I agree with you about the official none-of-the-above option. It should essentially be treated a by-election in six weeks time with all current candidates barred from running again. If you can't beat none-of-the-above you can't run again until the next official election. Also I'd like to see preferential balloting so that if you have the opposite problem of the GP and you want to vote for multiple different parties then you should be allowed to. For instance there's a lot of Canadians who I'd bet would like to simple vote "Not the Conservatives", and let any of the other parties win. Getting rid of strategic voting would be a net boon to democracy.
Do you ever wonder if maybe going to that little bit of effort to educate yourself on the candidates and the issues might make a difference? I have to agree that if you willfully choose to remain ignorant you probably shouldn't vote. The majority of people who don't bother to inform themselves actually do more damage to their own interests by voting for the wrong people.
However, your idea that eventually very few people will vote and that will change politics is highly unrealistic. It's part of the strategy of the Conservative Party of Canada to attempt to reduce the general election turn out. With their highly motivated base, lower turnouts translate to a larger relative share of the vote and one that is more easily controlled.
Interestingly enough the conservatives are taking a stand against the Canadian corrections system. They say a 3% recidivism rate isn't high enough, and it should be more like the American one... 66%. After all, if we don't get some more hardened criminals, how's their tough on crime that doesn't exist stand supposed to work long term?
The Harperites (as opposed to the conservatives) are responsible for many new firsts in Canada. The first minority parliament to hide the cost of the programs it's trying to implement from Parliament and Canadians. The first minority government to consistently blame all of it's terrible political ideas on civil servants, the first minority government to have a minister found to be in contempt of parliament (a world first, by the way for parliamentary countries) and the first government to be found in contempt of parliament (another world first).
It takes a long time for the effects of good or bad management to trickle down to the average person, but by the time it happens the guys responsible are rarely still in power. The Liberals set Canada up to do extremely well through the 2008 recession and the Conservatives have taken credit for the policies they opposed and were, in fact, planning to dismantle. Just look at the U.S. and realize that's what would have happened if Harper had had a majority government ten years ago. So, it does, in fact matter who you put at the helm.
I'm writing this as someone who has never voted for the Liberals. I used to vote for the conservatives, but Harper is a danger to the prosperity of Canada because he doesn't let the facts get in the way of his policies. And in my book that's the very opposite of a conservative.
Personally, I'd rather implement preferential balloting* first, let that sink in for a while and then see if we still need proportional representation. In theory preferential balloting should lead to more generally acceptable candidates because it becomes much harder to abuse minority support.
* Where you rank candidates in order of preference.
All the politicians expected the government to fall, but that's because they knew Harper wanted an election and therefore wouldn't work with them. He refused to meet with two of the parties and then deliberately shortchanged the final party. For the conservatives it was a win-win situation. If the NDP had taken the bait they ruled for another year with no effective opposition, having the current scandals smothered for political expediency. If they get voted down, they can continue to publically claim they don't want an election (even though it's obvious to everyone that they do) and blame the opposition parties for forcing one. Interestingly, it's also obvious that neither the Liberals nor the NDP actually wanted an election.
So, against all probabilities, the election was called for exactly the reason the opposition parties claim. Harper has governed in such a way that they can't continue to support him. He lost the confidence of Parliament and he did so by instructing his ministers to lie and conceal information from Parliament. In a very large sense this election is about Canadian democracy.
The central question that most Canadians will never understand is whether the members of Parliament are the government, or whether the Prime Minister's Office (staffed by unelected political appointees) is the government. Harper had run a government which displays unmitigated contempt for the representatives of the majority of Canadians and not just the opposition parties either. Harper's government has no respect for the rank and file of his own party and very little for the ministers. Effectively the government is run by 3 elected men (Harper, Baird, and Kenney) and the political hacks in the PMO. No one else matters except as seat fillers.
You need to be a little less polemic, the vast majority of cops are decent people. They believe in what they do and they believe that they are helping to make the world a better place. Claiming that "there is no such thing as a good cop" simply makes you looked hopelessly biased and one sided.
