Oh, you didn't get the memo. Since Bill the Borg disappeared from/. we've moved on from hating on Micro$oft. We're supposed to hate on Canonical now. So whether or not it's their fault, blame anonical.
"Dell announced plans today to offer Ubuntu Linux 7.04 preinstalled on "select consumer products." Dell has at various times offered some overpriced Linux options, but never a "budget" one. Dell currently offers a Ubuntu laptop for developers. [dell.com] It costs $1549 and will ship Real Soon Now. The same machine is available now with Windows [dell.com] for $999.
I'm responding to your comment on a budget Dell desktop that came with Ubuntu preinstalled. I used to have a Ubuntu netbook from Dell until an incident involving the overzealous use of a soldering iron...
Which is why many of the great story tellers (your Homer--or Homers as the case may be--, Sophocles, Shakespeare, etc) were able to start with stories everyone already knew the ending to. They were able to demonstrate their virtuosity through the story telling itself
No kidding. Imagine, for a moment, if the Star Wars prequels had traditional story telling elements (like defined characters, a protagonist, a story line that is cleanly resolved). In a story meant to entertain, predictable and formulaic are preferable to confusing, self-contradictory, and painful.
Saying that something "might be" is not making an assertion. It is speculation, nothing more. They are not the same things.
Indeed they are not. But I drew the conclusion you cite based not upon your "MIGHT BE" line, but upon the assumptions that underlie your whole line of reasoning. As I shall discuss below, whether or not you think you're asserting anything, you are certainly making certain assumptions about the science as the basis of your questioning.
The motives are made questionable by the very act referred to.
You fall into an informal fallacy here by using a unitary "they", as though climate scientists formed some secret cabal who, upon discovering that their warming predictions had proven false, concluded that they must change the language they use to continue to deceive the public.
This fallacy aside, the "act" you speak of never happened anyway. When others have pointed out that the term "climate change" has been in use all along (and have cited evidence to support the same) you've dismissed this as irrelevant. Yet it directly contradicts the notion you seem to have of scientists suddenly deciding to use the term "climate change" since "global warming" no longer fit the evidence.
And I repeat: I am not making assertions about those motives; I am merely questioning them.
But you're questioning them based on two misunderstandings which you refuse to rectify despite evidence offered to you by a great many here. On the one hand, you suspect the motives because you falsely believe scientists just up and changed their terminology to deceive the public. When people have presented you with arguments and evidence to the contrary you have dismissed it as irrelevant. This is just as well since recognizing the relevance of the response would require that you present evidence to the contrary.
On the other hand, you suspect their motives because you believe the data is contrary to the claims of climate change. Were this not the case then you'd be willing at least to entertain the idea that scientists are using the term "climate change" because it fits the data. You find such a response unconvincing, however, because of your assumptions about the facts of the case, namely that there is no evidence support climate change. This is a false assumption and but you have generally avoided anyone questioning it directly by claiming you're making no assertions about the science. Yet without such an assumption about the facts of the case (if you prefer the term assumption to assertion), your case against the motives of scientists would suffer greatly.
I will also note that nobody yet has presented a straightforward answer that convincingly offers a motive while supporting the honesty of their intentions.
Sure they have. Very straightforward responses have been offered including (but certainly not limited to) my own. You refuse to hear them, however, because of the second assumption mentioned above. Until you're willing to challenge your own assumptions about the data the scientists are looking at you'll never be able to be convinced of their honesty.
[...] "convincingly" is subjective, but I stand by it.
Your case here is convincing.
But that was one individual; I know of no other [conservatives]s who proposed the same thing.
You'll often find Republicans using the term "energy exploration" rather than "fossil fuel development" or "oil drilling". It was a very clever individual who came up with this shift in rhetoric which has since become quite popular. You may find it enlightening to research the history of that shift. If you insisted, however, I'd be willing to concede that Frank Luntz is no conservative, at least if that means holding to conservative principles. But, then again, if holding principles were necessary for holding any ideological label then he'd be uniquely unlabeled.
