Reading the thread for nostalgia purposes, is it weird to be bothered that I didn't notice a post years ago in the discussion on the ethics of bird-keeping someone saying their parrot didn't come from the rain forest because it's Australian? That I missed the chance to inform the nimrod that Australia has extensive rain forests and if not their specific bird then almost certainly the species hailed from those rain forests? That part of the problem with bird ownership is owners' ignorance about birds' natural habitats and behaviors?
Excellent example of using ", period" to mean "everything I just said only makes sense if you don't think about it at all so for the LOVE OF GOD please don't!"
Maybe I'm confused -- what substantive difference is there between receiving several documents including the climate strategy one, and only receiving the climate strategy one?
Either Gleick revised his post or Bad Astronomer got this one wrong.
I think you're just confused.
The summary and especially the BA's blog post are accurate and not contradicted by what you quoted. The blog post in particular points out that he received many of these documents anonymously at first, and then sought to verify them using the deceptive practice that is mentioned in the summary.
Since this update in particular is about the source of the documents, and their veracity, the part about how he verified the documents is rather relevant.
You don't need a reason or incentive to lie about something.
But it sure helps!
It's only prudent to look at the ones who benefit.
The government does gain more from lying about the moon landing. But then if you're a rational human you realize that you can't 'fake' a Saturn V launch and so once that's done there isn't much incentive to lie at all.
Instead Moon Hoaxers selling books have the greater incentive to lie.
The rest of the Moon Hoaxers aren't lying, they're just paranoid and stupid.
The GPL is a free license. It ensures the freedom of the software, and the freedom of its recipients to access the software to suit their purposes.
It's not a lie if you think of it in the proper context: that of a person for who only values their own freedom and cares nothing for the freedom of others. Losing the "freedom" to control and restrict users means GPL is less free when taken in this context. Similarly, laws against slavery are a loss of freedom for the would-be slave owner.
If anyone who thought the GPL was "not a free license" thought about maximizing freedom globally instead of maximizing it locally (i.e. for themselves) then they'd understand.
Only when they're fighting over billions. IBM will spend more on lawyers that SCO would cost to buy right now. It's in their shareholders' interest to end this case as cheaply as possible. Buying what's left of SCO is the quickest and cheapest solution, and a kick in the teeth for Microsoft.
"Quickest and cheapest" is only good for short-term shareholders. Those with long-term investments will want IBM to do everything in their power to ensure nobody else is emboldened to try to extort IBM with bullshit charges in the future. Buying out SCO was always the "quickest and cheapest" option. Instead they are making an example of SCO and do not intend to give an inch in the process. This is best in the long term.
"When particles are moving, relativistic mass provides a very economical description that absorbs the particles' motion naturally." -- Baez.
Okay, so after googling John Baer, it turns out that there's different views on the subject. And the last physicist to 'correct' me for using the term was a jerk for only pointing to resources that said relativistic mass shouldn't be used any more.
Personally whether physicists want to use it or not (and I liked Baer's explanation for why they should), at the very least it's highly useful for relating to newbies since relativistic mass is the value that relates most closely to classical mass in that it is what affects inertia and gravity.
quote>His actual belief appears to be that they are similar "crimes against nature". Savage, on the other hand, was giving a gratuitous insult.
Do you see the distinction? I get that Savage finds Santorum's beliefs offensive, but I'm also aware that Santorum's actual beliefs will still remain offensive to Savage no matter how hard Santorum might try to state them unoffensively.
Yes, the distinction is that one is an actual offensive belief that smears an entire class of human beings while simultaneously justifying denying them their rights. While Savage's comment is a mere harmless insult designed to poke fun at said offensive beliefs.
I'm glad you're aware that Savage will view Santorum's belief as offensive no matter how he might try to say them "unoffensively". Because it would still be offensive no matter how polite he tries to be. It's the concept that is offensive, not the specific wording.
If you don't understand, try this experiment: Walk up to a guy in a bar. A Santorum supporter would probably be perfect. Tell him that you think his underage daughter is a hottie tramp who would probably love to bounce on your meat pogo.
But don't say it all offensively like I just did! Say it in the most inoffensive way possible, making sure to explain that this is simply your belief and not a gratuitous insult.