Of course, it's still possible to be a decent person and abuse the power you're entrusted with, that's why there should always be civilian oversight of the police, and independent methods of making complaints about police abuse of power. Of course, that's simply part of building a robust and functioning society.
In that time, traffic on it grew at about the rate you give for increased capacity when there was no increase in capacity.
I'm pretty sure that they study is only looking at the induced traffic, thus if they had expanded your road by 10%, the traffic volume would have increased at double the rate it did.
But it makes a good sound bite, so rather than examining the whole situation, the anti-road nuts use it as ammunition to start asserting that destroying roads will improve traffic.
Actually that's not really what that quote says, it says that destroying roads makes traffic marginally worse. 7% of the traffic was diverted to other roads.
Well, lets look at public transport too, since that's often billed as the replacement. When you spend $1 on public transport, what level of traffic reduction do you get from it?
According to this pdf from Victoria, BC rail systems return an average of $5 in savings for every $1 spent on them (only a small portion of that saving is specifically congestion but based on the chart in the pdf it looks like it's a fair bit more than $0.11). Other studies seem to suggest you get an additional $4-$9 in economic benefits from rail system per $1 spent on them. The linked study doesn't account for economic benefits, only direct cost reductions.
It says that in the short term you gets $0.11 of traffic reduction for every $1 spent on new roads.
I also found a summary page, that notes some interesting research results:
[F]or every 10 percent increase in roadway capacity, traffic increased 9 percent within four years' time.
and
The phenomenon of induced traffic works in reverse as well. When New York's West Side Highway collapsed in 1973, an NYDOT study showed that 93 percent of the car trips lost did not reappear elsewhere; people simply stopped driving. A similar result accompanied the destruction of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway in the 1989 earthquake. Citizens voted to remove the freeway entirely despite the apocalyptic warnings of traffic engineers. Surprisingly, a recent British study found that downtown road removals tend to boost local economies, while new roads lead to higher urban unemployment. So much for road-building as a way to spur the economy.
Of course, this shouldn't be surprising at all, it's simple economics. While there is likely to be some upper threshold to how many car trips the citizens of an area will reasonably make, however, I suspect it's high enough that it would be impractical to build and maintain enough road infrastructure to reach that plateau.
What if the apps use GPS and plays some police-themed sound (maybe music) when you're approaching a checkpoint? If they announce the checkpoint's location then all you need to do is have the phone on and be able to understand what you're hearing.
I think the end result will be that Apple will likely pull the apps from the store. They are going to have a very difficult time arguing for applications that specifically aid and abet drunk drivers. Particularly if they apps are marketed as a way to avoid getting a ticket when you're driving drunk, it looks bad, and Apple doesn't want to look bad.
As I said, that is the simplest argument against building new roads. Road demand may be inelastic In the short term, however, in the medium and long terms it is more elastic. People will, in fact, modify their behavior when they have to actually pay the price for that behavior. Traffic congestion tends to be one of the major reasons for people choosing to use mass transit and commute times tend to be a major factor in where people choose to live.
Also, generalizing the actions of one person you know to everyone you think you disagree with is unhealthy and unproductive.
Was it greed or corporations that caused 10M dead of hunger in Russia?
Actually, it probably was. If I remember correctly, the massive starvation in Russia was a result of greed and pseudo-science.
Was it greed or corporations that turned Zimbabwe from the breadbasket it was into a corrupt armpit of a failed state
Oh there's absolutely greed to blame there.
You seem to have forgotten that greed and tyranny are not mutually exclusive. Violent utopian cults and broken economies are not the only causes of mass suffering.
Please remember that most people reporting something have something to gain. You, in other words, the commodity that they sell to advertisers. That's why most news stories tend towards the maudlin or sensational. It's how they get most people to watch the ads.
The point being made is that the prediction has been made many times, since at least the 19th century. The rate of population increase is decreasing, this means that if trends continue as they are and we don't run out of food and water before 2050, we should be ok.
Of course, we may actually soon facing falling crop yields due to two entwined factors:
Rising oil prices
Climate Change
I'm not sure how well we're going to adapt to those two challenges. Of course, recent history suggests it will not be very well at all, especially since we have vested interests who are lobbying hard on the side of doing nothing at all about it in the near future, just in case it might cut into their profits.
