So are you? The FUD with this issue is great and it attracts politicians who are angling for power and votes. That much should raise questions.
Everything attracts politicians. That shouldn't be a surprise, it's literally a politician's job to angle for power and votes. After all, a politician who loses an election isn't a politician, he's just an unemployed loudmouth.
You mean like maybe north of Canada or in the Bering Sea where there is so much ice the last few years that boats can't follow their normal schedules and are shut down for months at a time because of the ice? But I never see an alarming article about MORE ice. Always less.
That's because less than "a lot" can still be "a lot". Let's take for example, the difference between now and the 1940s, in 1940s it took 4 years to circumnavigate North America, including 3 years just for the Northwest passage, now it takes less than half a year. Being shut down for just months is a huge improvement over being shut down for years.
You can not improve an economy by sucking even more resources out of the productive sector for the politicians to lavish on their cronies.
Actually, you can. Because surprise, surprise, the "politicians" give it to their "cronies" who give it back to the "productive sector". Spending the money three times increases the total of economic activity more than spending it once. It is pretty crazy, especially if you're a libertarian who believes the government is an evil black hole where money goes to die. The biggest problem for economy isn't who takes or gives the money, it's who holds on to it. If it's not moving, it doesn't get counted.
Furthermore, higher taxes can actually subsidize employment. It's counter-intuitive, I know, but for corporations employees are an expense that reduces profit. Since taxes are only applied to profit, hiring more employees is effectively cheaper for the owners when taxes are high (if they would lose 30% of the profit to taxes, they're only effectively paying 70% of the price of an additional employee out of the profit they would keep, if it were 50%, they'd only be effectively paying half the cost for another employee*). Since capital gains are taxed at a lower rate, when taxes are higher it can be more effective to invest profits into growing the business.
* numbers for example purposes only, I'm not avocating for any particular tax rate here.
The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report concedes for the first time that global temperatures have not risen since 1998, despite a 7 percent rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
No, actually it doesn't, it actually says the trend over the last 15 years is lower than the overall trend because of the chosen start and end dates:
Due to natural variability, trends based on short records are very sensitive to
the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends. As one example, the rate of warming
over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to 0.15] C per decade), which begins with a strong El Niño, is smaller
than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951–2012; 0.12 [0.08 to 0.14] C per decade)
If man-made global warming is your religion, it looks like settled science despite the actual results.
Very convenient, anyone who disagrees with you is a religious zealot. However, any time that you are allying with religious leaders and calling scientists zealots, you should really take that as a clue that you need to carefully examine your beliefs.
97% of the scientists who study climate change think it's happening and it's man-made, as does 97% of the published research on the topic. That leaves a mere 3% to split between the undecided and those who think it's either not happening or not man-made. If it weren't actually happening there should be a lot more research showing negative results.
And who knows how you get China to play by the same rules as everyone else.
They're called Tariffs. Make it cheaper to make stuff right in your own country than to make them the wrong way in someone else's country and it's a win-win situation.
It is pretty Randian: all the people who believe as I do are pure angels who earn a profit and their greed is a holy thing to be worshipped, all the people who do not believe as I do are devils who steal their profits from the holy people, and their greed is an evil, malignant, thing which should be destroyed.
Do you mean that making a graph using a temperature proxy measurement, tree rings, then switching to recorded temperatures only at the point they diverge rapidly, without mentioning this change, is proper?
Actually, it was mentioned in the notes immediately below the graph in the IPCC report where that was done.
Is it also proper to use one specific type of tree as the basis of the graph, if that one type is the least likely to show historic temperature changes?
Well according to the paper in question, they used 12 proxies, of which 9 were various tree-based proxies and 3 are ice-core based proxies.
Wouldn't it be better to use results from trees that more accurately show historic temperature changes?
As previously noted, 9 different tree proxies were used and they were likely the best available proxies at the time. It's not like we all have 2000 year old trees lying around in our backyards.
