Does an America in civil war qualify as what America is supposed to stand for? For that matter does a slave holding America represent what America is supposed to stand for and very much did since at least WW2?
Lincoln is completely irrelevant to the unraveling of modern day America. It makes a very poor fig leaf.
The book burning is just a side show. The terrorists already won.
At least there are some bloggers on the right political spectrum like this libertarian who understand the actual issues.
Unfortunately these days something that shouldn't be a partisan issue at all is pretty much completely ignored. The right windbags seem to confuse torture with patriotism or sado-masochistic fun and the lefties shut miraculously up once Obama came into power. So now the policy has the blessing of the US federal appeals court.
Have fun living in a country where due process is not a right but a favor that your government can withdraw at any time.
When I grew up my mother had a grueling 12 hours work day. So I had to cook myself if I wanted to have something hot on my plate (yes I am so old my early teen years predate the microwave oven). This drown or swim approach to cooking tought me well and ensured I was always able to whip something up for myself.
Although I am still spending more time on the computer cranking out code than in the kitchen I consider myself something of a foodie now. Bake my own bread, make killer potato pancakes and have pretty much abandoned all precooked frozen food items.
"deny" implies that there is no shadow of a question about the factuality AGW (or how significant it is), which is just not true-- hence why it is a theory.
Special Relativity is also a theory, so is evolution. It'll be much more helpful to describe them as scientific models or frameworks in order to avoid this common misconception that you express here.
It is pretty much at least once spouted every time a/. thread touches on climate change and/or evolution.
The problem is that colloquial English uses the term "theory" very differently than science. Anything that is not experimental data but derived as a model will always be called a theory in science. Models can not be proven only falsified. Hence if you wait for a scientific theory to transition to fact you'll wait until hell freezes over (no pun intended). Climate change sciences is of course all about the modeling and requires enormous computing power to get more accurate predictions. It also has been around for a while and as far as I am concerned the early warnings i.e. the predictive power of climatology have proven rather accurate. I first heard about the green house effect 15 years ago when I studied physics (climate science is mostly applied physics). This simple model predicts that increase in atmospheric gases such as CO2 and methane will cause global warming via a rather straightforward mechanism. Nothing in the data we've gathered so far invalidates this very simple starting point for modeling. If you think the mechanism doesn't work I suggest vandalizing greenhouses to protest against faux science. It'll fit nicely with the sophisticated ways the American hard right likes to makes its points.
Both people who claimed to be "left" were in favor of a build up to war on Iraq, and people who claimed to be "right" were opposed to it.
Can you point me to any example where any opposition to the war was prominently featured in the mainstream media? The only discernible Republican voice that I remember was Ron Paul and he was roundly ridiculed from the right for his stance even as late as during his 2008 presidential campaign.
"Right" and "Left" are of course not well defined terms. But I think you are deluding yourself if you believe that there was a widespread opposition to the Iraq war on what is commonly understood to be the right political spectrum - although there are a few exception i.e. isolationist dino's like Buchanan and Libertarians like Ron Paul. The former wasn't very outspoken during the war build-up and the latter was essentially knee-capped by the media.
Essentially the US media completely sold out before the war and was cheerleading the whole effort in a way that would have made the Pravda proud.
There is no objective middle on the political spectrum. It especially varies greatly between different countries. Also what is considers a "centrist" position shifts over time. To give an example at some point support for the death penalty was a centrist position in all European countries. Now it is considered an opinion on the outer right fringe only support by such lovely outfits like the British National Party.
To me as a European the notion that American media is left leaning is completely incomprehensible. Where was this "left" American media in the build-up to the Iraq war? With very few exceptions American news media is sensational, shallow, devoid of any analytical depth, fear mongering and US centric. I find it appealingly bad especially when comparing to past greatness (e.g. Time magazine in the 40s, the Cronkite area) but to call it left leaning is just silly unless you push an agenda.
Creating more conservative media certainly paid well for him but it seems to be a bit far fetched to assume that this bias does not reflect his political leanings. Since he perceives his competiors as biased to the left he obviously leans the other way.
