Global warming is such a politicized issue from both sides...
But only one of those sides has the consensus of the scientific community behind it. Maybe we should listen to them when it comes to questions of science? I defer to epidemiologists on matters of epidemiology, metallurgists on matters of metallurgy, mathematicians on matters of mathematics, and climatologists on matters of climatology. Can you please give me a reason to consider climatology so "politicized" that I should trust the oil companies over the climatologists?
...and a lot of money from both environmentalists and big oil is going into 'proving' it, that it's really quite difficult to know what is happening at all.
That's true, unless you consider the scientific worldview to be a valid, dependable, fruitful, beneficient way of looking at the world. As a person who wears eyeglasses, uses medicine, rides in automobiles, travels in airplanes, enjoys the internet/electricity/air conditioning/light bulbs/telephones/etc, I have to confess that I'm biased in favor of science. Scientists, despite what you seem to be saying, have come to the conclusion that global warming is both happening and is being worsened by human actions. They have already taken that hot ball of plasma in the sky into account. Are you really entertaining the idea that scientists forgot to take the sun into account when figuring out global warming? The entire community of climatologists would have to be complete morons. Are you saying that's the case?
To the suits, knowing computers well isn't an asset, but a liability. They need to be seen as the big visionaries and sling buzzwords like ninja stars. There is some personal branding going on here. Server-room types are tech gods, but they have a ceiling in the organization past which they can't possibly rise. The suits want/need to know enough tech buzzwords to sound smart to the morlocks when talking to the morlocks, but when their sheepish not-getting of technology is more faux gentrification than an admission if ignorance. Knowing how to use vi to edit your apt sources file may be an amusing diversion for the future CEO, but it would probably be more of a social impediment than an asset.
They only wipe the system if it's a distro they don't like or if the seller made a proprietary, crud-laden install that you really want in a pristine state. For example, my Sony desktop came with a god-awful amount of software pre-installed that I just didn't want, so I had to wipe and re-install Win2K, and then later Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu, and as long as it's a standard Ubuntu 6.10 install with all the hardware supported, and apt-get/Synaptic pulls from the normal Ubuntu repositories, I'll be happy and use it as-is. My Sony uses a soundchip that is unsupported by Ubuntu, Debian, Knoppix, Suse, and even Fedora 4/5/6, so I will probably have to buy from a company that specializes in Linux-installed hardware from now on, just to make sure I'm buying hardware that is known to be supported. For me, Ubuntu is perfect, and if the hardware plays nicely then I'm happy.
Since unvaccinated people are choosing to be potential disease carriers (or, better, their parents are choosing for them) who endanger the larger population, society needs to segregate those who don't want to "opt in" to disease prevention. When they want to "opt in" to society and participate in public health by taking the normal immunizations we all get (polio, mumps, rubella, and so on) then they can reap the benefits of being members of society. Would that make you happy? I'm not sure whether a desert island or home arrest is better, but they definitely can't be out and about.
Also, science and medicine are never, and were never, presented as "perfect." Cars aren't perfect, planes aren't perfect, medicines aren't, and neither are vaccinations. All activity involves risk, and it's intelligent to take the known benefit over the hypothetical harm, particularly when millions of dollars and almost a decade of have gone into looking for that harm and yet still failed to find it. What you're doing is rejecting a vaccine that has been studied for 9 years, that is known to prevent cancer and save lives, and your objection is that it may not, in the long run, be perfect. Either you're trying to be clever but missing the obvious, or your objection is actually rooted in the same ideology that fuels the Religious Right.
Then should ANY vaccines be mandatory? Any vaccine (or medication, for that matter) can be thought safe for decades, and only later found to have side effects. The vaccine has been studied for almost ten years now. How many girls and women do you want to get cancer while you wait for your illusory certainty? This skepticism, if it call be called that, could be raised over the flu shot, typhoid, rubella, or any number of other shots now given. But the skepticism isn't raised, because the only reason this is controversial is that the religious right is muddying the waters, just like they do over condoms, sex-ed, and so on. All other vaccines (and medications) are also sold for a profit, and that doesn't mean that kids shouldn't get them. Don't believe the hype.
