No, seriously. Automatically equating "gifted" with "lazy?" Going ballistic when somebody suggests that we should be trying to get the most out of every student?
Nowhere in that guy's post did he ask for pity. Nowhere did he say we should stop providing remedial education. He's just pointing out the glaring deficiencies in the way we treat our brightest students.
Oh, and the studies have shown that a great deal of your determination and ambition is inborn. They can get a good gauge of a person's work ethic, determination, and willingness to delay gratification by the age of four. So whether you breeze through effortlessly, or fight tooth and nail for your education, either route to success depends heavily on what you're born with.
You don't like that idea, of course. You'll probably reject it out of hand. You prefer to think that other peoples' intelligence is granted from on high, while your work ethic is proof of your moral superiority. Well, believe whatever makes you feel good about yourself.
1) There is no God. 2) It is easy to demonstrate that moral sentiments about right and wrong exist in human beings. (See Stephen Pinker's "The Blank Slate") 3) It is possible to come up with guidelines of behavior that, if followed, will make people happier. 4) None of this proves that there is some single, ideal set of behaviors, whether handed down by God or written in the physical constants of the universe.
To extend your analogy, while our units of measurement have a basis in fact, the specifics are quite arbitrary. If the meter had been set longer or shorter, it wouldn't have made a big difference. It's not as though The Meter was brought down from on high by a white-haired prophet.
In the same way, our minds are built to feel certain emotions in certain situations. We are prone to violence and anger when our interests are threatened. We're likely to feel sexual jealousy when we think our mates are being unfaithful. We tend to desire sexual experiences that may not be in our long term interests. We react with shame when we're caught violating social customs, and righteous indignation when we catch someone else violating them. We are revolted by nasty, dead things.
If we accept these as the physics of the human psyche (just continuing your analogy), there can still be wide disagreement over what courses of action the fundamentals imply. Do you accept sexual jealousy at face value, and react with outrage at your spouse's indiscretions? Do you try to temper it with forgiveness, and try to heal the relationship? Or do you try to dispel the feeling altogether, and allow her to find happiness in a relationship with another man?
The third option may sound unthinkable to you, but given the unprecedented options we have for negating the potential consequences of sex, it's a far more plausible route than it might have been in, say, eleventh century England. Cultures change, and the rules often have to be changed to accompany them.
A less drastic example: What to do when you're hungry? Our plains-dwelling ancestors would have answered, "Go look for food." But they would have to spend the day hunting and farming to obtain sufficient food. We, on the other hand, are likely to have an overabundance available without leaving the house. If we follow the same guidelines in this new situation, we become fat and unhealthy. Some people are all right with that, others go to extraordinary lengths--even unhealthy ones--to avoid the available abundance. Two different times, two different sets of rules, and it's easy to see how the rules become inapplicable when divorced from their cultural context.
Those who want to elevate their personal moral preferences above those of other people by declaring them to be "Authored by God" tend to get angry and upset when others take completely different principles and try to give them the same status. Religious Democrats believe that it is God's will that the government help the poor and dispossessed, while Republicans think God wants the poor not to be robbed of their self-reliance while the rich are robbed of their earnings. Meanwhile, white supremacists think God is offended by the mixing of the races. Environmentalists think God wants us to be stewards of the land (and so do anti-environment business leaders, though they disagree on what exactly that entails). Last week, I ran into a Constitution Party nutcase who tried to tell me that non-Christians shouldn't be allowed to hold office, because that privilege should be reserved for people who truly understand the founding principles of this country (read: not me and my ilk).
Everyone thinks they know what God wants for us all, and too many of them are willing to use whatever means are at their disposal to enshrine their "godly laws" into the laws of Man. Far better that we take a step back, humble ourselves, and keep the world safe for honest disagreement.
An actual answer to your rhetorical question: here.
But I agree that relativism is wracking about in our society, and it's destroying our moral fabric. Rather than having disagreements over what constitutes ethical behavior, or weaken ourselves by allowing for disagreements, we need to have one standard of conduct and one standard of ethics.
And that standard is The Holy Bible. King James Version. None of that weak-kneed, liberal, namby-pamby NIV crap.
The term "open source" actually has a very precise definition, which enshrines each of the "four freedoms" described in your link. Anyone using the term to describe something like the Windows Shared Source Initiative is using it wrongly.
No need to start a controversy where there is none. The Open Source/Free Software split is more about ideology than practical effects.
