"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." --Harry S. Truman, message to Congress, August 8, 1950
1950 eh? So this was around the time that the entire country went bug-nuts over rounding up and silencing the dreaded communists?
Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act
Internet SAFETY Act...
Well, you can't really blame them. They have a pathological need to make their bills acronym friendly. No doubt some dickwad came up with the "Internet SAFETY Act" and gave it to some peon to work out what SAFETY should stand for.
They really aren't helping their case. One of the main arguments against their doom and gloom predictions, has been that they cherry pick their data.
This argument was used for example, against Al Gores pretty damn good documentary/movie when he used Mount Kilimanjaro as an example of glacial melting. Of all the examples he could have used, it was probably the worst one to use, since studies have shown that the retreating snow is not due to global warming. And the photos he used were deceptive, to say the least.
We don't call astronomy Copernicism, nor gravity Newtonism.
And we don't call evolution "Darwinism". It seems only the creationists do that, and they are deliberately obfuscating matters anyway.
However we DO call Newtonian Dynamics by its name, and rightly so. "Darwinian evolution" also has it's place, even if it has been supplanted in our understanding.
What I object to is changing the terminology to suit the prejudices of ignorant people, when they will neither appreciate the gesture nor cease their complaints.
If we were to start modifying any language, (which we shouldn't) a better place to start would be the word "theory" which seems to come under perpetual attack by virtue of the fact that its scientific meaning differs from its everyday meaning. Yet another distinction creationists are all too willing to overlook and exploit for their benefit.
I'm sick of pandering to the ill-educated buffoons who want to drag civilisation kicking and screaming back into the dark ages.
Darwin wasn't utterly and completely right first time out of the bag. So what? His discoveries have been validated, refined, added-to, improved in ways he could never have predicted. Again, so what?
Darwin laid the bedrock, the foundation, upon which stands much of modern science, let alone biology.
And until you can give me a reason why we should metaphorically bury the giants upon who's shoulders we collectively stand, I will resist this utterly foolish idea.
There has never been a "this is probably the last year you can ski here" statement from climate scientists. It's straw man attacks like these that make denialists into denialists: instead of criticising the models, the predictions and the findings, you come up with your own stuff. Or you choose to criticise moonbat environmentalist hippies instead of the science.
Exactly right.
For example, the oft-troped canard that scientists claimed we were heading for a new ice age back in the 70's.
Most predictions of an impending ice age came from the popular press (eg - Newsweek, NY Times, National Geographic, Time Magazine). As far as peer reviewed scientific papers in the 1970s, very few papers (7 in total) predicted global cooling. Significantly more papers (42 in total) predicted global warming due to CO2.
But of course, the denialists (yes, I'll use that term, because that's what they are) still repeat this debunked claim. In that way, they are damn similar to creationists: Repeating old discredited arguments based on misinformation to back their points.
This means YOU, Anonymous Coward above ("It doesn't help that scientists/politicians/news have claimed the onset of catastrophic climate change in both directions several times before in recent history.")
The article may be a contributing factor to global-warming denialists, but they'd have continued denying anyway. The fact that they might seize on this, and twist it to their aims, is neither here nor there.
The great frost was a relatively little known event historically, to the point that wikipedia only recently got a page about it, and as of this moment, it still hasn't appeared in the page detailing the events of 1709.
Even for those who want to claim it somehow invalidates global warming, it should be noted that the great frost was followed over the next few years by a period of rapid temperature increases. If they want to somehow draw a comparable link between 1709 and 2009, you can throw that back at them as another meaningless statistic.
You'd think from increased insurance premiums alone Picard would have had ample reason to find a new Number One
As opposed to Jean-Luc "I surrender" Picard? He may have had the British accent, but you could tell he was French by how quickly he was willing to surrender. To anyone.
To paraphrase the late Tasha Yar, "He surrenders at the drop of a hat. Any hat."
Off the top of my head, there was his surrender to Q. He tried to surrender to the Ferengi in The Last Outpost. In The Outragous Okona, he ordered the shields dropped "In case we decide to surrender to them." and in A Matter of Honor, he surrendered to Riker (who had taken over a Klingon ship.)
Seen on Ebay : "2nd hand Phaser inscribed "JPL". Never fired. Only dropped once."
Slashdot Mirror
that 8000 people hearing it, have guaranteed 8000 no-sales.
It's terrible.
