Exactly. Why is everyone ignoring the analogy to cigarette manufacturers? As Oreskes and Conway documented in Merchants of Doubt, oil companies used exactly the same strategies (and same people) to cast doubt on the link between fossil fuels and climate change as cigarette companies did to cast doubt on the link between smoking and lung cancer. If cigarette companies can be found liable, why not oil companies?
Regional pricing already exists on Steam (http://www.pcgamer.com/the-weird-ecomomics-behind-steam-prices-around-the-world/). When I worked in Kyrgyzstan (low GDP country), many games were significantly cheaper than in the US store.
Scientific dissent is fine, but at some point science has to move on to new questions. We'd never get anywhere if scientists were still sitting around debating whether the Earth really is round, whether the Sun is the centre of the solar system. Science has moved beyond the question of whether AGW is occurring, whether or not non-scientists are happy about that fact.
Prior to 1950 it was not uncommon for doctors to prescribe menthol cigarettes for respiratory problems. You can always find precursors in science, but prior to 1950 prevailing medical opinion was that cigarette smoking was not a significant health risk.
Climate science is an evolving science, but the question of whether AGW is happening is settled. How quickly it is occurring, how the climate will react to different forcings, how that will affect specific regions of the planet, etc. are all questions that are more or less up for debate.
Regardless of the political and economic circumstances, the science is very clear. AGW is a fact, whether or not political ideologies have seized upon it to further their agendas. You might be right in your explanation of progressive and conservative reaction to AGW, but this does not discredit its truth. There is no symmetry here---whether you are progressive or conservative the simple fact is that AGW is true.
This is just factually incorrect. Al Gore is not a scientist. He, as you said, used the results of science for political advocacy. But using the results of science does not politicize that science. The scientists did not have to give Al Gore their blessing to use their results. They were not complicit in his work. The scientists involved in the IPCC have been remarkably objective and apolitical.
Why do you think it is silly to deny GW while questioning A(nthropogenic)GW? Neither of us is competent to actually measure global warming ourselves---we have to rely on scientists to inform us that the Earth is in fact warming. We know that GW is occurring because there is a scientific consensus that it is. But that same scientific consensus tells us that the overwhelming cause of that warming is human activity. You can't consistently believe one but not the other.
You're right that scientific consensus is no guarantee of truth, but there are no guarantees of truth about anything. Scientific consensus is our, as laypeople not competent to judge the matter ourselves, best method of judging where the truth most likely lies. What justifies you in taking a position contrary to the scientific consensus? What is a more reliable guide to the truth?
It seems to be a fairly common problem on Slashdot that posts are poorly hyperlinked. There are two key pieces of information here: (1) The party received 4 seats and (2) the party can no longer be considered a "single issue" party. The second two hyperlinks (7.4% and 4 out of 51 seats) are related to (1), but there is no hyperlink for (2). If a reader wants to know where (2) comes from, they have to randomly click the links to find that it comes from the pcworld.com link (7.4%). This is just annoying.
Not to be a shill, but I've been using the Livescribe Pulsepen for about a year and it's perfect for class notes. It records what you write then uploads your notes to your computer, along with audio that is sync'd to your notes, so you can hear what was being said while you were writing. You can convert notes to text using 3rd party software, but I've found it to be better just to leave it in handwritten form. The search function actually works pretty well for handwritten notes.
As an aspiring academic half way through a philosophy Ph. D., I find Nunberg's argument pretty absurd. Google books is a godsend for academics, and would be much more so if there was full access to their entire catalog rather than "limited previews" for most books. I have used Google books countless times to quickly check out whether a book is relevant to my research, or to get the gist of an author's argument without having to trudge down to the library. I know many others who do this as well. In all this time I've never even looked at Google's metadata. No decent academic would rely on such information, as there are far more reliable methods: such as actually checking what's written in the book, which yes, Google scans in.
