You can also *read books* on your phone. Right now I'm reading Proust. So there is quite a bit of angsty introspection going on in my life right now. So just because someone is looking at their phone non-stop doesn't mean they're playing a game, or tweeting, or whatever. And if you're shallow, don't blame it on the phone, or the internet, or connectivity. Just spend less time with Angry Birds and more time with Thoreau.
To be fair, automobiles would be a money loser if government hadn't built roads and made the other subsidies necessary to make autos a tenable technology.
And don't forget the number of times that there are no penalties to avoid at all, because it turns out that the activity was unnecessary.
Yeah, I'm looking at you, work. The number of times it turns out that someone else has already done something, often even before I'm assigned a task, well, it pays to procrastinate.
Yeah, procrastination is actually my form of triage. If the deadline is months away, in the interim it may go away altogether, or at the very least the specifics and deliverables will change. Any work I do right now is generally a waste of effort, aside from looking like a Good Boy to the boss. And truthfully that does get figured in. Part of assessing the importance of a project is gauging the boss's enthusiasm. If we're talking about a metric that will make the boss look good, I prioritize it and go above and beyond. Making the boss look good is generally more important than the actual job. The downside is that the boss just assumes you can do all these shiny happy things and that the job just gets done, I suppose by magic elves.
The reason that I'm going to call bullshit on this is that empirically "lefties" tend to become "righties" through age or experience. A liberal is just a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet.
My experience is just the opposite. I was a libertarian through my 20's, when I (like most immature guys) thought I was John Galt and Zarathustra all rolled into one. And I *have* been mugged, as have many lefties. We're just aware of the seemingly obvious fact that voting Republican won't prevent you from getting mugged again. Like the myth that Republicans are better at national security, this is just so much self-congratulatory BS on the part of right-wingers.
"The father slowly smiled and said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."
I just hope she pays attention to her new party. They actually support quite a few wealth-redistribution programs, such as social security, farm subsidies, medicare, the Retiree Drug Subsidy, etc. Compared to the Libertarians, the Republicans are basically socialists.
I have to wonder if the 'liberal gene' isn't also something along the lines of a 'empathy gene.' I don't mean this purely in the virtuous sense. Empathy can be paralyzing and, if taken to extremes, make for some pretty bad law. The caricatures of the effete liberal too afraid to hurt someone's creativity or wound someone's feelings are all tied to an excess of empathy. Conservatives seem to think that people who are bad off just deserved it. Well, unless it's *them,* in which case the liberals killed their inner John Galt.
and it will be curious to see if they can survive their own success.
Sort of. If/when Republicans take majorities again, and/or the White House, the Tea Party will fade away. Sky-high spending will still be the norm, but the evil socialist Democrats won't be the ones doing it. If/when the Democratic Party win another election, the Tea Party phenom will be back, blaming the liberals for everything and crying "throw the bums out!" These people aren't pro-anything. They're anti-Obama, anti-Pelosi, or anti-anyone who is to the left of Rush Limbaugh. They aren't even for small government, because they generally don't favor cutting off social security, medicare, farm subsidies, and other eminently socialist parasite handouts. Granted, they don't want taxes collected to pay for these programs, but that's a given.
His election was essentially a flash mob, with just as much staying power.
I somehow doubt all that many were swayed by Obama's use of social media. Probably about as many as were swayed by Clinton's sax playing on a talk show. Obama could have called it "the internets" and I would still have voted for him over anyone who would choose Palin for anything. Do I wish he were better? Of course. But I'll probably vote for him again, because I can't see that Palin or Huckabee or Gingrich could be good for my country.