Let's consider a situation where it actually matters: pharmaceuticals. Drugs, if you will.
Say a drug company has invested five billion in a successful bid to find an AIDS vaccine, which they can make for $5/vaccination. Now, if they release it only in the U.S., they figure they can charge $300/vaccination, and quickly recoup their investment. But if they also sell it to Nigeria, they'll find very few people who can afford it.
So, what's the solution here? Obviously, lower the price in Nigeria. They can sell them for $10/each, still make loads of money, while providing something that will save lives. They're already making their money back just on sales to America.
Now enter the secondary effects. Given that there is now an item people can buy in Nigeria for $10 and sell in the States for twenty times that (while still undercutting the market), a booming business emerges, and half the drugs sent to Nigeria end up back in the states. So every vaccination sent to Nigeria actually costs the drug company around $150 in lost sales.
Meanwhile, Senator Rotweiler is grandstanding up on Capitol Hill, complaining about how the drug company is ripping people off by charging hundreds of dollars for a vaccine that costs five bucks to make. His proof? The fact that they can sell it in Nigeria for $10.
My point isn't that drug companies are saints, or that DVDs should be priced where they are (most movies have broken even before they hit the DVD market). The wider economic point is that sometimes by offering different prices to different people, businesses can make more money and serve more people. Demanding that everyone pay exactly the same price for an item, rather than allowing them to pay what they will can destroy market efficiency, leading to fewer people getting access to goods, whether lifesaving medicine or copies of Booty Call 2.
Anyhow, they're just movies. If you're so indignant about the price, fire up BitTorrent. That'll l'arn em.
This sounds a lot like the old, debunked rumor from back in the Reagan administration, about how there was a separate BIA caseworker for every caseworker being served.
I once saw an online test where they asked silly questions like, "Which of these two monkeys would win a fight," and "do you prefer sailing or waterskiing." The questions were dumb, but using a naive Bayesian classifier, they took the results and categorized the testers as male or female, with stunning accuracy.
If you asked the people who designed the test, they couldn't tell you why men were more likely to pick monkey X. All they know is that they do, and if you expose enough of these tendencies, the computer is very likely to figure you out.
They could be trying to determine anything: whether you're married, whether you have kids, whether you're likely to take orders or be stubborn. You just don't know.
One of your respondents claimed that such tests are illegal. I'm not sure. It's illegal to ask questions unrelated to job performance (like political affiliations), but if somebody could show that the results of such a test can predict your future success in the job, then a judge might take their side.
It's the first Linux distro I would feel comfortable inflicting on my parents, while still being a joy to inflict on myself.
I'm a CS major, and I do basically all my development on Linux. It's been pretty much the most cooperative distro I've ever run across. Cooperative when I want to do something advanced, and cooperative when I don't (as in "I don't want to manually config ALSA").
The original trolling was pretty impressive. Republishing it in this context? Sickly and derivative.
Still, when you think of how the original troll is still causing longwinded, indignant reactions by people like me four years later, you have to give the guy props.
It's a troll, and a plagarized troll at that, so of course I'll bite.
Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, the numerous gratuitous digs towards the other guy's operating system of choice might have been what caused him to stop worrying about your specific problem and get sidetracked into defending his OS's honor? I mean, the only reason anyone, anywhere, would find it worth their time to hang out on IRC answering Linux questions is because he has some emotional investment in the Linux scene. So when somebody comes on and starts spouting off with:
Why won't my fucking Linux computer print?
I don't know. It's a Hewlett Packard desktop inkjet number [You can get more information than this just by looking at the computer]
...I've got a floppy disk from HP, but my floppy drive is a USB drive and Linux doesn't have fucking USB support.["Linux doesn't support peripheral X" is a far cry from "Linux doesn't have USB support."]
By this time, the requester has already lost just about all the good will he can expect from the average IRC denizen. IRC can be a very helpful forum (it's certainly pretty hit-and-miss), but if you go onto a channel with the attitude of "this product sucks, it ruined my life, and I blame each and every one of you personally," then the chances of getting your issue solved quickly approach zero.
Even by this point in the conversation, it's difficult to imagine him having any real sympathy from the masses, so the only people who would even try to continue working on it are the ones who want to wipe the grimy smirk off his face. I know the guy had a bad experience, and I know he went into the conversation pissed. I'm sorry about all that, and I'm sorry that his computer got hosed. But for god's sake, what the hell did he expect would happen? He goes on to blame Linux for destroying his computer, and claiming that it's "a fucking operating system that doesn't operate".
