Re:"The Republican War on Science"?
on
Science Debate 2008
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· Score: 4, Insightful
History can use science to add to the body of historical knowledge; archaeology is a good example. History itself is not a science and neither is bio-ethics. Bio-ethics is a branch of ethics (philosophy) that applies to actions of people as they deal with biological studies and practices.
You are right to analogize the current science reporting with 50's reporting on communist regimes, but history isn't science. Most events examined by historians are given numerous incompatible explanations, and evidence is reported in a very selective fashion. Although there are many controversies in science, most hypotheses are fairly well resolved in a few decades. No phlogiston here!
What the fsck has giving a straight answer have to do with commitment to free market and limited government?
It is relevant because it is an example of him telling the truth. 1. I claim I support the free market. 2. My voting record shows I support the free market.
Some other candidates claim to support the free market, but their voting record contradicts that claim.
W.r.t. the "fair tax", you're neglecting the "prebate", which is very much biassed in favor of the lower middle class and below.
The problem with having a fundamentalist like Huckabee as president is that someone who believes god speaks to him is insane. Completely unfit for the presidency, end of story.
A bad temper is a fundamental personality flaw, and a very dangerous thing to have in a president. It indicates lack of personal control, and a president needs personal control. It indicates an attitude of "my feelings are more important than objective facts," and that also is an unacceptable property. Both McCain and H. Clinton are tempermentally unfit for the presidency.
Microsoft's sales and profits are both about 4 times as large as Google's. Based upon most recent quarter results, Google is growing sales faster but Microsoft is growing profits faster. Microsoft has challenges and places of vulnerability, but they are a long way from being in danger of extinction.
Precision electronics can be very rugged if they're potted (encapsulated in something like epoxy.) However, if your calculations are correct, the acceleration is 128000 gravities. That's likely to break anything less rugged than a block of steel. Something like a quartz crystal, needed to give an accurate frequency reference, has to be free to vibrate in air. It would be be pulverized.
For a non-mobile launcher, something as big as a skyscraper might be appropriate. Replace 50 m with 500 m, and acceleration goes down to 12800 gravities. That's still nasty.
To me, it makes sense that we try to get all the guns out of that environment, by making it impossible to buy them.
Do you have any idea how many people commute into NYC from Connecticut, New Jersey, Nassau county, Suffolk county, and Westchester county every weekday? Trying prohibit guns in NYC would be funny if it weren't tragic. It works about as well as prohibiting drugs does.
The primary use of legal guns in NYC is the threat of innocents able to protect themselves from predators. They aren't called "equalizers" for nothing. A thug doesn't need a legal gun, or even a gun.
Looking at the flaws in IQ testing is an interesting hobby, but nevertheless the results of IQ tests are predictive of success in an academic environment, and of the ability to learn in general. It's not perfect, but it is a tool with statistical value.
The good here is that Gates is proposing that businessmen do what they do best, run their businesses. This is in accordance with Ricardo's law, and promotes the best net advancement of humanity.
The middling is that Gates is proposing that businesses change their business models to add products and services that primarily benefit the poor. Fine if they can do it well, not fine if they can't do it well or the business is not appropriate to making things for poor people.
The bad is that Gates is proposing that the government provide money and incentives to encourage companies to do these things.
The ugly is the unstated, the implementation details. Government force and threats to targetted companies to make them create specific products. The creation of a new bureaucracy to hand out the largess, and make and enforce new rules. The corruption as officials solicit bribes from companies so that a new product line will be classified as benefitting the poor.
The claim that poverty is necessary for capitalism is nonsense. "Workers" (employees) do not generally "demand all the surplus they create at their companies", and that is true without regard to the existence of poverty. Employees who demand things generally get fired. Good employees understand that the more they produce, the more their employer will be able to pay them. They realize that the employer needs profit to grow, and that growth increases the possibility that they'll be paid more. They realize that the employer needs profit as a reason even to stay in business.
