Another problem is that terrorists tend to attack people, not assets. At most they'll attack symbols like the WTC, but even then it was calculated to kill the most people they could. This map blurring would be better spent on the Mall of American and sports stadiums, but if you follow that logic you'd eventually blur the entire map and burn all paper maps, because all of the maps could be used to help a terrorist. I'm not saying that anyone would explicitly advocate blurring the entire map (or burning the paper ones) but that isn't how it transpires. When someone comes to you and says "I want to blur X, so I don't help the terrorists," which ones do you deny? Because the way they've structured the question, to deny any request is to implicitly help the terrorists. That's the way the Bush administration got everything they wanted--they just appended "so we don't help the terrorists" to the end of every request, and it went like butter. And we end up with warrantless surveillance, torture, and watered-down habeus corpus. When the slope really is slippery, then the "slippery slope" fallacy doesn't apply all that much.
Yeah, even without watching the news I know that the Democrats must've won an election somewhere, because all of a sudden I'm seeing that Jefferson "tree of liberty" patriot quote again. Odd that imprisonment without trial+torture+warrantless surveillance=absolute indifference, but now all of a sudden sweet liberty is being gang-raped by a D congress. I know that isn't your point and you were being satirical. just got me thinking about something I haven't seen since Clinton was in office--Republicans saying that government is dangerous to freedom. I know they're lying and they don't actually believe it, but it's funny to hear it again all of a sudden. Brings me back to my days of furiously reading James Bovard and thinking that Randy Weaver and Waco had convinced the Republicans that you shouldn't trust government. Yeah, I was stupid.
You already seem to know more than me, and I've exclusively run different Linux distros, all Debian-based, for about 6 months. My WinXP install was about a year old and I didn't want to go through the pain of reinstalling all those dozens of programs. Apt-get is much faster in that regard, and with the default install I get a much more usable system than I do with the default install of Windows Anything. I like Kile, Synaptic, the terminal, and Knoppix. When things work, they work better than Windows. They work 90% of the time. When they don't work, they just don't work, and I can't fix it. My sound is at half-volume and apparantly it's a chipset issue with no resolution yet. Also, my university's distance-education portal (WebTycho at the U. of Maryland) won't work with Ubuntu, because it says I don't have Javascript installed, though it's there. So I have to reboot into Knoppix to do my homework.
So there have been frustrations, but not enough for me to re-install all the progams I would need to give me a Windows install as useful as the one I get with Knoppix or some other Linux distro. Also, I can't figure out how to get Konqueror to view all the folders in detailed-list view by default. I keep having to select it. So yes, again, there are frustrations. But it works, by and large. There were frustrations with Windows, too. But I'll at least have to get a VMWare install of Windows together, because I just ordered a Garmin GPS with the Mapsource software, which is Windows-only.
Science is not, never has been, and never will be "someone". I think that you actually mean "I trust scientists.". Not that that is an entirely bad thing, but you ought to say what you mean.
I did. I trust the process, the model, the way of looking at the world. Individual scientists are fallible, but I trust the worldview because it tries to discover and understand the world around us as best we can. I appreciate you dedication to exact language, but my statement was correct as written.
I'm sure our climate models will improve. I've never thought we had rock-solid unquestionable data, only that what we have is the best information we have. Considering what's at stake, I'd like to act on the best information we have rather than wait until we have another model. New models will always be forthcoming, but if carbon dioxide and other pollutants have the effects we now think they do, the effects of waiting will be both worse and nonreversible.
I do defer to the consensus of scientists working in a given field. If atomic physicists have come to the consensus that a particular subatomic particle exists, I'll buy it. If a zoologist, dermatologist, a minister, and Rush Limbaugh are skeptical, I'm skeptical of their skepticism, and will probably attribute (rightly or wrongly) their skepticism to political motives. Looking at, say, evolution, a lot of people are pointing at opinions of "scientists" not working in that field and saying "See? There is a controversy over evolution--the jury is still out."
I'm well aware that my approach can be wrong. But I think the best authority on physics would be physicists, the best authority on evolution would be biologists and zooligists, and the best authority on climatology would be climatologists. If a field comes to a consensus to the extent that climatologists have come to a consensus, I'll admit that I'm likely to defer to them. The opinion of scientists in other fields is not without value, but it doesn't constitute a full-fledged refutation. If you can think of a better approach for laymen, let me know.
Tell your doctor that you don't want any medication unless science completely understands why and how it works. You may be surprized, but many medications are given because they work, even though the "why" is barely understood. We never know everything, so the plea for more knowledge, though valid, can't be use to stall progress that is based on what we do know now. Is science infallible? No. Are the scientists absolutely unanimous? No. But has the mainstreat scientific community, based on several decades of research and hundreds of thousands of years of data (via ice cores and other sampling methods) come to this conclusion? In other words--even though we can always have more data, does the data we have now support this conclusion? The scientific community has reached the consensus that this is the case.
. Scientist have had a closed and narrow mind for a long time now. They need to leave the labs a little more and come back to reality. Scientists and people like you are the people who are really arrogant.