I'm not terribly sad that "we" (meaning us sad sacks who get a little thrill when somebody converts) lost him as a user.
I'm sorry, sweety. Your grades are fine, but in this family, we expect our kids to at least make it into the third round of competition. Now, go write "The Sicilian Defense is not a playtoy" 500 times, and we can try again next quarter.:)
Ever tried introducing the kids to old NES ROMs? Or would that be engaging in unabashed parental nostalgia?
This does seem to smack of reverse PR. I mean, what better way to try and create a reputation among those wanting to think of themselves as "hard-core gamers" than to spout on about how much trouble they're having getting their schweeeeet system accepted by the not-nearly-as-hardcore-as-you crowd?
I have no problem with constructive dialogue between environmental interest groups and industry. The two sides need to hear the other side out, and it's possible for them to hammer out outstanding compromises.
That's not what this guy is part of.
It's pretty obvious that this guy isn't engaging these industries to help them improve their practices. Instead, he's using his former environmentalist creds to help them promote their agenda while whitewashing destructive behaviors.
The environmentalists aren't the only ones who are insufficiently willing to compromise. If a corporation hires this guy to do what he does, they're not dealing honestly with us, full stop.
No, there is no one single solution to the energy crisis, and we do need a wide variety of approaches. But given that it's futile to discuss the energy crisis independent of the global warming crisis, I don't think the development of new oil fields should have any part in the solution. We'd do far better for ourselves and the environment if we raised CAFTA standards. Better still, scrap the CAFTA standards and replaced them with a hefty carbon tax on automotive fuel. ANWR only does a little to promote energy independence, while making the global warming problems worse.
Now, if they came up with a plan that appeared to have minimal impact on the environment, and the proceeds were being put toward the sort of programs you suggested, I think I could get behind that. But I do think that energy conservation is a much bigger part of the solution. For example, California has been at the forefront of the conservation movement for decades. While the average American's energy consumption has gone up about 50% since 1970, the average Californian's consumption has remained flat. Their electrical utilities providers are under a regime where their profits are only loosely coupled to the amount of energy they provide, and when they need new capacity they look to conservation first, then renewables, then fossil fuels.
My impression of most libertarians is that few of them would even consider allowing a government the sort of power necessary to enforce a pollution tax on gasoline. Of the ones I've talked to, only a handful recognize that externalities are a problem. I'm in favor of using auctions and cap-and-trade systems, which seem to yield better results than normal regulation.
I'm all in favor of facts and balance in environmental questions as well. But when it comes to this particular commentator, I think you give Moore too much credit for conviction. It seems he turned his back on the entire environmental movement decades ago. Rather than being a case of a grizzled veteran of the environmental movement taking a hard look at the facts and coming to an uncomfortable conclusion, I think it's a case of a disgruntled ex-employee using his credentials to give his opinions more credibility than they warrant.
The ANWR doesn't have enough oil in it to provide much aid for energy independence. I'm guessing the supporters of drilling fall into four camps: Exxon-Mobil, people who think there is fifty years of oil instead of one, people who want to piss off the hippies, and people who hate moose.
I'm still ambivalent about nuclear energy. Probably safer and cleaner than coal, but anything that makes it easier to get nukes into the hands of crazy people is worrying.
I want my glow-in-the-dark mutant carrots. I'm not really worried about the health effects of GMOs, but I do worry about the monocultures that arise from the hypermechanization of food production. It leaves us extremely vulnerable to disruptions in the food supply.
Finally, I think that much of the anti-environmental movement come from similarly childish notions. In this case, it's the idea that the free market and human grit will overcome all, or that God Almighty gave us dominion over nature, or that we're too puny to have any real effects. There is too much religion on both sides.
You've obviously experienced those wonders first-hand, because anyone who didn't crash and burn in high school debate knows that your argument lives and dies by the credibility of its sources. The fact is, the only reason we care what Patrick Moore has to say is because SHOCK! a prominent environmentalist has come out in favor of nuclear power.
That means nuclear power can't be bad for the environment, right?
I mean, if someone radical enough to have been a founder of Greenpeace is in favor, we should take notice, right?
Right?
Then we find out that he's been making a living these last two decades by providing moral support and PR for the mining, logging, and energy industries.
If Patrick Moore sold out twenty years ago, then this is a non-story. When the current leadership of Greenpeace comes out in favor of nukes, then we'll have a story that should give people something to think about.