I'm not sure what the legal mandate of the CBC actually is, but I don't think it should be to disseminate Canadian content. I think it should be to serve the Canadian public by broadcasting quality material that wouldn't necessarily be broadcast on commercial stations. Where that content is produced, and whether that content has a Canadian flag in the background or a shot of the CN Tower is of no interest to me. If the nationalistic agenda is undermining the quality content agenda (as I think it is), then something is wrong.
CBC Radio is great, but I think CBC TV would be a lot better if they didn't feel obligated to make all of these nationalistic TV series. I'm all for the government funding Canadian artists, but I hate content regulations.
No, the belief that smoking and obesity cost society is not based on any "stupid" premises.
Chronic diseases caused by smoking and obesity, such as emphysema and heart disease are chronic, require treatment over years and decades. The period of a person's life where they consume healthcare resources is going to be much longer for smokers and the obese than for the average person.
Whether smokers make up for their increased burden to the healthcare system by being less of a burden on social security system is up for debate, but it seems an odd comparison anyways. As a society it feels right to pay people for living longer (or conversely it would feel wrong to pay people to die earlier), but wrong or unfair to pay people because of their bad habits.
19th century capitalism, with little or no government intervention and a working class with almost no rights, is classic capitalism, the capitalism that Marx critiqued. Cheap labor is ultimately the engine of every country's economic growth. That's why Europe and North America import so much of it, and American companies rush to relocate to underdeveloped countries. The other engine of growth is technology, and it's hard to claim that China isn't pouring resources into technological development. China's growth is no more house-of-cards than Europe's or America's.
From a business perspective, China has some serious problems with contract law, but the operation of its economy is close enough to the US that it's not accurate to radically differentiate them.
Cuba certainly has its problems, but I don't think anyone accuses it of being fascist.
Norway meets many of the criteria of a socialist state (government ownership / control of large portions of industry, aggressive redistribution of wealth), and it's the furthest thing from fascism.
The US, on the other hand, with a government that consistently lies to its constituents, operates outside of the law, and protects the interests of a narrow segment of society, is a hair's breadth from full blown fascism.
See how easy it is to selectively pick examples to confirm your beliefs?
Does any of that even make sense? Looks like you strung together a bunch of buzzwords from the business section of the bookstore. Intuition is pattern recognition? Is that supposed to be a fact? How do we test it? Changing lenses? Angles? So we need a telescope or something? What is your metaphor supposed to tell us? "In order to think differently you have to think differently"?
This is just a bunch of nonsense with some baseless attack on the education system stuck on at the end.
- Wants to wall off the country and deport millions.
- Wants to let states ban abortions.
Ron Paul has some admirable positions, but his supporters should recognize that when it comes down to it he is effectively a social conservative and his policies if implemented completely would, if they didn't destroy the economy right off the bat, probably turn the country completely over to corporate rule.
[quote]The biggest parties (usually two) in any goverment are mostly equally corrupt.[/quote]
Written as if it is a law of nature. Nader pretty proved this theory wrong. There is a difference between the two largest parties. Voting for no-chance candidates is much like spoiling your ballot. If enough people do it then *maybe* some useful point is made, but there seem to be far more promising avenues for political activism. There is a major flaw in the political system that ensures that the business elite have a virtual lock on political power. Solving this problem requires more than protest votes. It requires taking action as a citizen outside of merely casting votes once every four years.
real problems like terrorism I agree with your overall sentiment, but that you list terrorism here, and first, really points to the power of the government propaganda machine. Despite the tragedy that occurred seven years ago, the U.S. is hardly Britain in the 70s or Israel/Palestine (in both directions to be fair) in recent history.
Has anyone else noticed that in the recount with 55/67 counties reporting, Gore has picked up 1372 (all my numbers from cnn.com) of the 1741 previously missed ballots? That is almost 80%! If the state really is in a statistical dead heat as far as real votes, shouldn't they each pick up roughly even amounts? To me this disparity means that either Gore is really unlucky with machinery, Gore voters aren't very good at punching holes / filling in circles, someone gave Bush some "extra" votes before the recount, or the people recounting (although it is machinery right now, right?) are biased towards Gore... thoughts?