During the resulting hospital stay, contemplate the truth that saying something offensive in an inoffensive way is a contradiction and nobody will fail to take offense at your inoffensively-worded offensive statements. Then contemplate how if you had merely leveled a gratuitous insult at the man, you might not be eating through a straw.
I agree with you 100%, but my application of this sentiment differs from yours. It's a shame when only a few dozen bits are discovered when the same effort could have lead to enormous gains in other fields.
The only way the LHC makes sense is if you believe one bit of particle physics knowledge is worth millions of times more than one bit of neuroscience knowledge, since there might be a million to one ratio of understanding per effort spent.
Even the single bit of "Does the SM Higgs exist?" has far greater implications than just "1 bit of information" implies. And we will learn farm more than a 'few dozen' bits of information from the LHC.
Those bits may not be a million times more important than knowledge gained in other fields -- then again they may be. Many of the fields you might think are more important are only possible because of fundamental physics discovered earlier. When one bit of knowledge is a prerequisite for finding another, then saying not to discover the first because the second is more important is backwards.
Even if there isn't a direct prerequisite relationship, advancement of science and technology depends on increasing knowledge in all fields. You argue that we should not discover if the Standard Model is correct and study other things, but you don't know how the answer to these questions will affect these other fields. The only way to find out is to discover the answers. There is no other way to find those answers.
Your implicit assumption that any dollar not spent on the LHC would be spent on some other science is simply not true, so the cost/benefit comparison you want to make doesn't actually apply. So the question isn't about relative worth, it's about whether the information we can find out from the LHC about the fundamental nature of our universe is worth the investment.
A good comparison I think where you can more directly compare the discoveries would be in astronomy, comparing space telescopes to ground-based telescopes. With adaptive optics we can (finally) have ground-based scopes with as high a resolution as Hubble, but for much cheaper. So for each space telescope we could have many ground-based scopes. Then was Hubble not worth it? Well would it have been worth it to wait 20 years to make the discoveries Hubble did? Or more importantly and relevantly, what about the Chandra X-ray scope, or WISE, or the JWST which operate on frequencies which adaptive optics cannot ever match because the light simply doesn't penetrate the atmosphere?
Is it worth getting all those extra bits those ground based telescope could get at the cost of never discovering all the things you can only learn via space telescope?
Of course even within this singular field, it still isn't the case that we could have actually made that choice. Not launching Hubble, or Chandra, or JWST will not result in a commensurate number of extra ground-based telescopes being built.
Vastly more so the case when talking about vastly different fields of science. Cancelling JWST will not result in a dollar-equivalent amount of stem cell research. Shutting down LHC will not result in a sudden explosion of neuroscience research -- we're already doing that, using other sources of funding.
So basically you're saying we shouldn't learn if the Higgs exists because other things are more important even though we won't learn those things as a consequence of giving up the search for the Higgs.
That's why I encourage scientists away from particle physics and into other areas like biophysics, nonlinear physics, fluid dynamics, bioengineering, neuroscience, machine intelligence and applied mathematics.
I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what position you're in where you can do such a thing and they'll listen. Tenured professor lecturing grad students? Maybe in some department where you feel your funding is being cannibalized by the physics dept.?
In any case, I can only hope that those interested in particle physics realize how short sited and misguided this encouragement is.
Ooooh - nice spin. There's a big difference between equating the constitutionality of various acts, and equating the practitioners as all equivalently 'deviant'.
And you know that there's a difference, which makes your comment disgusting in its own right.
Oh, so you're suggesting that Rick Santorum does not see homosexuality as morally wrong and deviant -- like bestiality and incest?
Or are you just arguing that he doesn't consider it as bad?
Because Santorum's belief that homosexuality is deviant and wrong is the only logically connection with the other two, and the foundation of his argument.
Santorum said that *the same rationale* for making things legal/not legal, applies equally to those supposedly different categories of things. There's an implication there that, for people who count those things as NOT the same categories of things... they would then conclude that there is something wrong with the legal standard.
But for the same rationale to apply to those other things, then they must be similar enough to the behavior in question for the logic to apply. You wouldn't say "by the same logic as overturning sodomy laws, you would overturn laws against deceptive advertising" -- because there is no logical connection. The implication of making the argument in the first place is that there is a logical connection where the Court's rationale could be applied to bestiality and incest as well. This is a rather important part of the logic that I understood and which you seem to have missed.