Just wanted to point out the simplest argument against building new roads:
1) If you reduce the cost of using roads (congestion) then 2) You increase usage of the roads
It's a simple argument and that part is correct. However, the problem comes from understanding the difference between traffic volume and traffic congestion. They're not the same and may be used incorrectly or interchangeably by people who don't understand the issue very well. Increasing road surface area tends to increase traffic volume and reduce traffic congestion. I expect you get a permanent reduction in congestion and a permanent increase in volume barring other factors just from building the road and people adjusting their behavior to the new situation. Thus saying new roads either increase or decreases traffic is wrong because it does both.
Now, there are other measures that do reduce both congestion and volume, taxes and tolls are probably the chief among them, and when combined with public transit may work well to reduce both congestion and volume, but that's a different discussion.
I agree with most of what you wrote with one big exception.
[A]bstinence is at least a free way to do something which may explain why it was first used (beside religious considerations).
Abstinence only education is pretty much always a religiously motivated program. The reason it's abstinence only is because some religious leader decided that if you tell the youngsters about birth control they'll figure out a way to have sex without children. They don't really consider unwanted pregnancies to be a real problem, they see that as the just consequence of unwanted sex. That's why the fact that abstinence only programs are massive failures in every measurable way seems to have absolutely no effect on many of the people who support them.
As a note, according to the studies, children exposed to abstinence only education have sex earlier, have more sexual partners, have sex more often, have more pregnancies, have more abortions, and have more sexually transmitted diseases than children who received uncensored sex education.
I think you are suffering from a bizarre myopia or are being disingenuous.
While Wahl did delete some emails, as far as I can tell his action was isolated, certainly the people he corresponded with did not delete them. It was not an "acknowledged action carried out by a number of people" but rather the action of one man.
When you are working with proxies, you already know they're not measuring the same thing, that's why they're called proxies. The question is always whether the flaws in the proxy outweigh it's usefulness. In a perfect world, you'd have perfect measurements, we don't live in a perfect world. I suggest you get used to the idea that we may have to rely on less than perfect information and instruments.
Until people stop researching an area there is always data that hasn't been released yet. The question is whether that data is significant or not. Unverified research is unverified research, eventually the data will be released and verified, on alternate research based on public research will corroborate or contradict the research.
I suspect they're not raising their voices in anger because they've got better things to do, like scientific research. In any case, there's more than enough people who are angry already. Most likely they understand that scientists are not perfect, they're not prophets or paragons of virtue and don't claim to be. They're just people who are looking for the answers to their questions. They understand that they are not perfect and getting angry over that, while occasionally cathartic, is mostly a waste of time.
It also seems Mr. Mann and his friends weren't averse to blacklisting scientists who disputed some of their contentions, or journals that published their work. "I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal," goes one email, apparently written by Mr. Mann to several recipients in March 2003. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."
You've made one glaring error. This is a perfectly reasonable response to a journal which has begun publishing pseudo-scientific nonsense. According to my research into this issue, they were right. One of the editors at Climate Research was approving articles that agreed with his climate change denial agenda even when they failed peer review. The article which triggered this message went 0 for 3 in peer review. All three reviewers separately recommended that it not be published and the editor in question approved it for publication anyway.
The journal had to change it's editorial policy to prevent abuse of this sort afterwards because two thirds of the editorial board, including the chief editor resigned over the actions of this rogue editor (at the time the chief editor was not allowed to overrule individual editors). It wasn't until after the editor in question had been removed by the owners and the rest of the editorial staff had returned that they discovered that the articles the editor claimed had passed peer review, had not. He had been deliberately misleading his coworkers to advance his political agenda.
So, when a supposedly peer reviewed journal starts publish articles which have failed peer review, I think "we have to stop considering [it] as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal" and it only makes sense to "encourage our colleagues" not to associate with the disgraced journal.
I haven't watched "Expelled", but I've heard that all the "discrimination" presented in the documentary had much simpler explanations, most if not all of the subjects failed to perform their regular duties and were terminated for both failure to perform the duties of the jobs and failure to improve on that performance after receiving several warnings.