Can I guarantee you that it's 100% safe? Nope, but my daughter will be getting it ASAP, and I'd wager that that shot will be safer, probability-wise, than the car ride to/from the clinic. People always jump up and down and demand 100% certitude of safety when they're opposing something on ideological grounds, but they routinely accept a normal level of risk on subjects they don't have an ideological issue with. Your kid could go to the ER for stitches and die from a reaction to the local anesthetic, but that doesn't mean you will refuse the anesthetic. These things do happen, but that reality doesn't make us stop giving medication.
There can still be consequences. You can refuse to "spare the rod" and you can beat the hell out of your daughter. If she doesn't honor you, I guess you could always put her to death. That would in turn bring consequences on you via a jail sentence, but the righteous should not be swayed by the judgement of this world. But as to the consequences of "fucking" (your term, I believe), there are many other diseases, plus pregnancy, that are still transmitted by this route. If those aren't enough for you, I'm guess you could deliberately expose her to a carcinogen in the hopes of giving her cancer so she'd feel justly punished.
Of course all of the above assumes that you're a really stupid, ignorant, vicious moron who wants children to suffer so you personally feel like you're walking with Jesus or something along those lines. I can only hope I've misjudged you and underestimated your intelligence and decency. I'd much rather be wrong about you than right about you, because if I'm right about you then you owe other Christians an apology, because you're the reason people like Richard Dawkins think they're stupid and crazy.
Maybe he forgot that the code phrase "culture of life" means "We should overturn Roe v. Wade," and that's all it means. If you extend your "life is sacred and we should cherish and protect it" thinking to vaccinations, big tobacco/alcohol, health care, the death penalty, the environment, or drug treatment the Religious Right is no longer your friend and their ideology will be in opposition to you just about 100% of the time.
They've co-opted a catchy phrase to get a free pass on an ideology that is largely anti-life, or at least anti-this-life. Maybe he's pushing it for everyone, even for girls whose parents would object, because he knows there are many of Texans who would rather their daughter get cancer than have premarital sex with no negative consequences. Even if his decisions seem extreme, I'll side with him against those who consider "not condoning sin" to be more important than preventing cancer. And that means the Religious Right.
I'm content just pointing out that they're lying as to the reasons for the objections. Same goes for prostitution, condoms, sex ed, birth control pills/patches, and so on. The religious right is motivated solely by not wanting to "encourage sin," and they don't care that communities/states that follow their ideology have a higher teen pregnancy and STD rate. Fine, that's their priority, and I can't criticize someone for thinking that sin is a more dire concern than cancer. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, even one that I consider to be medieval, vicious, irresponsible, immoral, ignorant, and stupid.
But I can fault them for lying and pretending that they're motivated by a concern for health, instead of just coming out and moralizing to me like they want to. It works for me to point out that they're lying about their motivation and lying about health information, yet expecting me to trust them, admitted, proven liars, on moral issues. That usually shuts them up, and that's good enough. I realize they just go peddle their vicious lies to someone else, but sometimes being away from the loony is the best I can hope for. In a perfect world they'd realize "hey, my ideology has turned me into a shameless liar, and since integrity is important, maybe I should rethink this," but I don't think that happens very often.
Yes, but first-world countries, particularly the USA, get a blank slate every 10 seconds or so. It doesn't matter if we bombed you last week or overthrew a democracy and installed a dictator--if you hate us, it must because we're so virtuous. Hence, "They hate us because we're free!" There are religious fundamentalists who no doubt detest our freedoms, but it's obvious that us killing their people, and giving money and support to dictators who kill their people, might just be a teensy-weensy factor in why they dislike us.
But contemplating that line of thinking involvees dwelling on morally questionable decisions made by Presidents we don't like to think morally complex thoughts about (at least not in relation to poor brown people who should be thankful we gave them Coca-Cola and jobs making our Nikes) so we stick with the morally superior answer that they hate us because we're too kind and free and virtuous. It's vanity plus denial plus laziness that has led us to this conclusion.
Everyone in the service volunteered--for a stated term of service. The "volunteer" status of many military members today is analogous to me buying a car from you and then deciding after the deal that the money I paid was for all of your cars, and you having nothing to say about it. The military is clearly, obviously, unambiguously changing the terms of the contract after the vulunteered-for term of service is over. People are serving time for which they did NOT volunteer.