The fact is, as hard as you try to paint yourself as the only rational, thinking person left in a world gone mad, you're actually just using one admission of error as a tool to discredit the entire movement. Faced with this sort of "rationality", what environmentalist is going to be persuaded to candidly consider his views on other subjects? Why should he, when he knows that making his peace with nuclear power is going to hurt every other cause he believes in?
Better for him that he stays the course, refuses to admit error, and tells his supporters exactly what they want to hear. I don't mean better for his ego, but better for the causes he believes in.
You're not being a judicious, even-handed thinker. You're being a partisan hack. Feel free to stop it, while considering that the environmentalists have been on the right side of history on plenty of occasions. The fact is, we'd be much worse off without the EPA, without the Endangered Species Act, or without the National Parks system (the people who set those up were considered obstacles to economic progress back in their day as well). I think they're on the right side of history in the global warming debate as well, but with so many forces arrayed on the wrong side, we're in for a few rough decades.
You remind me (whether with good reason or not) of the selfish, power-hungry bastards who managed to convict John Kerry of the unforgivable sin of nuanced thinking in the eyes of the American people. When you don't allow your opposition the ability to be right once in a while, or use their admissions of one error as a weapon against everything they believe in, do you know what you end up with? A country without debate, without compromise, and without good ideas. We might as well just make Ann Coulter our Supreme Dictator for Life and be done with it.
* American farm subsidies that keep millions unemployed. * A laundry list of other subsidies and tariffs that lock out foreign goods. * Organizations like the IMF that tie development loans to absurd and punitive measures, forcing developing countries to abandon effective poverty prevention programs in the name of "smaller government", while making stupid loans that may as well be sent straight to the Caymans. * Only supporting abstinence-only AIDS prevention. * Invading countries that don't pose any threat to us.
Frankly, I don't see how Greenpeace--with a global budget of about $150M a year--can do nearly as much damage as any one of dozens of multinational corporations, much less the federal government.
Well, just because a video gets put up on Google, doesn't mean anyone is watching it.
Me, I've never seen one that could keep me watching for more than two minutes, and it doesn't seem to matter what they do to it to make it more interesting. Of course, 90% of the time, they just cut out the walkin-around bits and add a death metal track.
The funniest ones generally last less than thirty seconds, and have a punchline. Like that one where somebody's critter detonated in the auction house, killing a whole crowd of people. I hear he got suspended for a month for it.
But for the most part, they're just boring. You sit and wait and wait for something really surprising to happen, and it never does. I think it's just that the producers (to use the term in its literal, rather than professional sense) just don't realize that it was way cooler for them while they were filming it than it is for everyone else watching it.
I think the field does have some potential, if someone was willing to put a lot of time and planning into a really short bit. But it's mostly pretty unwatchable.
In closing, when I was eleven I spent the better part of a day playing with my NES and a VCR, recording a Zelda II highlights reel. I cringe in shame.
But perhaps we should be looking down and saying, "well, a billion people using a few ounces of fuel to boil the dysentary out of their water doesn't count as much as a few million people driving forty miles each way to take in a movie."
Per capita does matter in the analysis of these things, and not just because it's disconcerting to see one person using a thousand times the resources that another person is, but because people use the resources to accomplish necessities first, and luxuries afterwards.
Maybe the atmosphere can't see the difference between a gallon of fuel used to boil drinking water and a gallon poured into a Hummer. But you should be able to.
As someone who agrees that global warming is a problem, and that this R&D should be done, let me take the devil's advocate position.
The state of the economy shouldn't just be based on the GDP. The GDP is just a proxy for all economic activity, which basically means how well we're doing at getting the stuff people want to the people who want it. If carbon emissions weren't a problem, and we still spent trillions of dollars working on making sure that carbon wasn't put into the atmosphere, that would be trillions of dollars spent on something that people didn't really want, and those resources could therefore have been spent more wisely.
There would be some benefits, of course. More fuel efficient cars, more renewable energy capacity, more efficient appliances. Those are going to offset part of the money we put into it, even if we don't reap the benefits of a saner climate (which I think we will).
Slashdot Mirror
You anti-elitist ass.
No, seriously. Automatically equating "gifted" with "lazy?" Going ballistic when somebody suggests that we should be trying to get the most out of every student?