For example, I remember, from when I looked into shortly after it was released, that one of the subjects claimed he was fired for writing a book about creationism, which was partially true. He was fired for writing a book about creationism during work hours when he was supposed to conducting unrelated research. Essentially he spent two years committing "time theft" and was completely surprised when he was fired for not doing his job.
Sadly, that documentary suffered from a severe confirmation bias and a persecution complex.
Is it Ironic that you can't see how the second paragraph lumps you in with the people in the first paragraph?
As far I understand everything you complain about in the second paragraph are imaginary problems that don't actually exist:
One scientist in a fit of pique threatened to destroy records to a friend in a private email, but didn't, in fact, do so.
Tree rings proxies agree with other proxy measurements from 1600-1950 thus it is actually reasonable to use them for the time period where they can be crosschecked with other proxies.
There few, if any, scientists who regularly refuse to provide the basic data they use to come to conclusions. The vast majority of data is freely available, and that which isn't, can't release because it's owned by private corporations.
Science hasn't broken faith with you. You've broken faith with it. You attack it based on rumors and innuendo.
You're falling into the same trap as the "morons" you dislike. You believe ridiculous fairy tales because that's what you want to believe, you either refuse to look at or consider the evidence that contradicts what you believe and you repeat lies to justify your erroneous conclusions.
I know those are right wing talking points, but they've been debunked over and over. There was no danger of a "terrorist" invasion on American soil from Iraq. All available evidence indicates that the invasion of Iraq weakened the United States and strengthened it's enemies. Most, maybe even all of the people that the U.S. is fighting now in Afghanistan and Iraq posed no danger to the United States before the invasions. Invading Afghanistan was justifiable because they were helping to train and arm terrorists, mostly for operations in the middle east, but still justifiable. Iraq on the other hand was a Bush vanity invasion and it has cost the U.S. severely.
Radicalizing those who were ripe for radicalization is actually a bad thing, because that radicalization tends to ripen other people. What you end up with is a terrorist assembly line where you generate a constant stream of people who hate America for very good reasons like "they invaded my country", "they burned my fields", "they destroyed my house", "they killed my friends", and "they killed my family".
I think you have a simplistic view of the world that creates enemies where there used to be none. Most of the people responsible for 9/11 are living in relative safety in Pakistan and they are no doubt trying to plan more attacks like 9/11 and Madrid and laughing at idiots like you believe in fighting the wrong wars in the wrong countries.
Part of the reason the U.S. hasn't taken a stronger leadership role in Libya is to avoid creating a larger backlash against American intervention in the Middle East. After the invasion of Iraq is entirely possible for the U.S. to actually create support for Qaddafi merely by stridently opposing him, then there's the massive debt and deficit legacy of the Bush years. I would say on the whole, that the invasion of Iraq has done more harm than good, which is to be expected of an invasion where all the justifications have turned out be nothing more than lies and wishful thinking.
You've written a lot of truly stupid things in this thread.
1) Copyright has no weight 2) Copyright infringement is theft 3) 90% of the world is third 4) Most people think stealing is a sacrament 5) No one is allowed to say something you've already said
It's obvious that you are suffering under a severe case of the Dunning Kruger effect. I suggest you educate yourself on the actual issues surrounding copyright and the world before you embarrass yourself further. Many of the "facts" that you believe are blatantly false, and repeating them in public makes you look ridiculous.
I think we are pretty much in agreement. I remember an older article where the optimal length of a copyright term was determined mathematically. The result? 14 years.
As surprising as this may seem, I agree with your distinction between physical and intellectual property. However, that doesn't impact my statement that property does not exist without government. Without government there can be no recognition that you own anything, you merely control something until someone stronger, sneakier, or with better aim takes it away from you or your rapidly cooling corpse. Once you have some agreement on who owns what, you have both a society and a government.
As far as Somalia goes, warlords are, by definition, a primitive form of government sometimes referred to as despotism. Government is required for capitalism, but it is not sufficient by itself.