Enlistment isn't for life, and you damned will know it. It's for a stated, defined term of service, and anything past that is a unilateral contract change, that though possibly legal, is not the same thing as "they volunteered!" The government gets away with it because they're the government, and you damned well know that too. What you're doing is saying "they volunteered! I have no sympathy!" while neglecting to mention that you've reserved the option of redefining the words however you want. That's the same way the government redefined terms like unemployment, civil war, deficit, WMD, and it's a fundamentally dishonest approach to your subject. Enlisting in the military doesn't mean they get to keep you forever and ever and still use the term "all-volunteer force."
No, the people are the reason behind CYA security, and the media only reflects that. People want the illusion of safety, and they get pissy if you point out that they're being irrational. The flu kills almost 7 times more Americans per year than were killed on 9/11 but you get treated like a barbarian for pointing that out, or like a simpleton for suggesting that our financial outlays should be proportional to the risk. Looking at the flu alone, and even disregarding TB, AIDS, and other disease, terrorism could never compete mortality-wise.
We could spend 1/10 as much as we're spending on the GWOT on child nutrition instead and save more American lives than the GWOT is protecting, and that's even granting the debatable conclusion that the GWOT is actually protecting, not endangering, lives. But 9/11 made Americans feel vulnerable and queasy, and that trumps child nutrition, public sanitation, immunizations for the poor, or any other project that could help a far greater number of Americans. Yes, the media feeds into this, the same way circuses feed into our love of circuses. But it isn't as if the population is intelligent and cool-headed and the media is swooping in to dumb us down. We get the media we choose. If people were reading the Economist and Harper's instead of People and TV Guide we still wouldn't have a perfect world, but it would reflect a more intelligent and rational citizenry.
Perhaps, but computers need to be replaced every 2 years because software and operating systems get bigger and more resource-demanding. That Canon 85L lens is expensive, but only needs to be purchased once, and next year's model will not be any different (with very few exceptions). Also, lenses barely dip in value, whereas the computer drops like a rock the second you buy it.
I don't object to it per se, but I'd bet it has much to do with the high divorce rate/breakup rate we have today. I think the pictures of physical perfection we see on TV and in the movies skews our expectations of the real people we meet every day. I really doubt that Scarlet Johanson or Angelina Jolie look in real life, sitting in their living room, like they do in those perfect breath-stopping scenes in the movies. You guys are artists, yes, and I respect that, but I think your art is the source of much unhappiness in the world. I need to go back and read me some Plato, because I think he touched on this somewhere...
Dating us just to make someone else jealous, and will dump us for him as soon as he takes proper notice
Stopped taking her birth control pills to trap us into marriage (my personal favorite), even as she says "but when you use a condom it makes me think you don't trust me"
Having us raise (and pay for) a child that isn't biologically related to us
I'm sure women have a similar list of complaints about the ways that men deceive them. My point is that we have lousy, horrible, undependable emotional BS detectors, but we're very skilled at conning ourselves into thinking that we're more perceptive than we actually are. Tears, as in droplets of salt water streaming down the face, have absolutely nothing to do with sincerity or authenticity. Your ability to accurately "read" people is probably 1/10 of what you think it is, and it's even worse if you have a high opinion of your own insight into people.
"Skepticism" towards global warming, evolution, or any issue that falls into the political territory of the left wing is the new populism. People who have no problem with the idea that Bill Clinton left a trail of corpses from Arkansas to the White House scoff at global warming and environmentalism, and CFLs fall squarely into that bucket. If you stand back and say "I'm not too sure... let's look at this more closely" when everyone else is buying CFLs that use 1/5 the energy and last 10 times as long, then you're congratulated by conservatives (social, not fiscal, I should point out) as a hard-nosed skeptic who doesn't fall for hysterical groupthink. It goes right along with hostility towards the Kyoto accords, teaching of evolution, prayer in schools, and thinking that Clinton's BJ was the downfall of western civilization. One position doesn't necessitate the others, but there is a strong correlation, just as there is a correlation between a concern for "state's rights" and thinking that slavery "wasn't really that bad."
To be fair, not everyone who doesn't like CFLs fall into this camp. But if you take out the conservatives who also happen to be "skeptical" of evolution and global warming, you end up with a much, much smaller number CFL "skeptics". The number is inflated by politics.
People go to the movies to see the latest Bruce Willis or Meryl Streep flick. Stars aren't stars because they're great actors necessarily, but because people will pay to see their movies. I don't really understand it, just as I don't really understand why people pay to read the celebrity magazines, but from what I read the phenomenon is as old as movies themselves. Maybe bit players could be simulated (extras, people in the background, etc) but the main feature will be the stars. I don't think that Hollywood (or Bollywood) could or would get away from using real live humans. Even when the simulations get so real that you can't really tell, people will still want to watch people.