Well, if you don't go in *both* the tourist trap duty-free shops *and* the backalley places where you can barely turn around, you haven't really gone to Akihabara. I was stationed near there for a few years, and loved it, just for the coolness factor. I liked the little warren of components and tool shops, but I also liked the high-end stores with $40,000 (in Yen equivalent) speakers. I thought it was cool to see the bleeding edge stuff. I remember reading about a new 50" LCD TV on a blog somewhere, and seeing it that evening for sale in Akihabara, for $25K. I still have that accursed Bic Camera tune stuck in my head, since there was one of those 10 minutes from my house. I do miss Tokyo, and I hope to get a job there again one day. My only disappointment with Akihabara was that there is almost no Linux representation there. There were a few Linux books in the big stores (in Japanese, naturally), and even Latex books, but mostly it's a Windows-only ad-space. I never even saw Linux or BSD cds for sale.
the scope of the current generation just allows for so much more in a game and my sense of nostalgia is not strong enough to persuade me to turn back
Meh. I can't play the modern games, because the 3D moving thing gives me a headache. But I love retro games like Robotron, Joust, Centipede, etc. No, I wouldn't buy a console just for those, but I bought my daughter a PS3 and I'd like to be able to play all those arcade classics they've released over the years for the PS1 and PS2. My daughter has Assassin's Creed II, which looks awesome, but it's not my cup of tea. I get a headache even watching for more than 10 minutes, and anyhoo I don't really like the storyline games. So the lack of old games essentially means that I'm stuck with Tekken and... that's about it. I'm not claiming that retrogrouches represent a significant market, but we do exist.
...it has a special cargo area to haul your smug around! It has never been about saving money, but about the very American idea of expressing your personal values through your choice of vehicle.
I don't drive a hybrid, just a beater diesel. However, I don't feel any guilt for moderate self-congratulation for using less gasoline. The BP fiasco is traceable, at least in part, to our dependence on gasoline. If you use less gasoline, there is less need to drill a mile under the ocean, and thus less probability of catastrophes like this happening. Also, and this is the biggie for me, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists get their money from oil. If you use less gas, they get less money. That's a good thing. At no point have I ever thought I was saving the world by using less gas. But I do believe that using less gas is a good thing. Call that smug if you want, but don't kid yourself into thinking that the amount of gasoline you use has no effect beyond the money you gave up for it.
I'd say Monsanto should win - stealing their seeds is wrong. But if his fields had been naturally pollinated, why should he be responsible for Monsanto's inability to contain their pollen?
What puzzles me is that Monsanto can sue people for "infringing" on their rights, but no one is prosecuting them for trespassing on other people's property. If I let my dog diddle in your yard, aren't I legally responsible for that? What is Monsanto's pollen doing in someone else's fields? Why are Monsanto's plants having illegal hot plant sex with someone else's plants?
A completely unregulated, free market tends towards consolidation of power into large companies and ultimately monopoly. This maximizes corruption every bit as effectively as a strong, centralized government.
Which is why I'm no longer a libertarian. Power corrupts. Libertarians seem to read this as "government power corrupts," which isn't the same thing. I've had consistent problems finding libertarians upset over the actions of Monsanto, Blackwater, etc. Basically no problem exists unless the government is doing it, and their only solution is to say "less government." That someone could do bad stuff for profit isn't even on the radar.
Women are too smart for careers in computers. Most intelligent women take a close look at the unrepentantly fucked-up culture that surrounds computing careers, and run like hell.
But women work in nursing and teaching, both of which are renowned for their screwed-up cultures. Nurses are known for "eating their young." Politics and bullying abounds. Passive-aggressive is still aggressive. I work for nurses and I'm related to teachers, and I can tell you that these female-dominated fields have cultures just as malignant as anything in IT. I know *female* nurses who, when you ask why they hate nursing, say "women!" Don't think it's all milk and honey elsewhere.
Frankly, there are plenty of corporations out there that would happily toss babies into a wood chipper if there was any profit in it.
And for every one of those corporations, 10 million conservatives and libertarians who would take to the web to explain in great detail why them doing so was moral, beneficial to us all, and would only be opposed by statist, collectivist fools who would rush us headlong to the Soviet model. In the libertarian world, if it's profitable then it's moral. In the conservative one, the same formula applies, except for drugs and sex.