Perhaps we should just vote on it? Does the speed of light depend on your opinion, or is it an objective fact? Should we vote on the germ theory? I can do some googling and probably find you a "skeptic" or two. Should we let them practice medicine on your loved ones? You provided links to several articles in the popular press--do you think the popular press does a good job at covering science? Do you think it possible that your view of science as "narrow minded" might have something to do with relying on Fox News and other mainstream media sources for coverage? Do you know what populism is? Do you know how populism relates to anti-intellectualism, and how that ties to distrust of science? No, I'm not calling you stupid. But there are cultural forces at work behind "skepticism" of global warming that you might find interesting. Have you ever wondered why there are well-funded "skeptics" only of evolution and global warming (two pet conservative causes) but not the germ theory or plate tectonics? Why do all the skeptics come from one political background, and why does all the furor center around issues important to fundamentalist Christians? I just find that odd.
I'm not saying that scientists are infallible, only that they are using a mental system that tries to observe, record, and understand objective reality. Calling them "narrow minded" because they don't toss out decades of science because a handful of skeptics said "nuh-uh!" is a bit odd. Do you use medicine? Electricity? Do you consider these to be the products of a narrow-minded viewpoint, or is there something else going on? Maybe the scientists are just describing objective reality as best they can. Being human, they will err, but the model is, I think, sound. Should we just conclude "it's not getting warmer!" and break the thermometers? Or should we watch it getting warmer every year, ignore the problems, refuse to cut down on pollutants, and just say we're "still collecting data?" Since we'll never know everything, do we just do nothing, ever?
Saying you don't understand something is not an ad hominem attack. Saying that I don't understand quantum mechanics (which I don't) is not insulting me--it's just making an accurate statement and attributing an attitude to that lack of understanding. And I concede that science if fallible. In this case, the entire mainstream scientific community would have to be wrong over the course of several decades. Is it impossible? No, I suppose not. But as I've said elsewhere, science gave me antibiotics and air conditioning--in short, that mental model has been the most productive and beneficient. So I'll trust it. All of the 'science' I've seen debunking GW has been funded by oil companies. We could posit that the oil companies, who have so much to gain by debunking GW, are still the true scientists, while the conventional scientists are frauds, dupes, shills, liars, and fools, but I don't find that too credible.
We can posit that groupthink and shoddy research fooled the medical community into thinking that smoking causes cancer, and the tobacco company 'studies' are the only authentic science, but I don't find that credible. But I admit I bring a certain set of assumptions to the table. I think companies will lie, fudge, and muddy the waters if they stand to lose hundreds of billions of dollars if public policy and opinion were to swing against what they were selling. I think that self-interest funds research that dovetails nicely with a populist tendency to distrust high-falutin' scientists who have, as you correctly point out, have been wrong before. Why should we trust them now? Why indeed.
But, wouldn't you agree they are also held by many non-Christians also? Are "fundamentalist Christians" the only people who deny evolution? Are fundamentalist Christians the only people who are skeptical regarding global warming? Are fundamentalist Christians the only people who believe in free market capitalism?
No, fundamentalist Muslims also disagree with evolution, but they don't live in a society that went through the Enlightenment like the West did, so they don't couch their objections in scientific-sounding jargon.
As far as "skepticism" about global warming, are you forgetting that this is the consensus of the mainstream climatalogical community? What is it about this one field, this one subject, that renders you so competent that you can confidently think that your insight exceeds that of the entire mainstream scientific community? What do we usually call laymen who think they're smarter than all the scientists? In all other fields we readily defer to scientific expertise. Do you trust your minister or baker to hold insightful views on string theory? You see so many laymen pondering this subject as if the scientific truth is waiting for them to weigh in, but why don't you see convenience-store workers or bus drivers weighing in on plate tectonics, the germ theory, or quantum gravity?
Are the opinions of non-experts, people who have not spent the requisite years in the field building expertise and studying data, valid when it comes to global warming and evolution, but not quantum mechanics? Does education matter at all? Can the guy in the street, the construction worker, cop, baker, or yes, minister, have our equal respect and deference on scientific matters as the actual scientists? Is that reasonable?
You can believe or disbelieve in anything you want--as a free human being, that is your prerogative. Believe in Bigfoot and scoff at electricity if it makes you happy. But the rest of us are mystified that so many people defer to scientific authority all the time, but suddenly when it comes to evolution and global warming, they turn into super-skeptics who can expound for hours on the 2nd law of thermodynamics or the philosophy of science, and proceed to tell the scientists what is and isn't good science.
Science gave me electricity, antibiotics, airplanes, and air conditioning. Global warming "skepticism" hails from oil-company funded "research" fed to conservative political think-tanks who in turn regurgitate it to a credulous public who then turn around and consider themselves to be better authorities on science than scientists. The creationism and intelligent design movements are funded by Christian reconstructionists/dominionists, who use these fronts to wage their war against Darwinism, which they believe is a literal tool of Satan that will drag you down to hell. Both of these movements hail exclusively from the conservative political movement, and the more to the right someone is, the more likely they are to disbelieve both evolution and global warming. Also the further to the right you are, the less likely you are to have a high school diploma, much less college degree. Does that make them stupid? No, not by a long shot. But there is a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism that has characterized the American right-wing for a very long time. They have long been hostile to academia and the "eggheads." They've adoped a folksy populism that assures the public that they (the public) can know, via a 10-second soundbite on Fox, all they need to know to hold an intelligent, viable opinion on any scientific subject.