Clearly this is not tied to a specific party but rather conservative policies. In this vein Murdoch's media machine was green lighted to support Blair once it became clear he was not to role back the Thatcher "revolution" and was about to pull Labour to the right. This is turn later gave him direct access to the poodle PM.
When I lived in the US I was appalled at what passed as news in your country. How much Murdoch's Fox is responsible for lowering the standards I can not discern but it fell a long hard way from the Cronkite gold standard. I know live in Canada and having access to CBC is like manna for the soul.
Yep, that certainly is much more in line with my anecdotal evidence. After my M.S. degree from the university of Heidelberg I got myself an MBA at the Simon School (UofR). Burned a good part of a inheritance on this but think it was a smart investment. Without that private wealth to spend I would have never done this. I hate debt.
Anyhow have a lot of US friends from this time as well as through my American friends. And all my anecdotal evidence indicates that taking on student debt is more the rule than the exception and the latter only seems to be generally avoided when the parents fund their kids.
The US does have a lot of great schools. What I am not so sure of is the ROI for the bachelor degree. Also from what I have seen college live is more structured than it is in Germany. University to me is always and from the beginning about learning self motivated and research driven on your own time. Not sure how much the American college model is really fostering this.
Good for you. But now please explain to me how representative is this experience for the vast amount of US college graduates?
How exactly does your claim square with news like this?
What I am looking for are actual statistical valid comparisons. We can exchange anecdotal evidence until our fingertips turn blue from typing without learning a thing.
Believe it or not, I am actually interested in a factual comparison. My kids have American and German citizenship and we live in Canada. At some they will have to pick a college and I want the best bang for the bucks.
The first poll is crap. The popularity of a university's web page have no bearing on the quality of its education and research performed. Until recently most German universities added their web pages as an afterthought and they were maintained by some IT admin sitting in a basement. I know that from first hand source having a friend working as IT admin at the University of Heidelberg. Having graduated there I always found its abysmally bad web presence a constant source of embarrassment.
Yet, there is no strict correlation between good research and good education. Scanning the rankings listed in the related wikipedia entry does not show anything equivalent to the PISA effort for college level education.
The US does dismal in the PISA rankings despite of course the existence of some outstanding private and public high schools. In the same vein the fact that the US hosts a good dozen of the best research universities tells us little to nothing of how the gross of the US colleges are holding up in international comparison. The only thing we can be certain off is that it costs much more than in many other places to get an advanced degree (i.e. Canada, Europe).
<snark> Poor Carly was forced to run for the senate. Having to live the lifestyle of a senator rather than a high-flying CEO is so harsh - and that is only if enough peasants actually vote for her. What an indignity! I am getting my keyboard all wet while I write this. Just can't hold back the tears *the poor woman*. </snark>
My comment was not meant to denigrate the troops. Clearly it is an established fact that suicide car bombings are a real threat (don't need to supply links to support that notion, do I?) but unfortunately the fact that a large amount of civilians get killed at checkpoints is an established fact as well. Hence, I understand the desire to find a non-lethal technical approach to disable vehicles.
For your sake I hope that Iraq calmed down enough so you won't end up in a situation where you have to make split second life and death decisions.
And, just in case you're wondering, yes, all EOF incidents are investigated.
Generally you are right but producing the exhaust elsewhere will still be beneficial for smog plagued places like LA. The exhaust from a coal fired plant can potentially be "cleaner" than car exhaust - even if the CO2 budget doesn't work out.
Glad to see somebody brought this up. This issued sparked a controversial discussion on my political blog of choice. In my opinion wikileaks really jumped the gun by not blanking out the names of Afghan and other low level civilians. Many will lose their lives because of this.
Civilian cars are often shot up at military check points because the drivers don't understand that they are supposed to stop. Since soldiers have to assume these could be car bombs they shoot to disable the vehicle but in real life that means people get killed. Often times children are involved or like it happened in Iraq pregnant women who the husband tried to rush to the hospital. A non-lethal weapon system that'll get a car to stop would be great but obviously microwaves can not penetrate a car so this weapon system is useless to help with this pressing problem.
But what if you can drive fast and be free from religion at the same time? The ski's the limit. It's like walking and chewing gum at the same time... but better!
