I see this as a disturbing trend in our society's prosperity. Star Trek was a symbol of a rational, secular future that was peaceful and optimistic. It was a world I wanted to live in as a child. But in reality I grew in a backward part of the world as a child: The American South. I wanted to explore space. But I was considered a weirdo and a nutcase as a kid because nobody in my Elementary school knew what a Borg was.
I was at Busch Gardens in VA maybe a decade ago, waiting in line for a ride. Behind me were two absolutely hick looking people--a dad and his son. Both had nascar/harley shirts, rattails, and very thick Appalachian accents. They were also talking about Star Trek for about 30 minutes! (it was a long wait)
And heck, I grew up in the south and most of my friends loved Star Trek, not just the better educated, or the yankee transplants, etc.
We have no active star trek series. Our science fiction authors are croaking off. And now this. Slowly, the optimistic future that Star Trek represented is falling vanishing in favor of a backward religious future. Its really sad.
Well, the science fiction authors croaking off doesn't bother me--I mean, I'll MISS them, but things go in waves, nothing is always popular. It's the changing of the guard. Science fiction was great in the first part of the 20th century because it provided one of the best landscapes for the uninhibited imagination. We view technology very differently now. It seems less fantastic and more "how much longer until we get this, come on..." Stories about going to the moon are less amazing when we've BEEN to the moon, and stories about aliens are Mars are less appealing when we've got a veritable fleet of rovers and probes and satellites on or around Mars. Beyond this, science fiction is just an expected part of our popular culture now, it's not niche. Movies, TV shows, etc.
And for those who like it, there is still hardcore s.f. being written.
Seems that it should be a government function, say the FOOD and drug administration, to not only make sure that your food won't kill you but that what you pay for is what you get.
I wonder if it's the restaurants pulling one, or their suppliers (or both)
Restaraunts here sell walleye [wikipedia.org], but walleye is in dangered and illegal (at least accorsing to a restaurant owner I talked to) so they sell pollack [wikipedia.org] and call it walleye. IMO it should be illegal to put "ribeye steak" on the menu and serve you dog.
Walleye endangered? I've never heard of that...sounds wacky to me, they're all over the great lakes, etc. (correction after looking it up -- the BLUE walleye has been extinct for about 30 years, but there are still lots of regular walleye).
I had walleye on a stick at the Minnesota state fair--it was great! My dad used to catch them when he was a kid too.
The others won't kill us off as a species, that is practically guaranteed. CO2 probably won't either, but it could.
The others certainly have the potential to affect my quality of life a heck of a lot more than CO2. They are also in general far easier to do something about, and the methods for controlling them better understood.
Like I said, I personally think the probability that the amount of CO2 released by human activities is going to dramatically destabilize the climate is miniscule. But hell, I'm not a climate scientist, so what the hell do I know. I just know that I'm not worried about it, which is good, since there's nothing I can do beyond what I'm already doing!
Your note about less trees is interesting--large parts of the world (South American rain forests, Indonesian jungle, etc) are being rapidly deforested, but on the other hand, large parts of Europe and North America (and China) are rapidly RE-foresting. I read an article which I unfortunately can't find now that suggested that tree cover in the united states was probably at its greatest extent since the arrival of Europeans. The state where I'm living now--North Carolina around the civil war era to ~1920 was virtually one big field. The Great Depression and the slow switch from an agricultural economy (and the lessening importance of the prime crop--tobacco) meant that there are huge young growth forests that are ~80 years old and still rapidly growing. It's an interesting phenomenon. Might find this link interesting--a university in the state has been experimenting with subjecting trees to much higher levels of CO2 to see how it affects their growth: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2007/08/carbonadd._print.ht with, results that are in my view hopeful.
With regards to your second point--"I think we should be polluting less anyway." I'm totally with you on this one. I just don't think that Carbon dioxide is our greatest concern, yet because its the "sexy" pollutant, its the only thing people focus on because of scary global climate change, while much else gets ignored. I personally am far more worried about pesticides and carcinogens and sulfur dioxide from china, etc etc.