[...] that one reason MIGHT BE that it keeps people interested in the subject even after their predictions have gone so demonstrably awry. After all; it's hard to harp on "Global Warming" when there has been little if any overall warming for a long time. [emphasis mine]
I would hold that you are making assertions about the science, but for the sake of argument I'll set that aside and assume that the above is "just one of the hypothetical examples". Even doing so, however, I'm left with this line:
I'm simply asking about their motives.
Why would you have to ask about their motives? I take "motives" to mean the motive for talking about climate change rather than global warming. Yet when I offered you a motive earlier, namely that this term (which had long been in use) more accurately reflects the data, you rejected it saying that, "It still seems to me that THEY (scientists, followed by the media) are playing self-serving word games." So you clearly reject professionalism, the pursuit of science, or basic honesty as a legitimate response to the question because you think they're self-serving and dishonest. But why would you think that? Because you do not believe that they hold their position in good faith, i.e. you believe there is, "little if any overall warming for a long time." So you must ask their motives. But the belief that they do not hold their position in good faith is built on an assertion about the science, namely that global climate change is incorrect. This is why you're left searching for their motives and this is why the conclusion you come up with is question begging.
The psychology you posit is sound--the prestige of public support for one's views can be a powerful motivator--but notice it's predicated on the assumption that there is no broader warming trend and therefore some other theory must be advanced. This is question begging, i.e. you're discounting their views about climate change because you think they must be incorrect since, after all, climate change (or at least a general warming trend) is false. Put differently, you're discounting witnesses precisely because they disagree with you about the very question at stake.
Because it's an article about a report from the UK Met Office.
No. It's an article that draws conclusions from data released by the Met Office. There was no report. This is once of several facts that the Daily Mail got wrong. See the Met Office's reply to the Mail's article here for more details.
Also, you don't have a problem with all of the alarmist press releases from that same organisation, do you?
Did you not see where I said, "it's worth noting that those who believe in climate change can do much the same to come up with the opposite results"? Of course I have a problem with alarmism or the manipulation of results. But the subject was one particular manipulation. If one had to respond to every distortion and manipulation made in the press when responding to any one, then I suppose even the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.
It seems to me that you only believe the bullshit the Met Office give out if it supports your already strongly held opinion, otherwise it's fine.
It seems to me that you're making baseless assumptions about a total stranger. It happens I don't have a 'strongly held opinion' on the matter--at least on the precise causes of climate change. I do have some tentative conclusions based on the data I've seen, but I'm willing to change my mind. What I certainly am, however, is a conservative and a traditionalist. As such, I recognize the radical changes--social, economic, technological, and environmental--that have occurred since the beginning of the industrial revolution and I am not inclined to assume that they're unmixed blessings. Clearly some good has come, even great good, but as a conservative I will always remain skeptical of those who would claim there is no cost, that nothing is lost, and that every change is 'progress', especially when those who make the claim stand to gain the most. Yet this is the claim of the industrial capitalists and certain segments of the press which defend them when it comes to the environment.
It's absolutely true because I read it in the Daily Mail. Oblig, sorry. In all seriousness though, it's easy to produce results like that by selecting the period carefully. This is why you see periodizations like 16 years. Here's an article that discusses how it's done. For the tl;dr crowd I'll summarize. One technique is to pick a year in the past that was unusually hot and compare it to the moment. If the moment is an average year we may declare that the earth is cooler now than however many years ago. But that little trick only works with the most credulous crowd. The article offers a couple more cherry picking techniques, but this should offer an idea of what it's talking about:
All of the false claims take advantage of one fundamental truth about the average temperature of our planet: it varies a little, naturally, from year to year. Some years are a bit warmer than average and some are a bit colder than average because of El Niños, La Niñas, cloud variability, volcanic activity, ocean conditions, and just the natural pulsing of our planetary systems. When you filter these out, the human-caused warming signal is clear. But natural variability makes it possible for scurrilous deceivers to do a classic “no-no” in science: to cherry-pick data to support their claims. They pick particular years or groups of years; they pick particular subsets of data. But when you look at all the data, or when you look at long-term trends, the only possible conclusion is that the Earth is warming – precisely the conclusion the scientific community has reached based on observations and fundamental physics.
