lol you are quoting the online journal as a source of reliable
journalism? ROFLMFAO!!! What's next the Enquirer? the Sun?
Mm. You can, of course, substantiate this implied accusation of
unreliability with something beyond the fact that they say things you don't
like? Or are you just upset that you can't answer any of
the
article's well-documented charges? [Assuming, overly optimistically,
that you've even read the article, of course...]
Does the fact that I require more than a few unsubstantiated articles
from rags of unknown (at least to me) biases to rattle my believe in
minimal government make me a religious zealot?
"Rags", eh? You still haven't read the articles, have you? Here,
let me help:
one of them
ran in the Observer (London), a highly respected mainstream British weekly,
and was written by an author who has also appeared several times in the
hardly-liberal Washington Post;
the other
ran in Canada's conservative National Post. Does that set your mind at
ease about their "biases"?
There is far too much historical data showing economies [...]
blossoming with minimal government for these articles to "threaten my
faith", as you call it.
Except that the "evidence" presented in support of this position usually
is Chile and New Zealand -- and as the articles demonstrate, the
belief that those countries' experiences support that position is
a matter of faith.
Perhaps you are confusing the scientific method with religion?
The scientific method is not generally taken to include dismissing a
priori evidence that does not fit with one's desired result. That's
more like the creationists' "scientific" method.
In any case, scratching them off my list merely indicates that I would
not consider moving to them because of the direction of their government
policies, no more no less.
Ah, a misunderstanding. I had interpreted "them" in "scratching them off
my list" as referring to the articles (and/or the authors thereof) rather
than the countries. We Apologize for the Confusion.(TM)
The petitioner is, of course, employing the libertarian definition of
"revisionist": "at odds with my world view". Can you actually refute
anything in these articles? For that matter, did you even read
them?
Neither Chile nor New Zealand "neo-liberals" as you call them, got very
far before their policies were reversed.
Just goes to prove the point of one of the articles, though:
But the myth of the free-market miracle persists because it serves a
quasi-religious function. Within the faith of the Reaganauts and
Thatcherites, Chile provides the necessary Genesis fable, the ersatz Eden
from which laissez-faire dogma sprang, successful and shining.
In any case, I'll scratch them off of my short list.
A very Watchtower-esque reaction -- must protect oneself from anything that
might threaten one's faith, after all.
Well we can't leave the planet (yet), so what are the alternatives?
New Zealand? Chile? I've heard they are just improved from their socialist
past, but not quite the libertarian utopia or even close.
Oh, Arturo, prince of irony. The economies of
Chile and
New Zealand
were both devastated by the application of neo-liberal economic policies;
they both eventually had to resort to more "socialist" policies to drag
their economies back from the brink of collapse.
Listening to the media as much as you have, how did you manage to watch
all those shows and still miss liberal regulars like Judy Woodruff, Bernard
Shaw, Bill Schneider, Bill Press, Mark Shields, Al Hunt, John King, Ted
Turner, Dan Rather, Bryant Gumbel, Bob Schieffer, Gloria Borger, Peter
Jennings, Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, Tom Brokau, David Broder, Chip
Reid, Gwen Ifil, Brian Williams, Laurie Singer, Andrea Mitchell, Alan
Colmes (an awesome guy), Ellen Ratner, Eleanor Clift, Jesse Jackson,
Geraldo Rivera, Alan Derschowitz, Nina Totenberg, Linda Wertheimer, Juan
Williams, Evan Thomas, Johnathan Alter, Ed Koch, Ellis Henican, Joe
Conason, Gene Lyons, Vic Kamber, Julian Epstein, Susan Estrich, Doris
Kearns Goodwin, Julian Bond, Kwasei Mfume, Michael Kinsley, Bill Maher,
Martin Sheen, Rosie O'Donnell, Whoopie Goldberg, [...]
You are joking, yes? Most of the people on your list are nowhere
close to liberal, and several have
publicly
repudiated the claim. And a few aren't even journalists (Whoopi
Goldberg?! Now, there's a desperate stretch...).
Actually, I believe it does just the opposite. When you are about
to make a stupid purchase, it praises you on your decision, by use of a
popup, and suggests you add a few more of the same item to your shopping
cart.
