Here's a fun video of Obama supporters condemning Romney for his horrible positions. Only to backtrack when they learn that they are actually Obama policies that have been implemented, not Romney proposals for the future. Youtube has links to back up all of the policies for those who doubt that Obama would have a secret kill list.
Once any third party starts to become a threat, the Big 2 will just start stealing planks out of their platform, divide up their issues, and get those voters.
This is demonstrably true. Just look at the last two years for your examples. People got all torqued off about how the feds were spending us into oblivion and started "tea party" protests. The healthcare debate through gasoline on that fire and a movement was born. It took about 5 minutes for the republican establishment to race down there and try to jump in front of the parade.
Then we had the Occupy movements. It never had the mass of the tea party, but there was still plenty of "quit screwing up my country" energy going on. The Dems didn't just parade jump, they tried desperately to make it the counter-revolution to the tea party they desperately needed.
In the end we just got more team red and team blue activists.
You don't have to look too terribly far to know that this isn't true. Obama ran primarily as the "anti-Bush". He has failed to distinguish himself from Bush in any significant way that I can see. Well, other than being a competent speechmaker.
Let's take a look at the things that Bush sucked on. Hate the tax cuts? Obama did't change that. Hate the Patriot Act? Obama doubled down on that one. Plus added in the latest defense authorization act. Yikes. Guantanamo? Nope, didn't change that. What about warrantless wiretaps? no. Killing people in other countries? Nope. Actually worse than Bush on that. Extra-constitutionality? Please. How about inventing the term "kinetic military action" to not only end run the constitution on making war, but also avoid the war powers act.
Let's keep going. How about secret government kill lists? Remember Bush's "kill or capture" deck of cards? Obama one-upped him on that and claims the right to issue a death warrant for american citizens based solely on his say-so that they are "enemy combatants". He did come up with the fancy euphemism of calling it a "disposition matrix" though.
But Obama is way better on domestic policy, right? He did healthcare reform.... Bush would never have done that. Oh, except that the biggest expansion of government benefits in the last 40 years prior to Obama's healthcare reform was... Bush's expansion of medicare (the prescription drug benefit). So yeah.... way different there. Oh, and Romney-care was supposedly a model for Obama-care. So I can see how you'd think they are so massively different.
Heck, Obama has been worse on immigration than Bush was.... deporting far more people than Bush ever did. Bush even spent some political capital trying to get an immigration reform package that would have allowed millions more immigrants from south of the border. Didn't go anywhere, but at least he put it forward. More than you can say for Obama. But on a "republicans are different than democrats" level, neither did anything productive, so effectively the same.
Look, keep telling yourself that Romney is so much, so very muchly much worse than Obama if it makes you feel better. But there's not a dimes worth of difference between the big government republicans and the big government democrats. Unless you are one of the big companies that support them. Then I suppose it makes a difference. I'm sure Goldman Sachs would see a very different world under Romney than Obama. Just like Halliburton saw a different world under Obama than Bush. The rest of us.... not so much.
Only a strong government can limit and oppose the power of strong corporations.
And you also need to indoctrinate all children in grade-school and religious studies in values supportive of a libertarian society. They would need to literally be terribly ashamed to behave badly. If they don't, laws won't be enough to keep them in check.
Those are the holes in the libertarian philosophy.
Only a strong government can be bought by corporations to funnel money into corporate coffers and/or regulate their competitors out of existence. (they even have a name for this, it is called crony capitalism) Do you really think that the US government opposes the power of strong corporations? (hint: where did all of the Obama administration higher-ups work before taking their jobs at the White House?)
Also, on what planet do you associate libertarians with religious studies? They have a high percentage of atheists running about at libertarian party events.
Libertarians don't believe in an absence of laws or police, just in a massive reduction of those things that are illegal. Basically, if there is no victim, there is no crime. That alone would free about half of the people incarcerated in this country. It would free up a lot of prison space for those rapists, murderers, child molesters and muggers that have to be released early to alleviate overcrowding. Also, police would have more time to stop child molesters if they weren't running sting operations for prostitution and pot smokers. You do want child molesters stopped don't you? Why do you hate children?