This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
You might want to read this explanation of the events your mention. To make a long story short, McIntyre and McKitrick made critical mistakes that exaggerated their findings (which were published in a social science journal that doesn't do peer review). Subsequent hockey stick graphs have been generated using the same data with different methods, different data with the same methods and different data with different methods.
I would guess that the source is an anti-vaccination site.
I found this dissection of his first quote, when I searched for "Dr. Bernard Greenberg". Basically, the good doctor appears to have been most concerned with how the media was overstating the effectiveness of the vaccine.
The other two quotes may be real as well, but both come from anti-vaccination campaigns, so while the quotes may be real, they are less likely to be truthful.
Sure when you see the list of 70 articles, it looks compelling. However, a little thought should tell you that's it's pretty thin evidence for his claims. If you average it out, it's a mere 7 articles a year spread across the entire English speaking world. That not terribly surprising that some articles would be written about it, given the combination of some unusually cold weather and the not-yet-settled debate in the climate science about whether the long-term natural cooling trend (plus aerosols) or shorter-term anthropogenic warming trend would be the primary driver for climate change in the near future.
Of course, as I often find when I look at the Watt's Up blog, the evidence only passes a friendly cursory review. Several of those 70 articles are repostings of the same article in different newpapers, and even more troubling is that some of the articles in that list aren't even about global cooling. For instance, they list a 1977 Times cover story called The Big Freeze. Apparently, it's about a cold and snowy winter, not a coming ice age.
Of course, this is not unexpected. Anthony Watts always seems to hold people who disagree with him to a much higher standard than those he agrees with. Just look at his treatment of Mueller who was an unquestionable god of climate science right up until he tried to tell Anthony Watts something he didn't want to hear, then suddenly he was a turn coat who sold out.
Think about it. Could you predict the sentiments of every human on the planet (over 4 billion) by asking the last 500 people born?
I think you need to think about this more. You are arguing that if I want to find out what people think about an issue now, let's say slavery, I should use a sample set that is spread across the entire lifetime of humanity. Is the opinion of someone who died 6000 years ago relevant to the modern view of slavery? Similarly, why would we care about the earth's climate 4 billion years ago, when determining if recent changes are man-made or not?
When you are asked to peer review an article do you take it on faith that the author is correct, or do you check his work to see if he made any mistakes?
The claim isn't that you're perfect or all knowing, it's that you don't blindly trust your fellow scientists and instead subject their claims to scrutiny, especially when they are within your field of expertise.
(when it has been going back down for the last 15 years straight).
Because it hasn't "been going down for the last 15 years straight"?. The decade from 2000-2009 was warmer than any previous decade on record, 10 out of the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998 (inclusive). Globally 2005 and 2010 were actually warmer than 1998. Lastly starting with an abnormal year (like 1998 which had an exceptionally strong El Nino effect) and not accounting for it's abnormality is either foolish bungling, or a deliberate attempt to deceive and manipulate others.
This is really basic stuff, if you don't know it, you're probably not knowledgeable enough to provide meaningful contributions to this discussion.
What we need is to account for the fact that the brain believing to have received a dose of medication has some effect.
Actually, there's no measurable effect from "the brain believing". Placebos have no effect on any actual measurable health outcomes, they only have an effect on self-reported health outcomes. People say they feel better. People say their hangnail is cured. People say that they can feel that their cancer is in remission. However, when the doctors take the actual measurements, there is no measurable difference between the control group (who got nothing) and the placebo group, no matter how much the placebo group claims they are feeling better and no matter how much the control groups claims they are feeling worse.
Imagine the sstate's smoking regulation being challenged by big tobacco and no the governor decides not to defend it. Imagine the off shord drilling ban having the same circumstances. They win by default and the law is overturned even if everyone in the state unanimousely voted for it.
The governor who did that likely wouldn't get re-elected if the law was important and popular. Would you care to provide a reason why free and fair elections are not a sufficent check against that behaviour?