Slashdot Mirror
That's true about the money.
I agree with you about the official none-of-the-above option. It should essentially be treated a by-election in six weeks time with all current candidates barred from running again. If you can't beat none-of-the-above you can't run again until the next official election. Also I'd like to see preferential balloting so that if you have the opposite problem of the GP and you want to vote for multiple different parties then you should be allowed to. For instance there's a lot of Canadians who I'd bet would like to simple vote "Not the Conservatives", and let any of the other parties win. Getting rid of strategic voting would be a net boon to democracy.
Do you ever wonder if maybe going to that little bit of effort to educate yourself on the candidates and the issues might make a difference? I have to agree that if you willfully choose to remain ignorant you probably shouldn't vote. The majority of people who don't bother to inform themselves actually do more damage to their own interests by voting for the wrong people.
However, your idea that eventually very few people will vote and that will change politics is highly unrealistic. It's part of the strategy of the Conservative Party of Canada to attempt to reduce the general election turn out. With their highly motivated base, lower turnouts translate to a larger relative share of the vote and one that is more easily controlled.
Interestingly enough the conservatives are taking a stand against the Canadian corrections system. They say a 3% recidivism rate isn't high enough, and it should be more like the American one... 66%. After all, if we don't get some more hardened criminals, how's their tough on crime that doesn't exist stand supposed to work long term?
The Harperites (as opposed to the conservatives) are responsible for many new firsts in Canada. The first minority parliament to hide the cost of the programs it's trying to implement from Parliament and Canadians. The first minority government to consistently blame all of it's terrible political ideas on civil servants, the first minority government to have a minister found to be in contempt of parliament (a world first, by the way for parliamentary countries) and the first government to be found in contempt of parliament (another world first).
It takes a long time for the effects of good or bad management to trickle down to the average person, but by the time it happens the guys responsible are rarely still in power. The Liberals set Canada up to do extremely well through the 2008 recession and the Conservatives have taken credit for the policies they opposed and were, in fact, planning to dismantle. Just look at the U.S. and realize that's what would have happened if Harper had had a majority government ten years ago. So, it does, in fact matter who you put at the helm.
I'm writing this as someone who has never voted for the Liberals. I used to vote for the conservatives, but Harper is a danger to the prosperity of Canada because he doesn't let the facts get in the way of his policies. And in my book that's the very opposite of a conservative.
Personally, I'd rather implement preferential balloting* first, let that sink in for a while and then see if we still need proportional representation. In theory preferential balloting should lead to more generally acceptable candidates because it becomes much harder to abuse minority support.
* Where you rank candidates in order of preference.
All the politicians expected the government to fall, but that's because they knew Harper wanted an election and therefore wouldn't work with them. He refused to meet with two of the parties and then deliberately shortchanged the final party. For the conservatives it was a win-win situation. If the NDP had taken the bait they ruled for another year with no effective opposition, having the current scandals smothered for political expediency. If they get voted down, they can continue to publically claim they don't want an election (even though it's obvious to everyone that they do) and blame the opposition parties for forcing one. Interestingly, it's also obvious that neither the Liberals nor the NDP actually wanted an election.
So, against all probabilities, the election was called for exactly the reason the opposition parties claim. Harper has governed in such a way that they can't continue to support him. He lost the confidence of Parliament and he did so by instructing his ministers to lie and conceal information from Parliament. In a very large sense this election is about Canadian democracy.
The central question that most Canadians will never understand is whether the members of Parliament are the government, or whether the Prime Minister's Office (staffed by unelected political appointees) is the government. Harper had run a government which displays unmitigated contempt for the representatives of the majority of Canadians and not just the opposition parties either. Harper's government has no respect for the rank and file of his own party and very little for the ministers. Effectively the government is run by 3 elected men (Harper, Baird, and Kenney) and the political hacks in the PMO. No one else matters except as seat fillers.
You need to be a little less polemic, the vast majority of cops are decent people. They believe in what they do and they believe that they are helping to make the world a better place. Claiming that "there is no such thing as a good cop" simply makes you looked hopelessly biased and one sided.