So please, explain how the same rationale that allowed consensual sex acts between gay adults would also allow bestiality or incest* without saying they are similar.
Your anger implys that you believe, "hey, the legal standard DOES equally apply to all those categories....
LOL, no, genius, my anger implies that I think Santorum believes the legal standard applies equally to all those categories and that the implication that consensual gay sex shares anything in common with animal or child rape* is idiotic and insulting. It implies that I believe Santorum either grossly (deliberately?) misunderstands the Court's reasoning, or grossly (deliberately?) misunderstands the nature of homosexuality, bestiality, and incest. Or all of the above.
He was creating a Slippery Slope argument to say, yes, the reasoning for overturning sodomy laws was misguided. The problem is in the crafting of the argument and the assumptions that went into it.
I think it's patently obvious that the legal standard does not apply (and patently obvious that I think that). I'm offended by the implication that they do apply, yes, because of what else that implies about how Santorum views homosexuality. He is the one who is closed minded and prejudiced. Any justification for ending discrimination against gays is bad to him. He wants more.
* And lease don't give me this BS about how incest is not necessarily rape. If you want to talk about the tiny fraction of incest that isn't rooted in child abuse then you and Santorum need to specify (but then the issue isn't as cut and dry and scary and the 'slippery slope' doesn't work as well). And animal fucking -- we don't let adults have sex with younger humans because they are (presumed) not mature enough to understand the ramifications. Are you going to argue that a dog or sheep does?
No, seriously -- are you/Santorum suggesting that sheep just love a good fuck from a human, or that homosexuality is akin to rape and the Court ruled that's okay? And if neither are true, then how the fuck does the Court's rationale apply to both?
Thanks to overstating the abilities of science to prove something, juries now expect DNA evidence in trivial cases,
That's CSI's fault, not scientists'.
By substituting "have compelling evidence" in place of "know", scientists could make accurate statements and educate the public at the same time.
But there's a quantitative difference between those things. We have compelling evidence for the existence of Dark Matter, or the KT impactor. We know neutrinos, W&Z bosons, and quarks exist with a degree of certainty that makes it bizarre to say anything but "know". The evidence is beyond compelling.
Seems to me like using the same terms to refer to a broad range of evidence is more likely to cause confusion. It could falsely imply that a rock-solid scientific fact has the same degree of surety as something for which merely compelling evidence exists.
Maybe the right tack to take on educating the public would be to explain that while knowledge is never 100% certain, science has exceedingly high standards for saying they "know" something -- and explain what that standard is!
By the end of this year, barring unforeseen circumstances, CERN will know whether the Standard Model Higgs exists or not.
I bet when NASA engineers play beer pong, each cup is moving at a different speed with a different path. And you have to aim from the next city over looking through a spyglass.
And nobody is impressed unless you use the lip of a closer cup to redirect the ball into the cup you were aiming for.
REST-massless ammunition. Which is what the Higgs theoretically grants to particles, and is also the only kind of mass which physicists talk about these days since 'relativistic mass' has fallen out of favor.
First of all, Rick Santorum said nothing in the quote that led to Dan Savage starting the SpreadingSantorum site about statutory rape. He said that the same logic that was used to strike down the anti-sodomy laws applied to laws against incest.
No shit. I was using statutory as another example that "the same logic" could be used to strike down, but won't because actually the same logic doesn't apply at all.
While some cases of incest are, also, statutory rape, incest is not necessarily statutory rape. But then, you probably think it is perfectly fine if a brother and sister decide to have sex with each other as long as they are both consenting adults.
You probably think that the number of cases of incest that are not or did not originate in child abuse isn't so vanishingly small as to be irrelevant.
You probably also think that cases of 'consensual' bestiality are meaningful and relevant, too. Right? I mean you would have to think this to think Santorum's argument holds any water.
You're comparing sex acts that are nearly always consensual with sex acts that are not rape about as often as Rick Santorum is not a giant bigot.
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
-Stephen Jay Gould
Mainly because Rick Santorum said that he believes that if anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional than so are anti-incest and anti-bestiality laws. He is probably correct.