I realize I'm a bit long-winded. But you need to realize who you're opposing and who you're aligning yourselves with. The scientists are all standing on the other side of the room and saying "the data indicates anthropocentric global warming." Yes, there are a lot of annoying, obnoxious celebrities that I know you don't want to stand beside, but just focus on the sc
Because they're going to keep saying it, and you'll have to keep repeating yourself. Global warming skepticism is not caused by an inordinate concern for intellectual integrity and rigor. Similarly, Evolution "skeptics" will still tell you that evolution is impossible because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, even though this has been refuted countless thousands of times. The mentality is the same. They trust all the fruits of science but think they can safely discard the mental model that created those fruits.
Well, that's the polite way of phrasing it. Basically they're just arrogant. They don't understand global warming (or evolution) and they really think that their own seat-of-the-pants assessment is more insightful than that of scientists who make their living analyzing the data. The virulent strain of populism that defines American culture encourages this. Evangelical Christianity encourages this. The media plays into it. The media exists to sell toothpaste and beer, and you don't sell as much toothpaste and beer if your message to viewers is "you don't understand things as well as you think you do, because you lack the education." It's a sad, self-perpetuating situation, but you (and all likeminded people) are stuck in a never-ending cycle of refuting the same claims, again and again and again and...
I'm here. I bought stuff last night using Firefox on Ubuntu. I've had no problems with SSL using Firefox, Konqueror, etc. My web-surfing experience has been no different than it has been anywhere else. If Korea is a "monoculture" then it's because of a cultural issue, not a technical issue.
Fundamentalists have a love-hate relationship with Mormons. They like to count on their vote on Social Conservative causes, and they always get it. Ergo Mormons think they are "in" with the fundamentalists. Not so. When it comes down to it, the fundamentalists think that Mormonism is a cult, Joseph Smith was a false prophet, and so on. So the Mormons are useful in that they provide critical votes for causes the fundamentalists like, but the relationship will never go further than that. Mormons don't blend well, and the extent that individual Mormons do blend is more a mark of their falling short as Mormons than it is of them succeeding to integrate with the society around them. I've known and worked with some that seemed "normal" (and by normal I don't necessarily mean that they cursed or drank alcohol, only that they weren't overtly weird) but some of those were I think only nominally Mormon. One of my former bosses is a Mormon, and he subscribes to The Skeptical Inquirer. I've also heard him curse (a banner day for me) though he never drank caffeine. But digression aside, the fundamentalists don't consider them to be Christians. Of course, the fundies don't consider Catholics to be Christians either, so take that for what it's worth.
Don't forget that many on the Religious Right consider Bush to be appointed by God to lead the country. This is part of the Christian Dominionist mindset, where Christians are supposed to take dominion over the nation. Dominion doesn't mean living in a hut, taking a vow of poverty, and serving mankind. It means dominion, as in "you will obey now, because God appointed me." These people are much more dangerous than a few crooked politicians lining their pockets. In the long run, we might be thankful for the current situation. If Iraq has sufficiently discredited the Neoconservatives, and if Gonzales et al have overplayed their hand too quickly and made people realize how contemptuous they are for due process, then we might have delayed their ascendancy for a few decades at least. They won't go away entirely (they never do), and eventualy there will be an effort to actually take over the government permanently, but if enough people know what they're really like, maybe we can marginalize them for a while.
The Neoconservatives aren't conservative; they are totalitarian in the Leo Strauss "the enlightened ones must lead because they know best" sense of the word. Hence the "big lies" of Iraq, liberals are evil, etc. The inherent problem with all "the enlightened must rule because they know best" systems is that th enlightened aren't really that enlightened, they are susceptible (like everyone) to self interest and so just enrich themselves and their buddies, and they always turn to totalitarianism eventually. Even Rumsfeld, probably the most well-liked and least evil-seeming of the Neocons, said "the current system of government makes competence next to impossible." Is that an all-out cry for Stalinesque death camps? No, but the idea that "the reason my policies have failed utterly is that the system needs to be altogether changed" basically means "give me more power." The idea of a secretive cabal of really smart rulers ruling benevolently for the masses inevitably leads to totalitarianism as the rulers try to force reality to make their ideas work. And there is always support for this from their party, because the politically charged atmosphere means you can't embolden the other party by breaking ranks.
Since it's patently obvious that the Neocons have been diastrous for the Republican Party, I hope they're jettisoned ASAP. We can't wait for them to admit they're wrong, because that does not happen, ever. Conservatives can, eventually, but Neoconservatives have that weird "vision" thing that is never, ever wrong in and of itself. The core Neocons like Cheney will always believe, just as the core still believe that Saddam was linked to 9/11, etc. We just have to hope that the Repubs sideline them and get back to being conservative.
It may be an academic exercise anyway, because neither Romney nor McCain could beat either Hillary or Obama in the election. The question of "would they be good Presidents?" pales next to whether or not the religious right will vote for them, which they won't. Dobson has already rejected McCain, and Romney is a Mormon. Without Dobson et al, they can't get in office. This isn't to say that I particularly want a Hillary/Obama administration, but if the election were held this week, that's what we would get.
Apt-get is perfect as long as the app is in the repository. Truecrypt is not. VMware is not. Those are my biggest "gripes," if you can call them that. I can't really fault the makers of free software for not giving me exactly what I want (maybe I could ask for my money back?) but I do wish that the two programs I find most intriguing were available in the otherwise perfect (to me) apt-get system. I've installed Truecrypt a few times from source from directions on the internets, and it works, but it miffs me that more things aren't automatic. I guess I'm wanting apt-get or some other front end to recognize that I"m trying to install from source, and go get the kernel headers and other files/programs I need to do that, just as it would if I was installing from the repositories.