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Why is everyone ignoring the analogy to cigarette manufacturers? As Oreskes and Conway documented in Merchants of Doubt, oil companies used exactly the same strategies (and same people) to cast doubt on the link between fossil fuels and climate change as cigarette companies did to cast doubt on the link between smoking and lung cancer. If cigarette companies can be found liable, why not oil companies?
Regional pricing already exists on Steam (http://www.pcgamer.com/the-weird-ecomomics-behind-steam-prices-around-the-world/). When I worked in Kyrgyzstan (low GDP country), many games were significantly cheaper than in the US store.
Scientific dissent is fine, but at some point science has to move on to new questions. We'd never get anywhere if scientists were still sitting around debating whether the Earth really is round, whether the Sun is the centre of the solar system. Science has moved beyond the question of whether AGW is occurring, whether or not non-scientists are happy about that fact.
Prior to 1950 it was not uncommon for doctors to prescribe menthol cigarettes for respiratory problems. You can always find precursors in science, but prior to 1950 prevailing medical opinion was that cigarette smoking was not a significant health risk.
Climate science is an evolving science, but the question of whether AGW is happening is settled. How quickly it is occurring, how the climate will react to different forcings, how that will affect specific regions of the planet, etc. are all questions that are more or less up for debate.
Regardless of the political and economic circumstances, the science is very clear. AGW is a fact, whether or not political ideologies have seized upon it to further their agendas. You might be right in your explanation of progressive and conservative reaction to AGW, but this does not discredit its truth. There is no symmetry here---whether you are progressive or conservative the simple fact is that AGW is true.
This is just factually incorrect. Al Gore is not a scientist. He, as you said, used the results of science for political advocacy. But using the results of science does not politicize that science. The scientists did not have to give Al Gore their blessing to use their results. They were not complicit in his work. The scientists involved in the IPCC have been remarkably objective and apolitical.
Why do you think it is silly to deny GW while questioning A(nthropogenic)GW? Neither of us is competent to actually measure global warming ourselves---we have to rely on scientists to inform us that the Earth is in fact warming. We know that GW is occurring because there is a scientific consensus that it is. But that same scientific consensus tells us that the overwhelming cause of that warming is human activity. You can't consistently believe one but not the other. You're right that scientific consensus is no guarantee of truth, but there are no guarantees of truth about anything. Scientific consensus is our, as laypeople not competent to judge the matter ourselves, best method of judging where the truth most likely lies. What justifies you in taking a position contrary to the scientific consensus? What is a more reliable guide to the truth?
It seems to be a fairly common problem on Slashdot that posts are poorly hyperlinked. There are two key pieces of information here: (1) The party received 4 seats and (2) the party can no longer be considered a "single issue" party. The second two hyperlinks (7.4% and 4 out of 51 seats) are related to (1), but there is no hyperlink for (2). If a reader wants to know where (2) comes from, they have to randomly click the links to find that it comes from the pcworld.com link (7.4%). This is just annoying.
Not to be a shill, but I've been using the Livescribe Pulsepen for about a year and it's perfect for class notes. It records what you write then uploads your notes to your computer, along with audio that is sync'd to your notes, so you can hear what was being said while you were writing. You can convert notes to text using 3rd party software, but I've found it to be better just to leave it in handwritten form. The search function actually works pretty well for handwritten notes.
As an aspiring academic half way through a philosophy Ph. D., I find Nunberg's argument pretty absurd. Google books is a godsend for academics, and would be much more so if there was full access to their entire catalog rather than "limited previews" for most books. I have used Google books countless times to quickly check out whether a book is relevant to my research, or to get the gist of an author's argument without having to trudge down to the library. I know many others who do this as well. In all this time I've never even looked at Google's metadata. No decent academic would rely on such information, as there are far more reliable methods: such as actually checking what's written in the book, which yes, Google scans in.