No, he is definitely not correct that if a law against consensual intercourse between adults is unconstitutional, that laws against the rape of animals or family members also is. Nor is it the case that striking down anti-sodomy laws will result in the striking of statutory rape laws. Or any other comparison to things that aren't taking place between consenting adults.
This is why anti-sodomy laws have been struck down, but none of these other things have. Because the Court is fully capable of distinguishing these very different things.
Santorum was deliberately trying to equate homosexuals with child abusers and present a 'slippery slope' argument that since these things are the same in kind, legalizing one will lead to legalizing the rest.
This is utter B.S. But apparently some people buy it.
Now I think less of the person and people who keep perpetuating this on the internet.
I'm not taking sides. Both sides can go to hell!
People who lack discernment can go to hell. Seriously, the inability to distinguish between two similar but different things is fucking ruining our country. "Oh both sides do it so they're the same". Bullshit! Santorum put homosexuals in the same catagory as animal and child rapists in a serious speech before congress that represents his actual policy goals which is to enshrine discrimination in law. Dan Savage responded to this offensive statement and goal by using Santorum's name to refer to something gross.
If you take no sides in this and see these as the same thing in style or magnitude then you're an idiot and can go to hell. And take your "neutrality" with you.
I could be wrong but I think he is criticising Santorum? I mean comparing homosexuality to bestiality and incest has no basis in reality and is just name-calling of the worst kind -- not the childish kind, but the adult I-will-do-anything-to-spread-hate kind. Much worse than what spreadingsantorum.com is doing.
That kind of santorum is just gross.
Santorum the man was equating homosexuals with monsters who rape their own children.
It's obvious which is more criticism-worthy. That must have been what the GP was talking about. Of course I'm assuming they aren't a colossal hypocrite.
Slashdot Mirror
Reading the thread for nostalgia purposes, is it weird to be bothered that I didn't notice a post years ago in the discussion on the ethics of bird-keeping someone saying their parrot didn't come from the rain forest because it's Australian? That I missed the chance to inform the nimrod that Australia has extensive rain forests and if not their specific bird then almost certainly the species hailed from those rain forests? That part of the problem with bird ownership is owners' ignorance about birds' natural habitats and behaviors?
That's weird, right?
I'm pretty sure that's weird.
Splunge!
A damaged passport is unusable, period.
Excellent example of using ", period" to mean "everything I just said only makes sense if you don't think about it at all so for the LOVE OF GOD please don't!"
Maybe I'm confused -- what substantive difference is there between receiving several documents including the climate strategy one, and only receiving the climate strategy one?
Either Gleick revised his post or Bad Astronomer got this one wrong.
I think you're just confused.
The summary and especially the BA's blog post are accurate and not contradicted by what you quoted. The blog post in particular points out that he received many of these documents anonymously at first, and then sought to verify them using the deceptive practice that is mentioned in the summary.
Since this update in particular is about the source of the documents, and their veracity, the part about how he verified the documents is rather relevant.
You don't need a reason or incentive to lie about something.
But it sure helps!
It's only prudent to look at the ones who benefit.
The government does gain more from lying about the moon landing. But then if you're a rational human you realize that you can't 'fake' a Saturn V launch and so once that's done there isn't much incentive to lie at all.
Instead Moon Hoaxers selling books have the greater incentive to lie.
The rest of the Moon Hoaxers aren't lying, they're just paranoid and stupid.
The lie appears again!
The GPL is a free license. It ensures the freedom of the software, and the freedom of its recipients to access the software to suit their purposes.
It's not a lie if you think of it in the proper context: that of a person for who only values their own freedom and cares nothing for the freedom of others. Losing the "freedom" to control and restrict users means GPL is less free when taken in this context. Similarly, laws against slavery are a loss of freedom for the would-be slave owner.
If anyone who thought the GPL was "not a free license" thought about maximizing freedom globally instead of maximizing it locally (i.e. for themselves) then they'd understand.
GPL is free as in free society.
Only when they're fighting over billions. IBM will spend more on lawyers that SCO would cost to buy right now. It's in their shareholders' interest to end this case as cheaply as possible. Buying what's left of SCO is the quickest and cheapest solution, and a kick in the teeth for Microsoft.