I mean, CO2 doesn't cause cancer, or kill animals, or cause acid rain, blacken the skies, etc--the opposite in fact, in some situations it can AID plant growth. In my view, at the very worst, human CO2 emissions play some role in the global carbon cycle that I don't think we fully understand, while the global carbon cycle plays some role in global climate, that I don't think we fully understand. But you know, I hope to be around at least another 50 years or so, so I guess by then we should all know!
When he (and I) said "model" the reference was to a "global climate change" model. ie, one that attempts to predict the temperature change etc. El nino on the other hand is a weather phenomenon, and the article you link to explicitly says the connection between global climate change and El nino is unknown.
Because consensus is ALWAYS right;-) ("Global warming controversy" article on wikipedia has some stats btw)
I think you missed my point, however. The GP wants the terminology to be "global climate instability." My point was that we know that the climate in the past has been quite unstable--with ice ages, desertification, etc, being extremely common events. Climate is not unchanging. In some ways, many global warming alarmists are the ultimate conservatives--they want no change, even if it takes putting screens over glaciers etc, to preserve the status quo. Whether or not there is any scientific consensus is irrelevant to my point.
Its just like that other century where we industrialized every aspect of human life and began polluting on a grand scale... oh wait, that has only happened once?
I'm confused--the Industrial Revolution started in the 18th century, yet most historical temperature models I've seen (for instance, I just checked some on wikipedia) don't show any substantial heating (and indeed fluctuations up as well as down) until maybe the 1970s? So, I'm not quite sure what you're referring to here?
Not every theory requires historical evidence, and if you have to ask what evidence the climate change scientists are using, you obviously haven't looked at the issue at all.
Well, as another poster said, show me the model that said there was going to be a decade long (starting now) "pause" in global warming (apparently in addition to the flat temperatures of the past decade). Yet a number of articles I've read have recently proposed this temporary pause theory.
What I was asking you is, just what theories (you correctly note there are many and that you don't believe ALL of them) are you choosing to believe in that predict mankind polluting = radically destabilized global climate? That is, out of all the climate change theories, which ones theorize that a radically destabilized global climate is the most likely outcome? Links / scientist names / article names / whatever you have, would be greatly appreciated.
So your theory is that mankind, through pollution--including but not limited to CO2, etc--is dramatically destabilizing the global climate. Like The Day After Tomorrow but less lame?
Why? Where's the historical evidence for this, or what evidence are you basing this on?
Half the people I know have been divorced or have parents who have.. the only ones who went to court are the people I know from the US. You do the math.
Well I guess that solves it, your anecdata wins the day. Take that Heather Mills!
That's the reason why the rest of the civilized world doesn't have ugly divorces in court,
Ok, you're obviously trolling, but can you even begin to back up the assertion that the rest of the "civilized world" doesn't have ugly divorces in court? (What the uncivilized world btw?)
I have 4 channels available for olympics -- all in highdef. NBC, Universal HD, USA HD (showing some events), Soccer HD, and occasionally some other channel. I've seen just about every sport on, though I haven't watched them all. This is Timewarner cable btw, is your experience different? TWC added some new channels in the 1500s just for the olympics, so maybe your provider did something similar?
False dichotomy: providing funding does not equal legislating morality.
So you wouldn't call it legislating morality (or have a problem with it) if congress and the president passed a budget that directly funded religious schools--Muslim, Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, etc. After all, having these schools doesn't tell anybody what they CANT do, what it does is tell people by telling them: "if you want to go to a religious school, we'll make it less expensive for you."
And that's why your argument falls apart and is wrong. (you can read the rest of the posts in this thread if you want to see my responses about why you're also ignoring the OTHER side of the liberty question, don't really feel like typing it all out again!)
I don't know how many cars I've seen with "Support our troops!" yellow ribbons
That's funny, I've never considered yellow ribbons a partisan thing... I guess you do? I have Democrat friends who have ribbons their cars.. Pretty interesting to me that you would think liberals/leftists DON'T support the troops.
Even in a leftist enclaves like Berkeley or Austin I would expect to see a more even split.
