well, here's the thing. Aircraft get two big free subsidies:
a) airlines don't have to pay for the land they fly over. What if I don't want any aircraft flying over my house? That's my land that they are violating.
b) aircraft design is very heavily subsidized by the military. Everything in a commercial aircraft is deritative from bomber design.
c) US airlines are repeatedly bailed out by the government. Look at the how much money the taxpayers forked over to the airlines after 9/11.
Question: When was the last time anybody *actually* smuggled or even constructed a dirty bomb? Exactly. Just sounds like more "duct tape and bottled water" ignorant hysteria if you ask me. I'm all for being proactive, but let's tackle *real* problems that can be solved
Bingo... enough material to make a dirty bomb would require a lead container weighing a few hundred tons to avoid detection. Putting neutron detectors in critical points would do more for national security than asking everyone at the airport if they happen to be carrying an atomic bomb.
Also, most of the trackage in the US is owned by freight railroads (Union Pacific, BNSF, etc). Amtrak has to pay for the right to run trains on those rails. High-speed passenger trains require significantly higher quality/more expensive tracks than freight trains do, so Amtrak or the gov't would have to pay the freight railroads to upgrade the trackage. Sadly that's unlikely to happen soon
Well, I agree, and I think the ultimate answer is to nationalize the rails and treat them the same way the federal government treats interstates. Then you have a federal system for managing rail traffic, and make things accessible to all players. Once you have that, you put in track upgrades to take the pressure off of commuter traffic and also allow for tourism. If you had a modest subsidy for a national rail pass, the way Europe does, you could open up the interior of the country for greater tourism, and indeed, make America much more friendly to tourists. You don't need a bunch of 9/11 red tape hassles on a train...
Not Kerry. Carter. Same party. Same environmental policy. Different dumbass.
I agree, sorta. I'm a Republican and I can't stand Carter. He was certainly wrong about many things, and his killing of breeder reactors and fuel rod re-use was among them, however, he was also pretty darned right about promoting nuclear power.
When TMI happened, Carter went there, to illustrate that it was perfectly safe. At that moment, Republicans actually jumped the pro-nuclear boat and hopped onto the anti-nuclear bandwagon, and used the moment to show that Carter was being irresponsible, doesn't have a clue, even though Jimmy, as one of Rickover's boys, probably knew more about nuclear power than just about anyone. As a result of this moment of bipartisan acord between the loonie left and right, nuclear power was killed in America, and Reagan actually never advanced it.
The US Rail system needs a track upgrade. The east coast is going from horrible to better, but beyond the great divide, track conditions are apalling. Seems to me the best way to go would be to get more track certified for 120-150mph runs in the northeast corridor, and that would take the demand off of congested airports, and would certainly be more fuel economical.
Riiiiight... because once they have this in place, they`ll stop spying on your phone calls right? I mean.. thats what it's for isn't it.. if no nukes/bombs can get into the country then we don't need to spy on our citizens because nobody has bombs right?!.. No ofcourse it's wrong, the Orweillian state will such continue growing uncontrollably
The hope is that Orwellian states are invariably made up of stupid people that don't give a shit.
So when you indicate that scientists should not be in position to judge the credibility of people, who should? Do you now suggest that scientists should believe that God exists, solely because a lot of people with credibility do so? Or that aliens exist, because some pilots and a bunch of other folks say so? And as a scientist, would you actually consider to allow yourself not to judge people when you're doing your job? Explain to us all how that would work, because I am curious.
Maybe the pilots did see a UFO? They were in the plane. The scientists weren't. That's how the public sees it. Plus, at least in terms of early NASA UFO sightings, the astronauts WERE scientists. They were all guys with Phds, for the most part. So...what do you do then?
Aliens can't be falsified, so scientists shouldn't even be weighing in on that, any more than they should weigh in on God or Ghosts. Sure, you could technically be right, but, if a UFO or God ever did show up, you'd be wrong, so, why even risk the hit. Stick to what can actually be measured, instead of trying to argue against something simply because it can't.
The correct answer, for scientists is, "Aliens, God, Bigfoot, I think its all ridiculous, and, if someone showed me an alien or a bigfoot or God, I might believe, but, I don't. However, with that said, I can't say that someone who saw a bigfoot didn't, because, I wasn't there." Then you can lead off with, well, Bigfoot might have cured Joe's cancer, but, I'm working on a cure for everyone that will cost $2. Or, whatever. The benefit of science is its utility, and I've found that Bigfoot isn't very useful.