That being said, I can't get Truecrypt installed at all on smaller distros like DSL, Feather, or Puppy. I haven't tried VMWare. Has anyone gotten this combination to work on one of the small distros?
it can be used on politicians before an election to see just how much good they actually intend to do for the public.
I doubt that many politicians, or even businesspeople, really set out consciously to screw the public and enrich themselves. I think people just spontaneously put more credence in arguments, policies, etc that happen to benefit themselves. So if all the people writing oil policy for a country happen to have been enriched by the oil trade, they are just going to be more open to energy policies that benefit the oil trade. I don't think there are many smoke-filled back rooms where evil men plan bad things--I think most bad things sound very plausible if you weed out all the arguments against them. There are exceptions, like Enron, but I really think that, say, Dick Cheney sincerely believes everything he has been saying over the last few years, and sincerely thinks that the Haliburton stock he owns has played no part at all in his decision-making. None of us, not one, is immune from the tug of self-interest, but it usually plays out that we just happen to sincerely believe things that also happen, by sheer coincidence, to align with our self-interest.
Communism (or socialism, or whatever you call it) would only work if people didn't suck. Not only that, it would be spontaneous if people didn't suck. We have capitalism because greed is the most consistently successful way to motivate people--what's more, large swaths of the population are mystified and suspicious of anyone who is motivated by anything else. See OSS, communes, co-ops, etc. The world is the way it is not because we haven't found the right way to tweak society (or the legal system, or the tax code) but because we are the way we are. People don't share, and as soon as a few of them do (on a scale larger than a few friends, and often even then) freeloaders immediately ruin it for everyone, almost on principle.
It's not that I mind capitalism, only that I think it's made a virtue of selfishness, and we pride ourselves on taking as much out as possible. No, I don't have an alternative. But as Jesus said (and Tolstoy later wrote a great book about), "The Kingdom of God is Within You." If we would act differently, most of the problems we faced would go away. If we made the mutual decision to share but not abuse that sharing, poverty would vanish. If we made the mutual decision to not wage war, there would be no war. We are the problem. Some days I find myself rooting for the meteor.
The Constitution has not failed us, nor will it fail us. We have failed ourselves by falling for every demagogue that promised safety if only we would give up a little freedom. We have failed ourselves by being busybodies and wanting to govern the private lives of those around us (see: gay marriage, pot smoking, prostitution laws, etc) but thinking that this doesn't erode freedom. We have failed ourselves by allowing political talking-heads to convince us that civil rights are "liberal" issues, that freeing someone who was convicted on a torture-induced confession is letting them off on a "technicality," and that civil rights themselves are quaint and outdated, unsuited for the complex world we live in today. The Constitution did not let us down, any more than the Sermon on the Mount let down Christians when they fall short of it and reach for dominion instead of goodness. The fact is that freedom is unpopular. Everyone wants it for themselves, but extending freedom for people to do things they find objectionable, like dating someone of the same sex, or smoking a joint, or hiring a hooker, or burning a flag, is too much to ask. The Constitution is fine--we're the problem.
You guys crack me up. Our government tortures people to death, holds people for years without charging them, keeps them in secret prisons with no due process or even so much as a visit from the Red Cross, puts Americans under surveillance without a warrant, calls the Geneva Conventions "quaint and outdated," says that no individual American actually has habeus corpus rights, and you say nothing. In fact, you impugn the intelligence and patriotism of anywone who is concerned about these developments. But if person getting paid $100,000 a year to blog is made to admit that he's paid for it, then suddenly you weep for the death of sweet, sweet liberty. Wow. Compelling worldview you have there. You're the one with the brain, all right. Thanks for weighing in on the issue.
This is the main reason I stuck with OpenOffice. Once I learned how to use styles to structure the document, and found that the various styles would produce a clickable, nested table of contents in the final pdf file, I was hooked. MS Office just doesn't do that. Plus, I'd much rather export a presentation as a pdf file than as a Powerpoint file. I've never liked Powerpoint for some reason.
I just wish I had the time to learn Latex Beamer more thoroughly. For quick-n-dirty one-page things, GUIs are fine, but I do prefer Latex for more complicated projects. I've found some Beamer-created pdf presentations that were much more slick and even beautiful than any Powerpoint presentation I've ever seen. Not to say you can't do good work with Powerpoint, but some things, like a TOC in a side panel, I've never seen even once.
I'm extremely offended by the suggestion that liberty be infringed in this way.
To use a leftist example, if the govt makes a blogger who works directly for George Soros making $100,000 a year acknowledge his affiliation, rather than pretending to be a grassroots citizens group, that isn't "infringing liberty." Again, you havn't shown how anyone's speech is being limited, abridged, shut down, cut off, silenced, or anything like that. They wouldn't be made to stop blogging, just as lobbyists are not made to stop lobbying. We have too many groups shilling for a corporation (oil, timber, pharmaceuticals, etc) that are pretending to be just concerned citizens's groups. Making them acknowledge openly who their employer is isn't endangering liberty. You are pretending that this bill was doing something it wasn't doing. You may think "it's the first step to..." but it did none of the things you're worrying about. People aren't being "registred" like Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. They just making people who are being paid to blog acknowledge that they are being paid to blog. They're making paid shills register as paid shills.