People want things. Unless they make everything themselves, they have to get these things from other people. The methods for getting things from other people are trade, theft, fraud, and begging. Trade is capitalism; all other systems use the other methods to some degree. Trading does not require poverty, it just requires "division of labor", people with different assets and abilities exchanging voluntarily with each other.
The institution that the Rockefellers created that most benefitted mankind is Standard Oil. The institution that Carnegie created that most benefitted mankind is Carnegie Steel (now U.S. Steel). By failing to keep directing their profits into industrial efforts, they have done less good than they would have otherwise. This is a direct consequence of Ricardo's Law. That the modern descendants of Rockefeller are damaging capitalism through the use of government is a demonstration of the destructive power of religion and left-wing philosophy.
There are places where the roads are inadequate for the job, no matter what the timing. In Los Angeles, rush hour extends from about 6:30AM to 10AM, and 3PM to 7:30PM. Even weekends have traffic jams.
L.A. has a substantial bus system, but unless you're fortunate enough not to have to transfer, a bus commute is about 3X as long as a car commute.
Until we have self-piloting cars dominating the roadways, there isn't any reasonable solution available for L.A.
For something with as low a mass/area number as a paper airplane, the calculation for "speed, friction, temperature, atmosphere-density" needs to be done for the complete deorbit process. The tail-off of the atmosphere is a continuum. I suspect that most of the speed will bleed off and the heat radiate away before the paper plane reaches what we normally consider atmosphere. Just a guess on my part; I lack the data and aerodynamic knowledge to do the work.
It takes time to shut off a computer. You can't just hit the power switch, or it's going to take a lot of time to check the drives when it is next turned on. You've got to wake the computer so that the display is visible, then go through the keyboard or mouse motions to tell the machine to turn itself off. Figure 1 minute per machine, then 15 seconds to walk to the next machine. An 8 hour shift is 480 minutes, so 1 person could only shut down 384 machines per shift. 21 people would be required to shut down all the machines, and they would still all be running an average of 4 hours unused. Assuming that these people cost $10 an hour fully burdened (unlikely), that's $1680 a night, versus the $1440 per night cost of having the machines left running.
It gets worse. If each user has to turn on his machine each morning when he would otherwise be ready to run immediately, and waiting for bootup takes 2 minutes, these people (earning $30+ an hour) would each be wasting $1 a day, or $8000 a day for the whole company. That doesn't count the time for restarting applications (browser, spreadsheet, or whatever) that might otherwise be left on continuously.
First, calling the election before it was over favored the Democrats because the voting that was discouraged by the call was in western Florida, a more Republican area. The call was made by the TV network pool, with is overwhelmingly Democrat, and can't reasonably be called anything but a deliberate dirty trick.
Second, the voting in each Florida county is more controlled by the dominant party in that county than by anything else, so they were responsible for the setting of their machines.
Third, the multiple recounts were not legal.
Fourth, all recounts still resulted in a Republican win.
Fifth, Kerry's technique for getting out of the armed forces early is well documented, Yes, he served; but no, he's neither honest nor a hero.
Sixth, the California zero emissions mandate was cancelled because it was not practical for the imposed time limit. Or do you think that economically struggling General Motors lost tens of millions of dollars on the EV1 for the fun of it?
Seventh,
Anyway, the most efficient cars run the cleanest.
There's a certain amount of logic to this, but it's not strictly true. Efficiency can always be improved by removing the cat converter, and also by raising the maximum temperature (which increases NOx).
I could continue, but you obviously have no interest in seeing the whole truth.
Judging by what you say, Chile has done a remarkably good job. Considering how bad things could be (countries with outright fraud or force) the US has moderate problems in some places. Historically, some areas have deliberately delayed counting so that in the event of a close elections the results could be tampered with by enough to throw the election. Cook county, Illinois, and some Florida counties come to mind.
Part of the problem is a lack of people willing to do the drudge work of overseeing an election. It takes something special to care more about the election being fair than having the "right" guy win, and that's something I'm not sure I have.