. The reason modern successful democracies are successful is because they strive to provide equal opportunity to all their citizens. Only mechanisms for that are rapidly unraveling in the US.
I'd like to hear more about this..... what mechanism of redistribution are you speaking of, and how is it rapidly unraveling in the US?
Nice rant. Completely wasted, but nice rant nonetheless. Anybody who trots out Somalia as an example of libertarianism is not going to be someone who can be argued with.
That matches my experience. GM drivetrains are pretty good - even back in the 80's they were solid. I put over 140k on a Cavalier.... never did anything to the drivetrain. The rest of the car.... not so much.. They seem to have a design philosophy centered around saving a nickel every chance they get. So you get cheap materials throughout the interior. And not only does it look cheap to begin with, it deteriorates pretty rapidly. Then you get things like the headliner coming loose and sagging onto your noggin. And heaters and AC units that break. And electric windows that quit on you. And knobs and levers that come apart.... yuk.
It seems like all of the makers start doing this when they get big enough. Maybe it is because a nickel at a time spread over millions of cars is a lot of money. I've seen something similar with Toyota and Honda recently. I have an Accord with a saggy headliner right now. The Korean makers haven't "made it" yet, so their stuff seems really good so far. I just traded in a Santa Fe with 100k on it and we never spent a nickel on maintenance beyond oil changes. The interior looked like it did the day we bought it 6 years ago. My mom's old Civic lasted a dozen years before she traded it in and still looked brand new on the inside. That's one reason I bought my Accord. Apparently they've made a few compromises in materials in the last couple of decades. (still way better than that old Cavalier though).
Your analysis sounds spot on. What sense does it make to have a carbon tax on a car for just existing? It sounds more like a "car tax" than a tax on carbon emissions. Fuels burn in very predictable ways - so taxing gasoline and diesel based on their expected CO2 emissions should be easy. Just count up the average carbon atoms per molecule and you've got your answer. That'd be fair enough, if you want to institute a "carbon tax".
Most states have "lemon laws" that allow for returns of defective vehicles if they can't be repaired correctly after a couple of attempts. The MPG numbers are set by government regulations and are determined by the government's formula. If you live in Los Angeles California and drive according to the government formula, you probably do about the same as the government test numbers. Otherwise, ymmv.
You are probably suffering the same problem I am - usage case. I bought my latest car in large part because of the promised mileage benefits. Unfortunately, my daily use is primarily in-town stop and go driving in heavy traffic. I get about 25% less than promised, no matter how carefully I drive.
When I am able to drive at a fairly constant 35 mph with only a few stops at a light, I actually exceed the EPA numbers. The same goes for the highway... at ~60 I do really well. At ~70-75 I get much worse mileage. Strangely, it does worse at 50-55 too.
Prior to my last two cars I have always greatly exceeded the EPA numbers. But I only recently started living in a mostly city-driving area, so I'm not sure if I can really compare those situations. But I am disappointed that I don' t see the numbers I might have expected given my history. Heck, back in the 80's I had a car rated at 27 mpg and consistently exceeded 34 mpg in real world use. I was kinda hoping for that result with my new car.... didn't work out for me though.
Nice. A huge solution to an almost nonexistent problem. How about a much simpler solution to the problem of "finding time to vote": leave the polls open for a full 24 hours. Problem solved. No need for anyone on any shift to take any time off from work. No need to add to the regulatory burden. No need for additional powers to the government.
It's funny because we're old. Remember when making a joke about Paul McCartney being in a band before Wings was funny? Now you'd get: "who's Paul McCartney?"
Still, Spock had a pretty good run for a "how-to" book published in the 1940's. I wonder how many similar instruction manuals from today will still be remembered in 2060? "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" is probably the best selling self-help book of the last decade. Any chance people will remember it in 50 years?
Still, Spock changed the way the western world thinks about raising kids, and for the better. I'm not sure I'd be happy about being linked to pop-psy TV personalities like Dr Phil and Dr Oz.
I don't know anything about this particular study, but I do know this: most of these studies are absolute crap. This one might be the rare exception, but I doubt it. And I'll commit my own logical fallacy and argue from authority on this one, having been in many a lab meeting and journal club in molecular genetics, biochemistry, transplant medicine, psychology and behavioral psychology. There is a completely different view of what constitutes data and evidence in the "hard" sciences than there is in psychology studies. Heck, epidemiology is a notoriously difficult science, but it is light-years ahead of psychology.