Just for the sake of full disclosure: I am German, my wife is American and I lived in NC for a while. My son was born there. This was around the time that Bush won his second term.
I couldn't stand living in your country. People have been so blinded to what is going on and the media is such a travesty I decided I didn't want my kids to grow up in this environment. I now live in Canada.
I hope you're wrong when you write "I don't think there is a solution to this as a nation."
The US are a great nation despite all its shortcomings. Your country has more to offer to the world than war and always has.
I strongly sympathize with your frustration. I regard the US as on a trajectory towards a dictatorial regime. You are not quite there yet. Personal core freedoms remain but the media already lost its independence and is corporate controlled hence the prominence of blogs. The establishment managed to channel the libertarian and right wing anger into the controllable Tea Party movement and disenfranchised progressives are yet not ready to break with Obama.
I see two paths:
The US continues its slide towards a regime where elections matter about as much as in the Soviet Union.
People will eventually be frustrated enough, as well as informed and organized enough via alternative means such as the internet, to challenge the two party oligopoly.
Western democratically elected governments have checks and balances put in place to prevent them from "being solely about war".
There is a reason why Hitler for instance put away with the Weimar republic before he engaged in war preparations.
Many of the numerous wars the US fights and fought since its inception are nothing but a testament to how much these checks and balances have been failing the US republic. To extrapolate from this example to all other governments is a fallacy.
But I give you that - if you limit yourself to dictatorships and absolute monarchies you're statement about these forms of governments being primarily about war is generally true.
On this Celeron based machine Flash is unwatchable with 32bit Linux as well as 64bit. HTML5 streamed video on the other hand, when watched with a beta Chrome build that supports it,gives me a passable viewing experience (although you still get immediate frame-dragging if the machine has any additional load).
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Does an America in civil war qualify as what America is supposed to stand for? For that matter does a slave holding America represent what America is supposed to stand for and very much did since at least WW2?
Lincoln is completely irrelevant to the unraveling of modern day America. It makes a very poor fig leaf.
... when your government threw habeas corpuse under the bus.
The book burning is just a side show. The terrorists already won.
At least there are some bloggers on the right political spectrum like this libertarian who understand the actual issues.
Unfortunately these days something that shouldn't be a partisan issue at all is pretty much completely ignored. The right windbags seem to confuse torture with patriotism or sado-masochistic fun and the lefties shut miraculously up once Obama came into power. So now the policy has the blessing of the US federal appeals court.
Have fun living in a country where due process is not a right but a favor that your government can withdraw at any time.
"Land of the free" what a joke.
More than if I had to microwave myself. It's been a long steady pressure cooking and now at times I actually feel quite tender.
As with regards to taste, my wife assures me I always had exceptional taste.
When I grew up my mother had a grueling 12 hours work day. So I had to cook myself if I wanted to have something hot on my plate (yes I am so old my early teen years predate the microwave oven). This drown or swim approach to cooking tought me well and ensured I was always able to whip something up for myself.
Although I am still spending more time on the computer cranking out code than in the kitchen I consider myself something of a foodie now. Bake my own bread, make killer potato pancakes and have pretty much abandoned all precooked frozen food items.
Special Relativity is also a theory, so is evolution. It'll be much more helpful to describe them as scientific models or frameworks in order to avoid this common misconception that you express here.
It is pretty much at least once spouted every time a /. thread touches on climate change and/or evolution.
The problem is that colloquial English uses the term "theory" very differently than science. Anything that is not experimental data but derived as a model will always be called a theory in science. Models can not be proven only falsified. Hence if you wait for a scientific theory to transition to fact you'll wait until hell freezes over (no pun intended). Climate change sciences is of course all about the modeling and requires enormous computing power to get more accurate predictions. It also has been around for a while and as far as I am concerned the early warnings i.e. the predictive power of climatology have proven rather accurate. I first heard about the green house effect 15 years ago when I studied physics (climate science is mostly applied physics). This simple model predicts that increase in atmospheric gases such as CO2 and methane will cause global warming via a rather straightforward mechanism. Nothing in the data we've gathered so far invalidates this very simple starting point for modeling. If you think the mechanism doesn't work I suggest vandalizing greenhouses to protest against faux science. It'll fit nicely with the sophisticated ways the American hard right likes to makes its points.