The claim that the internet would not exist in a libertarian world is an unknowable conjecture. Consider the possibility that without the FCC, a vast system of cellular communications might have developed in a fashion giving a result much like today's internet. Consider the early days of the ARRL.
It's not just a question of "a couple of percentage points off of my personal earnings". Only about 35% of the federal budget is either constitutional or in line with libertarian principles, and that figure would only be about 20% if we hadn't accumulated a huge debt. Consider how easy it would be to contribute to charity if your taxes were 80% lower. Consider how much faster technology would advance if the feds weren't sucking away money that could be invested. Consider how much faster technology would advance if the feds weren't dedicating so much effort in making it illegal (particularly in the medical field).
To directly answer your question, the attraction of the internet to libertarians is two-fold. The internet is a land of technology, and technology-oriented people tend to be more libertarian than the general populace. The internet has a wide variety of challenging ideas and the freedom to express them and read them, which also appeals to libertarians. Compare this to the one-way and one-sided media of television, radio, books, magazines and newspapers. Only conversations are equivalently two-way, and they tend not to have as great a degree of variety of reasoned opinion.
Electors have occasionally voted contrary to their instructions, but it has never changed the winner. In one of the last 2 elections (I forget which one) there was some news coverage of people planning to attempt to have some (pro-Bush) electors change their votes. This is really scary to me.
This reveals a surprising weakness in the electoral college system. On the other hand, the electoral college does offer the advantage of agility: if after apparent victory but before the electoral college meets the winner announced plans to invade the Martian base in Antarctica, the vote might be shifted to a sane candidate.
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You are right to analogize the current science reporting with 50's reporting on communist regimes, but history isn't science. Most events examined by historians are given numerous incompatible explanations, and evidence is reported in a very selective fashion. Although there are many controversies in science, most hypotheses are fairly well resolved in a few decades. No phlogiston here!
Some other candidates claim to support the free market, but their voting record contradicts that claim.
The problem with having a fundamentalist like Huckabee as president is that someone who believes god speaks to him is insane. Completely unfit for the presidency, end of story.
It would be a good idea to learn what an exponent is.
A bad temper is a fundamental personality flaw, and a very dangerous thing to have in a president. It indicates lack of personal control, and a president needs personal control. It indicates an attitude of "my feelings are more important than objective facts," and that also is an unacceptable property. Both McCain and H. Clinton are tempermentally unfit for the presidency.
Microsoft's sales and profits are both about 4 times as large as Google's. Based upon most recent quarter results, Google is growing sales faster but Microsoft is growing profits faster. Microsoft has challenges and places of vulnerability, but they are a long way from being in danger of extinction.
On the 1984 Corvette, removing the battery required removing a body panel.
I'll respond to your libel by reminding you that one of the chatchphrases of Objectivism is "check your premises."
For a non-mobile launcher, something as big as a skyscraper might be appropriate. Replace 50 m with 500 m, and acceleration goes down to 12800 gravities. That's still nasty.
It's a misspelling. They're actually launching Labradors, but whether they are referring to dogs or subcontinents is secret.
The primary use of legal guns in NYC is the threat of innocents able to protect themselves from predators. They aren't called "equalizers" for nothing. A thug doesn't need a legal gun, or even a gun.
Looking at the flaws in IQ testing is an interesting hobby, but nevertheless the results of IQ tests are predictive of success in an academic environment, and of the ability to learn in general. It's not perfect, but it is a tool with statistical value.
The middling is that Gates is proposing that businesses change their business models to add products and services that primarily benefit the poor. Fine if they can do it well, not fine if they can't do it well or the business is not appropriate to making things for poor people.
The bad is that Gates is proposing that the government provide money and incentives to encourage companies to do these things.
The ugly is the unstated, the implementation details. Government force and threats to targetted companies to make them create specific products. The creation of a new bureaucracy to hand out the largess, and make and enforce new rules. The corruption as officials solicit bribes from companies so that a new product line will be classified as benefitting the poor.