I'd only call it mildly successful when it can run at least 50% without government subsidies. and fully successful when it is >99%
Considering how much we spend on building and maintenance of roads, not to mention military intervention to protect cheap oil, can we consider automobiles viable yet? What a boondoggle that's been!
You're missing the point that the IPCC's data was just one of the sources. There have been thousands of studies, papers, etc, and the entire field of AGW does not hinge on the IPCC. All science, and all human activity for that matter, will have bad data points. The ~97% of climatologists who accept AGW did not do so solely because the IPCC said so. The field is huge, with dozens of organizations and universities, thousands of scientists, etc. Aside from that, exactly what percentage of the IPCC's data is suspect? Or are you assuming that we have to ignore everything they ever published or concluded, based on a couple of errors? Is that the plan?
Medical science has been wrong before. No question. Does that mean we reject all medicine, until we have absolute certitude? Science does not offer theological certitude. The finding and correcting of error is PART of science. I'm very accustomed to conservative attempts to use any and all errors in science to discredit evolution, stem cell research, medical marijuana, the HPV vaccine, and AGW. I'm also very familiar with conservative attempts to portray themselves as the defenders of "real" science, independent thought, etc, meaning only that they have implicit trust in anyone in any field who rejects AGW, evolution, the efficacy of sex ed, etc. I will continue to get my info on AGW from climatologists, not from right-wing pundits like Glen Beck or whoever.
This is simple, IPCC was married with politics, like much of the entire debate. Everyone back to the lab, the field, the research. Stop pandering to politicians and environmentalists, and come up with some science!
Unfortunately, the science has been done, by climatologists. However, they said a bunch of stuff that some of us didn't want to hear, which by definition makes it controversial, so we pretend that the science is still murky. Throwing out Gore's movie or the entire IPCC doesn't change the bare fact that about 97 out of a hundred climatologists will tell you that humans are exacerbating global warming.
Well, you see, we don't trust our government. We never have. We might have national pride, but we don't trust Bush, Obama, or whomever.
Who's we? I knew plenty of people who trusted Bush regarding Iraq, indefinite detention, waterboarding, warrantless wiretaps, the Valerie Plame leak, and many other things. The issue with conservatives isn't distrust of government, but distrust of non-Republicans. Most conservatives I know had zero problem trusting Pres Bush to decide which human beings deserved habeas corpus, trial by jury, etc. Most conservatives I know have zero problems with "big government" when it comes to marijuana (medical or otherwise), pornography, prostitution, gay marriage, etc. I don't know any conservatives railing against farm subsidies, no-bid Haliburton contracts, or Blackwater mercs making tons of cash.
Anyone who is a-okay with indefinite detention without trial or waterboarding but thinks that government paying for surgery is totalitarian isn't conservative--they're just stupid, liars, or stupid liars. You have to see through the BS conservative myths about conservatism. Neither neoconservatives nor social conservatives are small-government conservatives, though both will lie through their teeth about it. Conservatives didn't bat an eyelash at Bush's spending spree, nor Reagan's back in the day. They're lying. No one who supports indefinite detention without trial, waterboarding, or for that matter even capital punishment is actually a "small-government" anything.
My problem with conservatives is not that they're conservatives, but that they're liars. The same goes for their BS about character and morality. They get apoplectic over Clinton's BJ, but Gingrich, who is still feted and admired, had an affair even as he participated in Clinton's impeachment. If the issue was morality, and not politics, they'd have ostracized Delay and Gingrich. Their moral outrage is faked, and ultimately nothing but cheap opportunism.
I respect actual conservatives, but truth be told I know less than a handful. Plenty pretend to be when the Dems are in office, but it's easy to smoke them out. Just murmur "medical marijuana" or "legalize prostitution" and all talk of government getting off our backs sort of goes by the wayside. I can't begin to express the intensity of my contempt for these people.
who is to actually say that God is not waiting for us beyond the last theorem? Physics is not complete yet so isn't it hubris to proclaim that there is no God without a complete understanding of where our Universe came from?