Nowhere in that guy's post did he ask for pity. Nowhere did he say we should stop providing remedial education. He's just pointing out the glaring deficiencies in the way we treat our brightest students.
Oh, and the studies have shown that a great deal of your determination and ambition is inborn. They can get a good gauge of a person's work ethic, determination, and willingness to delay gratification by the age of four. So whether you breeze through effortlessly, or fight tooth and nail for your education, either route to success depends heavily on what you're born with.
You don't like that idea, of course. You'll probably reject it out of hand. You prefer to think that other peoples' intelligence is granted from on high, while your work ethic is proof of your moral superiority. Well, believe whatever makes you feel good about yourself.
Here's where I'm coming from:
1) There is no God.
2) It is easy to demonstrate that moral sentiments about right and wrong exist in human beings. (See Stephen Pinker's "The Blank Slate")
3) It is possible to come up with guidelines of behavior that, if followed, will make people happier.
4) None of this proves that there is some single, ideal set of behaviors, whether handed down by God or written in the physical constants of the universe.
To extend your analogy, while our units of measurement have a basis in fact, the specifics are quite arbitrary. If the meter had been set longer or shorter, it wouldn't have made a big difference. It's not as though The Meter was brought down from on high by a white-haired prophet.
In the same way, our minds are built to feel certain emotions in certain situations. We are prone to violence and anger when our interests are threatened. We're likely to feel sexual jealousy when we think our mates are being unfaithful. We tend to desire sexual experiences that may not be in our long term interests. We react with shame when we're caught violating social customs, and righteous indignation when we catch someone else violating them. We are revolted by nasty, dead things.
If we accept these as the physics of the human psyche (just continuing your analogy), there can still be wide disagreement over what courses of action the fundamentals imply. Do you accept sexual jealousy at face value, and react with outrage at your spouse's indiscretions? Do you try to temper it with forgiveness, and try to heal the relationship? Or do you try to dispel the feeling altogether, and allow her to find happiness in a relationship with another man?
The third option may sound unthinkable to you, but given the unprecedented options we have for negating the potential consequences of sex, it's a far more plausible route than it might have been in, say, eleventh century England. Cultures change, and the rules often have to be changed to accompany them.
A less drastic example: What to do when you're hungry? Our plains-dwelling ancestors would have answered, "Go look for food." But they would have to spend the day hunting and farming to obtain sufficient food. We, on the other hand, are likely to have an overabundance available without leaving the house. If we follow the same guidelines in this new situation, we become fat and unhealthy. Some people are all right with that, others go to extraordinary lengths--even unhealthy ones--to avoid the available abundance. Two different times, two different sets of rules, and it's easy to see how the rules become inapplicable when divorced from their cultural context.
Those who want to elevate their personal moral preferences above those of other people by declaring them to be "Authored by God" tend to get angry and upset when others take completely different principles and try to give them the same status. Religious Democrats believe that it is God's will that the government help the poor and dispossessed, while Republicans think God wants the poor not to be robbed of their self-reliance while the rich are robbed of their earnings. Meanwhile, white supremacists think God is offended by the mixing of the races. Environmentalists think God wants us to be stewards of the land (and so do anti-environment business leaders, though they disagree on what exactly that entails). Last week, I ran into a Constitution Party nutcase who tried to tell me that non-Christians shouldn't be allowed to hold office, because that privilege should be reserved for people who truly understand the founding principles of this country (read: not me and my ilk).
Everyone thinks they know what God wants for us all, and too many of them are willing to use whatever means are at their disposal to enshrine their "godly laws" into the laws of Man. Far better that we take a step back, humble ourselves, and keep the world safe for honest disagreement.
Until we have condorcet voting, I don't think the problem of strategic voting will go away.
But I can't see how it would benefit the congresscritters to implement it, so I'm not sure who to write.
An actual answer to your rhetorical question: here.
But I agree that relativism is wracking about in our society, and it's destroying our moral fabric. Rather than having disagreements over what constitutes ethical behavior, or weaken ourselves by allowing for disagreements, we need to have one standard of conduct and one standard of ethics.
And that standard is The Holy Bible. King James Version. None of that weak-kneed, liberal, namby-pamby NIV crap.
The term "open source" actually has a very precise definition, which enshrines each of the "four freedoms" described in your link. Anyone using the term to describe something like the Windows Shared Source Initiative is using it wrongly.
No need to start a controversy where there is none. The Open Source/Free Software split is more about ideology than practical effects.
Not at all true.