But from what I read, this bill wouldn't have applied to just anyone, but only people paid $100,000 a year by a politically-oriented organization. This wouldn't be a David-vs-Goliath situation, but the employee of Goliath vs. the lawyer of another Goliath. There is way too much money being thrown around to sway the public on political matters, and much of the propaganda is masquerading as grassroots indignation. As a citizen, I'd like that astroturfing labeled as such, and if this bill is conducive to that, I'm all for it. I don't want the Swiftboaters of the world silenced, but I do want them identified as a politically-motivated organization financially backed by another organization dedicated to the election of a particular candidate. Revealing who pays the bills for the latest manufactured "scandal" may make politics a little less ugly for us.
How exactly did this bill affect free speech? Were the astroturfers prohibited from speaking/writing/blogging? Whether you or I agree that astroturfers should be treated like lobbyists, it bears mentioning that lobbyists do indeed have free speech rights. Saying "you have to be forthright and say that you're being paid to extoll these particular views, rather than acting as if you're a regular guy with a keyboard" isn't saying you have to stop saying what you're saying, only that you can't do so under false pretenses.
No one can "prove" anything outside of mathematics. Science does not prove anything, ever. But strangely, antibiotics still work, and airplanes still fly, because science is dependable method of analyzing the world around us. Scientists use ice cores for data collection, and their methods have proven useful--to science. Yes, you can say "it's not science!" just as you could say the same about the germ theory or the heliocentric solar system or whatever it is you don't like. You can say it or type it or semaphore it, but I'm fairly sure that working scientists are a better authority on what methods are useful for science, what methods can be used for data collection, than laymen who want to throw out the data set because it confirms global warming.
Look, the idea that human action can harm the place humans live is not a liberal idea. No one is trying to get you to vote for Hillary Clinton. Conservatives should care more about this, and frankly, I think they would if they listened to the saner elements in their party, instead of Limbaugh and O'Reilly who must, to keep ratings high, turn every single issue into an us-vs-them fight to the death. We have a shared interest in minimizing the damage we do to our own environment, not for the spotted owl, but for our own children and grandchildren. Even if the scientific community's position on anthropocentric global warming is exaggerated, we still have a vested interest in reducing pollution. It's the right thing to do, and it's not a liberal issue or conservative issue. It's a people issue. Even if you're one of the people who believe the Rapture could happen at any second, until that moment this planet is in our trust.
I know there are some enviro-kooks who are over the top. Ignore them, just as I ignore the Christian Identity movement. I know that they're kooks who don't typify the entire right wing. There are always going to be outliers, kooks on each end of the spectrum. But there has to be some common ground. I don't think ignoring science is a good step in the right direction. The scientific worldview has given us too many good things for us to summarily ignore it this time just because we don't want to stand on the same side of the room as the granolaheads. (hint--we don't like them either)
Meaningless to the scientific community, yes. But conservative commentators would present them as the suppressed vanguard of science, the only ones brave enough to say "the emperor has no clothes." Consevatives don't actually like science or scientists, because they don't fit well into the populist worldview where the man in the street is about as smart as anyone needs to be. They don't like the idea of someone going to school for decades, learning a lot, and expecting us to hold her opinion on the subject of her expertise in higher regard than our gut-feeling, seat-of-the pants assessment.
Maybe we should look into the issue a bit to see if anyone was actually "silenced." There are a lot of people walking around with persecution fantasies, and there are a lot of people crying persecution just because they would be ignored otherwise. You can probably find quite a few cold-fusion and zero-point-energy "experts" around the web who have been "silenced" by mainstream science because their theories hold no water. From reading the responses to this article, it seems that the source is a bit suspect, and what actually happened was a bit less fascist than it was made out to be.
Truth be told, scientists make their careers by shaking up the scientific community. Scientists are of course suspicious of someone saying "all the established, mainstream science is hooey!" when no research is there to justify throwing out the dominant model of the day. But when the research is there to validate it, when the facts do point to the truth in the new model, then the new model is accepted and the maverick scientists is revered as a genius.
Read about the advent of quantum mechanics--even Einstein resisted it because it seemed so counterintuitive, but as the data mounted, it has become mainstream science, and the founders are considered geniuses. The problem with global warming naysayers is that they aren't producing any science. They're sitting there on the oil companies' dime and saying "nuh-uh; global warming is bunk!" and the conservative bloggers and talking heads are presenting them as the suppressed scientific vanguard trying to break through a wall of stifling dogma. This isn't just bullshit, but obvious bullshit.
Yes, anthropocentric global warming is a theory, the way that the germ theory is a theory, or quantum mechanics. When you're talking about science, "theory" doesn't mean "baseless conjecture." It's a mental model that explains the facts, and has been supported by experiment, validation, etc. They didn't just make it up. This is the same scientific method that gave you antibiotics and air conditioning, and put people on the moon. You can say "I don't believe it!" just as you can say you don't believe in plate tectonics or the atomic theory.
Science is the only tool we have to understand the world around us. This method has shown that global warming is happening, and is being exacerbated by human activity. No one is saying that mankind "caused it all," only that our actions are going to cause negative consequences for ourselves. If you don't trust science, I can respect that worldview--assuming you never take medicine again, turn off your electricity, don't use sanitized food/water, and so on. If you don't trust science, don't trust the fruits of science.