You are getting the issue sort of backwards. You are asking for evidence of a negative--evidence that God does NOT exist, and since proving a negative is impossible (disregarding logical impossibilities, like square circles), it's no wonder that you're coming up short. The issue is whether or not there is any reason TO believe.
I am finding it more difficult to remain an atheist
Have you found it more difficult to continue not believing in Zeus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, etc? It's not in dispute that there are many things about the universe that we do not understand. I just don't see how "I don't know" maps to "God did it." Ignorance is not a theological argument.
Just because most of what the world pushes on you as the concept of "God" is complete crap does not mean that "God" does not exist.
Isn't that just as true of all the other gods? I'm an atheist because I see no reason to believe in God, not because I claim to have total knowledge of the universe and can definitively tell you that there is no God. Please stop acting as if atheists are the one making untenable knowledge-claims. Theism is the claim that God exists, and atheism is just skepticism towards that claim. The burden of evidence still rests on the theists, just as it always does for the person making the claim.
I agree, but it's not so much that power corrupts, but that unaccountability corrupts
But I think that accountability automatically scales down as power goes up. When powerful people do bad things, usually there are many other people around them who are complicit in some way, or who should've known better, or who should have spoken up, or who just went along because everyone else did so. Eventually you get to a point where people will give you a pass just because the alternative--admitting that everyone around you facilitated what you were doing--is just too unpalatable. When admitting your guilt involves admitting their own guilt, most people around you will insist on your innocence, to a degree they never would have if they weren't tangentially complicit.
That's why committees and "consensus" are so popular. If one decision can be tracked to one person, they might actually have to deal with personal responsibility. Very few people want that for themselves, and for that they'll collude to muddy the waters for everyone else, too.
"Wow, somebody else is pointing out other things that got left out when people talk about the Saint of Science."
The issue isn't that Galileo was a saint, but that he had to recant under threat of torture. He's become a symbol of a time when religious powers told people what they could say, under threat of torture, prison, or death. When people exaggerate how great Galileo really was, what they're really saying is that they're thankful that part of history is behind us. Whether you love James Dobson or cringe at his name, I don't know anyone who would want to empower him with the authority to have someone tortured and killed because they published a scientific paper, right or wrong, that went against his religious views. We should all be thankful that our culture has moved beyond that.
I didn't say that diet wasn't involved, and I didn't quote any sports trainer. Also, I *do* see fat people at the gym--walking leisurely on the treadmill while the fit people run their butts off at the other treadmill right next to them. The fat people who put forth more (sustained) effort at exercise *and* modify their diet can and do lose weight and get more fit. It takes time and committment.
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You can also *read books* on your phone. Right now I'm reading Proust. So there is quite a bit of angsty introspection going on in my life right now. So just because someone is looking at their phone non-stop doesn't mean they're playing a game, or tweeting, or whatever. And if you're shallow, don't blame it on the phone, or the internet, or connectivity. Just spend less time with Angry Birds and more time with Thoreau.
To be fair, automobiles would be a money loser if government hadn't built roads and made the other subsidies necessary to make autos a tenable technology.
And don't forget the number of times that there are no penalties to avoid at all, because it turns out that the activity was unnecessary.
Yeah, I'm looking at you, work. The number of times it turns out that someone else has already done something, often even before I'm assigned a task, well, it pays to procrastinate.
Yeah, procrastination is actually my form of triage. If the deadline is months away, in the interim it may go away altogether, or at the very least the specifics and deliverables will change. Any work I do right now is generally a waste of effort, aside from looking like a Good Boy to the boss. And truthfully that does get figured in. Part of assessing the importance of a project is gauging the boss's enthusiasm. If we're talking about a metric that will make the boss look good, I prioritize it and go above and beyond. Making the boss look good is generally more important than the actual job. The downside is that the boss just assumes you can do all these shiny happy things and that the job just gets done, I suppose by magic elves.