You think you got it bad? I just got finished installing 2.4.8 on a box
literally ten minutes ago. And I see 2.4.9 has a driver update
for my Ethernet card, which, I suppose, means I really should upgrade.
*groan...*
As to why I have issues with evolutionary theory, here are my tests for a
good scientific theory:
1. Must be falsifiable. If there is no reasonable way it could be proved wrong,
it's not science.
2. Must make verifiable predictions. If a theory doesn't make any predictions
that can be checked, it's not terribly useful.
[...] and I hear [Hamill] does a few of the voices on the Batman
animated series [...]
Most notably the voice of the Joker [as a quick
IMDB search would have
revealed...;)]. Which blew my mind when I found out -- I mean,
the voice of the Joker and the voice of Luke Skywalker are not two that I
would have pegged, just from listening to them, as coming from the same
man.
For instance, the three-part test for excessive church-state entanglement
established by Lemon v. Kurtzman became known as the Lemon
Test; and similarly, the three-part test for obscenity established by
Miller v. California became known as the Miller Test.
Perhaps future court cases of this nature will cite the "Dendrite
procedure" as a test for the legitimacy of this sort of discovery request. -- #/usr/bin/perl require 6.0;
Why bother typing so many tags if they all lead to fair.org?
(shrug) I was rushed for time; I went somewhere that I was fairly sure
would have most of what I needed.
Yes, I have read the letter written by the parents [...] Were
you aware that most of them were present *during* the original
interviews [...]
Um, yes, that was mentioned in
the
letter. That is, after all, how they were able to observe that Stossel
"asked leading questions to get [the kids] to say what [he] wanted". I
asked because you didn't seem to have grasped that point (about which more
below).
[...] and only protested after being cajoled by environmentalists?
Riiiiiight. What's your source for this?
Regarding Stossels record, of course I'm aware of the nonexistent test
(it was not 'faked', as you claim, [...]
He 'faked' that the tests existed at all. You're engaging in
tetrapyloctomy.
[...] rather he was erroneously told by a producer that it had
occurred)
Mm-hmm. "It was just a mistake. Honest." Very credible. Not at all the
sort of thing one might say to cover one's ass or the asses of one's
colleagues.
Furthermore, I find your line about 'just the one he got caught on'
quite laughable.
(shrug) A poor choice of words, perhaps; "caught and held accountable for"
was what I was aiming for. This one was sufficiently egregious that ABC
couldn't just sweep it under the rug, like it's done with so many others.
His every move is scrutinized by people such as you who don't believe
any viewpoint other than their own should even be voiced.
Hmm. Calling Stossel out on verifiable errors of fact is now somehow
equivalent to attempting to silence him because of his opinions. No
presentation of any actual rational connection between these concepts, of
course; the point is merely to create the mental association between the
two. Associationism, on top of projection of conservatives' (and possibly
also the accuser's) censorial inclinations onto amorphous "people such as
you" (whatever sort that might be). Are you with
the
cult, perchance?
As for the resignations of the producers, have you considered that they
are as politically biased as you and can't abide the airing of opinions
that don't match their own?
(shrug) I considered it, but it seemed far less plausible than their stated
reasons for leaving: that they couldn't abide being associated with the
airing of opinions that were contradicted by actual evidence (which
evidence was indeed thrown out precisely because it contradicted
said opinions).
And you *still* have not addressed the point of my original article
[...]
Yes, I did; you just ignored it, presumably because you couldn't answer it.
(find it yourself...I'm not as link-addicted as you)
(shrug) I like to present evidence for my claims. So sue me.
namely that the kids parrotted the opinions of the environmentalists,
never acknowledging the merest possibility that alternative views
exist.