Due to whatever reason, the general public will only see this as the government hard at work on protecting us. Successes like this lend credibility to the administration across the board
See, I don't think that at all. I think people will be like, geez, why do I have to do all of this search crap, when all ya need to do is buy a scanner. Really, the RADAR gun used by police to catch speeders is the appropriate metaphor.
Don't get me wrong being able to detect a nuke is a good thing. However, to me this seems to fit right in along with the whole security theater schtick that the government is pulling. Throw out some nifty vaporware. Have some conveniently thwarted plots and you have a carte blanche to do whatever you want with personal liberty.
Well, the whole point of having devices like this, is that, if you can directly detect somebody trying to smuggle in a nuke or even a backpack bomb, you don't need to spy on the whole country because you are afraid someone might.
Advances such as these should be trumpeted, as much as possible, to indicate that we don't need to have our civil liberties trampled in order to defend ourselves. That is, defending against terrorism is something for grad students to work on with big defense grants, not, a bunch of jackasses that want to play rent-a-cop at the CIA.
For the most part, the 84,000 dead in Iraq, even if you accept the statistic, is because of Iraq on Iraq violence. However, in the grim game of accounting lives, the 84,000 dead in Iraq due to the war is a much smaller toll than the sanctions had caused before. What people do not get is that sanctions are an act of war, and if you are going to engage in a war, it is better to be quicker about it, then longer.
You need to lay off of the kool-aid and reconsider: where does the money go? The invasions under Dubya have been bleeding holes in the Federal reserve
What kool=aid? I'd ask the question, what good is NATO?
I swear, one Sunni village in Iraq has probably done more to fight America's enemies than all of Europe combined. Instead of all of this antagonism with Iran, why not ally with them? It's not like the United States doesn't have a conservative religious group of its own, and, while they are obviously anti-muslim, they are probably even more anti-european, and, the idea of allying with the mideast, doing some sort of a free trade pact, backing out of NATO in favor of the M.E., makes a good deal of sense.
If you invoked Article 5 with an Islamic country, and had some cleric bless it, you'd get guys that would fight. On the other hand, Europe will never fight, so what's the point of being in a military alliance with a continent that will never even step into the ring. Plus, there's a billion muslims and rising, and Europe's population is declining.
Point is, how can you as a scientist tell who's who?
Your argument has the premise that scientists are the people whose job it is to separate fact from fiction. By allowing them to accept or reject what the sailors say, you argue that scientists should be in a position to judge the credibility of other people, and, in fact, in today's society, they are. However, what's happened here is that you have two groups of people, scientists and sailors, and ultimately, the sailors were right, and the scientists wrong. Thus, in the public eyes, the eyes of everyone else, your very claim that scientists have this job of distilling knowledge is severely undermined. Were this an isolated case, sure, scientists would probably not be hurting too much. However, the person lay reported exception to the opinion of the academic community is increasingly the normal event, thus, its reasonable in the eyes of the world to not trust scientists at all, except in the very narrow role of producers of "better" consumer products.
The the U.S. would still be
Well then the hell with our so called allies then. The whole lot of them are worthless. You know, really, the whole US position in the middle east is designed to protect the southern flank of NATO, and really has no geopolitical value to the USA. The USA has enough coal and enough land and enough existing oil reserves to put together a completely energy independent strategy. Europe cannot. After 50 years of hearing that the EU does not want the USA as an ally, I'm inclined to say go right the hell ahead, let's have the USA quit NATO, go energy independent, and let the EU go to hell.
At this point, Iraqi Sunnis are a better ally to the United States than any European Nation, as at least they fight. Perhaps instead of the USA being opposed to Islamic states, the USA should be allied to them, and just dump Europe once and for all.
You do realize that eyewitness accounts are among the least reliable types of evidence, right?
Science is nothing more than eyewitness accounts. You claim to witness something, then, I can witness it too. In the best and strongest case, you create a model that will allow others to predict what they will witness, then, below that, you can just give a set of procedures to witness something, and finally, you can say that you witnessed something and then make up a story about it.
Ultimately, the whole academic process exists to create a set of witnesses that are ethical, reliable, and knowledgable enough to describe what they have witnessed, and hopefully, insightful enough to do understand what others have witnessed. So, my criticism isn't to say that we should go back to (insert favorite holy book). It is to say that we need to monitor how good our science actually is, not by deluding ourselves into thinking that technological progress is the exclusive benchmark, but, as a function of, how much do we trust these people to be supreme witnesses. Right now, from the public perspective, its not as much as one might think, and that's really why superstition is making a comeback.