Of course, it's worth noting that those who believe in climate change can do much the same to come up with the opposite results. Regardless, you'll notice that the Daily Mail article gives you a chart that "proves" they're right, but neither offers you the Met Office's data nor gives you a link to the same. The good news is that it isn't hard to go to the Met Office's website and look at the data yourself. I think you'll find it tells a different story than the DM.
I doubt that very much. Your argument sounds nice but logically it makes no sense. The "conservatives" would have wanted to make it sound MORE scary, not less.
Since largely speaking it was the liberals, not the conservatives, who were pushing the "global warming" agenda, it would only make sense that THEY were behind the change to make it "less scary" to the public.
Accepting for the sake of argument the common caricature of 'conservative' and 'liberal', I'm afraid the situation is quite the reverse. The common notion of a conservative in conversations like this is one who is pro-business and pro-fossil fuels. Such a one recognizes the many material benefits and the great we have gained through our fossil-fueled economy. He concludes, therefore, that undermining that fossil-fueled economy would undermine the economy and its concomitant benefits. If scientists come out and say that this fossil fueled economy directly increases CO2 to dangerous levels, the conservatives will want to minimize the scope of the threat in the public consciousness inasmuch as they fear the loss of the economy more than warnings of the scientists.
The common notion of a liberal in like context is one who is pro-regulation and pro-environment. Such a one believes rising CO2 levels a threat to the environment and would like to further regulate its emissions. Increasing public fear of the greenhouse effect (using more frightening terms like climate change) will increase the chances that the public will favor more regulation, even if that means paying more for energy. What would it profit a man, after all, to gain the whole world's wealth but to lose the world he can live in due to environmental catastrophe? So it really is quite the opposite of what you say. Such conservatives would desire a more subdued term, like climate change, while such liberals would prefer something more alarming.
All that being said, those are just the caricatures of 'conservative' and 'liberal' that act as tropes in our political discourse. The reality of both is rather more complicated. I count myself a conservative, for example, but one who in addition political, religious, and social traditions also thinks the environment something of conservation. (In this, I agree with the likes of Wendell Berry, inter al.)
Incidentally, you complain above about being marked troll and I think it a fair complaint. For what it's worth, I disagree with your position but I did not take you as trolling. I haven't a problem with people up-modding comments they agree with but I do not care for disagreement being expressed with down-mods--that's what replies are for. "Troll" mods should be saved for actual trolls; there are enough to choose from.
I'm only glad that the fear of nuclear holocaust has hitherto prevented the weapons' use (with two notable and regrettable exceptions). But the importance of this fear (indeed, also for the purposes you mention) does not negate the reality of the threat.
"Climate change" is just a workaday term that's been around for some time to describe, well, exactly what it sounds like it describes. And GP is quite right that it's been in use for some time. A simple search of the NY Times archives and I found articles from the 1930's discussing the relationship between climate change and forest evolution.
It is certainly true that the term "climate change" has seen increasing use of late. As the OED says, "The Oxford English Corpus data from the year 2009 contains twice as many examples of climate change as of global warming." But it would be a mistake to think this is a consequence of activism on the part of "greenies" (whoever they might be), as though they had conjured the term themselves for nefarious purposes. You can readily find scientific articles dating well into the past which employ "climate change" if you only search using an academic database. (Checking the data rather than relying on our faulty memories would be more scientific anyway.) The change in language, therefore, reflects more on an increasing public awareness of the term rather than any politically motivated agenda on the scientists' part.
Excoriate the media establishment all you want. They're an easy mark since they make a living from sensationalism. But I'm curious how you think this is a self-serving word game for the scientists (especially given that it the term is a more accurate descriptor of the data). What, exactly, do you think they're getting out of it? Nota bene: by 'they' I mean the vast majority of scientist who concur about the reality of climate change, not the very few who make a living as pet scientists for the media. How, exactly, do you think the average climate scientist benefits?
Because climate change is a more accurate descriptor. The record shows that increased CO2 levels accompany periods of instability (e.g. rapid growth and reduction in glacier size) even if the trend tends toward warming. While the overall trend will be toward warming such warming will not be evenly distributed over time or space.