The kids that were shown. Stossel has a history of dismissing or
ignoring evidence that doesn't support the position he wants to present;
how much of the metaphorical cutting room floor is littered with kids that
didn't "parrot[] the opinions of the environmentalists", or that
didn't present themselves as 'scared' by the environmentalists (the
position Stossel was pushing), or that responded with actual
evidence supporting the environmentalists' positions or refuting
the "alternative views" (or that otherwise couldn't be edited to make it
look like "parrot[ing]")? And don't forget the "leading questions" from
above (not to mention "ask[ing] and re-ask[ing] questions until he got
material he could edit [...] to support his position", as described
elsewhere); how many of the kids who did say what Stossel wanted
to hear were prompted into doing so by Stossel himself? Given his
"interviewing" tactics as witnessed by the aforementioned parents, we have
no reason to believe that what was shown on air bore any resemblance to
what the majority of the kids actually said or believed, and plenty of
reason to believe that it didn't.
[...] but you still can't tell me what temperature it will be on August
16th in Berlin, whether 2001 or 2101.
Ooh, nice straw-man misrepresentation of the position you're attacking
(another common tactic of
the
cult; I'm guessing you are a member, then). One does not have to be
able to predict the exact temperature in Berlin on August 16, 2101 (morning
or evening? you didn't specify) to be able to predict, for instance, what
the average temperature of the entire planet is likely to be in the early
22nd century, or that it will be sufficiently higher than the current
average planetary temperature to cause significant ecological problems. -- #/usr/bin/perl require 6.0;
I'm not talking about what Stossel says. If you read my post, I'm
advising to listen to what the *kids* said. Their responses prove my point,
not his reporting.
Um, did you even read
the
letter from the parents of the children that were interviewed, in which
they described Stossel as "ask[ing] leading questions to get [the children]
to say what [he] wanted"? That immediately and irreparably destroys the
credibility of anything the children might have been portrayed on screen as
saying; given
Stossel's track
record, it's very easy to believe that he simply edited out the
children that didn't say anything he could use.
On a side note, he does not have a dubious track record, as you say,
[...]
*blink* Wow, can I get the address of the cave you've been living
in these past few years? Perhaps you just missed that incident last
summer, when
Stossel
was caught faking test results on organic foods and had to
apologize on air. And that's just the one he got caught on; he does this
sort of thing consistently nowadays. Particulary notable, for instance,
was his April`94 20/20special on the environment;
two of the
three producers resigned in protest after Stossel and the
third producer systematically threw out evidence that refuted the
ideological position they wanted to present.
Do you also not put much credence in network news and CNN, given their
track records?
You won't read any of these links, of course, as you probably didn't in
my
previous article -- or perhaps you'll read just enough to convince
yourself that they're just "a load of leftist whining" and can therefore be
dismissed out of hand, without any need to actually try to refute them or
anything. -- #/usr/bin/perl require 6.0;
Now, the only problem with THIS is that it was the Mimbari who gave [the
triluminary] to Sinclair, who then went back in time and gave it to the
Mimbari, so they could give it to him...
No. The triluminary and the Chrysalis device came from Epsilon 3. It went
back in time on B4, where Valen gave it to the Minbari, who gave it to
Delenn, who still has it.
JMS has
acknowledged that the shot of Zathras bringing it on board was
underplayed and should have been better emphasized.
As for the pilot, of course they are going to try to pretend it all
fits, even though some of the key elements of the pilot (mere chemicals
being able to be injected via contact to a being of pure energy) are in
direct conflict woith the actual series.
I think the series has fairly firmly established that even energy beings
have a degree of physicality and can be affected by physical things.
Consider, for instance, the energy being in "The Long Dark", who was killed
by mere PPGs. -- #/usr/bin/perl require 6.0;
the rushed excuse the producers came up with is, at best, utterly
lame.
What "rushed"? The "Analyzing Crystalline Structure" line was right
there in the pilot, right where it needed to be. JMS thought of that
issue and covered it from the very beginning; this is not a
hastily-tacked-on retcon, and the evidence of that is right on screen.
there is no way any of the lesser species would be able to glean
sufficient knowledge of the Vorlons to be able to come up with such a
"poison" in the first place.
The Minbari had been in contact with the Vorlons for more than a thousand
years -- more than enough time to ferret out that kind of information.
Besides, enough is apparently generally known about Vorlon physiology (or
energy-being physiology in general) that Dr.Kyle was able to cure
Kosh once he found out which particular poison had been used.
However, the actual [Sinclair/Valen] story itself has a MAJOR plot hole,
if you care to look.