No problem, twinkletoes. All that work that was getting done because I was working around your restrictions just stop getting done. That 1.4MB Powerpoint presentation I was working on at home, off the clock? Well, I guess the ETA just got pushed back, since I'm certainly not living in my office for you.
Just a few days ago I ran an entire meeting of 12 Powerpoint presentations from my USB drive because the network drive went down the very morning the VIP showed up to have his apple polished. I thought ahead, realized that our network goes down all the time is about as reliable as the Iraqi army, so I had the foresight to copy the files to my personal USB drive. No longer--now I'll just shrug my shoulders and the organization looks only as competent as we really are for a change. I'm actually ecstatic when they lock the computers down a bit more. Already my workplace has cut off webmail, much to the joy of all the workers who now can't be held responsible for not knowing about (and completing the tasking from) an email sent out at 10PM Friday. Lock everything down, please. Could you please take my printer? Who knows what sort of shenanigans I might get up to with that.
Give me a diskless workstation that only works during business hours, and make sure it's the only place from which I can access company data, and I'll buy you lunch for a week. Don't forget that company cellphones and blackberries and PDAs are also the spawn of Satan. Keep up the good work! We love you!
Zimbardo, Milgram, Arendt, and Acton should be a mandatory part of education. Our problem is optimism. Everyone wants to think that people aren't that bad. Also, we like to dismiss a bad cop as a single bad apple, not interpret his actions as evidence that power corrupts even good people. We like to see people as identifiably good or identifiably bad, and someone who's a good person the vast majority of the time but then a monster when he gets the chance to indulge his power with impunity doesn't fit well into that binary worldview.
My personal fantasy is that the interrogations done at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib are filmed then shown on US TV. Every frame of the show would have a message at the bottom denoting the percentage of people in these facilities who were released because there was zero evidence linking them to terrorism. People have this fantasy that torture is okay because "we know they're a terrorist, and it'll save lives" but the real world isn't much like an episode of 24. If people had to face the consequences of the policies they support, maybe the support would be a little less common.
But then again, I also want the press to have free access to areas recently bombed by our military. We should get to see the bodies of people killed by our tax dollars. If the bodies happen to be of enemy combatants surrounded by weapons and bombs, great, then we can make an informed decision to support the bombing. But if 90% are noncombatants with nary a weapon in sight, then, well, we still get to make an informed decision. What we have now is propaganda funded by us, voted by for us, designed to bolster our own support for war by lying to us. Lewis Carroll couldn't have written a more nonsensical plot.
Actually creationists don't even concede evolution in viruses or bacteria. I've worked with a NURSE who hands out antibiotics all day who, even knowing the facts of antibiotic resistance, still insists that there is no evolution. His explanation for antibiotic resistance was so torturous and hard to follow that I can't actually put it into words (something along the lines of "no, the organisms didn't change--these are just different organisms") but it's both fascinating and terrifying to behold.
Well, thinking that evolution is part of a Satanic plot to drag your children into the very pit of hell is somewhat motivational. I'd say that's more motivational than being merely interested in education for education's sake. They're envisioning the creation/evolution debate as a battle between God and Satan, with themselves being soldiers in God's army. Megalomania may make for more active citizens, but it still isn't healthy.
I think it's telling that every time the public finds out that a school board tried to undermine science education via an attack on mainstream scientific theories, the public votes them out immediately. It happened at Dover, and now in Kansas. The ID crowd only get the chance to promote their "alternative theory" when they keep quiet about what they intend to do, but as soon as they do it, the cat is out of the bag and they get voted out of office. Somehow they still think that they have grassroots support, but the movement only survives as long as they lie about it. People love talk about being more Godly and all that, but they don't want their state to be the laughingstock of the country.
I have no problems with secret societies, even those that are vaguely sinister, but the key is to remain secret. I see people wearing rings, t-shirts, even tattoos of that symbol. I don't really care if you drink human blood, but why do you act all secret and then talk about it all the time?