I know they aren't the only animals who have fake "not food" markings.
Suburban human teenagers have been known to imitate the aggressive display and dress of alpha male gangsters from the city. This is done chiefly to avoid predation or being asked to take out the trash.
If my guess is right about their reason, I couldn't agree more with your objection. But this is the reason you sometimes find police "safety" inspections in poor neighborhoods. If you let them in to check and make sure everything is okay in your house then they can argue you've consented to a search. Of course, their standards for consent are sometimes comparable to those of an unscrupulous drunken frat boy, but this is why the wise deny consent to the police in so many words from the beginning.
Once you've voluntarily handed the valet the means of getting into the trunk (i.e. the keys), I think it likely they'd argue you cannot even expect privacy there.
Mind you, I don't think people surrender their reasonable expectation of privacy by using a valet. It would be different if uniformed TSA agents were acting as valets and you handed them your keys, but that is not the case here. This is more like living in an apartment building and having the maintenance staff, who came in to fix a leaky toilet, turn around and search your house for marijuana under police orders.
We found out it happened to her because she valet parked her car. Those are the only cars that get inspected. So if security feels it is necessary to search some cars in the name of safety, why not search all of them?
They'd probably like to be able to search any car that comes to the airport. Even so, I imagine they restrict searches to valet parked cars for two reasons: 1) they've the keys in hand and so it's easy; 2) more importantly, some lawyer probably told them that they could make the case in court that valet parked cars have no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Pandora is a Greek compound meaning all gifts (pan, as in pantheon--all the gods + dora, pl., as in Theodore--a gift of God). Just an FYI. I'd give the actual Greek but, alas, unicode support on/. does not have the greatest reputation. I see the term thrown about in literature sometimes, and I the think intent can be missed because folks only know the story from Hesiod. I suspect this is what Cameron had in mind when he thus christened the planetary home of his Lakota, er, Powhatan's Algonquin, ah... no, Na'vi, yeah that's what he called the sympathetic characters in his highly original film.
Ah, I think I see the source of your objection somewhat better now. You're reading into my statements a moral judgement I am not making. I never said anything about anyone being "shitty". I said that the were acting, at least in part, in their own interests. That's not being "shitty"; it's being human. Perhaps it will help if I explain it this way: experience teaching in my university has left me with an appreciation of engineering students and students from one of the local Catholic high schools (one with higher academic standards). I have a job to do. I'm supposed to teach these students and I go to great efforts to design a curriculum that will accomplish this end. This curriculum includes assignments, often assignments that require a degree of work many of the students had not encountered before. The aforementioned students are often (but not always) more diligent than average. This means they complete the assignments I give them and therefore learn more quickly the principles I'm trying to communicate. Now, on the one hand I'm happy to see students learning for their own sake (if I were not, I would not teach but I would go into admin or some such as it pays better). But it is also true that I would speak well of the education of these students because they've learned to complete assignments and because they make my job easier (or even possible). Put another way, it is in my own interests that they be better educated and this shapes my judgement of their education. For anyone in my or a similar position to deny this factor would be dishonest or at least would indicate a lack of self-reflection. For one to fail to see this factor at work in others--especially when those others are praising the way education correlates with diligent work in their subordinates--would be short-sighted. Again, this doesn't make such people "shitty"; it only makes them human.
The guy deliberately pulled a quote that was immediate followed by the statement that educated people are the least likely to put up with bullshit. As direct a contradiction of his thesis as it gets.
The contradiction isn't there. Again, look at the contrast in the whole passage. It's between the ignorant, who won't do what you tell them to, and the educated, who not only will do what you ask them but will convince their coworkers to do likewise. Sure price of securing such acquiescence is to discuss with them the reasonableness of your demands. The claim about the ignorant is that cannot be convinced, i.e. they must be bullied into submission.