Which you again fail to elaborate. As they say in the business, put up or
shut up. -- #/usr/bin/perl require 6.0;
The classic, I think, is Vir's answer to Morden's "What do you
want?":
I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head
and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some
favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless
eyes and wave, like this. (waves) Can you and your associates arrange that
for me, Mr. Morden?
Erm, you mean like the fundamental plot hole introduced in the pilot?
You remember, the one where a normal being was able to apply a poison to
Kosh by injecting it into him through his encounter suit?!
Nice try, but that one is long since resolved. In the
words of the
producer: "Remember, they do have a certain physicality about them,
even in that form, and the nature of the poison was such that it would
affect that kind of life form using a crystalline base (note in the pilot
the screen reads analyzing crystalline structure, and you filter light or
refract or distort it using a crystalline structure)."
(don't get me started on that whole Valen/Sinclair thing - a major flaw
in there if you look),
Where? You were aware that that was part of the arc from the very
beginning, yes? -- #/usr/bin/perl require 6.0;
Because of Debian dependencies that means compiling from the tar
(packages in unstable depend on the rest of the unstable distro) - and f*ck
me but I'm not going to build a Debian package just to get Debian to
recognize what I've installed.
*blink* Why not? In most cases, building the.deb is
easier that trying to manually build from the tarball, because the
debian/rules file (a Makefile with a #!/usr/bin/make -f
at the top so it can be run like a script) has already consolidated
everything you need to do to build the program and the package. In fact,
here's the entire process:
Download the.orig.tar.gz, the.dsc and the.diff.gz (if any) from the unstable package listing page.
dpkg-source -x package-name_NN.NN.dsc
cd package-name-NN.NN/
debian/rules binary
dpkg -i../package-name_NN.NN.deb
You were going to do essentially the same work anyway to build from the
tarball: instead of step2, you'd do a manual untar and patch;
instead of step4, you'd invoke this program's particular unique build
incantation; and instead of step5, you'd manually figure out where in/usr/{bin,lib}/wherever each bit is supposed to go.
I've done this several times to install sid- or woody-version packages
(GIMP 1.2, Mozilla 0.9.1) on my mostly-potato system; it's not hard at all.
And that's not even mentioning apt-get -b source, which I haven't
tried myself, but which I understand takes care of all the above for you. -- #/usr/bin/perl require 6.0;
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno, I still think that whole King Yrcanos thing from the "Mindwarp" segment of "Trial of a Time Lord" takes the cake.
Mm. You can, of course, substantiate this implied accusation of unreliability with something beyond the fact that they say things you don't like? Or are you just upset that you can't answer any of the article's well-documented charges? [Assuming, overly optimistically, that you've even read the article, of course...]
Indeed, it has been well established that Gore won the Florida recount.
Oh, they found lots to report; they just didn't report it.
"Rags", eh? You still haven't read the articles, have you? Here, let me help: one of them ran in the Observer (London), a highly respected mainstream British weekly, and was written by an author who has also appeared several times in the hardly-liberal Washington Post; the other ran in Canada's conservative National Post. Does that set your mind at ease about their "biases"?
Except that the "evidence" presented in support of this position usually is Chile and New Zealand -- and as the articles demonstrate, the belief that those countries' experiences support that position is a matter of faith.
The scientific method is not generally taken to include dismissing a priori evidence that does not fit with one's desired result. That's more like the creationists' "scientific" method.
Ah, a misunderstanding. I had interpreted "them" in "scratching them off my list" as referring to the articles (and/or the authors thereof) rather than the countries. We Apologize for the Confusion.(TM)
The petitioner is, of course, employing the libertarian definition of "revisionist": "at odds with my world view". Can you actually refute anything in these articles? For that matter, did you even read them?
They got far enough to double the poverty rate, quadruple the unemployment rate, and drive the GDP down 19 percent and 30 percent, respectively. And that was after ten years of trying in Chile and fifteen in New Zealand; these could hardly be called short-term experiments interrupted early.
Just goes to prove the point of one of the articles, though:
A very Watchtower-esque reaction -- must protect oneself from anything that might threaten one's faith, after all.