In most cases it would dependent on the circumstances and whether the donation could be seen as compromising the figurehead's ability to lead. For example, the CEO of Chik-Fil-A will, most likely, be perfectly able to contribute to campaign against pornography, against religious freedom for non-Christians and against abortion without compromising his ability to lead, however, social conservatives would likely force him out for taking a stand on the opposite side of those issues (if they could, of course, I'm not sure how much ownership the CEO has). In this case, Eich donated money to a campaign whose sole purpose was to strip some people (including a number of the people working for him) of their rights, and it temporarily succeeded. That has to create some bad blood between him and the affected employees and that type of antagonism is not something to be taken lightly. Having done so and then having refused to recant his position, Eich had compromised his ability to lead and either they were going to go or he was going to go.
As I said, if he had been able to apologise and admit he had done something wrong, he likely would have been able to maintain the position, but if you can't publicly acknowledge that treating some of your co-workers as people deserving of fewer rights than yourself was a mistake, you aren't going to be able to lead them.
It wasn't just his political activism from 5 years ago that was the problem. If he had disavowed that behaviour, apologized to his employees and make an act on contrition (such as donating a significant amount of money to a pro-gay marriage organization or campaign) they could have buried the hatchet. However, apparently he still does not believe that his gay employees should be fully equal to the heterosexual ones. Effectively, he chose to step down rather than admit he was wrong.
Besides, if there really is supposed to be a "wall of separation" between church and state, why do we have a secular government recognizing a primarily religious ceremony? Not to mention that's the reason why most people oppose it.
You have it backwards, it's a religious ceremony around the secular activity of signing your marriage certificate. The religious ceremony has no legal standing if you don't sign the government's paper. Next you'll be telling us that only proper Christians should be allowed be married and that athiests, agnostics and those who worship the wrong god should also be excluded from marraige.
There was a Constitutional amendment passed in the state that banned gay marriage, but somehow the courts decided that the amendment was unconstitutional!
This is very simple, the amendment conflicted with a part of the constitution that wasn't amended, thus the amendment was determined to be improper and tossed out. It's actually the job of the courts to do that type of thing, though it would happen less often if politicans wrote fewer stupid laws.
Actually, I thought he was referring to the right-wingers who use the threat of a liberal bogeymen bringing back the "fairness doctrine" to cudgel you into voting for them.
As CTO he was in charge of making technology decisions, as CEO he's in charge of making decisions that affect the gay employees he considers to be less worthy than himself.
I thought that was why we allowed them to wear the shirts in the first place without kicking up a huge fuss... It's a convenient self-applied warning label.
Brendan Eich made a personal comment that was not representative of the views of the entire office at Mozilla.
Actually, he donated money to a campaign to strip some of his employees of the rights they had been granted by the state of California. That campaign temporarily succeed, those employees have a really good reason to oppose him. Additionally, he was put in a position where his personal views would likely be material to his performance of the office because he would be making the decision on whether his gay and lesbian employees would be treated the same as his straight employees and he is on record as opposing that equality. He has claimed he would not act on that belief in his position, instead of renouncing the view entirely so many people are (rightfully) skeptical that he would keep his personal prejudices separate from his professional decisions.
It is important to note that we did not hear any complaints about his prejudice until he was put in a position where his prejudice could materially affect the lives of his fellow Mozilla empoyees. It seems like many of the Mozilla employees were concerned not that he was a bigot but that we has a bigot who was put in a position to act on his bigotry (by design or by inconsideration).
Would it have been morally right if Brendan Eich stated in his departure speech that the 'net in general, as well as all non-LGBT persons should boycott OKCupid as a dating site due to their anti-free speech and pro-gay agenda?
Morally right? No, but that's because Eich's bigotry is morally wrong and the claim that OKCupid is anti-free speech would be a lie. He does, however, have the right to make such statements.