And don't forget evolution! Those scientists, with all their theories, undermining honest God-fearing values! Have they ever seen anything evolve? No!
This isn't about saying that science should be replaced by religion. It is about saying that science should not become a religion, and, in this case, it was a religion about wave theory that hindered science. Had someone gotten off their ass, gotten onto a boat, and looked for some of these rogue waves, instead of just saying that it was impossible, then, we might have had something. The failure here is the same failure that science accusses religion of. You have a prescribed belief that is so overwhelming that no one even bothered to investigate a possible contradiction, dismissing it as so much sailor stories.
Ironically, it was those sailor's stories that described things disappearing over the horizon, that lent weight towards the idea of the earth being round, instead of flat.
The U.N is corrupted by it's continued need to allow the US to be involved in it.
I'd be happy to kick them out, shut it down, and have a world body consisting only of democracies.
Beancounters: "Do you have any scientific basis for that recommendation?"
Engineers: "Well, no, but we heard this old sailor telling stories one day..."
Realistically, its more like this:
Sailor: "A giant wave knocked off the bow of my ship."
Engineer: "Sorry, but that wave couldn't have existed, because my computer model didn't predict it.
Would saying "ok, I believe you" without any evidence or understanding actually have saved any of the lives lost?
Why do you need a scientist to prove something exists? Really, I would the burden on science would be to prove that it doesn't exist. That's one thing that's lost in this process. A scientist tells me that I didn't see a rogue wave, when I saw it, then, he needs to prove that it doesn't exist. Really, its the same sort of thinking over and over again... there's a theory, says something couldn't happen, and woops suddenly we find out that all of these people that were discredited were actually right.
There's no data on how many of these ships actually sunk from a super wave. In fact, the number could be so small that it's not even worth our time. More importantly, most of these accidents happen to really old boats.
Last but not least, there are many eyewitnesses who claim to have spotted UFOs, been exposed to abductions, seen the Loch Ness monster and whatnot. You need credible evidence before you start spending billions of dollars on altering ship designs..
I would think sailors would be credible. That's the thing. You put sailors into same camp as UFO believers, but really, they are subject matter experts when it comes to the water. Really, that someone never went and bothered to really check the sailor's claims of giant waves for decades just tells me that "credible evidence" as you call it is just an excuse for laziness in the discipline.
he Model T was immensely successfu
The Model T was successful, but the line of thinking behind it ultimately screwed Ford. Read some industrial history. The early battles between Ford and GM were fascinating. Ford had a huge lead, and Henry kept thinking that the Model T was the "one car", and he never thought of improving it, just making it cheaper. So Henry kept getting the Model T cheaper and cheaper.
GM, on the other hand, went a bit upscale with Chevrolet. While the Model T was available just in black, you could get a Chevy in multiple colors. Soon, what happened was, there were enough used Chevys out there, so that, someone could, for the same price as a new Model T, get a used Chevy with a few extras, for the same price. And, if you wanted something really cheap, you could always get a used Model T. Both of those forces conspired to ultimately kill the Model T in the market place. Ford had to shut down production for a year to build a car that really could respond to Chevy, and did, but too late. Ford lost its lead to GM, and never regained it.
So yeah, Model T won the battle for Ford. But, GM ultimately won the war and the Model T was a big part of why GM won.
The subtext of this article is amazing. Basically, sailors have been out there getting killed by giant waves for decades, but a bunch of scientists decreed that such waves could not exist, and therefor, everything from safety standards, to engineering, to the ships themselves, were all designed in line with what was predicted, but not what was observed. During this entire time, numerous eye witness reports were ignored, and even the odd photograph was dismissed as a fluke.
I find it amazing that anyone would blindly trust an academic institution with any matter of policy, regarding climate, when, 2 ships a week have been sinking now for decades (on average), that, there's eyewitnesses that have said what caused these sinkings, and instead, ignored them. If there's a smoking gun that says that scientists find what they want to find, and its not necessarily the truth, then this is it, and the only way to save science is to demand that science must act scientific.
The thing is, Negroponte's $100 laptop suffers from the same flaw as Ford's Model T ultimately did. A used computer will probably give you more capability than a cheap new one. I think for $150, you could buy a notebook that's better than this "everyman's computer", and while you were at it, you could probably buy a used generator.