Oh, Arturo, prince of irony. The economies of Chile and New Zealand were both devastated by the application of neo-liberal economic policies; they both eventually had to resort to more "socialist" policies to drag their economies back from the brink of collapse.
You are joking, yes? Most of the people on your list are nowhere close to liberal, and several have publicly repudiated the claim. And a few aren't even journalists (Whoopi Goldberg?! Now, there's a desperate stretch...).
No, that's already turned off; that's one of the first things I tried. I still get the "Search for" drop-down.
HOW?! I've been going crazy trying to figure that out. The "Internet Search" panel in Preferences just lets you change where you search.
Sort of like this...
You think you got it bad? I just got finished installing 2.4.8 on a box literally ten minutes ago. And I see 2.4.9 has a driver update for my Ethernet card, which, I suppose, means I really should upgrade. *groan...*
And evolution is falsifiable, and has made verifiable (and verified) predictions. I commend the Gentle Reader to the Talk.Origins Archive, which has much information on these subjects.
Most notably the voice of the Joker [as a quick IMDB search would have revealed... ;)]. Which blew my mind when I found out -- I mean,
the voice of the Joker and the voice of Luke Skywalker are not two that I
would have pegged, just from listening to them, as coming from the same
man.
Well, if we're doing B5/Tron connections, it should be noted that David Warner himself appeared in B5, as Aldous Gajic in the episode "Grail".
--
You mean this one, I believe.
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
For instance, the three-part test for excessive church-state entanglement established by Lemon v. Kurtzman became known as the Lemon Test; and similarly, the three-part test for obscenity established by Miller v. California became known as the Miller Test. Perhaps future court cases of this nature will cite the "Dendrite procedure" as a test for the legitimacy of this sort of discovery request.
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
Spefically, the "How to Rid the World of All Known Diseases" sketch from Episode 28. A good one indeed.
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
(shrug) I was rushed for time; I went somewhere that I was fairly sure would have most of what I needed.
Um, yes, that was mentioned in the letter. That is, after all, how they were able to observe that Stossel "asked leading questions to get [the kids] to say what [he] wanted". I asked because you didn't seem to have grasped that point (about which more below).
Riiiiiight. What's your source for this?
He 'faked' that the tests existed at all. You're engaging in tetrapyloctomy.
Mm-hmm. "It was just a mistake. Honest." Very credible. Not at all the sort of thing one might say to cover one's ass or the asses of one's colleagues.
(shrug) A poor choice of words, perhaps; "caught and held accountable for" was what I was aiming for. This one was sufficiently egregious that ABC couldn't just sweep it under the rug, like it's done with so many others.
Hmm. Calling Stossel out on verifiable errors of fact is now somehow equivalent to attempting to silence him because of his opinions. No presentation of any actual rational connection between these concepts, of course; the point is merely to create the mental association between the two. Associationism, on top of projection of conservatives' (and possibly also the accuser's) censorial inclinations onto amorphous "people such as you" (whatever sort that might be). Are you with the cult, perchance?
(shrug) I considered it, but it seemed far less plausible than their stated reasons for leaving: that they couldn't abide being associated with the airing of opinions that were contradicted by actual evidence (which evidence was indeed thrown out precisely because it contradicted said opinions).
Yes, I did; you just ignored it, presumably because you couldn't answer it.
(shrug) I like to present evidence for my claims. So sue me.The kids that were shown. Stossel has a history of dismissing or ignoring evidence that doesn't support the position he wants to present; how much of the metaphorical cutting room floor is littered with kids that didn't "parrot[] the opinions of the environmentalists", or that didn't present themselves as 'scared' by the environmentalists (the position Stossel was pushing), or that responded with actual evidence supporting the environmentalists' positions or refuting the "alternative views" (or that otherwise couldn't be edited to make it look like "parrot[ing]")? And don't forget the "leading questions" from above (not to mention "ask[ing] and re-ask[ing] questions until he got material he could edit [...] to support his position", as described elsewhere); how many of the kids who did say what Stossel wanted to hear were prompted into doing so by Stossel himself? Given his "interviewing" tactics as witnessed by the aforementioned parents, we have no reason to believe that what was shown on air bore any resemblance to what the majority of the kids actually said or believed, and plenty of reason to believe that it didn't.