If I had my way instead of recognizing same-sex marriages I would rather the government exit completely out of the marriage business altogether and no longer ask it on tax forms, etc...
I keep seeing people say that the government should get out of the marriage business, but it seems like Religions should get out of the marriage business. Religions should be in the ceremony business, not the marriage business. Which is good because that's how things generally are. Too many people don't seem to understand that the religious ceremony is intended to make the signing of a piece of paper in front of two witnesses feel special. However, the marriage licence is provided by the state and is the same no matter what religion (if any) you subscribe to. That's not a bad thing, but too many people are making the mistake of confusing the ceremony with the actual marriage. For simplicity's sake being married in front of god conveys no legal status at all until you sign the government provided piece of paper.
The reason the government is involved and should remain so, is because there are significant and important legal implications to marriage. Beyond tax implications, there are legal issues such as inheretance (particularly important if the home is not in name of both partners), end-of-life care, hospital visitations, prison access, health benefit access, and the list goes on and on. Adn that's before we get to any provisions that are supposed to provide assitance to those raising children.
It seems strange to me that someone unmarried and living together is treated differently than someone who is married and living together or is treated differently than a brother and a sister who are living together.
Actually, people who are unmarried and living together may be treated the same as someone who is married and living together (it's called common-law), though I doubt you could claim a common law status with your brother or sister, but that's because you are assumed to not be in stable long term exclusive relationship.
In which case the board made a decision that his views were counter-productive to the organization and they did what they had to. I'd prefer to think that he had the wisdom to see that his political history was damaging to the foundation, that he was foolish enough to require the board to force him out. Of course, there were other options he could have engaged in, he could have apologized, recanted his views and made a gesture of reconciliation (like publicly donating money to a pro-gay-marriage campaign). However, while I haven't been following the story too closely, it appears he tried to take the "I won't let my prejudices influence how I deal with my should-be-less-than-equal underlings" approach, which he couldn't pull off.
Slashdot Mirror
So are you? The FUD with this issue is great and it attracts politicians who are angling for power and votes. That much should raise questions.
Everything attracts politicians. That shouldn't be a surprise, it's literally a politician's job to angle for power and votes. After all, a politician who loses an election isn't a politician, he's just an unemployed loudmouth.
You mean like maybe north of Canada or in the Bering Sea where there is so much ice the last few years that boats can't follow their normal schedules and are shut down for months at a time because of the ice? But I never see an alarming article about MORE ice. Always less.
That's because less than "a lot" can still be "a lot". Let's take for example, the difference between now and the 1940s, in 1940s it took 4 years to circumnavigate North America, including 3 years just for the Northwest passage, now it takes less than half a year. Being shut down for just months is a huge improvement over being shut down for years.
You can not improve an economy by sucking even more resources out of the productive sector for the politicians to lavish on their cronies.
Actually, you can. Because surprise, surprise, the "politicians" give it to their "cronies" who give it back to the "productive sector". Spending the money three times increases the total of economic activity more than spending it once. It is pretty crazy, especially if you're a libertarian who believes the government is an evil black hole where money goes to die. The biggest problem for economy isn't who takes or gives the money, it's who holds on to it. If it's not moving, it doesn't get counted.
Furthermore, higher taxes can actually subsidize employment. It's counter-intuitive, I know, but for corporations employees are an expense that reduces profit. Since taxes are only applied to profit, hiring more employees is effectively cheaper for the owners when taxes are high (if they would lose 30% of the profit to taxes, they're only effectively paying 70% of the price of an additional employee out of the profit they would keep, if it were 50%, they'd only be effectively paying half the cost for another employee*). Since capital gains are taxed at a lower rate, when taxes are higher it can be more effective to invest profits into growing the business.
* numbers for example purposes only, I'm not avocating for any particular tax rate here.
Wine grape grew in England back then.
They grow there now too.