Of course, it's still possible to be a decent person and abuse the power you're entrusted with, that's why there should always be civilian oversight of the police, and independent methods of making complaints about police abuse of power. Of course, that's simply part of building a robust and functioning society.
In that time, traffic on it grew at about the rate you give for increased capacity when there was no increase in capacity.
I'm pretty sure that they study is only looking at the induced traffic, thus if they had expanded your road by 10%, the traffic volume would have increased at double the rate it did.
But it makes a good sound bite, so rather than examining the whole situation, the anti-road nuts use it as ammunition to start asserting that destroying roads will improve traffic.
Actually that's not really what that quote says, it says that destroying roads makes traffic marginally worse. 7% of the traffic was diverted to other roads.
Well, lets look at public transport too, since that's often billed as the replacement. When you spend $1 on public transport, what level of traffic reduction do you get from it?
According to this pdf from Victoria, BC rail systems return an average of $5 in savings for every $1 spent on them (only a small portion of that saving is specifically congestion but based on the chart in the pdf it looks like it's a fair bit more than $0.11). Other studies seem to suggest you get an additional $4-$9 in economic benefits from rail system per $1 spent on them. The linked study doesn't account for economic benefits, only direct cost reductions.
I found a research paper on the issue:
It says that in the short term you gets $0.11 of traffic reduction for every $1 spent on new roads.
I also found a summary page, that notes some interesting research results:
[F]or every 10 percent increase in roadway capacity, traffic increased 9 percent within four years' time.
and
The phenomenon of induced traffic works in reverse as well. When New York's West Side Highway collapsed in 1973, an NYDOT study showed that 93 percent of the car trips lost did not reappear elsewhere; people simply stopped driving. A similar result accompanied the destruction of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway in the 1989 earthquake. Citizens voted to remove the freeway entirely despite the apocalyptic warnings of traffic engineers. Surprisingly, a recent British study found that downtown road removals tend to boost local economies, while new roads lead to higher urban unemployment. So much for road-building as a way to spur the economy.
Of course, this shouldn't be surprising at all, it's simple economics. While there is likely to be some upper threshold to how many car trips the citizens of an area will reasonably make, however, I suspect it's high enough that it would be impractical to build and maintain enough road infrastructure to reach that plateau.
Just so you know, with all the preview releases the extension people have generally had time to get ready for the release.
I'm using Web developer, Firebug and NoScript with no problems so far in FF4. I don't use gestures, though.
I'm guessing you don't know that IE9 was officially released last week.
So they're comparing the released version of IE9 to the released version of FF4.
What if the apps use GPS and plays some police-themed sound (maybe music) when you're approaching a checkpoint? If they announce the checkpoint's location then all you need to do is have the phone on and be able to understand what you're hearing.
I think the end result will be that Apple will likely pull the apps from the store. They are going to have a very difficult time arguing for applications that specifically aid and abet drunk drivers. Particularly if they apps are marketed as a way to avoid getting a ticket when you're driving drunk, it looks bad, and Apple doesn't want to look bad.
As I said, that is the simplest argument against building new roads. Road demand may be inelastic In the short term, however, in the medium and long terms it is more elastic. People will, in fact, modify their behavior when they have to actually pay the price for that behavior. Traffic congestion tends to be one of the major reasons for people choosing to use mass transit and commute times tend to be a major factor in where people choose to live.
Also, generalizing the actions of one person you know to everyone you think you disagree with is unhealthy and unproductive.
Was it greed or corporations that caused 10M dead of hunger in Russia?
Actually, it probably was. If I remember correctly, the massive starvation in Russia was a result of greed and pseudo-science.
Was it greed or corporations that turned Zimbabwe from the breadbasket it was into a corrupt armpit of a failed state
Oh there's absolutely greed to blame there.
You seem to have forgotten that greed and tyranny are not mutually exclusive. Violent utopian cults and broken economies are not the only causes of mass suffering.
Please remember that most people reporting something have something to gain. You, in other words, the commodity that they sell to advertisers. That's why most news stories tend towards the maudlin or sensational. It's how they get most people to watch the ads.