Let me put this another way. "while they are the last to submit to imposition" is a dependent clause, subordinate to the main clause "they reason". The dependent clause is not the main point of the sentence at all, but the use of the subordinating conjunction indicates a contrast. The contrast is between the reasonable requirements to which they're susceptible and the unreasonable demands ("imposition") which they resist. The next independent clause is simply that "they will generally acquiesce" and they will "exert a salutary influence upon their associates", although it has the parenthetical caveat "if your requirements are reasonable" which merely reinforces the conditions under which they will obey implied by the previous clause. You've place an emphasis on the dependent clause that the author does not (either grammatically, rhetorically, or in the broader context of the passage), treating it as if the author were terribly worried about the educated worker's reluctance to "submit to imposition". Far from being worried about this reluctance--I would venture he sees it as a sign of virtue--the author is delighted that he can reason with such workers because, as is the case with humans generally and managers particularly, he assumes that his requirements will be reasonable and that the reasonable will therefore acquiesce to them.
The rhetorical function of the sentence within the whole, however, must be understood in the light of its antithesis which follows: "But the ignorant and uneducated I have generally found the most turbulent and troublesome, acting under the impulse of excited passion and jealousy." The implication is that the education are not turbulent, not troublesome, and resist the impulse of their passions. He might well say that they're more moral. I would call this docility (mind, I am not of the opinion that docility or meekness is a vice). But, as I've said before, for the sake of common understanding I would happily abandon the word if "manageable" is more agreeable to you. Regardless of what you choose to call it, our author is happy to see that the educated workers have better behavior and are more apt to obey and advocates public education on this basis. That he's also happy to see them improved (by his standards) in other ways, such as attending church, being more focused on family, and being more contented, neither lessens nor contradicts this fact.
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Oh, you didn't get the memo. Since Bill the Borg disappeared from /. we've moved on from hating on Micro$oft. We're supposed to hate on Canonical now. So whether or not it's their fault, blame anonical.
I'm responding to your comment on a budget Dell desktop that came with Ubuntu preinstalled. I used to have a Ubuntu netbook from Dell until an incident involving the overzealous use of a soldering iron...
Which is why many of the great story tellers (your Homer--or Homers as the case may be--, Sophocles, Shakespeare, etc) were able to start with stories everyone already knew the ending to. They were able to demonstrate their virtuosity through the story telling itself
No kidding. Imagine, for a moment, if the Star Wars prequels had traditional story telling elements (like defined characters, a protagonist, a story line that is cleanly resolved). In a story meant to entertain, predictable and formulaic are preferable to confusing, self-contradictory, and painful.
Indeed they are not. But I drew the conclusion you cite based not upon your "MIGHT BE" line, but upon the assumptions that underlie your whole line of reasoning. As I shall discuss below, whether or not you think you're asserting anything, you are certainly making certain assumptions about the science as the basis of your questioning.
You fall into an informal fallacy here by using a unitary "they", as though climate scientists formed some secret cabal who, upon discovering that their warming predictions had proven false, concluded that they must change the language they use to continue to deceive the public.
This fallacy aside, the "act" you speak of never happened anyway. When others have pointed out that the term "climate change" has been in use all along (and have cited evidence to support the same) you've dismissed this as irrelevant. Yet it directly contradicts the notion you seem to have of scientists suddenly deciding to use the term "climate change" since "global warming" no longer fit the evidence.
But you're questioning them based on two misunderstandings which you refuse to rectify despite evidence offered to you by a great many here. On the one hand, you suspect the motives because you falsely believe scientists just up and changed their terminology to deceive the public. When people have presented you with arguments and evidence to the contrary you have dismissed it as irrelevant. This is just as well since recognizing the relevance of the response would require that you present evidence to the contrary.
On the other hand, you suspect their motives because you believe the data is contrary to the claims of climate change. Were this not the case then you'd be willing at least to entertain the idea that scientists are using the term "climate change" because it fits the data. You find such a response unconvincing, however, because of your assumptions about the facts of the case, namely that there is no evidence support climate change. This is a false assumption and but you have generally avoided anyone questioning it directly by claiming you're making no assertions about the science. Yet without such an assumption about the facts of the case (if you prefer the term assumption to assertion), your case against the motives of scientists would suffer greatly.
Sure they have. Very straightforward responses have been offered including (but certainly not limited to) my own. You refuse to hear them, however, because of the second assumption mentioned above. Until you're willing to challenge your own assumptions about the data the scientists are looking at you'll never be able to be convinced of their honesty.