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Another problem is that terrorists tend to attack people, not assets. At most they'll attack symbols like the WTC, but even then it was calculated to kill the most people they could. This map blurring would be better spent on the Mall of American and sports stadiums, but if you follow that logic you'd eventually blur the entire map and burn all paper maps, because all of the maps could be used to help a terrorist. I'm not saying that anyone would explicitly advocate blurring the entire map (or burning the paper ones) but that isn't how it transpires. When someone comes to you and says "I want to blur X, so I don't help the terrorists," which ones do you deny? Because the way they've structured the question, to deny any request is to implicitly help the terrorists. That's the way the Bush administration got everything they wanted--they just appended "so we don't help the terrorists" to the end of every request, and it went like butter. And we end up with warrantless surveillance, torture, and watered-down habeus corpus. When the slope really is slippery, then the "slippery slope" fallacy doesn't apply all that much.
Yeah, even without watching the news I know that the Democrats must've won an election somewhere, because all of a sudden I'm seeing that Jefferson "tree of liberty" patriot quote again. Odd that imprisonment without trial+torture+warrantless surveillance=absolute indifference, but now all of a sudden sweet liberty is being gang-raped by a D congress. I know that isn't your point and you were being satirical. just got me thinking about something I haven't seen since Clinton was in office--Republicans saying that government is dangerous to freedom. I know they're lying and they don't actually believe it, but it's funny to hear it again all of a sudden. Brings me back to my days of furiously reading James Bovard and thinking that Randy Weaver and Waco had convinced the Republicans that you shouldn't trust government. Yeah, I was stupid.
So there have been frustrations, but not enough for me to re-install all the progams I would need to give me a Windows install as useful as the one I get with Knoppix or some other Linux distro. Also, I can't figure out how to get Konqueror to view all the folders in detailed-list view by default. I keep having to select it. So yes, again, there are frustrations. But it works, by and large. There were frustrations with Windows, too. But I'll at least have to get a VMWare install of Windows together, because I just ordered a Garmin GPS with the Mapsource software, which is Windows-only.
I'm sure our climate models will improve. I've never thought we had rock-solid unquestionable data, only that what we have is the best information we have. Considering what's at stake, I'd like to act on the best information we have rather than wait until we have another model. New models will always be forthcoming, but if carbon dioxide and other pollutants have the effects we now think they do, the effects of waiting will be both worse and nonreversible.
I do defer to the consensus of scientists working in a given field. If atomic physicists have come to the consensus that a particular subatomic particle exists, I'll buy it. If a zoologist, dermatologist, a minister, and Rush Limbaugh are skeptical, I'm skeptical of their skepticism, and will probably attribute (rightly or wrongly) their skepticism to political motives. Looking at, say, evolution, a lot of people are pointing at opinions of "scientists" not working in that field and saying "See? There is a controversy over evolution--the jury is still out."
I'm well aware that my approach can be wrong. But I think the best authority on physics would be physicists, the best authority on evolution would be biologists and zooligists, and the best authority on climatology would be climatologists. If a field comes to a consensus to the extent that climatologists have come to a consensus, I'll admit that I'm likely to defer to them. The opinion of scientists in other fields is not without value, but it doesn't constitute a full-fledged refutation. If you can think of a better approach for laymen, let me know.
I'm not saying that scientists are infallible, only that they are using a mental system that tries to observe, record, and understand objective reality. Calling them "narrow minded" because they don't toss out decades of science because a handful of skeptics said "nuh-uh!" is a bit odd. Do you use medicine? Electricity? Do you consider these to be the products of a narrow-minded viewpoint, or is there something else going on? Maybe the scientists are just describing objective reality as best they can. Being human, they will err, but the model is, I think, sound. Should we just conclude "it's not getting warmer!" and break the thermometers? Or should we watch it getting warmer every year, ignore the problems, refuse to cut down on pollutants, and just say we're "still collecting data?" Since we'll never know everything, do we just do nothing, ever?
We can posit that groupthink and shoddy research fooled the medical community into thinking that smoking causes cancer, and the tobacco company 'studies' are the only authentic science, but I don't find that credible. But I admit I bring a certain set of assumptions to the table. I think companies will lie, fudge, and muddy the waters if they stand to lose hundreds of billions of dollars if public policy and opinion were to swing against what they were selling. I think that self-interest funds research that dovetails nicely with a populist tendency to distrust high-falutin' scientists who have, as you correctly point out, have been wrong before. Why should we trust them now? Why indeed.
No, fundamentalist Muslims also disagree with evolution, but they don't live in a society that went through the Enlightenment like the West did, so they don't couch their objections in scientific-sounding jargon.
As far as "skepticism" about global warming, are you forgetting that this is the consensus of the mainstream climatalogical community? What is it about this one field, this one subject, that renders you so competent that you can confidently think that your insight exceeds that of the entire mainstream scientific community? What do we usually call laymen who think they're smarter than all the scientists? In all other fields we readily defer to scientific expertise. Do you trust your minister or baker to hold insightful views on string theory? You see so many laymen pondering this subject as if the scientific truth is waiting for them to weigh in, but why don't you see convenience-store workers or bus drivers weighing in on plate tectonics, the germ theory, or quantum gravity?
Are the opinions of non-experts, people who have not spent the requisite years in the field building expertise and studying data, valid when it comes to global warming and evolution, but not quantum mechanics? Does education matter at all? Can the guy in the street, the construction worker, cop, baker, or yes, minister, have our equal respect and deference on scientific matters as the actual scientists? Is that reasonable?