The point being made is that the prediction has been made many times, since at least the 19th century. The rate of population increase is decreasing, this means that if trends continue as they are and we don't run out of food and water before 2050, we should be ok.
Of course, we may actually soon facing falling crop yields due to two entwined factors:
I'm not sure how well we're going to adapt to those two challenges. Of course, recent history suggests it will not be very well at all, especially since we have vested interests who are lobbying hard on the side of doing nothing at all about it in the near future, just in case it might cut into their profits.
Just wanted to point out the simplest argument against building new roads:
1) If you reduce the cost of using roads (congestion)
then
2) You increase usage of the roads
It's a simple argument and that part is correct. However, the problem comes from understanding the difference between traffic volume and traffic congestion. They're not the same and may be used incorrectly or interchangeably by people who don't understand the issue very well. Increasing road surface area tends to increase traffic volume and reduce traffic congestion. I expect you get a permanent reduction in congestion and a permanent increase in volume barring other factors just from building the road and people adjusting their behavior to the new situation. Thus saying new roads either increase or decreases traffic is wrong because it does both.
Now, there are other measures that do reduce both congestion and volume, taxes and tolls are probably the chief among them, and when combined with public transit may work well to reduce both congestion and volume, but that's a different discussion.
I agree with most of what you wrote with one big exception.
[A]bstinence is at least a free way to do something which may explain why it was first used (beside religious considerations).
Abstinence only education is pretty much always a religiously motivated program. The reason it's abstinence only is because some religious leader decided that if you tell the youngsters about birth control they'll figure out a way to have sex without children. They don't really consider unwanted pregnancies to be a real problem, they see that as the just consequence of unwanted sex. That's why the fact that abstinence only programs are massive failures in every measurable way seems to have absolutely no effect on many of the people who support them.
As a note, according to the studies, children exposed to abstinence only education have sex earlier, have more sexual partners, have sex more often, have more pregnancies, have more abortions, and have more sexually transmitted diseases than children who received uncensored sex education.
I think you are suffering from a bizarre myopia or are being disingenuous.
While Wahl did delete some emails, as far as I can tell his action was isolated, certainly the people he corresponded with did not delete them. It was not an "acknowledged action carried out by a number of people" but rather the action of one man.
When you are working with proxies, you already know they're not measuring the same thing, that's why they're called proxies. The question is always whether the flaws in the proxy outweigh it's usefulness. In a perfect world, you'd have perfect measurements, we don't live in a perfect world. I suggest you get used to the idea that we may have to rely on less than perfect information and instruments.
Until people stop researching an area there is always data that hasn't been released yet. The question is whether that data is significant or not. Unverified research is unverified research, eventually the data will be released and verified, on alternate research based on public research will corroborate or contradict the research.
I suspect they're not raising their voices in anger because they've got better things to do, like scientific research. In any case, there's more than enough people who are angry already. Most likely they understand that scientists are not perfect, they're not prophets or paragons of virtue and don't claim to be. They're just people who are looking for the answers to their questions. They understand that they are not perfect and getting angry over that, while occasionally cathartic, is mostly a waste of time.
It also seems Mr. Mann and his friends weren't averse to blacklisting scientists who disputed some of their contentions, or journals that published their work. "I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal," goes one email, apparently written by Mr. Mann to several recipients in March 2003. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."
You've made one glaring error. This is a perfectly reasonable response to a journal which has begun publishing pseudo-scientific nonsense. According to my research into this issue, they were right. One of the editors at Climate Research was approving articles that agreed with his climate change denial agenda even when they failed peer review. The article which triggered this message went 0 for 3 in peer review. All three reviewers separately recommended that it not be published and the editor in question approved it for publication anyway.
The journal had to change it's editorial policy to prevent abuse of this sort afterwards because two thirds of the editorial board, including the chief editor resigned over the actions of this rogue editor (at the time the chief editor was not allowed to overrule individual editors). It wasn't until after the editor in question had been removed by the owners and the rest of the editorial staff had returned that they discovered that the articles the editor claimed had passed peer review, had not. He had been deliberately misleading his coworkers to advance his political agenda.