I find that to be false, useless and offensive. Before I had kids, I gave my sister advice on more than one occassion. She, like so many others gave the "you don't have children" response.... My advice, given as a childless 20-something was correct.... To dismiss good advice because you don't like the source seems absurd, but parents everywhere do it.
As a 40-something parent I agree. But I will also add that being a parent teaches you quite a bit of humility and not to judge other parent's choices too quickly. Kids will teach you what they need - and every kid is different. Often very, very different. I have friends who don't put their 5 year old down until after 9. Seems to work for them. I wouldn't do that with my kids for anything - on the rare occasions they have to be up late we pay for it for 2-3 days afterwords. So depending on who's looking either our friends are crazy lax parents who are raising sleep-deprived kids or I'm a crazy-obsessive, overprotective parent who is too fixated on an early bedtime. And unless they were the ones raising the kids our putative observers would be opinionated idiots. Heck, all three of my kids are quite different in their needs, personalities and response to discipline. That's where the "you don't have kids" meme comes from. Every kid is different, and although there are plenty of general-case pieces of good advice, it isn't good advice until applied to the correct kid.
This - times ten. A decade ago a low-level Bush administration appointee of my acquaintance argued that we should disengage entirely from the middle east and divert all the money spent there to research and development of sustainable alternative energy. Like half a trillion a year. A decade later you'd have wasted a bunch of money (there are not that many competent researchers around that you could effectively spend a half-trillion dollars in a year), but you'd probably be pretty close to eliminating our dependence on oil imports.
It sounds a little nutty, but it is certainly a lot more sane than continuing to spend insane sums of money killing people in other countries for stupid reasons. Without the oil economy, who would really give a rat's tush what the leaders in the Persian Gulf think?
I said "a ban for unlicensed individuals" just like you can't buy a kilowatt radio transmitter without a license from any reputable radio shop (there are plenty of assholes who will sell linears to CB owners, though, and they should be shut down).
You need to prove you're not an idiot before you can use technology that can do damage to people at a distance.
And I say "No, that's just plain dumb." We lived through the 90's when laser pointers became common and morons brought them to the movie theater and we'll live through the early 21st century when morons shine them at planes. Nobody does the "laser pointer in a theater" thing anymore, and soon enough nobody will do the "laser at an airplane" thing either.
3,000 reported incidents in a year sounds like a lot, but assuming that each douchebag points his little toy at more than one airplane, you've got at most a couple hundred idiots in a country of 300 million. There are about a million takeoffs and landings each year at Atlanta Hartsfield alone. Even if every incident was just at that one airport it isn't that big of an issue. Certainly not really a problem worth addressing with new licensing schemes.
If I went around with 200,000 BTU/hr propane torch and fired it off across the bar from people, I'd expect to be restrained
And I would WHOLEHEARTEDLY be in support of your lengthy incarceration. But I would NOT be in favor of an outright ban on propane torches!
Didn't you read him? He said someone might walk into a bar and start burning people with propane torches!!!! We have to ban these dangerous incendiary devices immediately!!!
Yeah. And tens of thousands are killed by motor vehicles! Ban motor vehicles! And peanuts! Effin' peanut allergies are serious, man!!! Won't someone think of the children?!?!
How about we just go with "assault is already illegal" and call it a day? Whether you assault someone with a baseball bat, tennis shoe or laser pointer, it is still illegal. No need to go around banning things that might be used for assault. (acknowledging that laser pointers make it uniquely easy to commit an assault over great distances)
Another problem with replication is that very few replication articles will get published. Although reproducibility is a critical component of the scientific process, good luck getting your replication study published in a top journal. Or even in a crappy one. Editors just aren't interested in that sort of thing. It is so pervasive that the net result has a name: Publication bias.
Good scientists will often cooperate with those attempting to replicate their results. We just saw this in medicine with a controversial finding relating XMRV to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The original investigators cooperated with a more rigorous study of XMRV that disproved their initial findings. That's how science is supposed to work.