In the past 5 years I've lived in Chicago, VA/DC, and NC. If you don't buy my claim, start keeping count--I did for awhile! Put a tick everytime you see a liberal bumper sticker, and an x everytime you see a conservative one. You could get fancier and track cars with multiple bumper stickers, cars with attack bumper stickers (ie that insult somebody, rather than just say Kerry/Gore or W '04, etc) Like I said in another post, I saw 3 Bush bumper stickers the entire 2 years I lived in Chicago.
The point the OP was making is that modern conservatives have essentially abandoned was was called "conservatism" as little as 10 years ago
Well, I don't disagree at all that the Republican party of the Bush admin has been very disappointing in many ways, I don't think that that's merely what the GP was saying. (I would add gun rights, trade issues, and taxes to issues btw)
Why do most women get abortions? I've seen different percentage results from surveys, and am suspicious of biases, but the obvious reasons are--accidental and unwanted pregnancy (this happened to a friend of mine, and it was rough), changed mind after getting pregnant, health issues (for mother or fetus), rape/incest. I think those 4 categories pretty much cover it all?
I think only health issues+rape/incest (which seem to be a small % of all abortions?) is the only choice that is at all akin to "killing in self defense" thus I think your analogy overreaches substantially.
I also think you're off base when you sy "it's all in the justification." Each side of COURSE wants to paint their side in the best possible light--who would want to be anti-life or anti-choice? Pro-abortion or anti-abortion simplifies the matter a lot. It rips the semantic crap away and gets to the heart of the matter. You think it should be legal, or you think it should not be legal. End of story--do verbal justifications change the end results either way? No.
But just a couple of posts ago you said I think the government should be in the business of increasing personal freedom (possibly at the expense of corporate freedom), not reducing it.. You now make the argument that sometimes to increase personal freedom, the government has to LIMIT personal freedom (that's how I interpret "Maximizing personal freedom for everyone requires some limitations to be enforced")
You're now on a very slippery slope due to the government's interest in a moral issue. Who exactly gets to decide the greater good / greater freedom? Is the greater freedom protecting life, or is the greater freedom allowing parent's to terminate a life? Is the greater freedom allowing a woman freedom over her own body, or is the greater freedom allowing a child to be born safely. This is exactly why I said earlier that when you get into arguments over legislating morality, both left and right run into the same problems.
On a slight side note, you don't think personal freedom is a type of morality? I do! I think you would find many people and governments around the world that would argue that individual freedom above all else is IMMORAL. What about the greater good? An individual's free choices are not always the best choices for everyone else.
It's possible, but I don't think so. Maybe the real ratio is 90:10 or something other than 99:1, but I wouldn't bet on it;-)
I DO know that during my two years living in Chicago (a very blue city, yes, and during the 2004 election) I saw only 3 Bush bumper stickers anywhere in the city (I did keep track!). On the other hand, the number of Kerry and Obama stickers were literally too many to count.
like legal abortion, Planned Parenthood is about increasing one's ability to make informed choices about reproduction.
Yes, that is certainly part of Planned Parenthood's mission. Let's not forget that it's also an organization that was originally called the Birthcontrol League and that PP performs the majority of all abortions in the US. Ergo, when the Government funds PP, it funds a lot of abortions. I am very torn about abortion, and have argued both sides in the past, and don't particularly feel like taking a position now (lame, I know..)... however, I think you illustrate very well the typical pro-abortion (or pro-choice if you prefer..) viewpoint that I mentioned to the GP. If you really think the Government should not legislate morality and should butt out, then that includes butting out for the things you like as well as the things you don't. Frequent problem with both the left and the right.
Slashdot Mirror
I see this as a disturbing trend in our society's prosperity. Star Trek was a symbol of a rational, secular future that was peaceful and optimistic. It was a world I wanted to live in as a child. But in reality I grew in a backward part of the world as a child: The American South. I wanted to explore space. But I was considered a weirdo and a nutcase as a kid because nobody in my Elementary school knew what a Borg was.