Ooh, nice straw-man misrepresentation of the position you're attacking (another common tactic of the cult; I'm guessing you are a member, then). One does not have to be able to predict the exact temperature in Berlin on August 16, 2101 (morning or evening? you didn't specify) to be able to predict, for instance, what the average temperature of the entire planet is likely to be in the early 22nd century, or that it will be sufficiently higher than the current average planetary temperature to cause significant ecological problems.
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
Um, did you even read the letter from the parents of the children that were interviewed, in which they described Stossel as "ask[ing] leading questions to get [the children] to say what [he] wanted"? That immediately and irreparably destroys the credibility of anything the children might have been portrayed on screen as saying; given Stossel's track record, it's very easy to believe that he simply edited out the children that didn't say anything he could use.
*blink* Wow, can I get the address of the cave you've been living in these past few years? Perhaps you just missed that incident last summer, when Stossel was caught faking test results on organic foods and had to apologize on air. And that's just the one he got caught on; he does this sort of thing consistently nowadays. Particulary notable, for instance, was his April`94 20/20special on the environment; two of the three producers resigned in protest after Stossel and the third producer systematically threw out evidence that refuted the ideological position they wanted to present.
(shrug) Granted, CNN's demonstrated pro-establishment, pro-corporate, anti-liberal bias does give me pause (as does the fact that they're owned by AOL/Time-Warner). And no, the rest of the mainstream media isn't much better.
You won't read any of these links, of course, as you probably didn't in my previous article -- or perhaps you'll read just enough to convince yourself that they're just "a load of leftist whining" and can therefore be dismissed out of hand, without any need to actually try to refute them or anything.
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
See also the various debunkings of same. Stossel has a very dubious track record on matters like this; I wouldn't put much credence in anything he says.
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
No. The triluminary and the Chrysalis device came from Epsilon 3. It went back in time on B4, where Valen gave it to the Minbari, who gave it to Delenn, who still has it. JMS has acknowledged that the shot of Zathras bringing it on board was underplayed and should have been better emphasized.
I think the series has fairly firmly established that even energy beings have a degree of physicality and can be affected by physical things. Consider, for instance, the energy being in "The Long Dark", who was killed by mere PPGs.
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
What "rushed"? The "Analyzing Crystalline Structure" line was right there in the pilot, right where it needed to be. JMS thought of that issue and covered it from the very beginning; this is not a hastily-tacked-on retcon, and the evidence of that is right on screen.
The Minbari had been in contact with the Vorlons for more than a thousand years -- more than enough time to ferret out that kind of information. Besides, enough is apparently generally known about Vorlon physiology (or energy-being physiology in general) that Dr.Kyle was able to cure Kosh once he found out which particular poison had been used.
Which you again fail to elaborate. As they say in the business, put up or shut up.
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
The classic, I think, is Vir's answer to Morden's "What do you want?":
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
Nice try, but that one is long since resolved. In the words of the producer: "Remember, they do have a certain physicality about them, even in that form, and the nature of the poison was such that it would affect that kind of life form using a crystalline base (note in the pilot the screen reads analyzing crystalline structure, and you filter light or refract or distort it using a crystalline structure)."
Where? You were aware that that was part of the arc from the very beginning, yes?
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;
*blink* Why not? In most cases, building the .deb is
easier that trying to manually build from the tarball, because the
debian/rules file (a Makefile with a #!/usr/bin/make -f
at the top so it can be run like a script) has already consolidated
everything you need to do to build the program and the package. In fact,
here's the entire process:
You were going to do essentially the same work anyway to build from the tarball: instead of step2, you'd do a manual untar and patch; instead of step4, you'd invoke this program's particular unique build incantation; and instead of step5, you'd manually figure out where in /usr/{bin,lib}/wherever each bit is supposed to go.
I've done this several times to install sid- or woody-version packages (GIMP 1.2, Mozilla 0.9.1) on my mostly-potato system; it's not hard at all. And that's not even mentioning apt-get -b source, which I haven't tried myself, but which I understand takes care of all the above for you.
--
#/usr/bin/perl
require 6.0;