The reason that I'm going to call bullshit on this is that empirically "lefties" tend to become "righties" through age or experience. A liberal is just a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet.
My experience is just the opposite. I was a libertarian through my 20's, when I (like most immature guys) thought I was John Galt and Zarathustra all rolled into one. And I *have* been mugged, as have many lefties. We're just aware of the seemingly obvious fact that voting Republican won't prevent you from getting mugged again. Like the myth that Republicans are better at national security, this is just so much self-congratulatory BS on the part of right-wingers.
I just hope she pays attention to her new party. They actually support quite a few wealth-redistribution programs, such as social security, farm subsidies, medicare, the Retiree Drug Subsidy, etc. Compared to the Libertarians, the Republicans are basically socialists.
I have to wonder if the 'liberal gene' isn't also something along the lines of a 'empathy gene.' I don't mean this purely in the virtuous sense. Empathy can be paralyzing and, if taken to extremes, make for some pretty bad law. The caricatures of the effete liberal too afraid to hurt someone's creativity or wound someone's feelings are all tied to an excess of empathy. Conservatives seem to think that people who are bad off just deserved it. Well, unless it's *them,* in which case the liberals killed their inner John Galt.
and it will be curious to see if they can survive their own success.
Sort of. If/when Republicans take majorities again, and/or the White House, the Tea Party will fade away. Sky-high spending will still be the norm, but the evil socialist Democrats won't be the ones doing it. If/when the Democratic Party win another election, the Tea Party phenom will be back, blaming the liberals for everything and crying "throw the bums out!" These people aren't pro-anything. They're anti-Obama, anti-Pelosi, or anti-anyone who is to the left of Rush Limbaugh. They aren't even for small government, because they generally don't favor cutting off social security, medicare, farm subsidies, and other eminently socialist parasite handouts. Granted, they don't want taxes collected to pay for these programs, but that's a given.
I somehow doubt all that many were swayed by Obama's use of social media. Probably about as many as were swayed by Clinton's sax playing on a talk show. Obama could have called it "the internets" and I would still have voted for him over anyone who would choose Palin for anything. Do I wish he were better? Of course. But I'll probably vote for him again, because I can't see that Palin or Huckabee or Gingrich could be good for my country.
Well, if you don't go in *both* the tourist trap duty-free shops *and* the backalley places where you can barely turn around, you haven't really gone to Akihabara. I was stationed near there for a few years, and loved it, just for the coolness factor. I liked the little warren of components and tool shops, but I also liked the high-end stores with $40,000 (in Yen equivalent) speakers. I thought it was cool to see the bleeding edge stuff. I remember reading about a new 50" LCD TV on a blog somewhere, and seeing it that evening for sale in Akihabara, for $25K. I still have that accursed Bic Camera tune stuck in my head, since there was one of those 10 minutes from my house. I do miss Tokyo, and I hope to get a job there again one day. My only disappointment with Akihabara was that there is almost no Linux representation there. There were a few Linux books in the big stores (in Japanese, naturally), and even Latex books, but mostly it's a Windows-only ad-space. I never even saw Linux or BSD cds for sale.
Meh. I can't play the modern games, because the 3D moving thing gives me a headache. But I love retro games like Robotron, Joust, Centipede, etc. No, I wouldn't buy a console just for those, but I bought my daughter a PS3 and I'd like to be able to play all those arcade classics they've released over the years for the PS1 and PS2. My daughter has Assassin's Creed II, which looks awesome, but it's not my cup of tea. I get a headache even watching for more than 10 minutes, and anyhoo I don't really like the storyline games. So the lack of old games essentially means that I'm stuck with Tekken and... that's about it. I'm not claiming that retrogrouches represent a significant market, but we do exist.
Whoa, it's not like he outed Valerie Plame or something.