"Quickest and cheapest" is only good for short-term shareholders. Those with long-term investments will want IBM to do everything in their power to ensure nobody else is emboldened to try to extort IBM with bullshit charges in the future. Buying out SCO was always the "quickest and cheapest" option. Instead they are making an example of SCO and do not intend to give an inch in the process. This is best in the long term.
"When particles are moving, relativistic mass provides a very economical description that absorbs the particles' motion naturally." -- Baez.
Okay, so after googling John Baer, it turns out that there's different views on the subject. And the last physicist to 'correct' me for using the term was a jerk for only pointing to resources that said relativistic mass shouldn't be used any more.
Personally whether physicists want to use it or not (and I liked Baer's explanation for why they should), at the very least it's highly useful for relating to newbies since relativistic mass is the value that relates most closely to classical mass in that it is what affects inertia and gravity.
quote>His actual belief appears to be that they are similar "crimes against nature". Savage, on the other hand, was giving a gratuitous insult.
Do you see the distinction? I get that Savage finds Santorum's beliefs offensive, but I'm also aware that Santorum's actual beliefs will still remain offensive to Savage no matter how hard Santorum might try to state them unoffensively.
Yes, the distinction is that one is an actual offensive belief that smears an entire class of human beings while simultaneously justifying denying them their rights. While Savage's comment is a mere harmless insult designed to poke fun at said offensive beliefs.
I'm glad you're aware that Savage will view Santorum's belief as offensive no matter how he might try to say them "unoffensively". Because it would still be offensive no matter how polite he tries to be. It's the concept that is offensive, not the specific wording.
If you don't understand, try this experiment: Walk up to a guy in a bar. A Santorum supporter would probably be perfect. Tell him that you think his underage daughter is a hottie tramp who would probably love to bounce on your meat pogo.
But don't say it all offensively like I just did! Say it in the most inoffensive way possible, making sure to explain that this is simply your belief and not a gratuitous insult.
During the resulting hospital stay, contemplate the truth that saying something offensive in an inoffensive way is a contradiction and nobody will fail to take offense at your inoffensively-worded offensive statements. Then contemplate how if you had merely leveled a gratuitous insult at the man, you might not be eating through a straw.
That man has his priorities straight. You do not.
I agree with you 100%, but my application of this sentiment differs from yours. It's a shame when only a few dozen bits are discovered when the same effort could have lead to enormous gains in other fields.
The only way the LHC makes sense is if you believe one bit of particle physics knowledge is worth millions of times more than one bit of neuroscience knowledge, since there might be a million to one ratio of understanding per effort spent.
Even the single bit of "Does the SM Higgs exist?" has far greater implications than just "1 bit of information" implies. And we will learn farm more than a 'few dozen' bits of information from the LHC.
Those bits may not be a million times more important than knowledge gained in other fields -- then again they may be. Many of the fields you might think are more important are only possible because of fundamental physics discovered earlier. When one bit of knowledge is a prerequisite for finding another, then saying not to discover the first because the second is more important is backwards.
Even if there isn't a direct prerequisite relationship, advancement of science and technology depends on increasing knowledge in all fields. You argue that we should not discover if the Standard Model is correct and study other things, but you don't know how the answer to these questions will affect these other fields. The only way to find out is to discover the answers. There is no other way to find those answers.
Your implicit assumption that any dollar not spent on the LHC would be spent on some other science is simply not true, so the cost/benefit comparison you want to make doesn't actually apply. So the question isn't about relative worth, it's about whether the information we can find out from the LHC about the fundamental nature of our universe is worth the investment.
A good comparison I think where you can more directly compare the discoveries would be in astronomy, comparing space telescopes to ground-based telescopes. With adaptive optics we can (finally) have ground-based scopes with as high a resolution as Hubble, but for much cheaper. So for each space telescope we could have many ground-based scopes. Then was Hubble not worth it? Well would it have been worth it to wait 20 years to make the discoveries Hubble did? Or more importantly and relevantly, what about the Chandra X-ray scope, or WISE, or the JWST which operate on frequencies which adaptive optics cannot ever match because the light simply doesn't penetrate the atmosphere?
Is it worth getting all those extra bits those ground based telescope could get at the cost of never discovering all the things you can only learn via space telescope?