Let's consider a situation where it actually matters: pharmaceuticals. Drugs, if you will.
Say a drug company has invested five billion in a successful bid to find an AIDS vaccine, which they can make for $5/vaccination. Now, if they release it only in the U.S., they figure they can charge $300/vaccination, and quickly recoup their investment. But if they also sell it to Nigeria, they'll find very few people who can afford it.
So, what's the solution here? Obviously, lower the price in Nigeria. They can sell them for $10/each, still make loads of money, while providing something that will save lives. They're already making their money back just on sales to America.
Now enter the secondary effects. Given that there is now an item people can buy in Nigeria for $10 and sell in the States for twenty times that (while still undercutting the market), a booming business emerges, and half the drugs sent to Nigeria end up back in the states. So every vaccination sent to Nigeria actually costs the drug company around $150 in lost sales.
Meanwhile, Senator Rotweiler is grandstanding up on Capitol Hill, complaining about how the drug company is ripping people off by charging hundreds of dollars for a vaccine that costs five bucks to make. His proof? The fact that they can sell it in Nigeria for $10.
My point isn't that drug companies are saints, or that DVDs should be priced where they are (most movies have broken even before they hit the DVD market). The wider economic point is that sometimes by offering different prices to different people, businesses can make more money and serve more people. Demanding that everyone pay exactly the same price for an item, rather than allowing them to pay what they will can destroy market efficiency, leading to fewer people getting access to goods, whether lifesaving medicine or copies of Booty Call 2.
Anyhow, they're just movies. If you're so indignant about the price, fire up BitTorrent. That'll l'arn em.
This sounds a lot like the old, debunked rumor from back in the Reagan administration, about how there was a separate BIA caseworker for every caseworker being served.
I'm going to need a source on this.
Not even remotely.
A fox has teeth.
What are they looking for?
Honestly, you can't be sure.
I once saw an online test where they asked silly questions like, "Which of these two monkeys would win a fight," and "do you prefer sailing or waterskiing." The questions were dumb, but using a naive Bayesian classifier, they took the results and categorized the testers as male or female, with stunning accuracy.
If you asked the people who designed the test, they couldn't tell you why men were more likely to pick monkey X. All they know is that they do, and if you expose enough of these tendencies, the computer is very likely to figure you out.
They could be trying to determine anything: whether you're married, whether you have kids, whether you're likely to take orders or be stubborn. You just don't know.
One of your respondents claimed that such tests are illegal. I'm not sure. It's illegal to ask questions unrelated to job performance (like political affiliations), but if somebody could show that the results of such a test can predict your future success in the job, then a judge might take their side.
It's the first Linux distro I would feel comfortable inflicting on my parents, while still being a joy to inflict on myself.
I'm a CS major, and I do basically all my development on Linux. It's been pretty much the most cooperative distro I've ever run across. Cooperative when I want to do something advanced, and cooperative when I don't (as in "I don't want to manually config ALSA").
The original trolling was pretty impressive. Republishing it in this context? Sickly and derivative.
Still, when you think of how the original troll is still causing longwinded, indignant reactions by people like me four years later, you have to give the guy props.
Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, the numerous gratuitous digs towards the other guy's operating system of choice might have been what caused him to stop worrying about your specific problem and get sidetracked into defending his OS's honor? I mean, the only reason anyone, anywhere, would find it worth their time to hang out on IRC answering Linux questions is because he has some emotional investment in the Linux scene. So when somebody comes on and starts spouting off with:
By this time, the requester has already lost just about all the good will he can expect from the average IRC denizen. IRC can be a very helpful forum (it's certainly pretty hit-and-miss), but if you go onto a channel with the attitude of "this product sucks, it ruined my life, and I blame each and every one of you personally," then the chances of getting your issue solved quickly approach zero.
Even by this point in the conversation, it's difficult to imagine him having any real sympathy from the masses, so the only people who would even try to continue working on it are the ones who want to wipe the grimy smirk off his face. I know the guy had a bad experience, and I know he went into the conversation pissed. I'm sorry about all that, and I'm sorry that his computer got hosed. But for god's sake, what the hell did he expect would happen? He goes on to blame Linux for destroying his computer, and claiming that it's "a fucking operating system that doesn't operate".
I'm not terribly sad that "we" (meaning us sad sacks who get a little thrill when somebody converts) lost him as a user.