I don't drive a hybrid, just a beater diesel. However, I don't feel any guilt for moderate self-congratulation for using less gasoline. The BP fiasco is traceable, at least in part, to our dependence on gasoline. If you use less gasoline, there is less need to drill a mile under the ocean, and thus less probability of catastrophes like this happening. Also, and this is the biggie for me, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists get their money from oil. If you use less gas, they get less money. That's a good thing. At no point have I ever thought I was saving the world by using less gas. But I do believe that using less gas is a good thing. Call that smug if you want, but don't kid yourself into thinking that the amount of gasoline you use has no effect beyond the money you gave up for it.
What puzzles me is that Monsanto can sue people for "infringing" on their rights, but no one is prosecuting them for trespassing on other people's property. If I let my dog diddle in your yard, aren't I legally responsible for that? What is Monsanto's pollen doing in someone else's fields? Why are Monsanto's plants having illegal hot plant sex with someone else's plants?
Which is why I'm no longer a libertarian. Power corrupts. Libertarians seem to read this as "government power corrupts," which isn't the same thing. I've had consistent problems finding libertarians upset over the actions of Monsanto, Blackwater, etc. Basically no problem exists unless the government is doing it, and their only solution is to say "less government." That someone could do bad stuff for profit isn't even on the radar.
But women work in nursing and teaching, both of which are renowned for their screwed-up cultures. Nurses are known for "eating their young." Politics and bullying abounds. Passive-aggressive is still aggressive. I work for nurses and I'm related to teachers, and I can tell you that these female-dominated fields have cultures just as malignant as anything in IT. I know *female* nurses who, when you ask why they hate nursing, say "women!" Don't think it's all milk and honey elsewhere.
And for every one of those corporations, 10 million conservatives and libertarians who would take to the web to explain in great detail why them doing so was moral, beneficial to us all, and would only be opposed by statist, collectivist fools who would rush us headlong to the Soviet model. In the libertarian world, if it's profitable then it's moral. In the conservative one, the same formula applies, except for drugs and sex.
Considering how much we spend on building and maintenance of roads, not to mention military intervention to protect cheap oil, can we consider automobiles viable yet? What a boondoggle that's been!
You're missing the point that the IPCC's data was just one of the sources. There have been thousands of studies, papers, etc, and the entire field of AGW does not hinge on the IPCC. All science, and all human activity for that matter, will have bad data points. The ~97% of climatologists who accept AGW did not do so solely because the IPCC said so. The field is huge, with dozens of organizations and universities, thousands of scientists, etc. Aside from that, exactly what percentage of the IPCC's data is suspect? Or are you assuming that we have to ignore everything they ever published or concluded, based on a couple of errors? Is that the plan?
Medical science has been wrong before. No question. Does that mean we reject all medicine, until we have absolute certitude? Science does not offer theological certitude. The finding and correcting of error is PART of science. I'm very accustomed to conservative attempts to use any and all errors in science to discredit evolution, stem cell research, medical marijuana, the HPV vaccine, and AGW. I'm also very familiar with conservative attempts to portray themselves as the defenders of "real" science, independent thought, etc, meaning only that they have implicit trust in anyone in any field who rejects AGW, evolution, the efficacy of sex ed, etc. I will continue to get my info on AGW from climatologists, not from right-wing pundits like Glen Beck or whoever.
Unfortunately, the science has been done, by climatologists. However, they said a bunch of stuff that some of us didn't want to hear, which by definition makes it controversial, so we pretend that the science is still murky. Throwing out Gore's movie or the entire IPCC doesn't change the bare fact that about 97 out of a hundred climatologists will tell you that humans are exacerbating global warming.