You can believe or disbelieve in anything you want--as a free human being, that is your prerogative. Believe in Bigfoot and scoff at electricity if it makes you happy. But the rest of us are mystified that so many people defer to scientific authority all the time, but suddenly when it comes to evolution and global warming, they turn into super-skeptics who can expound for hours on the 2nd law of thermodynamics or the philosophy of science, and proceed to tell the scientists what is and isn't good science.
Science gave me electricity, antibiotics, airplanes, and air conditioning. Global warming "skepticism" hails from oil-company funded "research" fed to conservative political think-tanks who in turn regurgitate it to a credulous public who then turn around and consider themselves to be better authorities on science than scientists. The creationism and intelligent design movements are funded by Christian reconstructionists/dominionists, who use these fronts to wage their war against Darwinism, which they believe is a literal tool of Satan that will drag you down to hell. Both of these movements hail exclusively from the conservative political movement, and the more to the right someone is, the more likely they are to disbelieve both evolution and global warming. Also the further to the right you are, the less likely you are to have a high school diploma, much less college degree. Does that make them stupid? No, not by a long shot. But there is a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism that has characterized the American right-wing for a very long time. They have long been hostile to academia and the "eggheads." They've adoped a folksy populism that assures the public that they (the public) can know, via a 10-second soundbite on Fox, all they need to know to hold an intelligent, viable opinion on any scientific subject.
I realize I'm a bit long-winded. But you need to realize who you're opposing and who you're aligning yourselves with. The scientists are all standing on the other side of the room and saying "the data indicates anthropocentric global warming." Yes, there are a lot of annoying, obnoxious celebrities that I know you don't want to stand beside, but just focus on the sc
Well, that's the polite way of phrasing it. Basically they're just arrogant. They don't understand global warming (or evolution) and they really think that their own seat-of-the-pants assessment is more insightful than that of scientists who make their living analyzing the data. The virulent strain of populism that defines American culture encourages this. Evangelical Christianity encourages this. The media plays into it. The media exists to sell toothpaste and beer, and you don't sell as much toothpaste and beer if your message to viewers is "you don't understand things as well as you think you do, because you lack the education." It's a sad, self-perpetuating situation, but you (and all likeminded people) are stuck in a never-ending cycle of refuting the same claims, again and again and again and...
I'm here. I bought stuff last night using Firefox on Ubuntu. I've had no problems with SSL using Firefox, Konqueror, etc. My web-surfing experience has been no different than it has been anywhere else. If Korea is a "monoculture" then it's because of a cultural issue, not a technical issue.
Fundamentalists have a love-hate relationship with Mormons. They like to count on their vote on Social Conservative causes, and they always get it. Ergo Mormons think they are "in" with the fundamentalists. Not so. When it comes down to it, the fundamentalists think that Mormonism is a cult, Joseph Smith was a false prophet, and so on. So the Mormons are useful in that they provide critical votes for causes the fundamentalists like, but the relationship will never go further than that. Mormons don't blend well, and the extent that individual Mormons do blend is more a mark of their falling short as Mormons than it is of them succeeding to integrate with the society around them. I've known and worked with some that seemed "normal" (and by normal I don't necessarily mean that they cursed or drank alcohol, only that they weren't overtly weird) but some of those were I think only nominally Mormon. One of my former bosses is a Mormon, and he subscribes to The Skeptical Inquirer. I've also heard him curse (a banner day for me) though he never drank caffeine. But digression aside, the fundamentalists don't consider them to be Christians. Of course, the fundies don't consider Catholics to be Christians either, so take that for what it's worth.
Don't forget that many on the Religious Right consider Bush to be appointed by God to lead the country. This is part of the Christian Dominionist mindset, where Christians are supposed to take dominion over the nation. Dominion doesn't mean living in a hut, taking a vow of poverty, and serving mankind. It means dominion, as in "you will obey now, because God appointed me." These people are much more dangerous than a few crooked politicians lining their pockets. In the long run, we might be thankful for the current situation. If Iraq has sufficiently discredited the Neoconservatives, and if Gonzales et al have overplayed their hand too quickly and made people realize how contemptuous they are for due process, then we might have delayed their ascendancy for a few decades at least. They won't go away entirely (they never do), and eventualy there will be an effort to actually take over the government permanently, but if enough people know what they're really like, maybe we can marginalize them for a while.
Since it's patently obvious that the Neocons have been diastrous for the Republican Party, I hope they're jettisoned ASAP. We can't wait for them to admit they're wrong, because that does not happen, ever. Conservatives can, eventually, but Neoconservatives have that weird "vision" thing that is never, ever wrong in and of itself. The core Neocons like Cheney will always believe, just as the core still believe that Saddam was linked to 9/11, etc. We just have to hope that the Repubs sideline them and get back to being conservative.
It may be an academic exercise anyway, because neither Romney nor McCain could beat either Hillary or Obama in the election. The question of "would they be good Presidents?" pales next to whether or not the religious right will vote for them, which they won't. Dobson has already rejected McCain, and Romney is a Mormon. Without Dobson et al, they can't get in office. This isn't to say that I particularly want a Hillary/Obama administration, but if the election were held this week, that's what we would get.
That being said, I can't get Truecrypt installed at all on smaller distros like DSL, Feather, or Puppy. I haven't tried VMWare. Has anyone gotten this combination to work on one of the small distros?