Sorry if it seemed that I disagreed with you. I was adding my idea of nuance, not saying that I thought you were wrong. I actually wish more minorities of all races were given more complex roles. Think of a movie as disturbing as The Woodsman, where Kevin Bacon played a child molester. What minority would've touched that role? Forest Whitaker, maybe, because he seems to be willing to take odd roles, but I don't know of any other. I'm not actually offended by whites playing bible-thumping zealots or serial killers, because that's part of human frailty that you're going to see in film and on TV. But I think people would cry "racism" if an asian murderer (much less black or hispanic) was slowly torturing Scarlett Johansson in the latest blockbuster.
I believe you're overestimating American culture. I like to think we're getting better, but we have a long way to go. But something tells me that all cultures are susceptible to stereotypes. I was in Thailand a few years ago and met a Japanese guy. When he found out that I was from Texas, he asked me, "Are you a cowboy?" I said, "No--are you a samurai?" We both got a good laugh out of it, but it made me think about how we all see each other. I worked with a black woman who said once of another co-worker (Chinese), "I bet he knows kung fu." My response was, "I bet you have a great jump shot." She got it, and we had a shared joke from then on. So some of us are trying to point out the stereotypes. But I'm still trying to get that Jamaican woman I work with to make me some Jerk chicken.
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That's true, unless you consider the scientific worldview to be a valid, dependable, fruitful, beneficient way of looking at the world. As a person who wears eyeglasses, uses medicine, rides in automobiles, travels in airplanes, enjoys the internet/electricity/air conditioning/light bulbs/telephones/etc, I have to confess that I'm biased in favor of science. Scientists, despite what you seem to be saying, have come to the conclusion that global warming is both happening and is being worsened by human actions. They have already taken that hot ball of plasma in the sky into account. Are you really entertaining the idea that scientists forgot to take the sun into account when figuring out global warming? The entire community of climatologists would have to be complete morons. Are you saying that's the case?
To the suits, knowing computers well isn't an asset, but a liability. They need to be seen as the big visionaries and sling buzzwords like ninja stars. There is some personal branding going on here. Server-room types are tech gods, but they have a ceiling in the organization past which they can't possibly rise. The suits want/need to know enough tech buzzwords to sound smart to the morlocks when talking to the morlocks, but when their sheepish not-getting of technology is more faux gentrification than an admission if ignorance. Knowing how to use vi to edit your apt sources file may be an amusing diversion for the future CEO, but it would probably be more of a social impediment than an asset.
They only wipe the system if it's a distro they don't like or if the seller made a proprietary, crud-laden install that you really want in a pristine state. For example, my Sony desktop came with a god-awful amount of software pre-installed that I just didn't want, so I had to wipe and re-install Win2K, and then later Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu, and as long as it's a standard Ubuntu 6.10 install with all the hardware supported, and apt-get/Synaptic pulls from the normal Ubuntu repositories, I'll be happy and use it as-is. My Sony uses a soundchip that is unsupported by Ubuntu, Debian, Knoppix, Suse, and even Fedora 4/5/6, so I will probably have to buy from a company that specializes in Linux-installed hardware from now on, just to make sure I'm buying hardware that is known to be supported. For me, Ubuntu is perfect, and if the hardware plays nicely then I'm happy.
Also, science and medicine are never, and were never, presented as "perfect." Cars aren't perfect, planes aren't perfect, medicines aren't, and neither are vaccinations. All activity involves risk, and it's intelligent to take the known benefit over the hypothetical harm, particularly when millions of dollars and almost a decade of have gone into looking for that harm and yet still failed to find it. What you're doing is rejecting a vaccine that has been studied for 9 years, that is known to prevent cancer and save lives, and your objection is that it may not, in the long run, be perfect. Either you're trying to be clever but missing the obvious, or your objection is actually rooted in the same ideology that fuels the Religious Right.
Can I guarantee you that it's 100% safe? Nope, but my daughter will be getting it ASAP, and I'd wager that that shot will be safer, probability-wise, than the car ride to/from the clinic. People always jump up and down and demand 100% certitude of safety when they're opposing something on ideological grounds, but they routinely accept a normal level of risk on subjects they don't have an ideological issue with. Your kid could go to the ER for stitches and die from a reaction to the local anesthetic, but that doesn't mean you will refuse the anesthetic. These things do happen, but that reality doesn't make us stop giving medication.