Who's we? I knew plenty of people who trusted Bush regarding Iraq, indefinite detention, waterboarding, warrantless wiretaps, the Valerie Plame leak, and many other things. The issue with conservatives isn't distrust of government, but distrust of non-Republicans. Most conservatives I know had zero problem trusting Pres Bush to decide which human beings deserved habeas corpus, trial by jury, etc. Most conservatives I know have zero problems with "big government" when it comes to marijuana (medical or otherwise), pornography, prostitution, gay marriage, etc. I don't know any conservatives railing against farm subsidies, no-bid Haliburton contracts, or Blackwater mercs making tons of cash.
Anyone who is a-okay with indefinite detention without trial or waterboarding but thinks that government paying for surgery is totalitarian isn't conservative--they're just stupid, liars, or stupid liars. You have to see through the BS conservative myths about conservatism. Neither neoconservatives nor social conservatives are small-government conservatives, though both will lie through their teeth about it. Conservatives didn't bat an eyelash at Bush's spending spree, nor Reagan's back in the day. They're lying. No one who supports indefinite detention without trial, waterboarding, or for that matter even capital punishment is actually a "small-government" anything.
My problem with conservatives is not that they're conservatives, but that they're liars. The same goes for their BS about character and morality. They get apoplectic over Clinton's BJ, but Gingrich, who is still feted and admired, had an affair even as he participated in Clinton's impeachment. If the issue was morality, and not politics, they'd have ostracized Delay and Gingrich. Their moral outrage is faked, and ultimately nothing but cheap opportunism.
I respect actual conservatives, but truth be told I know less than a handful. Plenty pretend to be when the Dems are in office, but it's easy to smoke them out. Just murmur "medical marijuana" or "legalize prostitution" and all talk of government getting off our backs sort of goes by the wayside. I can't begin to express the intensity of my contempt for these people.
You are getting the issue sort of backwards. You are asking for evidence of a negative--evidence that God does NOT exist, and since proving a negative is impossible (disregarding logical impossibilities, like square circles), it's no wonder that you're coming up short. The issue is whether or not there is any reason TO believe.
Have you found it more difficult to continue not believing in Zeus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, etc? It's not in dispute that there are many things about the universe that we do not understand. I just don't see how "I don't know" maps to "God did it." Ignorance is not a theological argument.
Isn't that just as true of all the other gods? I'm an atheist because I see no reason to believe in God, not because I claim to have total knowledge of the universe and can definitively tell you that there is no God. Please stop acting as if atheists are the one making untenable knowledge-claims. Theism is the claim that God exists, and atheism is just skepticism towards that claim. The burden of evidence still rests on the theists, just as it always does for the person making the claim.
But I think that accountability automatically scales down as power goes up. When powerful people do bad things, usually there are many other people around them who are complicit in some way, or who should've known better, or who should have spoken up, or who just went along because everyone else did so. Eventually you get to a point where people will give you a pass just because the alternative--admitting that everyone around you facilitated what you were doing--is just too unpalatable. When admitting your guilt involves admitting their own guilt, most people around you will insist on your innocence, to a degree they never would have if they weren't tangentially complicit.
That's why committees and "consensus" are so popular. If one decision can be tracked to one person, they might actually have to deal with personal responsibility. Very few people want that for themselves, and for that they'll collude to muddy the waters for everyone else, too.
The issue isn't that Galileo was a saint, but that he had to recant under threat of torture. He's become a symbol of a time when religious powers told people what they could say, under threat of torture, prison, or death. When people exaggerate how great Galileo really was, what they're really saying is that they're thankful that part of history is behind us. Whether you love James Dobson or cringe at his name, I don't know anyone who would want to empower him with the authority to have someone tortured and killed because they published a scientific paper, right or wrong, that went against his religious views. We should all be thankful that our culture has moved beyond that.
I didn't say that diet wasn't involved, and I didn't quote any sports trainer. Also, I *do* see fat people at the gym--walking leisurely on the treadmill while the fit people run their butts off at the other treadmill right next to them. The fat people who put forth more (sustained) effort at exercise *and* modify their diet can and do lose weight and get more fit. It takes time and committment.