I was at Busch Gardens in VA maybe a decade ago, waiting in line for a ride. Behind me were two absolutely hick looking people--a dad and his son. Both had nascar/harley shirts, rattails, and very thick Appalachian accents. They were also talking about Star Trek for about 30 minutes! (it was a long wait)
And heck, I grew up in the south and most of my friends loved Star Trek, not just the better educated, or the yankee transplants, etc.
We have no active star trek series. Our science fiction authors are croaking off. And now this. Slowly, the optimistic future that Star Trek represented is falling vanishing in favor of a backward religious future. Its really sad.
Well, the science fiction authors croaking off doesn't bother me--I mean, I'll MISS them, but things go in waves, nothing is always popular. It's the changing of the guard. Science fiction was great in the first part of the 20th century because it provided one of the best landscapes for the uninhibited imagination. We view technology very differently now. It seems less fantastic and more "how much longer until we get this, come on..." Stories about going to the moon are less amazing when we've BEEN to the moon, and stories about aliens are Mars are less appealing when we've got a veritable fleet of rovers and probes and satellites on or around Mars. Beyond this, science fiction is just an expected part of our popular culture now, it's not niche. Movies, TV shows, etc.
And for those who like it, there is still hardcore s.f. being written.
Seems that it should be a government function, say the FOOD and drug administration, to not only make sure that your food won't kill you but that what you pay for is what you get.
I wonder if it's the restaurants pulling one, or their suppliers (or both)
Restaraunts here sell walleye [wikipedia.org], but walleye is in dangered and illegal (at least accorsing to a restaurant owner I talked to) so they sell pollack [wikipedia.org] and call it walleye. IMO it should be illegal to put "ribeye steak" on the menu and serve you dog.
Walleye endangered? I've never heard of that...sounds wacky to me, they're all over the great lakes, etc. (correction after looking it up -- the BLUE walleye has been extinct for about 30 years, but there are still lots of regular walleye).
I had walleye on a stick at the Minnesota state fair--it was great! My dad used to catch them when he was a kid too.
The others won't kill us off as a species, that is practically guaranteed. CO2 probably won't either, but it could.
The others certainly have the potential to affect my quality of life a heck of a lot more than CO2. They are also in general far easier to do something about, and the methods for controlling them better understood.
Like I said, I personally think the probability that the amount of CO2 released by human activities is going to dramatically destabilize the climate is miniscule. But hell, I'm not a climate scientist, so what the hell do I know. I just know that I'm not worried about it, which is good, since there's nothing I can do beyond what I'm already doing!
Your note about less trees is interesting--large parts of the world (South American rain forests, Indonesian jungle, etc) are being rapidly deforested, but on the other hand, large parts of Europe and North America (and China) are rapidly RE-foresting. I read an article which I unfortunately can't find now that suggested that tree cover in the united states was probably at its greatest extent since the arrival of Europeans. The state where I'm living now--North Carolina around the civil war era to ~1920 was virtually one big field. The Great Depression and the slow switch from an agricultural economy (and the lessening importance of the prime crop--tobacco) meant that there are huge young growth forests that are ~80 years old and still rapidly growing. It's an interesting phenomenon. Might find this link interesting--a university in the state has been experimenting with subjecting trees to much higher levels of CO2 to see how it affects their growth: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2007/08/carbonadd._print.ht with, results that are in my view hopeful.
With regards to your second point--"I think we should be polluting less anyway." I'm totally with you on this one. I just don't think that Carbon dioxide is our greatest concern, yet because its the "sexy" pollutant, its the only thing people focus on because of scary global climate change, while much else gets ignored. I personally am far more worried about pesticides and carcinogens and sulfur dioxide from china, etc etc.
I mean, CO2 doesn't cause cancer, or kill animals, or cause acid rain, blacken the skies, etc--the opposite in fact, in some situations it can AID plant growth. In my view, at the very worst, human CO2 emissions play some role in the global carbon cycle that I don't think we fully understand, while the global carbon cycle plays some role in global climate, that I don't think we fully understand. But you know, I hope to be around at least another 50 years or so, so I guess by then we should all know!