I'm sorry, sweety. Your grades are fine, but in this family, we expect our kids to at least make it into the third round of competition. Now, go write "The Sicilian Defense is not a playtoy" 500 times, and we can try again next quarter. :)
Ever tried introducing the kids to old NES ROMs? Or would that be engaging in unabashed parental nostalgia?
This does seem to smack of reverse PR. I mean, what better way to try and create a reputation among those wanting to think of themselves as "hard-core gamers" than to spout on about how much trouble they're having getting their schweeeeet system accepted by the not-nearly-as-hardcore-as-you crowd?
When did this "death of UNIX" happen? Why wasn't I told?
UNIX continues to dominate the server market, and is finally seeing its first mass success in the desktop market via OSX and Linux.
You're either hopelessly out of touch, or a simple troll. Either way, you're terribly uninteresting.
I have no problem with constructive dialogue between environmental interest groups and industry. The two sides need to hear the other side out, and it's possible for them to hammer out outstanding compromises.
That's not what this guy is part of.
It's pretty obvious that this guy isn't engaging these industries to help them improve their practices. Instead, he's using his former environmentalist creds to help them promote their agenda while whitewashing destructive behaviors.
The environmentalists aren't the only ones who are insufficiently willing to compromise. If a corporation hires this guy to do what he does, they're not dealing honestly with us, full stop.
No, there is no one single solution to the energy crisis, and we do need a wide variety of approaches. But given that it's futile to discuss the energy crisis independent of the global warming crisis, I don't think the development of new oil fields should have any part in the solution. We'd do far better for ourselves and the environment if we raised CAFTA standards. Better still, scrap the CAFTA standards and replaced them with a hefty carbon tax on automotive fuel. ANWR only does a little to promote energy independence, while making the global warming problems worse.
Now, if they came up with a plan that appeared to have minimal impact on the environment, and the proceeds were being put toward the sort of programs you suggested, I think I could get behind that. But I do think that energy conservation is a much bigger part of the solution. For example, California has been at the forefront of the conservation movement for decades. While the average American's energy consumption has gone up about 50% since 1970, the average Californian's consumption has remained flat. Their electrical utilities providers are under a regime where their profits are only loosely coupled to the amount of energy they provide, and when they need new capacity they look to conservation first, then renewables, then fossil fuels.
My impression of most libertarians is that few of them would even consider allowing a government the sort of power necessary to enforce a pollution tax on gasoline. Of the ones I've talked to, only a handful recognize that externalities are a problem. I'm in favor of using auctions and cap-and-trade systems, which seem to yield better results than normal regulation.
I'm all in favor of facts and balance in environmental questions as well. But when it comes to this particular commentator, I think you give Moore too much credit for conviction. It seems he turned his back on the entire environmental movement decades ago. Rather than being a case of a grizzled veteran of the environmental movement taking a hard look at the facts and coming to an uncomfortable conclusion, I think it's a case of a disgruntled ex-employee using his credentials to give his opinions more credibility than they warrant.
The ANWR doesn't have enough oil in it to provide much aid for energy independence. I'm guessing the supporters of drilling fall into four camps: Exxon-Mobil, people who think there is fifty years of oil instead of one, people who want to piss off the hippies, and people who hate moose.
I'm still ambivalent about nuclear energy. Probably safer and cleaner than coal, but anything that makes it easier to get nukes into the hands of crazy people is worrying.
I want my glow-in-the-dark mutant carrots. I'm not really worried about the health effects of GMOs, but I do worry about the monocultures that arise from the hypermechanization of food production. It leaves us extremely vulnerable to disruptions in the food supply.
Finally, I think that much of the anti-environmental movement come from similarly childish notions. In this case, it's the idea that the free market and human grit will overcome all, or that God Almighty gave us dominion over nature, or that we're too puny to have any real effects. There is too much religion on both sides.
You've obviously experienced those wonders first-hand, because anyone who didn't crash and burn in high school debate knows that your argument lives and dies by the credibility of its sources. The fact is, the only reason we care what Patrick Moore has to say is because SHOCK! a prominent environmentalist has come out in favor of nuclear power.
That means nuclear power can't be bad for the environment, right?
I mean, if someone radical enough to have been a founder of Greenpeace is in favor, we should take notice, right?
Right?
Then we find out that he's been making a living these last two decades by providing moral support and PR for the mining, logging, and energy industries.