Your case here is convincing.
You'll often find Republicans using the term "energy exploration" rather than "fossil fuel development" or "oil drilling". It was a very clever individual who came up with this shift in rhetoric which has since become quite popular. You may find it enlightening to research the history of that shift. If you insisted, however, I'd be willing to concede that Frank Luntz is no conservative, at least if that means holding to conservative principles. But, then again, if holding principles were necessary for holding any ideological label then he'd be uniquely unlabeled.
and
I would hold that you are making assertions about the science, but for the sake of argument I'll set that aside and assume that the above is "just one of the hypothetical examples". Even doing so, however, I'm left with this line:
Why would you have to ask about their motives? I take "motives" to mean the motive for talking about climate change rather than global warming. Yet when I offered you a motive earlier, namely that this term (which had long been in use) more accurately reflects the data, you rejected it saying that, "It still seems to me that THEY (scientists, followed by the media) are playing self-serving word games." So you clearly reject professionalism, the pursuit of science, or basic honesty as a legitimate response to the question because you think they're self-serving and dishonest. But why would you think that? Because you do not believe that they hold their position in good faith, i.e. you believe there is, "little if any overall warming for a long time." So you must ask their motives. But the belief that they do not hold their position in good faith is built on an assertion about the science, namely that global climate change is incorrect. This is why you're left searching for their motives and this is why the conclusion you come up with is question begging.
The psychology you posit is sound--the prestige of public support for one's views can be a powerful motivator--but notice it's predicated on the assumption that there is no broader warming trend and therefore some other theory must be advanced. This is question begging, i.e. you're discounting their views about climate change because you think they must be incorrect since, after all, climate change (or at least a general warming trend) is false. Put differently, you're discounting witnesses precisely because they disagree with you about the very question at stake.
Yes.
No. It's an article that draws conclusions from data released by the Met Office. There was no report. This is once of several facts that the Daily Mail got wrong. See the Met Office's reply to the Mail's article here for more details.
Did you not see where I said, "it's worth noting that those who believe in climate change can do much the same to come up with the opposite results"? Of course I have a problem with alarmism or the manipulation of results. But the subject was one particular manipulation. If one had to respond to every distortion and manipulation made in the press when responding to any one, then I suppose even the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.
It seems to me that you're making baseless assumptions about a total stranger. It happens I don't have a 'strongly held opinion' on the matter--at least on the precise causes of climate change. I do have some tentative conclusions based on the data I've seen, but I'm willing to change my mind. What I certainly am, however, is a conservative and a traditionalist. As such, I recognize the radical changes--social, economic, technological, and environmental--that have occurred since the beginning of the industrial revolution and I am not inclined to assume that they're unmixed blessings. Clearly some good has come, even great good, but as a conservative I will always remain skeptical of those who would claim there is no cost, that nothing is lost, and that every change is 'progress', especially when those who make the claim stand to gain the most. Yet this is the claim of the industrial capitalists and certain segments of the press which defend them when it comes to the environment.
Of course, it's worth noting that those who believe in climate change can do much the same to come up with the opposite results. Regardless, you'll notice that the Daily Mail article gives you a chart that "proves" they're right, but neither offers you the Met Office's data nor gives you a link to the same. The good news is that it isn't hard to go to the Met Office's website and look at the data yourself. I think you'll find it tells a different story than the DM.
Accepting for the sake of argument the common caricature of 'conservative' and 'liberal', I'm afraid the situation is quite the reverse. The common notion of a conservative in conversations like this is one who is pro-business and pro-fossil fuels. Such a one recognizes the many material benefits and the great we have gained through our fossil-fueled economy. He concludes, therefore, that undermining that fossil-fueled economy would undermine the economy and its concomitant benefits. If scientists come out and say that this fossil fueled economy directly increases CO2 to dangerous levels, the conservatives will want to minimize the scope of the threat in the public consciousness inasmuch as they fear the loss of the economy more than warnings of the scientists.