Of course all of the above assumes that you're a really stupid, ignorant, vicious moron who wants children to suffer so you personally feel like you're walking with Jesus or something along those lines. I can only hope I've misjudged you and underestimated your intelligence and decency. I'd much rather be wrong about you than right about you, because if I'm right about you then you owe other Christians an apology, because you're the reason people like Richard Dawkins think they're stupid and crazy.
They've co-opted a catchy phrase to get a free pass on an ideology that is largely anti-life, or at least anti-this-life. Maybe he's pushing it for everyone, even for girls whose parents would object, because he knows there are many of Texans who would rather their daughter get cancer than have premarital sex with no negative consequences. Even if his decisions seem extreme, I'll side with him against those who consider "not condoning sin" to be more important than preventing cancer. And that means the Religious Right.
But I can fault them for lying and pretending that they're motivated by a concern for health, instead of just coming out and moralizing to me like they want to. It works for me to point out that they're lying about their motivation and lying about health information, yet expecting me to trust them, admitted, proven liars, on moral issues. That usually shuts them up, and that's good enough. I realize they just go peddle their vicious lies to someone else, but sometimes being away from the loony is the best I can hope for. In a perfect world they'd realize "hey, my ideology has turned me into a shameless liar, and since integrity is important, maybe I should rethink this," but I don't think that happens very often.
But contemplating that line of thinking involvees dwelling on morally questionable decisions made by Presidents we don't like to think morally complex thoughts about (at least not in relation to poor brown people who should be thankful we gave them Coca-Cola and jobs making our Nikes) so we stick with the morally superior answer that they hate us because we're too kind and free and virtuous. It's vanity plus denial plus laziness that has led us to this conclusion.
Enlistment isn't for life, and you damned will know it. It's for a stated, defined term of service, and anything past that is a unilateral contract change, that though possibly legal, is not the same thing as "they volunteered!" The government gets away with it because they're the government, and you damned well know that too. What you're doing is saying "they volunteered! I have no sympathy!" while neglecting to mention that you've reserved the option of redefining the words however you want. That's the same way the government redefined terms like unemployment, civil war, deficit, WMD, and it's a fundamentally dishonest approach to your subject. Enlisting in the military doesn't mean they get to keep you forever and ever and still use the term "all-volunteer force."
We could spend 1/10 as much as we're spending on the GWOT on child nutrition instead and save more American lives than the GWOT is protecting, and that's even granting the debatable conclusion that the GWOT is actually protecting, not endangering, lives. But 9/11 made Americans feel vulnerable and queasy, and that trumps child nutrition, public sanitation, immunizations for the poor, or any other project that could help a far greater number of Americans. Yes, the media feeds into this, the same way circuses feed into our love of circuses. But it isn't as if the population is intelligent and cool-headed and the media is swooping in to dumb us down. We get the media we choose. If people were reading the Economist and Harper's instead of People and TV Guide we still wouldn't have a perfect world, but it would reflect a more intelligent and rational citizenry.
Perhaps, but computers need to be replaced every 2 years because software and operating systems get bigger and more resource-demanding. That Canon 85L lens is expensive, but only needs to be purchased once, and next year's model will not be any different (with very few exceptions). Also, lenses barely dip in value, whereas the computer drops like a rock the second you buy it.
I don't object to it per se, but I'd bet it has much to do with the high divorce rate/breakup rate we have today. I think the pictures of physical perfection we see on TV and in the movies skews our expectations of the real people we meet every day. I really doubt that Scarlet Johanson or Angelina Jolie look in real life, sitting in their living room, like they do in those perfect breath-stopping scenes in the movies. You guys are artists, yes, and I respect that, but I think your art is the source of much unhappiness in the world. I need to go back and read me some Plato, because I think he touched on this somewhere...
I'm sure women have a similar list of complaints about the ways that men deceive them. My point is that we have lousy, horrible, undependable emotional BS detectors, but we're very skilled at conning ourselves into thinking that we're more perceptive than we actually are. Tears, as in droplets of salt water streaming down the face, have absolutely nothing to do with sincerity or authenticity. Your ability to accurately "read" people is probably 1/10 of what you think it is, and it's even worse if you have a high opinion of your own insight into people.
To be fair, not everyone who doesn't like CFLs fall into this camp. But if you take out the conservatives who also happen to be "skeptical" of evolution and global warming, you end up with a much, much smaller number CFL "skeptics". The number is inflated by politics.