It's not that I mind capitalism, only that I think it's made a virtue of selfishness, and we pride ourselves on taking as much out as possible. No, I don't have an alternative. But as Jesus said (and Tolstoy later wrote a great book about), "The Kingdom of God is Within You." If we would act differently, most of the problems we faced would go away. If we made the mutual decision to share but not abuse that sharing, poverty would vanish. If we made the mutual decision to not wage war, there would be no war. We are the problem. Some days I find myself rooting for the meteor.
The Constitution has not failed us, nor will it fail us. We have failed ourselves by falling for every demagogue that promised safety if only we would give up a little freedom. We have failed ourselves by being busybodies and wanting to govern the private lives of those around us (see: gay marriage, pot smoking, prostitution laws, etc) but thinking that this doesn't erode freedom. We have failed ourselves by allowing political talking-heads to convince us that civil rights are "liberal" issues, that freeing someone who was convicted on a torture-induced confession is letting them off on a "technicality," and that civil rights themselves are quaint and outdated, unsuited for the complex world we live in today. The Constitution did not let us down, any more than the Sermon on the Mount let down Christians when they fall short of it and reach for dominion instead of goodness. The fact is that freedom is unpopular. Everyone wants it for themselves, but extending freedom for people to do things they find objectionable, like dating someone of the same sex, or smoking a joint, or hiring a hooker, or burning a flag, is too much to ask. The Constitution is fine--we're the problem.
You guys crack me up. Our government tortures people to death, holds people for years without charging them, keeps them in secret prisons with no due process or even so much as a visit from the Red Cross, puts Americans under surveillance without a warrant, calls the Geneva Conventions "quaint and outdated," says that no individual American actually has habeus corpus rights, and you say nothing. In fact, you impugn the intelligence and patriotism of anywone who is concerned about these developments. But if person getting paid $100,000 a year to blog is made to admit that he's paid for it, then suddenly you weep for the death of sweet, sweet liberty. Wow. Compelling worldview you have there. You're the one with the brain, all right. Thanks for weighing in on the issue.
I just wish I had the time to learn Latex Beamer more thoroughly. For quick-n-dirty one-page things, GUIs are fine, but I do prefer Latex for more complicated projects. I've found some Beamer-created pdf presentations that were much more slick and even beautiful than any Powerpoint presentation I've ever seen. Not to say you can't do good work with Powerpoint, but some things, like a TOC in a side panel, I've never seen even once.
How exactly did this bill affect free speech? Were the astroturfers prohibited from speaking/writing/blogging? Whether you or I agree that astroturfers should be treated like lobbyists, it bears mentioning that lobbyists do indeed have free speech rights. Saying "you have to be forthright and say that you're being paid to extoll these particular views, rather than acting as if you're a regular guy with a keyboard" isn't saying you have to stop saying what you're saying, only that you can't do so under false pretenses.
Look, the idea that human action can harm the place humans live is not a liberal idea. No one is trying to get you to vote for Hillary Clinton. Conservatives should care more about this, and frankly, I think they would if they listened to the saner elements in their party, instead of Limbaugh and O'Reilly who must, to keep ratings high, turn every single issue into an us-vs-them fight to the death. We have a shared interest in minimizing the damage we do to our own environment, not for the spotted owl, but for our own children and grandchildren. Even if the scientific community's position on anthropocentric global warming is exaggerated, we still have a vested interest in reducing pollution. It's the right thing to do, and it's not a liberal issue or conservative issue. It's a people issue. Even if you're one of the people who believe the Rapture could happen at any second, until that moment this planet is in our trust.
I know there are some enviro-kooks who are over the top. Ignore them, just as I ignore the Christian Identity movement. I know that they're kooks who don't typify the entire right wing. There are always going to be outliers, kooks on each end of the spectrum. But there has to be some common ground. I don't think ignoring science is a good step in the right direction. The scientific worldview has given us too many good things for us to summarily ignore it this time just because we don't want to stand on the same side of the room as the granolaheads. (hint--we don't like them either)
Meaningless to the scientific community, yes. But conservative commentators would present them as the suppressed vanguard of science, the only ones brave enough to say "the emperor has no clothes." Consevatives don't actually like science or scientists, because they don't fit well into the populist worldview where the man in the street is about as smart as anyone needs to be. They don't like the idea of someone going to school for decades, learning a lot, and expecting us to hold her opinion on the subject of her expertise in higher regard than our gut-feeling, seat-of-the pants assessment.
Truth be told, scientists make their careers by shaking up the scientific community. Scientists are of course suspicious of someone saying "all the established, mainstream science is hooey!" when no research is there to justify throwing out the dominant model of the day. But when the research is there to validate it, when the facts do point to the truth in the new model, then the new model is accepted and the maverick scientists is revered as a genius.
Read about the advent of quantum mechanics--even Einstein resisted it because it seemed so counterintuitive, but as the data mounted, it has become mainstream science, and the founders are considered geniuses. The problem with global warming naysayers is that they aren't producing any science. They're sitting there on the oil companies' dime and saying "nuh-uh; global warming is bunk!" and the conservative bloggers and talking heads are presenting them as the suppressed scientific vanguard trying to break through a wall of stifling dogma. This isn't just bullshit, but obvious bullshit.
Science is the only tool we have to understand the world around us. This method has shown that global warming is happening, and is being exacerbated by human activity. No one is saying that mankind "caused it all," only that our actions are going to cause negative consequences for ourselves. If you don't trust science, I can respect that worldview--assuming you never take medicine again, turn off your electricity, don't use sanitized food/water, and so on. If you don't trust science, don't trust the fruits of science.