So, when a supposedly peer reviewed journal starts publish articles which have failed peer review, I think "we have to stop considering [it] as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal" and it only makes sense to "encourage our colleagues" not to associate with the disgraced journal.
I haven't watched "Expelled", but I've heard that all the "discrimination" presented in the documentary had much simpler explanations, most if not all of the subjects failed to perform their regular duties and were terminated for both failure to perform the duties of the jobs and failure to improve on that performance after receiving several warnings.
For example, I remember, from when I looked into shortly after it was released, that one of the subjects claimed he was fired for writing a book about creationism, which was partially true. He was fired for writing a book about creationism during work hours when he was supposed to conducting unrelated research. Essentially he spent two years committing "time theft" and was completely surprised when he was fired for not doing his job.
Sadly, that documentary suffered from a severe confirmation bias and a persecution complex.
Is it Ironic that you can't see how the second paragraph lumps you in with the people in the first paragraph?
As far I understand everything you complain about in the second paragraph are imaginary problems that don't actually exist:
Science hasn't broken faith with you. You've broken faith with it. You attack it based on rumors and innuendo.
You're falling into the same trap as the "morons" you dislike. You believe ridiculous fairy tales because that's what you want to believe, you either refuse to look at or consider the evidence that contradicts what you believe and you repeat lies to justify your erroneous conclusions.
I know those are right wing talking points, but they've been debunked over and over. There was no danger of a "terrorist" invasion on American soil from Iraq. All available evidence indicates that the invasion of Iraq weakened the United States and strengthened it's enemies. Most, maybe even all of the people that the U.S. is fighting now in Afghanistan and Iraq posed no danger to the United States before the invasions. Invading Afghanistan was justifiable because they were helping to train and arm terrorists, mostly for operations in the middle east, but still justifiable. Iraq on the other hand was a Bush vanity invasion and it has cost the U.S. severely.
Radicalizing those who were ripe for radicalization is actually a bad thing, because that radicalization tends to ripen other people. What you end up with is a terrorist assembly line where you generate a constant stream of people who hate America for very good reasons like "they invaded my country", "they burned my fields", "they destroyed my house", "they killed my friends", and "they killed my family".
I think you have a simplistic view of the world that creates enemies where there used to be none. Most of the people responsible for 9/11 are living in relative safety in Pakistan and they are no doubt trying to plan more attacks like 9/11 and Madrid and laughing at idiots like you believe in fighting the wrong wars in the wrong countries.
Part of the reason the U.S. hasn't taken a stronger leadership role in Libya is to avoid creating a larger backlash against American intervention in the Middle East. After the invasion of Iraq is entirely possible for the U.S. to actually create support for Qaddafi merely by stridently opposing him, then there's the massive debt and deficit legacy of the Bush years. I would say on the whole, that the invasion of Iraq has done more harm than good, which is to be expected of an invasion where all the justifications have turned out be nothing more than lies and wishful thinking.
You've written a lot of truly stupid things in this thread.
1) Copyright has no weight
2) Copyright infringement is theft
3) 90% of the world is third
4) Most people think stealing is a sacrament
5) No one is allowed to say something you've already said
It's obvious that you are suffering under a severe case of the Dunning Kruger effect. I suggest you educate yourself on the actual issues surrounding copyright and the world before you embarrass yourself further. Many of the "facts" that you believe are blatantly false, and repeating them in public makes you look ridiculous.
I think we are pretty much in agreement. I remember an older article where the optimal length of a copyright term was determined mathematically. The result? 14 years.
As surprising as this may seem, I agree with your distinction between physical and intellectual property. However, that doesn't impact my statement that property does not exist without government. Without government there can be no recognition that you own anything, you merely control something until someone stronger, sneakier, or with better aim takes it away from you or your rapidly cooling corpse. Once you have some agreement on who owns what, you have both a society and a government.
As far as Somalia goes, warlords are, by definition, a primitive form of government sometimes referred to as despotism. Government is required for capitalism, but it is not sufficient by itself.
It certainly is. A property deed is the exclusive right to use a section of land granted by the government.
The secret is that without government there is no capital.