Sorry if I was unclear. This is the post I was referring to: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=653587&cid=24698515
When he (and I) said "model" the reference was to a "global climate change" model. ie, one that attempts to predict the temperature change etc. El nino on the other hand is a weather phenomenon, and the article you link to explicitly says the connection between global climate change and El nino is unknown.
Troll? Sheesh, the scientific consensus human-caused-global-climate-instability-change mods are apparently out in force!
Ok, that's fair enough, criticism accepted :-)
Because consensus is ALWAYS right ;-) ("Global warming controversy" article on wikipedia has some stats btw)
I think you missed my point, however. The GP wants the terminology to be "global climate instability." My point was that we know that the climate in the past has been quite unstable--with ice ages, desertification, etc, being extremely common events. Climate is not unchanging. In some ways, many global warming alarmists are the ultimate conservatives--they want no change, even if it takes putting screens over glaciers etc, to preserve the status quo. Whether or not there is any scientific consensus is irrelevant to my point.
Its just like that other century where we industrialized every aspect of human life and began polluting on a grand scale... oh wait, that has only happened once?
I'm confused--the Industrial Revolution started in the 18th century, yet most historical temperature models I've seen (for instance, I just checked some on wikipedia) don't show any substantial heating (and indeed fluctuations up as well as down) until maybe the 1970s? So, I'm not quite sure what you're referring to here?
Not every theory requires historical evidence, and if you have to ask what evidence the climate change scientists are using, you obviously haven't looked at the issue at all.
Well, as another poster said, show me the model that said there was going to be a decade long (starting now) "pause" in global warming (apparently in addition to the flat temperatures of the past decade). Yet a number of articles I've read have recently proposed this temporary pause theory.
What I was asking you is, just what theories (you correctly note there are many and that you don't believe ALL of them) are you choosing to believe in that predict mankind polluting = radically destabilized global climate? That is, out of all the climate change theories, which ones theorize that a radically destabilized global climate is the most likely outcome? Links / scientist names / article names / whatever you have, would be greatly appreciated.
So your theory is that mankind, through pollution--including but not limited to CO2, etc--is dramatically destabilizing the global climate. Like The Day After Tomorrow but less lame?
Why? Where's the historical evidence for this, or what evidence are you basing this on?
Global climate instability? Isn't that more like, the status quo?
If you DO buy into human-caused global climate change, you should call it that.
Half the people I know have been divorced or have parents who have.. the only ones who went to court are the people I know from the US. You do the math.
Well I guess that solves it, your anecdata wins the day. Take that Heather Mills!
That's the reason why the rest of the civilized world doesn't have ugly divorces in court,
Ok, you're obviously trolling, but can you even begin to back up the assertion that the rest of the "civilized world" doesn't have ugly divorces in court? (What the uncivilized world btw?)
The courts just shouldn't be tied up with rich people dividing their assets, for fuck sake
What on earth makes you think it's just--or even primarily--rich people having rough divorces?
Hmmm...
I have 4 channels available for olympics -- all in highdef. NBC, Universal HD, USA HD (showing some events), Soccer HD, and occasionally some other channel. I've seen just about every sport on, though I haven't watched them all. This is Timewarner cable btw, is your experience different? TWC added some new channels in the 1500s just for the olympics, so maybe your provider did something similar?
False dichotomy:
providing funding does not equal legislating morality.
So you wouldn't call it legislating morality (or have a problem with it) if congress and the president passed a budget that directly funded religious schools--Muslim, Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, etc. After all, having these schools doesn't tell anybody what they CANT do, what it does is tell people by telling them: "if you want to go to a religious school, we'll make it less expensive for you."
And that's why your argument falls apart and is wrong. (you can read the rest of the posts in this thread if you want to see my responses about why you're also ignoring the OTHER side of the liberty question, don't really feel like typing it all out again!)
That's a hilarious bumpersticker...the kind I'd be proud to display!