The common notion of a liberal in like context is one who is pro-regulation and pro-environment. Such a one believes rising CO2 levels a threat to the environment and would like to further regulate its emissions. Increasing public fear of the greenhouse effect (using more frightening terms like climate change) will increase the chances that the public will favor more regulation, even if that means paying more for energy. What would it profit a man, after all, to gain the whole world's wealth but to lose the world he can live in due to environmental catastrophe? So it really is quite the opposite of what you say. Such conservatives would desire a more subdued term, like climate change, while such liberals would prefer something more alarming.
All that being said, those are just the caricatures of 'conservative' and 'liberal' that act as tropes in our political discourse. The reality of both is rather more complicated. I count myself a conservative, for example, but one who in addition political, religious, and social traditions also thinks the environment something of conservation. (In this, I agree with the likes of Wendell Berry, inter al.)
Incidentally, you complain above about being marked troll and I think it a fair complaint. For what it's worth, I disagree with your position but I did not take you as trolling. I haven't a problem with people up-modding comments they agree with but I do not care for disagreement being expressed with down-mods--that's what replies are for. "Troll" mods should be saved for actual trolls; there are enough to choose from.
I'm only glad that the fear of nuclear holocaust has hitherto prevented the weapons' use (with two notable and regrettable exceptions). But the importance of this fear (indeed, also for the purposes you mention) does not negate the reality of the threat.
"Climate change" is just a workaday term that's been around for some time to describe, well, exactly what it sounds like it describes. And GP is quite right that it's been in use for some time. A simple search of the NY Times archives and I found articles from the 1930's discussing the relationship between climate change and forest evolution.
It is certainly true that the term "climate change" has seen increasing use of late. As the OED says, "The Oxford English Corpus data from the year 2009 contains twice as many examples of climate change as of global warming." But it would be a mistake to think this is a consequence of activism on the part of "greenies" (whoever they might be), as though they had conjured the term themselves for nefarious purposes. You can readily find scientific articles dating well into the past which employ "climate change" if you only search using an academic database. (Checking the data rather than relying on our faulty memories would be more scientific anyway.) The change in language, therefore, reflects more on an increasing public awareness of the term rather than any politically motivated agenda on the scientists' part.
Excoriate the media establishment all you want. They're an easy mark since they make a living from sensationalism. But I'm curious how you think this is a self-serving word game for the scientists (especially given that it the term is a more accurate descriptor of the data). What, exactly, do you think they're getting out of it? Nota bene: by 'they' I mean the vast majority of scientist who concur about the reality of climate change, not the very few who make a living as pet scientists for the media. How, exactly, do you think the average climate scientist benefits?
Because climate change is a more accurate descriptor. The record shows that increased CO2 levels accompany periods of instability (e.g. rapid growth and reduction in glacier size) even if the trend tends toward warming. While the overall trend will be toward warming such warming will not be evenly distributed over time or space.
When did we stop talking about the threat of nuclear catastrophe in the past tense? Last I checked, there were still at least a few weapons out there.
Suburban human teenagers have been known to imitate the aggressive display and dress of alpha male gangsters from the city. This is done chiefly to avoid predation or being asked to take out the trash.
If my guess is right about their reason, I couldn't agree more with your objection. But this is the reason you sometimes find police "safety" inspections in poor neighborhoods. If you let them in to check and make sure everything is okay in your house then they can argue you've consented to a search. Of course, their standards for consent are sometimes comparable to those of an unscrupulous drunken frat boy, but this is why the wise deny consent to the police in so many words from the beginning.
This is also a sensible explanation, but they'd still some need legal justification.
Once you've voluntarily handed the valet the means of getting into the trunk (i.e. the keys), I think it likely they'd argue you cannot even expect privacy there.
Mind you, I don't think people surrender their reasonable expectation of privacy by using a valet. It would be different if uniformed TSA agents were acting as valets and you handed them your keys, but that is not the case here. This is more like living in an apartment building and having the maintenance staff, who came in to fix a leaky toilet, turn around and search your house for marijuana under police orders.
They'd probably like to be able to search any car that comes to the airport. Even so, I imagine they restrict searches to valet parked cars for two reasons: 1) they've the keys in hand and so it's easy; 2) more importantly, some lawyer probably told them that they could make the case in court that valet parked cars have no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Yeah, sorry. Typo. Should have been, "pahty."