The problem is that if preliminary information is published, its easier for people to accuse them of bias without judging them based on their findings.
I don't buy that at all. Shouldn't we have an example of this in practice first before we consider it a problem?
We have this problem all the time - only the problem isn't usually accusations of bias. All of those little studies that show that acai berries or blueberries, etc. prevent cancer or heart disease or whatever. They almost always end up being flawed little studies that don't hold up under more rigorous conditions. Yet there's tons of stupid products that get sold to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars on a BS claim.
The same goes for more serious things like the breast implant scare and power line tumor clusters. Hundreds of millions later.... oops, the initial studies were flawed and there really wasn't anything there.
Publishing preliminary information just pushes this even farther into the wacky realm. Of course, this isn't a problem with peer review or the scientific process, it is more of a problem with the press coverage of science and the lack of understanding of the scientific process among the public. Whether it is some interesting preliminary data or a finding in a small study, the scientific response is "that's interesting, let's do some followup studies to confirm the results". Unfortunately, the public response is "OMG! Diapers cause brain clouds! We have to ban diapers!!!" Perhaps equally unfortunately, scientific journals don't like to publish followup studies that confirm (or contradict) initial studies.
We saw an excellent example of how to publish preliminary results this summer from CERN. They had very good data, but they were quite circumspect in their publications, pointing out the possibility of being wrong and wanting to gather more data to confirm to a much greater degree of certainty. If only other areas of scientific inquiry would adopt the same rigorous statistical analysis that the harder sciences try to adhere to...
Shhh.... don't tell them that people with a big (D) after their name are no better, and in some cases much worse than people with a big (R) after their name on the drug war. Next thing you know they'll be looking into Gary Johnson's candidacy.
Don't talk about pot legalization. It is a gateway drug to all sorts of evil ideas about personal freedom. Stay asleep and choose between your giant douche and turd sandwich.
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Thanks for that. One of my pet peeves.
Here's a fun video of Obama supporters condemning Romney for his horrible positions. Only to backtrack when they learn that they are actually Obama policies that have been implemented, not Romney proposals for the future. Youtube has links to back up all of the policies for those who doubt that Obama would have a secret kill list.
Once any third party starts to become a threat, the Big 2 will just start stealing planks out of their platform, divide up their issues, and get those voters.
This is demonstrably true. Just look at the last two years for your examples. People got all torqued off about how the feds were spending us into oblivion and started "tea party" protests. The healthcare debate through gasoline on that fire and a movement was born. It took about 5 minutes for the republican establishment to race down there and try to jump in front of the parade.
Then we had the Occupy movements. It never had the mass of the tea party, but there was still plenty of "quit screwing up my country" energy going on. The Dems didn't just parade jump, they tried desperately to make it the counter-revolution to the tea party they desperately needed.
In the end we just got more team red and team blue activists.
You don't have to look too terribly far to know that this isn't true. Obama ran primarily as the "anti-Bush". He has failed to distinguish himself from Bush in any significant way that I can see. Well, other than being a competent speechmaker.
Let's take a look at the things that Bush sucked on. Hate the tax cuts? Obama did't change that. Hate the Patriot Act? Obama doubled down on that one. Plus added in the latest defense authorization act. Yikes. Guantanamo? Nope, didn't change that. What about warrantless wiretaps? no. Killing people in other countries? Nope. Actually worse than Bush on that. Extra-constitutionality? Please. How about inventing the term "kinetic military action" to not only end run the constitution on making war, but also avoid the war powers act.
Let's keep going. How about secret government kill lists? Remember Bush's "kill or capture" deck of cards? Obama one-upped him on that and claims the right to issue a death warrant for american citizens based solely on his say-so that they are "enemy combatants". He did come up with the fancy euphemism of calling it a "disposition matrix" though.
But Obama is way better on domestic policy, right? He did healthcare reform.... Bush would never have done that. Oh, except that the biggest expansion of government benefits in the last 40 years prior to Obama's healthcare reform was... Bush's expansion of medicare (the prescription drug benefit). So yeah.... way different there. Oh, and Romney-care was supposedly a model for Obama-care. So I can see how you'd think they are so massively different.