Of course even within this singular field, it still isn't the case that we could have actually made that choice. Not launching Hubble, or Chandra, or JWST will not result in a commensurate number of extra ground-based telescopes being built.
Vastly more so the case when talking about vastly different fields of science. Cancelling JWST will not result in a dollar-equivalent amount of stem cell research. Shutting down LHC will not result in a sudden explosion of neuroscience research -- we're already doing that, using other sources of funding.
So basically you're saying we shouldn't learn if the Higgs exists because other things are more important even though we won't learn those things as a consequence of giving up the search for the Higgs.
That's why I encourage scientists away from particle physics and into other areas like biophysics, nonlinear physics, fluid dynamics, bioengineering, neuroscience, machine intelligence and applied mathematics.
I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what position you're in where you can do such a thing and they'll listen. Tenured professor lecturing grad students? Maybe in some department where you feel your funding is being cannibalized by the physics dept.?
In any case, I can only hope that those interested in particle physics realize how short sited and misguided this encouragement is.
Ooooh - nice spin. There's a big difference between equating the constitutionality of various acts, and equating the practitioners as all equivalently 'deviant'.
And you know that there's a difference, which makes your comment disgusting in its own right.
Oh, so you're suggesting that Rick Santorum does not see homosexuality as morally wrong and deviant -- like bestiality and incest?
Or are you just arguing that he doesn't consider it as bad?
Because Santorum's belief that homosexuality is deviant and wrong is the only logically connection with the other two, and the foundation of his argument.
Which you know. So, nice spin there, asshole.
Santorum said that *the same rationale* for making things legal/not legal, applies equally to those supposedly different categories of things. There's an implication there that, for people who count those things as NOT the same categories of things... they would then conclude that there is something wrong with the legal standard.
But for the same rationale to apply to those other things, then they must be similar enough to the behavior in question for the logic to apply. You wouldn't say "by the same logic as overturning sodomy laws, you would overturn laws against deceptive advertising" -- because there is no logical connection. The implication of making the argument in the first place is that there is a logical connection where the Court's rationale could be applied to bestiality and incest as well. This is a rather important part of the logic that I understood and which you seem to have missed.
So please, explain how the same rationale that allowed consensual sex acts between gay adults would also allow bestiality or incest* without saying they are similar.
Your anger implys that you believe, "hey, the legal standard DOES equally apply to all those categories....
LOL, no, genius, my anger implies that I think Santorum believes the legal standard applies equally to all those categories and that the implication that consensual gay sex shares anything in common with animal or child rape* is idiotic and insulting. It implies that I believe Santorum either grossly (deliberately?) misunderstands the Court's reasoning, or grossly (deliberately?) misunderstands the nature of homosexuality, bestiality, and incest. Or all of the above.
He was creating a Slippery Slope argument to say, yes, the reasoning for overturning sodomy laws was misguided. The problem is in the crafting of the argument and the assumptions that went into it.
I think it's patently obvious that the legal standard does not apply (and patently obvious that I think that). I'm offended by the implication that they do apply, yes, because of what else that implies about how Santorum views homosexuality. He is the one who is closed minded and prejudiced. Any justification for ending discrimination against gays is bad to him. He wants more.
* And lease don't give me this BS about how incest is not necessarily rape. If you want to talk about the tiny fraction of incest that isn't rooted in child abuse then you and Santorum need to specify (but then the issue isn't as cut and dry and scary and the 'slippery slope' doesn't work as well). And animal fucking -- we don't let adults have sex with younger humans because they are (presumed) not mature enough to understand the ramifications. Are you going to argue that a dog or sheep does?
No, seriously -- are you/Santorum suggesting that sheep just love a good fuck from a human, or that homosexuality is akin to rape and the Court ruled that's okay? And if neither are true, then how the fuck does the Court's rationale apply to both?
Nowhere is it written that incest is always rape.
However it is written in the sad statistics of child abuse that it almost always is.
Thanks to overstating the abilities of science to prove something, juries now expect DNA evidence in trivial cases,
That's CSI's fault, not scientists'.
By substituting "have compelling evidence" in place of "know", scientists could make accurate statements and educate the public at the same time.