Can you point me to any example where any opposition to the war was prominently featured in the mainstream media? The only discernible Republican voice that I remember was Ron Paul and he was roundly ridiculed from the right for his stance even as late as during his 2008 presidential campaign.
"Right" and "Left" are of course not well defined terms. But I think you are deluding yourself if you believe that there was a widespread opposition to the Iraq war on what is commonly understood to be the right political spectrum - although there are a few exception i.e. isolationist dino's like Buchanan and Libertarians like Ron Paul. The former wasn't very outspoken during the war build-up and the latter was essentially knee-capped by the media.
Essentially the US media completely sold out before the war and was cheerleading the whole effort in a way that would have made the Pravda proud.
There is no objective middle on the political spectrum. It especially varies greatly between different countries. Also what is considers a "centrist" position shifts over time. To give an example at some point support for the death penalty was a centrist position in all European countries. Now it is considered an opinion on the outer right fringe only support by such lovely outfits like the British National Party.
To me as a European the notion that American media is left leaning is completely incomprehensible. Where was this "left" American media in the build-up to the Iraq war? With very few exceptions American news media is sensational, shallow, devoid of any analytical depth, fear mongering and US centric. I find it appealingly bad especially when comparing to past greatness (e.g. Time magazine in the 40s, the Cronkite area) but to call it left leaning is just silly unless you push an agenda.
R. Murdoch has many times claimed liberal media bias of competitors in his market space.
Creating more conservative media certainly paid well for him but it seems to be a bit far fetched to assume that this bias does not reflect his political leanings. Since he perceives his competiors as biased to the left he obviously leans the other way.
Clearly this is not tied to a specific party but rather conservative policies. In this vein Murdoch's media machine was green lighted to support Blair once it became clear he was not to role back the Thatcher "revolution" and was about to pull Labour to the right. This is turn later gave him direct access to the poodle PM.
When I lived in the US I was appalled at what passed as news in your country. How much Murdoch's Fox is responsible for lowering the standards I can not discern but it fell a long hard way from the Cronkite gold standard. I know live in Canada and having access to CBC is like manna for the soul.
I don't think you've paid much attention to R. Murdoch before, have you?
Yep, that certainly is much more in line with my anecdotal evidence. After my M.S. degree from the university of Heidelberg I got myself an MBA at the Simon School (UofR). Burned a good part of a inheritance on this but think it was a smart investment. Without that private wealth to spend I would have never done this. I hate debt.
Anyhow have a lot of US friends from this time as well as through my American friends. And all my anecdotal evidence indicates that taking on student debt is more the rule than the exception and the latter only seems to be generally avoided when the parents fund their kids.
The US does have a lot of great schools. What I am not so sure of is the ROI for the bachelor degree. Also from what I have seen college live is more structured than it is in Germany. University to me is always and from the beginning about learning self motivated and research driven on your own time. Not sure how much the American college model is really fostering this.
Good for you. But now please explain to me how representative is this experience for the vast amount of US college graduates?
How exactly does your claim square with news like this?
What I am looking for are actual statistical valid comparisons. We can exchange anecdotal evidence until our fingertips turn blue from typing without learning a thing.
Believe it or not, I am actually interested in a factual comparison. My kids have American and German citizenship and we live in Canada. At some they will have to pick a college and I want the best bang for the bucks.
The first poll is crap. The popularity of a university's web page have no bearing on the quality of its education and research performed. Until recently most German universities added their web pages as an afterthought and they were maintained by some IT admin sitting in a basement. I know that from first hand source having a friend working as IT admin at the University of Heidelberg. Having graduated there I always found its abysmally bad web presence a constant source of embarrassment.
There are some objective polls measuring research effectiveness using solid and well defined measures. And as one would expect the top tier well funded US research universities have a strong showing.
Yet, there is no strict correlation between good research and good education. Scanning the rankings listed in the related wikipedia entry does not show anything equivalent to the PISA effort for college level education.
The US does dismal in the PISA rankings despite of course the existence of some outstanding private and public high schools. In the same vein the fact that the US hosts a good dozen of the best research universities tells us little to nothing of how the gross of the US colleges are holding up in international comparison. The only thing we can be certain off is that it costs much more than in many other places to get an advanced degree (i.e. Canada, Europe).