Heck, Obama has been worse on immigration than Bush was.... deporting far more people than Bush ever did. Bush even spent some political capital trying to get an immigration reform package that would have allowed millions more immigrants from south of the border. Didn't go anywhere, but at least he put it forward. More than you can say for Obama. But on a "republicans are different than democrats" level, neither did anything productive, so effectively the same.
Look, keep telling yourself that Romney is so much, so very muchly much worse than Obama if it makes you feel better. But there's not a dimes worth of difference between the big government republicans and the big government democrats. Unless you are one of the big companies that support them. Then I suppose it makes a difference. I'm sure Goldman Sachs would see a very different world under Romney than Obama. Just like Halliburton saw a different world under Obama than Bush. The rest of us.... not so much.
Only a strong government can limit and oppose the power of strong corporations.
And you also need to indoctrinate all children in grade-school and religious studies in values supportive of a libertarian society. They would need to literally be terribly ashamed to behave badly. If they don't, laws won't be enough to keep them in check.
Those are the holes in the libertarian philosophy.
Only a strong government can be bought by corporations to funnel money into corporate coffers and/or regulate their competitors out of existence. (they even have a name for this, it is called crony capitalism) Do you really think that the US government opposes the power of strong corporations? (hint: where did all of the Obama administration higher-ups work before taking their jobs at the White House?)
Also, on what planet do you associate libertarians with religious studies? They have a high percentage of atheists running about at libertarian party events.
Libertarians don't believe in an absence of laws or police, just in a massive reduction of those things that are illegal. Basically, if there is no victim, there is no crime. That alone would free about half of the people incarcerated in this country. It would free up a lot of prison space for those rapists, murderers, child molesters and muggers that have to be released early to alleviate overcrowding. Also, police would have more time to stop child molesters if they weren't running sting operations for prostitution and pot smokers. You do want child molesters stopped don't you? Why do you hate children?
. The reason modern successful democracies are successful is because they strive to provide equal opportunity to all their citizens. Only mechanisms for that are rapidly unraveling in the US.
I'd like to hear more about this..... what mechanism of redistribution are you speaking of, and how is it rapidly unraveling in the US?
Nice rant. Completely wasted, but nice rant nonetheless. Anybody who trots out Somalia as an example of libertarianism is not going to be someone who can be argued with.
That matches my experience. GM drivetrains are pretty good - even back in the 80's they were solid. I put over 140k on a Cavalier.... never did anything to the drivetrain. The rest of the car.... not so much.. They seem to have a design philosophy centered around saving a nickel every chance they get. So you get cheap materials throughout the interior. And not only does it look cheap to begin with, it deteriorates pretty rapidly. Then you get things like the headliner coming loose and sagging onto your noggin. And heaters and AC units that break. And electric windows that quit on you. And knobs and levers that come apart.... yuk.
It seems like all of the makers start doing this when they get big enough. Maybe it is because a nickel at a time spread over millions of cars is a lot of money. I've seen something similar with Toyota and Honda recently. I have an Accord with a saggy headliner right now. The Korean makers haven't "made it" yet, so their stuff seems really good so far. I just traded in a Santa Fe with 100k on it and we never spent a nickel on maintenance beyond oil changes. The interior looked like it did the day we bought it 6 years ago. My mom's old Civic lasted a dozen years before she traded it in and still looked brand new on the inside. That's one reason I bought my Accord. Apparently they've made a few compromises in materials in the last couple of decades. (still way better than that old Cavalier though).
Your analysis sounds spot on. What sense does it make to have a carbon tax on a car for just existing? It sounds more like a "car tax" than a tax on carbon emissions. Fuels burn in very predictable ways - so taxing gasoline and diesel based on their expected CO2 emissions should be easy. Just count up the average carbon atoms per molecule and you've got your answer. That'd be fair enough, if you want to institute a "carbon tax".
Most states have "lemon laws" that allow for returns of defective vehicles if they can't be repaired correctly after a couple of attempts. The MPG numbers are set by government regulations and are determined by the government's formula. If you live in Los Angeles California and drive according to the government formula, you probably do about the same as the government test numbers. Otherwise, ymmv.
I suppose there's a reason that "YMMV" is a meme.