Pandora is a Greek compound meaning all gifts (pan, as in pantheon--all the gods + dora, pl., as in Theodore--a gift of God). Just an FYI. I'd give the actual Greek but, alas, unicode support on /. does not have the greatest reputation. I see the term thrown about in literature sometimes, and I the think intent can be missed because folks only know the story from Hesiod. I suspect this is what Cameron had in mind when he thus christened the planetary home of his Lakota, er, Powhatan's Algonquin, ah... no, Na'vi, yeah that's what he called the sympathetic characters in his highly original film.
I think we all know what happened to the atmosphere on Mars, and how to replenish it. We just need to find the reactor. See you at the part, Richter!
Ah, I think I see the source of your objection somewhat better now. You're reading into my statements a moral judgement I am not making. I never said anything about anyone being "shitty". I said that the were acting, at least in part, in their own interests. That's not being "shitty"; it's being human. Perhaps it will help if I explain it this way: experience teaching in my university has left me with an appreciation of engineering students and students from one of the local Catholic high schools (one with higher academic standards). I have a job to do. I'm supposed to teach these students and I go to great efforts to design a curriculum that will accomplish this end. This curriculum includes assignments, often assignments that require a degree of work many of the students had not encountered before. The aforementioned students are often (but not always) more diligent than average. This means they complete the assignments I give them and therefore learn more quickly the principles I'm trying to communicate. Now, on the one hand I'm happy to see students learning for their own sake (if I were not, I would not teach but I would go into admin or some such as it pays better). But it is also true that I would speak well of the education of these students because they've learned to complete assignments and because they make my job easier (or even possible). Put another way, it is in my own interests that they be better educated and this shapes my judgement of their education. For anyone in my or a similar position to deny this factor would be dishonest or at least would indicate a lack of self-reflection. For one to fail to see this factor at work in others--especially when those others are praising the way education correlates with diligent work in their subordinates--would be short-sighted. Again, this doesn't make such people "shitty"; it only makes them human.
The contradiction isn't there. Again, look at the contrast in the whole passage. It's between the ignorant, who won't do what you tell them to, and the educated, who not only will do what you ask them but will convince their coworkers to do likewise. Sure price of securing such acquiescence is to discuss with them the reasonableness of your demands. The claim about the ignorant is that cannot be convinced, i.e. they must be bullied into submission.
Let me put this another way. "while they are the last to submit to imposition" is a dependent clause, subordinate to the main clause "they reason". The dependent clause is not the main point of the sentence at all, but the use of the subordinating conjunction indicates a contrast. The contrast is between the reasonable requirements to which they're susceptible and the unreasonable demands ("imposition") which they resist. The next independent clause is simply that "they will generally acquiesce" and they will "exert a salutary influence upon their associates", although it has the parenthetical caveat "if your requirements are reasonable" which merely reinforces the conditions under which they will obey implied by the previous clause. You've place an emphasis on the dependent clause that the author does not (either grammatically, rhetorically, or in the broader context of the passage), treating it as if the author were terribly worried about the educated worker's reluctance to "submit to imposition". Far from being worried about this reluctance--I would venture he sees it as a sign of virtue--the author is delighted that he can reason with such workers because, as is the case with humans generally and managers particularly, he assumes that his requirements will be reasonable and that the reasonable will therefore acquiesce to them.
The rhetorical function of the sentence within the whole, however, must be understood in the light of its antithesis which follows: "But the ignorant and uneducated I have generally found the most turbulent and troublesome, acting under the impulse of excited passion and jealousy." The implication is that the education are not turbulent, not troublesome, and resist the impulse of their passions. He might well say that they're more moral. I would call this docility (mind, I am not of the opinion that docility or meekness is a vice). But, as I've said before, for the sake of common understanding I would happily abandon the word if "manageable" is more agreeable to you. Regardless of what you choose to call it, our author is happy to see that the educated workers have better behavior and are more apt to obey and advocates public education on this basis. That he's also happy to see them improved (by his standards) in other ways, such as attending church, being more focused on family, and being more contented, neither lessens nor contradicts this fact.