But there's a quantitative difference between those things. We have compelling evidence for the existence of Dark Matter, or the KT impactor. We know neutrinos, W&Z bosons, and quarks exist with a degree of certainty that makes it bizarre to say anything but "know". The evidence is beyond compelling.
Seems to me like using the same terms to refer to a broad range of evidence is more likely to cause confusion. It could falsely imply that a rock-solid scientific fact has the same degree of surety as something for which merely compelling evidence exists.
Maybe the right tack to take on educating the public would be to explain that while knowledge is never 100% certain, science has exceedingly high standards for saying they "know" something -- and explain what that standard is!
By the end of this year, barring unforeseen circumstances, CERN will know whether the Standard Model Higgs exists or not.
I bet when NASA engineers play beer pong, each cup is moving at a different speed with a different path. And you have to aim from the next city over looking through a spyglass.
And nobody is impressed unless you use the lip of a closer cup to redirect the ball into the cup you were aiming for.
REST-massless ammunition. Which is what the Higgs theoretically grants to particles, and is also the only kind of mass which physicists talk about these days since 'relativistic mass' has fallen out of favor.
Happy now?
This detached hipsterism is such an awesome way to avoid having to use your brain to distinguish!
Lemme try.
So you're going to vote for the guy or not?
*rolls eyes*
Voting? Whatever, man. Like, they're all the same.
First of all, Rick Santorum said nothing in the quote that led to Dan Savage starting the SpreadingSantorum site about statutory rape. He said that the same logic that was used to strike down the anti-sodomy laws applied to laws against incest.
No shit. I was using statutory as another example that "the same logic" could be used to strike down, but won't because actually the same logic doesn't apply at all.
While some cases of incest are, also, statutory rape, incest is not necessarily statutory rape. But then, you probably think it is perfectly fine if a brother and sister decide to have sex with each other as long as they are both consenting adults.
You probably think that the number of cases of incest that are not or did not originate in child abuse isn't so vanishingly small as to be irrelevant.
You probably also think that cases of 'consensual' bestiality are meaningful and relevant, too. Right? I mean you would have to think this to think Santorum's argument holds any water.
You're comparing sex acts that are nearly always consensual with sex acts that are not rape about as often as Rick Santorum is not a giant bigot.
It's ignorant, and insulting.
They did, and it's rated at 4 Tev (Totally excellent Vibes).
Lasers use massless ammunition.
Of course the massless laser generator might be a little hard to engineer.
Mainly because Rick Santorum said that he believes that if anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional than so are anti-incest and anti-bestiality laws. He is probably correct.
No, he is definitely not correct that if a law against consensual intercourse between adults is unconstitutional, that laws against the rape of animals or family members also is. Nor is it the case that striking down anti-sodomy laws will result in the striking of statutory rape laws. Or any other comparison to things that aren't taking place between consenting adults.
This is why anti-sodomy laws have been struck down, but none of these other things have. Because the Court is fully capable of distinguishing these very different things.
Santorum was deliberately trying to equate homosexuals with child abusers and present a 'slippery slope' argument that since these things are the same in kind, legalizing one will lead to legalizing the rest.
This is utter B.S. But apparently some people buy it.
Now I think less of the person and people who keep perpetuating this on the internet.
I'm not taking sides. Both sides can go to hell!
People who lack discernment can go to hell. Seriously, the inability to distinguish between two similar but different things is fucking ruining our country. "Oh both sides do it so they're the same". Bullshit! Santorum put homosexuals in the same catagory as animal and child rapists in a serious speech before congress that represents his actual policy goals which is to enshrine discrimination in law. Dan Savage responded to this offensive statement and goal by using Santorum's name to refer to something gross.
If you take no sides in this and see these as the same thing in style or magnitude then you're an idiot and can go to hell. And take your "neutrality" with you.
I could be wrong but I think he is criticising Santorum? I mean comparing homosexuality to bestiality and incest has no basis in reality and is just name-calling of the worst kind -- not the childish kind, but the adult I-will-do-anything-to-spread-hate kind. Much worse than what spreadingsantorum.com is doing.
That kind of santorum is just gross.
Santorum the man was equating homosexuals with monsters who rape their own children.
It's obvious which is more criticism-worthy. That must have been what the GP was talking about. Of course I'm assuming they aren't a colossal hypocrite.