You are probably suffering the same problem I am - usage case. I bought my latest car in large part because of the promised mileage benefits. Unfortunately, my daily use is primarily in-town stop and go driving in heavy traffic. I get about 25% less than promised, no matter how carefully I drive.
When I am able to drive at a fairly constant 35 mph with only a few stops at a light, I actually exceed the EPA numbers. The same goes for the highway... at ~60 I do really well. At ~70-75 I get much worse mileage. Strangely, it does worse at 50-55 too.
Prior to my last two cars I have always greatly exceeded the EPA numbers. But I only recently started living in a mostly city-driving area, so I'm not sure if I can really compare those situations. But I am disappointed that I don' t see the numbers I might have expected given my history. Heck, back in the 80's I had a car rated at 27 mpg and consistently exceeded 34 mpg in real world use. I was kinda hoping for that result with my new car.... didn't work out for me though.
Don't we call a professional juror "judge"? Just sayin'.
Nice. A huge solution to an almost nonexistent problem. How about a much simpler solution to the problem of "finding time to vote": leave the polls open for a full 24 hours. Problem solved. No need for anyone on any shift to take any time off from work. No need to add to the regulatory burden. No need for additional powers to the government.
It's funny because we're old. Remember when making a joke about Paul McCartney being in a band before Wings was funny? Now you'd get: "who's Paul McCartney?"
Still, Spock had a pretty good run for a "how-to" book published in the 1940's. I wonder how many similar instruction manuals from today will still be remembered in 2060? "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" is probably the best selling self-help book of the last decade. Any chance people will remember it in 50 years?
Like parking your car in your garage ... at eighty miles per hour.
More like parking your car in a garage that's moving at 80 miles per hour while driving at 80.05 miles per hour.
Interestingly, Dr. Oz and Dr Phil are woo-spewing kooks and more modern pediatric research has moved away from much of Spock's advice.
Still, Spock changed the way the western world thinks about raising kids, and for the better. I'm not sure I'd be happy about being linked to pop-psy TV personalities like Dr Phil and Dr Oz.
I don't know anything about this particular study, but I do know this: most of these studies are absolute crap. This one might be the rare exception, but I doubt it. And I'll commit my own logical fallacy and argue from authority on this one, having been in many a lab meeting and journal club in molecular genetics, biochemistry, transplant medicine, psychology and behavioral psychology. There is a completely different view of what constitutes data and evidence in the "hard" sciences than there is in psychology studies. Heck, epidemiology is a notoriously difficult science, but it is light-years ahead of psychology.
And your raised how many children?
I find that to be false, useless and offensive. Before I had kids, I gave my sister advice on more than one occassion. She, like so many others gave the "you don't have children" response. ... My advice, given as a childless 20-something was correct. ... To dismiss good advice because you don't like the source seems absurd, but parents everywhere do it.
As a 40-something parent I agree. But I will also add that being a parent teaches you quite a bit of humility and not to judge other parent's choices too quickly. Kids will teach you what they need - and every kid is different. Often very, very different. I have friends who don't put their 5 year old down until after 9. Seems to work for them. I wouldn't do that with my kids for anything - on the rare occasions they have to be up late we pay for it for 2-3 days afterwords. So depending on who's looking either our friends are crazy lax parents who are raising sleep-deprived kids or I'm a crazy-obsessive, overprotective parent who is too fixated on an early bedtime. And unless they were the ones raising the kids our putative observers would be opinionated idiots. Heck, all three of my kids are quite different in their needs, personalities and response to discipline. That's where the "you don't have kids" meme comes from. Every kid is different, and although there are plenty of general-case pieces of good advice, it isn't good advice until applied to the correct kid.
This - times ten. A decade ago a low-level Bush administration appointee of my acquaintance argued that we should disengage entirely from the middle east and divert all the money spent there to research and development of sustainable alternative energy. Like half a trillion a year. A decade later you'd have wasted a bunch of money (there are not that many competent researchers around that you could effectively spend a half-trillion dollars in a year), but you'd probably be pretty close to eliminating our dependence on oil imports.
It sounds a little nutty, but it is certainly a lot more sane than continuing to spend insane sums of money killing people in other countries for stupid reasons. Without the oil economy, who would really give a rat's tush what the leaders in the Persian Gulf think?