People go to the movies to see the latest Bruce Willis or Meryl Streep flick. Stars aren't stars because they're great actors necessarily, but because people will pay to see their movies. I don't really understand it, just as I don't really understand why people pay to read the celebrity magazines, but from what I read the phenomenon is as old as movies themselves. Maybe bit players could be simulated (extras, people in the background, etc) but the main feature will be the stars. I don't think that Hollywood (or Bollywood) could or would get away from using real live humans. Even when the simulations get so real that you can't really tell, people will still want to watch people.
Just a few days ago I ran an entire meeting of 12 Powerpoint presentations from my USB drive because the network drive went down the very morning the VIP showed up to have his apple polished. I thought ahead, realized that our network goes down all the time is about as reliable as the Iraqi army, so I had the foresight to copy the files to my personal USB drive. No longer--now I'll just shrug my shoulders and the organization looks only as competent as we really are for a change. I'm actually ecstatic when they lock the computers down a bit more. Already my workplace has cut off webmail, much to the joy of all the workers who now can't be held responsible for not knowing about (and completing the tasking from) an email sent out at 10PM Friday. Lock everything down, please. Could you please take my printer? Who knows what sort of shenanigans I might get up to with that.
Give me a diskless workstation that only works during business hours, and make sure it's the only place from which I can access company data, and I'll buy you lunch for a week. Don't forget that company cellphones and blackberries and PDAs are also the spawn of Satan. Keep up the good work! We love you!
Zimbardo, Milgram, Arendt, and Acton should be a mandatory part of education. Our problem is optimism. Everyone wants to think that people aren't that bad. Also, we like to dismiss a bad cop as a single bad apple, not interpret his actions as evidence that power corrupts even good people. We like to see people as identifiably good or identifiably bad, and someone who's a good person the vast majority of the time but then a monster when he gets the chance to indulge his power with impunity doesn't fit well into that binary worldview.
But then again, I also want the press to have free access to areas recently bombed by our military. We should get to see the bodies of people killed by our tax dollars. If the bodies happen to be of enemy combatants surrounded by weapons and bombs, great, then we can make an informed decision to support the bombing. But if 90% are noncombatants with nary a weapon in sight, then, well, we still get to make an informed decision. What we have now is propaganda funded by us, voted by for us, designed to bolster our own support for war by lying to us. Lewis Carroll couldn't have written a more nonsensical plot.
Actually creationists don't even concede evolution in viruses or bacteria. I've worked with a NURSE who hands out antibiotics all day who, even knowing the facts of antibiotic resistance, still insists that there is no evolution. His explanation for antibiotic resistance was so torturous and hard to follow that I can't actually put it into words (something along the lines of "no, the organisms didn't change--these are just different organisms") but it's both fascinating and terrifying to behold.
Well, thinking that evolution is part of a Satanic plot to drag your children into the very pit of hell is somewhat motivational. I'd say that's more motivational than being merely interested in education for education's sake. They're envisioning the creation/evolution debate as a battle between God and Satan, with themselves being soldiers in God's army. Megalomania may make for more active citizens, but it still isn't healthy.
I think it's telling that every time the public finds out that a school board tried to undermine science education via an attack on mainstream scientific theories, the public votes them out immediately. It happened at Dover, and now in Kansas. The ID crowd only get the chance to promote their "alternative theory" when they keep quiet about what they intend to do, but as soon as they do it, the cat is out of the bag and they get voted out of office. Somehow they still think that they have grassroots support, but the movement only survives as long as they lie about it. People love talk about being more Godly and all that, but they don't want their state to be the laughingstock of the country.
I have no problems with secret societies, even those that are vaguely sinister, but the key is to remain secret. I see people wearing rings, t-shirts, even tattoos of that symbol. I don't really care if you drink human blood, but why do you act all secret and then talk about it all the time?
I believe you're overestimating American culture. I like to think we're getting better, but we have a long way to go. But something tells me that all cultures are susceptible to stereotypes. I was in Thailand a few years ago and met a Japanese guy. When he found out that I was from Texas, he asked me, "Are you a cowboy?" I said, "No--are you a samurai?" We both got a good laugh out of it, but it made me think about how we all see each other. I worked with a black woman who said once of another co-worker (Chinese), "I bet he knows kung fu." My response was, "I bet you have a great jump shot." She got it, and we had a shared joke from then on. So some of us are trying to point out the stereotypes. But I'm still trying to get that Jamaican woman I work with to make me some Jerk chicken.