I don't know how many cars I've seen with "Support our troops!" yellow ribbons
That's funny, I've never considered yellow ribbons a partisan thing... I guess you do? I have Democrat friends who have ribbons their cars.. Pretty interesting to me that you would think liberals/leftists DON'T support the troops.
Even in a leftist enclaves like Berkeley or Austin I would expect to see a more even split.
In the past 5 years I've lived in Chicago, VA/DC, and NC. If you don't buy my claim, start keeping count--I did for awhile! Put a tick everytime you see a liberal bumper sticker, and an x everytime you see a conservative one. You could get fancier and track cars with multiple bumper stickers, cars with attack bumper stickers (ie that insult somebody, rather than just say Kerry/Gore or W '04, etc) Like I said in another post, I saw 3 Bush bumper stickers the entire 2 years I lived in Chicago.
The point the OP was making is that modern conservatives have essentially abandoned was was called "conservatism" as little as 10 years ago
Well, I don't disagree at all that the Republican party of the Bush admin has been very disappointing in many ways, I don't think that that's merely what the GP was saying. (I would add gun rights, trade issues, and taxes to issues btw)
It refers to this incident:
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/14/bush.fainting/
The wording of the license plate may have been slightly off, but that was the gist.
Why do most women get abortions? I've seen different percentage results from surveys, and am suspicious of biases, but the obvious reasons are--accidental and unwanted pregnancy (this happened to a friend of mine, and it was rough), changed mind after getting pregnant, health issues (for mother or fetus), rape/incest. I think those 4 categories pretty much cover it all?
I think only health issues+rape/incest (which seem to be a small % of all abortions?) is the only choice that is at all akin to "killing in self defense" thus I think your analogy overreaches substantially.
I also think you're off base when you sy "it's all in the justification." Each side of COURSE wants to paint their side in the best possible light--who would want to be anti-life or anti-choice? Pro-abortion or anti-abortion simplifies the matter a lot. It rips the semantic crap away and gets to the heart of the matter. You think it should be legal, or you think it should not be legal. End of story--do verbal justifications change the end results either way? No.
But just a couple of posts ago you said I think the government should be in the business of increasing personal freedom (possibly at the expense of corporate freedom), not reducing it.. You now make the argument that sometimes to increase personal freedom, the government has to LIMIT personal freedom (that's how I interpret "Maximizing personal freedom for everyone requires some limitations to be enforced")
You're now on a very slippery slope due to the government's interest in a moral issue. Who exactly gets to decide the greater good / greater freedom? Is the greater freedom protecting life, or is the greater freedom allowing parent's to terminate a life? Is the greater freedom allowing a woman freedom over her own body, or is the greater freedom allowing a child to be born safely. This is exactly why I said earlier that when you get into arguments over legislating morality, both left and right run into the same problems.
Fortunately we don't generally enforce the death penalty for a generic breach of contract ;-)
On a slight side note, you don't think personal freedom is a type of morality? I do! I think you would find many people and governments around the world that would argue that individual freedom above all else is IMMORAL. What about the greater good? An individual's free choices are not always the best choices for everyone else.
It's possible, but I don't think so. Maybe the real ratio is 90:10 or something other than 99:1, but I wouldn't bet on it ;-)
I DO know that during my two years living in Chicago (a very blue city, yes, and during the 2004 election) I saw only 3 Bush bumper stickers anywhere in the city (I did keep track!). On the other hand, the number of Kerry and Obama stickers were literally too many to count.
like legal abortion, Planned Parenthood is about increasing one's ability to make informed choices about reproduction.
Yes, that is certainly part of Planned Parenthood's mission. Let's not forget that it's also an organization that was originally called the Birthcontrol League and that PP performs the majority of all abortions in the US. Ergo, when the Government funds PP, it funds a lot of abortions. I am very torn about abortion, and have argued both sides in the past, and don't particularly feel like taking a position now (lame, I know..) ... however, I think you illustrate very well the typical pro-abortion (or pro-choice if you prefer..) viewpoint that I mentioned to the GP. If you really think the Government should not legislate morality and should butt out, then that includes butting out for the things you like as well as the things you don't. Frequent problem with both the left and the right.