People want things. Unless they make everything themselves, they have to get these things from other people. The methods for getting things from other people are trade, theft, fraud, and begging. Trade is capitalism; all other systems use the other methods to some degree. Trading does not require poverty, it just requires "division of labor", people with different assets and abilities exchanging voluntarily with each other.
The institution that the Rockefellers created that most benefitted mankind is Standard Oil. The institution that Carnegie created that most benefitted mankind is Carnegie Steel (now U.S. Steel). By failing to keep directing their profits into industrial efforts, they have done less good than they would have otherwise. This is a direct consequence of Ricardo's Law. That the modern descendants of Rockefeller are damaging capitalism through the use of government is a demonstration of the destructive power of religion and left-wing philosophy.
L.A. has a substantial bus system, but unless you're fortunate enough not to have to transfer, a bus commute is about 3X as long as a car commute.
Until we have self-piloting cars dominating the roadways, there isn't any reasonable solution available for L.A.
For something with as low a mass/area number as a paper airplane, the calculation for "speed, friction, temperature, atmosphere-density" needs to be done for the complete deorbit process. The tail-off of the atmosphere is a continuum. I suspect that most of the speed will bleed off and the heat radiate away before the paper plane reaches what we normally consider atmosphere. Just a guess on my part; I lack the data and aerodynamic knowledge to do the work.
It gets worse. If each user has to turn on his machine each morning when he would otherwise be ready to run immediately, and waiting for bootup takes 2 minutes, these people (earning $30+ an hour) would each be wasting $1 a day, or $8000 a day for the whole company. That doesn't count the time for restarting applications (browser, spreadsheet, or whatever) that might otherwise be left on continuously.
Second, the voting in each Florida county is more controlled by the dominant party in that county than by anything else, so they were responsible for the setting of their machines.
Third, the multiple recounts were not legal.
Fourth, all recounts still resulted in a Republican win.
Fifth, Kerry's technique for getting out of the armed forces early is well documented, Yes, he served; but no, he's neither honest nor a hero.
Sixth, the California zero emissions mandate was cancelled because it was not practical for the imposed time limit. Or do you think that economically struggling General Motors lost tens of millions of dollars on the EV1 for the fun of it?
Seventh,
There's a certain amount of logic to this, but it's not strictly true. Efficiency can always be improved by removing the cat converter, and also by raising the maximum temperature (which increases NOx).I could continue, but you obviously have no interest in seeing the whole truth.
Part of the problem is a lack of people willing to do the drudge work of overseeing an election. It takes something special to care more about the election being fair than having the "right" guy win, and that's something I'm not sure I have.
It's not just a question of "a couple of percentage points off of my personal earnings". Only about 35% of the federal budget is either constitutional or in line with libertarian principles, and that figure would only be about 20% if we hadn't accumulated a huge debt. Consider how easy it would be to contribute to charity if your taxes were 80% lower. Consider how much faster technology would advance if the feds weren't sucking away money that could be invested. Consider how much faster technology would advance if the feds weren't dedicating so much effort in making it illegal (particularly in the medical field).
To directly answer your question, the attraction of the internet to libertarians is two-fold. The internet is a land of technology, and technology-oriented people tend to be more libertarian than the general populace. The internet has a wide variety of challenging ideas and the freedom to express them and read them, which also appeals to libertarians. Compare this to the one-way and one-sided media of television, radio, books, magazines and newspapers. Only conversations are equivalently two-way, and they tend not to have as great a degree of variety of reasoned opinion.
Slavery, up through the Civil War.
Internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry in WWII.
Military draft at various times until ended by Nixon.
Did you fail to think of these things before posting, or are you just ignorant?
This reveals a surprising weakness in the electoral college system. On the other hand, the electoral college does offer the advantage of agility: if after apparent victory but before the electoral college meets the winner announced plans to invade the Martian base in Antarctica, the vote might be shifted to a sane candidate.