The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report concedes for the first time that global temperatures have not risen since 1998, despite a 7 percent rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
No, actually it doesn't, it actually says the trend over the last 15 years is lower than the overall trend because of the chosen start and end dates:
If man-made global warming is your religion, it looks like settled science despite the actual results.
Very convenient, anyone who disagrees with you is a religious zealot. However, any time that you are allying with religious leaders and calling scientists zealots, you should really take that as a clue that you need to carefully examine your beliefs.
97% of the scientists who study climate change think it's happening and it's man-made, as does 97% of the published research on the topic. That leaves a mere 3% to split between the undecided and those who think it's either not happening or not man-made. If it weren't actually happening there should be a lot more research showing negative results.
And who knows how you get China to play by the same rules as everyone else.
They're called Tariffs. Make it cheaper to make stuff right in your own country than to make them the wrong way in someone else's country and it's a win-win situation.
It is pretty Randian: all the people who believe as I do are pure angels who earn a profit and their greed is a holy thing to be worshipped, all the people who do not believe as I do are devils who steal their profits from the holy people, and their greed is an evil, malignant, thing which should be destroyed.
Do you mean that making a graph using a temperature proxy measurement, tree rings, then switching to recorded temperatures only at the point they diverge rapidly, without mentioning this change, is proper?
Actually, it was mentioned in the notes immediately below the graph in the IPCC report where that was done.
Is it also proper to use one specific type of tree as the basis of the graph, if that one type is the least likely to show historic temperature changes?
Well according to the paper in question, they used 12 proxies, of which 9 were various tree-based proxies and 3 are ice-core based proxies.
Wouldn't it be better to use results from trees that more accurately show historic temperature changes?
As previously noted, 9 different tree proxies were used and they were likely the best available proxies at the time. It's not like we all have 2000 year old trees lying around in our backyards.
This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
You might want to read this explanation of the events your mention. To make a long story short, McIntyre and McKitrick made critical mistakes that exaggerated their findings (which were published in a social science journal that doesn't do peer review). Subsequent hockey stick graphs have been generated using the same data with different methods, different data with the same methods and different data with different methods.
I would guess that the source is an anti-vaccination site.
I found this dissection of his first quote, when I searched for "Dr. Bernard Greenberg". Basically, the good doctor appears to have been most concerned with how the media was overstating the effectiveness of the vaccine.
The other two quotes may be real as well, but both come from anti-vaccination campaigns, so while the quotes may be real, they are less likely to be truthful.
Sure when you see the list of 70 articles, it looks compelling. However, a little thought should tell you that's it's pretty thin evidence for his claims. If you average it out, it's a mere 7 articles a year spread across the entire English speaking world. That not terribly surprising that some articles would be written about it, given the combination of some unusually cold weather and the not-yet-settled debate in the climate science about whether the long-term natural cooling trend (plus aerosols) or shorter-term anthropogenic warming trend would be the primary driver for climate change in the near future.
Of course, as I often find when I look at the Watt's Up blog, the evidence only passes a friendly cursory review. Several of those 70 articles are repostings of the same article in different newpapers, and even more troubling is that some of the articles in that list aren't even about global cooling. For instance, they list a 1977 Times cover story called The Big Freeze. Apparently, it's about a cold and snowy winter, not a coming ice age.
Of course, this is not unexpected. Anthony Watts always seems to hold people who disagree with him to a much higher standard than those he agrees with. Just look at his treatment of Mueller who was an unquestionable god of climate science right up until he tried to tell Anthony Watts something he didn't want to hear, then suddenly he was a turn coat who sold out.
Think about it. Could you predict the sentiments of every human on the planet (over 4 billion) by asking the last 500 people born?
I think you need to think about this more. You are arguing that if I want to find out what people think about an issue now, let's say slavery, I should use a sample set that is spread across the entire lifetime of humanity. Is the opinion of someone who died 6000 years ago relevant to the modern view of slavery? Similarly, why would we care about the earth's climate 4 billion years ago, when determining if recent changes are man-made or not?