I'm not sure what the legal mandate of the CBC actually is, but I don't think it should be to disseminate Canadian content. I think it should be to serve the Canadian public by broadcasting quality material that wouldn't necessarily be broadcast on commercial stations. Where that content is produced, and whether that content has a Canadian flag in the background or a shot of the CN Tower is of no interest to me. If the nationalistic agenda is undermining the quality content agenda (as I think it is), then something is wrong.
CBC Radio is great, but I think CBC TV would be a lot better if they didn't feel obligated to make all of these nationalistic TV series. I'm all for the government funding Canadian artists, but I hate content regulations.
Use Google's infrastructure and clout to combat censorship and surveillance of dissidents by oppressive regimes.
No, the belief that smoking and obesity cost society is not based on any "stupid" premises.
Chronic diseases caused by smoking and obesity, such as emphysema and heart disease are chronic, require treatment over years and decades. The period of a person's life where they consume healthcare resources is going to be much longer for smokers and the obese than for the average person.
Whether smokers make up for their increased burden to the healthcare system by being less of a burden on social security system is up for debate, but it seems an odd comparison anyways. As a society it feels right to pay people for living longer (or conversely it would feel wrong to pay people to die earlier), but wrong or unfair to pay people because of their bad habits.
19th century capitalism, with little or no government intervention and a working class with almost no rights, is classic capitalism, the capitalism that Marx critiqued. Cheap labor is ultimately the engine of every country's economic growth. That's why Europe and North America import so much of it, and American companies rush to relocate to underdeveloped countries. The other engine of growth is technology, and it's hard to claim that China isn't pouring resources into technological development. China's growth is no more house-of-cards than Europe's or America's.
From a business perspective, China has some serious problems with contract law, but the operation of its economy is close enough to the US that it's not accurate to radically differentiate them.
Cuba certainly has its problems, but I don't think anyone accuses it of being fascist.
Norway meets many of the criteria of a socialist state (government ownership / control of large portions of industry, aggressive redistribution of wealth), and it's the furthest thing from fascism.
The US, on the other hand, with a government that consistently lies to its constituents, operates outside of the law, and protects the interests of a narrow segment of society, is a hair's breadth from full blown fascism.
See how easy it is to selectively pick examples to confirm your beliefs?
Does any of that even make sense? Looks like you strung together a bunch of buzzwords from the business section of the bookstore. Intuition is pattern recognition? Is that supposed to be a fact? How do we test it? Changing lenses? Angles? So we need a telescope or something? What is your metaphor supposed to tell us? "In order to think differently you have to think differently"?
This is just a bunch of nonsense with some baseless attack on the education system stuck on at the end.
- Wants to wall off the country and deport millions.
- Wants to let states ban abortions.
Ron Paul has some admirable positions, but his supporters should recognize that when it comes down to it he is effectively a social conservative and his policies if implemented completely would, if they didn't destroy the economy right off the bat, probably turn the country completely over to corporate rule.
[quote]The biggest parties (usually two) in any goverment are mostly equally corrupt.[/quote]
Written as if it is a law of nature. Nader pretty proved this theory wrong. There is a difference between the two largest parties. Voting for no-chance candidates is much like spoiling your ballot. If enough people do it then *maybe* some useful point is made, but there seem to be far more promising avenues for political activism. There is a major flaw in the political system that ensures that the business elite have a virtual lock on political power. Solving this problem requires more than protest votes. It requires taking action as a citizen outside of merely casting votes once every four years.
Has anyone else noticed that in the recount with 55/67 counties reporting, Gore has picked up 1372 (all my numbers from cnn.com) of the 1741 previously missed ballots? That is almost 80%! If the state really is in a statistical dead heat as far as real votes, shouldn't they each pick up roughly even amounts? To me this disparity means that either Gore is really unlucky with machinery, Gore voters aren't very good at punching holes / filling in circles, someone gave Bush some "extra" votes before the recount, or the people recounting (although it is machinery right now, right?) are biased towards Gore... thoughts?