I said "a ban for unlicensed individuals" just like you can't buy a kilowatt radio transmitter without a license from any reputable radio shop (there are plenty of assholes who will sell linears to CB owners, though, and they should be shut down).
You need to prove you're not an idiot before you can use technology that can do damage to people at a distance.
And I say "No, that's just plain dumb." We lived through the 90's when laser pointers became common and morons brought them to the movie theater and we'll live through the early 21st century when morons shine them at planes. Nobody does the "laser pointer in a theater" thing anymore, and soon enough nobody will do the "laser at an airplane" thing either.
3,000 reported incidents in a year sounds like a lot, but assuming that each douchebag points his little toy at more than one airplane, you've got at most a couple hundred idiots in a country of 300 million. There are about a million takeoffs and landings each year at Atlanta Hartsfield alone. Even if every incident was just at that one airport it isn't that big of an issue. Certainly not really a problem worth addressing with new licensing schemes.
If I went around with 200,000 BTU/hr propane torch and fired it off across the bar from people, I'd expect to be restrained
And I would WHOLEHEARTEDLY be in support of your lengthy incarceration. But I would NOT be in favor of an outright ban on propane torches!
Didn't you read him? He said someone might walk into a bar and start burning people with propane torches!!!! We have to ban these dangerous incendiary devices immediately!!!
Yeah. And tens of thousands are killed by motor vehicles! Ban motor vehicles! And peanuts! Effin' peanut allergies are serious, man!!! Won't someone think of the children?!?!
How about we just go with "assault is already illegal" and call it a day? Whether you assault someone with a baseball bat, tennis shoe or laser pointer, it is still illegal. No need to go around banning things that might be used for assault. (acknowledging that laser pointers make it uniquely easy to commit an assault over great distances)
Another problem with replication is that very few replication articles will get published. Although reproducibility is a critical component of the scientific process, good luck getting your replication study published in a top journal. Or even in a crappy one. Editors just aren't interested in that sort of thing. It is so pervasive that the net result has a name: Publication bias.
Good scientists will often cooperate with those attempting to replicate their results. We just saw this in medicine with a controversial finding relating XMRV to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The original investigators cooperated with a more rigorous study of XMRV that disproved their initial findings. That's how science is supposed to work.
The problem is that if preliminary information is published, its easier for people to accuse them of bias without judging them based on their findings.
I don't buy that at all. Shouldn't we have an example of this in practice first before we consider it a problem?
We have this problem all the time - only the problem isn't usually accusations of bias. All of those little studies that show that acai berries or blueberries, etc. prevent cancer or heart disease or whatever. They almost always end up being flawed little studies that don't hold up under more rigorous conditions. Yet there's tons of stupid products that get sold to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars on a BS claim.
The same goes for more serious things like the breast implant scare and power line tumor clusters. Hundreds of millions later.... oops, the initial studies were flawed and there really wasn't anything there.
Publishing preliminary information just pushes this even farther into the wacky realm. Of course, this isn't a problem with peer review or the scientific process, it is more of a problem with the press coverage of science and the lack of understanding of the scientific process among the public. Whether it is some interesting preliminary data or a finding in a small study, the scientific response is "that's interesting, let's do some followup studies to confirm the results". Unfortunately, the public response is "OMG! Diapers cause brain clouds! We have to ban diapers!!!" Perhaps equally unfortunately, scientific journals don't like to publish followup studies that confirm (or contradict) initial studies.
We saw an excellent example of how to publish preliminary results this summer from CERN. They had very good data, but they were quite circumspect in their publications, pointing out the possibility of being wrong and wanting to gather more data to confirm to a much greater degree of certainty. If only other areas of scientific inquiry would adopt the same rigorous statistical analysis that the harder sciences try to adhere to...
Yes, there is indeed no true Scottsman....
Shhh.... don't tell them that people with a big (D) after their name are no better, and in some cases much worse than people with a big (R) after their name on the drug war. Next thing you know they'll be looking into Gary Johnson's candidacy.
Don't talk about pot legalization. It is a gateway drug to all sorts of evil ideas about personal freedom. Stay asleep and choose between your giant douche and turd sandwich.