When you are asked to peer review an article do you take it on faith that the author is correct, or do you check his work to see if he made any mistakes?
The claim isn't that you're perfect or all knowing, it's that you don't blindly trust your fellow scientists and instead subject their claims to scrutiny, especially when they are within your field of expertise.
I'll keep denying until somebody can explain to me why going in and out of ice ages wasn't manmade
Milankovitch cycles
but now we should freak out and spend billions over 1 or 2 degrees of "manmade" "climate change" over the last hundred years
Food security
(when it has been going back down for the last 15 years straight).
Because it hasn't "been going down for the last 15 years straight"?. The decade from 2000-2009 was warmer than any previous decade on record, 10 out of the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998 (inclusive). Globally 2005 and 2010 were actually warmer than 1998. Lastly starting with an abnormal year (like 1998 which had an exceptionally strong El Nino effect) and not accounting for it's abnormality is either foolish bungling, or a deliberate attempt to deceive and manipulate others.
This is really basic stuff, if you don't know it, you're probably not knowledgeable enough to provide meaningful contributions to this discussion.
Unfotunatetly, we see the same kind of wilful blindness is other fields too.
What we need is to account for the fact that the brain believing to have received a dose of medication has some effect.
Actually, there's no measurable effect from "the brain believing". Placebos have no effect on any actual measurable health outcomes, they only have an effect on self-reported health outcomes. People say they feel better. People say their hangnail is cured. People say that they can feel that their cancer is in remission. However, when the doctors take the actual measurements, there is no measurable difference between the control group (who got nothing) and the placebo group, no matter how much the placebo group claims they are feeling better and no matter how much the control groups claims they are feeling worse.
Imagine the sstate's smoking regulation being challenged by big tobacco and no the governor decides not to defend it. Imagine the off shord drilling ban having the same circumstances. They win by default and the law is overturned even if everyone in the state unanimousely voted for it.
The governor who did that likely wouldn't get re-elected if the law was important and popular. Would you care to provide a reason why free and fair elections are not a sufficent check against that behaviour?
In most cases it would dependent on the circumstances and whether the donation could be seen as compromising the figurehead's ability to lead. For example, the CEO of Chik-Fil-A will, most likely, be perfectly able to contribute to campaign against pornography, against religious freedom for non-Christians and against abortion without compromising his ability to lead, however, social conservatives would likely force him out for taking a stand on the opposite side of those issues (if they could, of course, I'm not sure how much ownership the CEO has). In this case, Eich donated money to a campaign whose sole purpose was to strip some people (including a number of the people working for him) of their rights, and it temporarily succeeded. That has to create some bad blood between him and the affected employees and that type of antagonism is not something to be taken lightly. Having done so and then having refused to recant his position, Eich had compromised his ability to lead and either they were going to go or he was going to go.
As I said, if he had been able to apologise and admit he had done something wrong, he likely would have been able to maintain the position, but if you can't publicly acknowledge that treating some of your co-workers as people deserving of fewer rights than yourself was a mistake, you aren't going to be able to lead them.
It wasn't just his political activism from 5 years ago that was the problem. If he had disavowed that behaviour, apologized to his employees and make an act on contrition (such as donating a significant amount of money to a pro-gay marriage organization or campaign) they could have buried the hatchet. However, apparently he still does not believe that his gay employees should be fully equal to the heterosexual ones. Effectively, he chose to step down rather than admit he was wrong.
Besides, if there really is supposed to be a "wall of separation" between church and state, why do we have a secular government recognizing a primarily religious ceremony? Not to mention that's the reason why most people oppose it.
You have it backwards, it's a religious ceremony around the secular activity of signing your marriage certificate. The religious ceremony has no legal standing if you don't sign the government's paper. Next you'll be telling us that only proper Christians should be allowed be married and that athiests, agnostics and those who worship the wrong god should also be excluded from marraige.