If Patrick Moore sold out twenty years ago, then this is a non-story. When the current leadership of Greenpeace comes out in favor of nukes, then we'll have a story that should give people something to think about.
s/environmental activists/oil industry lobbyists/
The fact is, as hard as you try to paint yourself as the only rational, thinking person left in a world gone mad, you're actually just using one admission of error as a tool to discredit the entire movement. Faced with this sort of "rationality", what environmentalist is going to be persuaded to candidly consider his views on other subjects? Why should he, when he knows that making his peace with nuclear power is going to hurt every other cause he believes in?
Better for him that he stays the course, refuses to admit error, and tells his supporters exactly what they want to hear. I don't mean better for his ego, but better for the causes he believes in.
You're not being a judicious, even-handed thinker. You're being a partisan hack. Feel free to stop it, while considering that the environmentalists have been on the right side of history on plenty of occasions. The fact is, we'd be much worse off without the EPA, without the Endangered Species Act, or without the National Parks system (the people who set those up were considered obstacles to economic progress back in their day as well). I think they're on the right side of history in the global warming debate as well, but with so many forces arrayed on the wrong side, we're in for a few rough decades.
You remind me (whether with good reason or not) of the selfish, power-hungry bastards who managed to convict John Kerry of the unforgivable sin of nuanced thinking in the eyes of the American people. When you don't allow your opposition the ability to be right once in a while, or use their admissions of one error as a weapon against everything they believe in, do you know what you end up with? A country without debate, without compromise, and without good ideas. We might as well just make Ann Coulter our Supreme Dictator for Life and be done with it.
Misguided policies? Where to begin.
* American farm subsidies that keep millions unemployed.
* A laundry list of other subsidies and tariffs that lock out foreign goods.
* Organizations like the IMF that tie development loans to absurd and punitive measures, forcing developing countries to abandon effective poverty prevention programs in the name of "smaller government", while making stupid loans that may as well be sent straight to the Caymans.
* Only supporting abstinence-only AIDS prevention.
* Invading countries that don't pose any threat to us.
Frankly, I don't see how Greenpeace--with a global budget of about $150M a year--can do nearly as much damage as any one of dozens of multinational corporations, much less the federal government.
Excellent. Now if only we could get this post copied about three hundred times into every global warming story.
I'm so sick of hearing the "first it's cooling, now it's warming, would you quote/unquote scientists make up your foolish little minds" crap.
Well, just because a video gets put up on Google, doesn't mean anyone is watching it.
Me, I've never seen one that could keep me watching for more than two minutes, and it doesn't seem to matter what they do to it to make it more interesting. Of course, 90% of the time, they just cut out the walkin-around bits and add a death metal track.
The funniest ones generally last less than thirty seconds, and have a punchline. Like that one where somebody's critter detonated in the auction house, killing a whole crowd of people. I hear he got suspended for a month for it.
But for the most part, they're just boring. You sit and wait and wait for something really surprising to happen, and it never does. I think it's just that the producers (to use the term in its literal, rather than professional sense) just don't realize that it was way cooler for them while they were filming it than it is for everyone else watching it.
I think the field does have some potential, if someone was willing to put a lot of time and planning into a really short bit. But it's mostly pretty unwatchable.
In closing, when I was eleven I spent the better part of a day playing with my NES and a VCR, recording a Zelda II highlights reel. I cringe in shame.
But perhaps we should be looking down and saying, "well, a billion people using a few ounces of fuel to boil the dysentary out of their water doesn't count as much as a few million people driving forty miles each way to take in a movie."
Per capita does matter in the analysis of these things, and not just because it's disconcerting to see one person using a thousand times the resources that another person is, but because people use the resources to accomplish necessities first, and luxuries afterwards.
Maybe the atmosphere can't see the difference between a gallon of fuel used to boil drinking water and a gallon poured into a Hummer. But you should be able to.
As someone who agrees that global warming is a problem, and that this R&D should be done, let me take the devil's advocate position.
The state of the economy shouldn't just be based on the GDP. The GDP is just a proxy for all economic activity, which basically means how well we're doing at getting the stuff people want to the people who want it. If carbon emissions weren't a problem, and we still spent trillions of dollars working on making sure that carbon wasn't put into the atmosphere, that would be trillions of dollars spent on something that people didn't really want, and those resources could therefore have been spent more wisely.
There would be some benefits, of course. More fuel efficient cars, more renewable energy capacity, more efficient appliances. Those are going to offset part of the money we put into it, even if we don't reap the benefits of a saner climate (which I think we will).