Indeed couldn't agree more.
<snark>
Poor Carly was forced to run for the senate. Having to live the lifestyle of a senator rather than a high-flying CEO is so harsh - and that is only if enough peasants actually vote for her. What an indignity! I am getting my keyboard all wet while I write this. Just can't hold back the tears *the poor woman*.
</snark>
I was thinking of one of these incidents in Iraq.
My comment was not meant to denigrate the troops. Clearly it is an established fact that suicide car bombings are a real threat (don't need to supply links to support that notion, do I?) but unfortunately the fact that a large amount of civilians get killed at checkpoints is an established fact as well. Hence, I understand the desire to find a non-lethal technical approach to disable vehicles.
For your sake I hope that Iraq calmed down enough so you won't end up in a situation where you have to make split second life and death decisions.
And, just in case you're wondering, yes, all EOF incidents are investigated.
I expect nothing less.
Be safe.
Generally you are right but producing the exhaust elsewhere will still be beneficial for smog plagued places like LA. The exhaust from a coal fired plant can potentially be "cleaner" than car exhaust - even if the CO2 budget doesn't work out.
Glad to see somebody brought this up. This issued sparked a controversial discussion on my political blog of choice. In my opinion wikileaks really jumped the gun by not blanking out the names of Afghan and other low level civilians. Many will lose their lives because of this.
Civilian cars are often shot up at military check points because the drivers don't understand that they are supposed to stop. Since soldiers have to assume these could be car bombs they shoot to disable the vehicle but in real life that means people get killed. Often times children are involved or like it happened in Iraq pregnant women who the husband tried to rush to the hospital. A non-lethal weapon system that'll get a car to stop would be great but obviously microwaves can not penetrate a car so this weapon system is useless to help with this pressing problem.
Relax, I was joking. The issues you are raising are not black and white.
I typically refrain from discussing these issues at /. Not my venue of choice. Rather do this at my favorit political blog hang-out.
For a discussion on the minaret issue in Switzerland I refer you to the thread that developed after my first comment to this article on Turkey
But what if you can drive fast and be free from religion at the same time? The ski's the limit. It's like walking and chewing gum at the same time ... but better!
As a German I take the freedom to drive as fast as I want on the Autobahn over freedom of religion any day. Who needs the latter anyway.
Just for the sake of full disclosure: I am German, my wife is American and I lived in NC for a while. My son was born there. This was around the time that Bush won his second term.
I couldn't stand living in your country. People have been so blinded to what is going on and the media is such a travesty I decided I didn't want my kids to grow up in this environment. I now live in Canada.
I hope you're wrong when you write "I don't think there is a solution to this as a nation."
The US are a great nation despite all its shortcomings. Your country has more to offer to the world than war and always has.
I strongly sympathize with your frustration. I regard the US as on a trajectory towards a dictatorial regime. You are not quite there yet. Personal core freedoms remain but the media already lost its independence and is corporate controlled hence the prominence of blogs. The establishment managed to channel the libertarian and right wing anger into the controllable Tea Party movement and disenfranchised progressives are yet not ready to break with Obama.
I see two paths:
Western democratically elected governments have checks and balances put in place to prevent them from "being solely about war".
There is a reason why Hitler for instance put away with the Weimar republic before he engaged in war preparations.
Many of the numerous wars the US fights and fought since its inception are nothing but a testament to how much these checks and balances have been failing the US republic. To extrapolate from this example to all other governments is a fallacy.
But I give you that - if you limit yourself to dictatorships and absolute monarchies you're statement about these forms of governments being primarily about war is generally true.
The point is that I will not submit to unconstitutional, warrantless searches. I will not voluntarily give up my rights as a liberated person.
Good for you!
Wished more Americans as well as citizens in other still nominally free countries had that attitude.
On this Celeron based machine Flash is unwatchable with 32bit Linux as well as 64bit. HTML5 streamed video on the other hand, when watched with a beta Chrome build that supports it ,gives me a passable viewing experience (although you still get immediate frame-dragging if the machine has any additional load).