There was a Constitutional amendment passed in the state that banned gay marriage, but somehow the courts decided that the amendment was unconstitutional!
This is very simple, the amendment conflicted with a part of the constitution that wasn't amended, thus the amendment was determined to be improper and tossed out. It's actually the job of the courts to do that type of thing, though it would happen less often if politicans wrote fewer stupid laws.
Actually, I thought he was referring to the right-wingers who use the threat of a liberal bogeymen bringing back the "fairness doctrine" to cudgel you into voting for them.
As CTO he was in charge of making technology decisions, as CEO he's in charge of making decisions that affect the gay employees he considers to be less worthy than himself.
See the difference?
I thought that was why we allowed them to wear the shirts in the first place without kicking up a huge fuss... It's a convenient self-applied warning label.
Brendan Eich made a personal comment that was not representative of the views of the entire office at Mozilla.
Actually, he donated money to a campaign to strip some of his employees of the rights they had been granted by the state of California. That campaign temporarily succeed, those employees have a really good reason to oppose him. Additionally, he was put in a position where his personal views would likely be material to his performance of the office because he would be making the decision on whether his gay and lesbian employees would be treated the same as his straight employees and he is on record as opposing that equality. He has claimed he would not act on that belief in his position, instead of renouncing the view entirely so many people are (rightfully) skeptical that he would keep his personal prejudices separate from his professional decisions.
It is important to note that we did not hear any complaints about his prejudice until he was put in a position where his prejudice could materially affect the lives of his fellow Mozilla empoyees. It seems like many of the Mozilla employees were concerned not that he was a bigot but that we has a bigot who was put in a position to act on his bigotry (by design or by inconsideration).
Would it have been morally right if Brendan Eich stated in his departure speech that the 'net in general, as well as all non-LGBT persons should boycott OKCupid as a dating site due to their anti-free speech and pro-gay agenda?
Morally right? No, but that's because Eich's bigotry is morally wrong and the claim that OKCupid is anti-free speech would be a lie. He does, however, have the right to make such statements.
If I had my way instead of recognizing same-sex marriages I would rather the government exit completely out of the marriage business altogether and no longer ask it on tax forms, etc...
I keep seeing people say that the government should get out of the marriage business, but it seems like Religions should get out of the marriage business. Religions should be in the ceremony business, not the marriage business. Which is good because that's how things generally are. Too many people don't seem to understand that the religious ceremony is intended to make the signing of a piece of paper in front of two witnesses feel special. However, the marriage licence is provided by the state and is the same no matter what religion (if any) you subscribe to. That's not a bad thing, but too many people are making the mistake of confusing the ceremony with the actual marriage. For simplicity's sake being married in front of god conveys no legal status at all until you sign the government provided piece of paper.
The reason the government is involved and should remain so, is because there are significant and important legal implications to marriage. Beyond tax implications, there are legal issues such as inheretance (particularly important if the home is not in name of both partners), end-of-life care, hospital visitations, prison access, health benefit access, and the list goes on and on. Adn that's before we get to any provisions that are supposed to provide assitance to those raising children.
It seems strange to me that someone unmarried and living together is treated differently than someone who is married and living together or is treated differently than a brother and a sister who are living together.
Actually, people who are unmarried and living together may be treated the same as someone who is married and living together (it's called common-law), though I doubt you could claim a common law status with your brother or sister, but that's because you are assumed to not be in stable long term exclusive relationship.
In which case the board made a decision that his views were counter-productive to the organization and they did what they had to. I'd prefer to think that he had the wisdom to see that his political history was damaging to the foundation, that he was foolish enough to require the board to force him out. Of course, there were other options he could have engaged in, he could have apologized, recanted his views and made a gesture of reconciliation (like publicly donating money to a pro-gay-marriage campaign). However, while I haven't been following the story too closely, it appears he tried to take the "I won't let my prejudices influence how I deal with my should-be-less-than-equal underlings" approach, which he couldn't pull off.