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." --Harry S. Truman, message to Congress, August 8, 1950
1950 eh? So this was around the time that the entire country went bug-nuts over rounding up and silencing the dreaded communists?
Can we pass a law that prevents lawmakers from coming up with bills that have contrived acronyms in them?
Sure! We'll call it "The No Acronym Memes in Bipartisan Legislation Act"
Or Nambla.
Where's the party who doesn't want any of this shit and thinks the government has much, much more important stuff on its plate right now?
France?
Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act
Internet SAFETY Act...
Well, you can't really blame them. They have a pathological need to make their bills acronym friendly.
No doubt some dickwad came up with the "Internet SAFETY Act" and gave it to some peon to work out what SAFETY should stand for.
is too clueless to secure his wireless router, how the heck is he/she/it going to know how to maintain a 2 year log file of every access?
who is going to be liable if 100,000 people get irradiated with low-power microwaves?
Oh, I know! Motorola and Nokia, right?
They really aren't helping their case. One of the main arguments against their doom and gloom predictions, has been that they cherry pick their data.
This argument was used for example, against Al Gores pretty damn good documentary/movie when he used Mount Kilimanjaro as an example of glacial melting. Of all the examples he could have used, it was probably the worst one to use, since studies have shown that the retreating snow is not due to global warming. And the photos he used were deceptive, to say the least.
Plastic sheeting, cornstarch and water, and a bass speaker. You can make a non-newtonian fluid, which can be quite interesting.
Oh yeah...
You've just given me an incredible idea for a SF/porn movie!
"The woman with two brains!"
No, it's not just you.
Didn't we just get over discussing the other day how wikipedia is not a valid reference?
DRM-free *is* a format, and one which experience has shown that people are willing to pay for.
When it's available.
Yup.
And did you hear Obama is a Muslim? And he doesn't have an American birth certificate?
Then the circle would be something like
1) Redneck in bar
2) Conservapedia
3) Bill O'Reilly
4) Goto 1.
Slashdot editors earning their keep...
When are you guys demanding a slice of the government bail-out then?
We don't call astronomy Copernicism, nor gravity Newtonism.
And we don't call evolution "Darwinism". It seems only the creationists do that, and they are deliberately obfuscating matters anyway.
However we DO call Newtonian Dynamics by its name, and rightly so. "Darwinian evolution" also has it's place, even if it has been supplanted in our understanding.
What I object to is changing the terminology to suit the prejudices of ignorant people, when they will neither appreciate the gesture nor cease their complaints.
If we were to start modifying any language, (which we shouldn't) a better place to start would be the word "theory" which seems to come under perpetual attack by virtue of the fact that its scientific meaning differs from its everyday meaning. Yet another distinction creationists are all too willing to overlook and exploit for their benefit.
I'm sick of pandering to the ill-educated buffoons who want to drag civilisation kicking and screaming back into the dark ages.
Darwin wasn't utterly and completely right first time out of the bag. So what?
His discoveries have been validated, refined, added-to, improved in ways he could never have predicted.
Again, so what?
Darwin laid the bedrock, the foundation, upon which stands much of modern science, let alone biology.
And until you can give me a reason why we should metaphorically bury the giants upon who's shoulders we collectively stand, I will resist this utterly foolish idea.
Yeah, but I think that was the point. They were underscoring how cool and different that Picard was from the one that was on our screens every week.
There has never been a "this is probably the last year you can ski here" statement from climate scientists. It's straw man attacks like these that make denialists into denialists: instead of criticising the models, the predictions and the findings, you come up with your own stuff. Or you choose to criticise moonbat environmentalist hippies instead of the science.
Exactly right.
For example, the oft-troped canard that scientists claimed we were heading for a new ice age back in the 70's.
Most predictions of an impending ice age came from the popular press (eg - Newsweek, NY Times, National Geographic, Time Magazine). As far as peer reviewed scientific papers in the 1970s, very few papers (7 in total) predicted global cooling. Significantly more papers (42 in total) predicted global warming due to CO2.
But of course, the denialists (yes, I'll use that term, because that's what they are) still repeat this debunked claim. In that way, they are damn similar to creationists: Repeating old discredited arguments based on misinformation to back their points.
This means YOU, Anonymous Coward above ("It doesn't help that scientists/politicians/news have claimed the onset of catastrophic climate change in both directions several times before in recent history.")
(Source : http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm )
The article may be a contributing factor to global-warming denialists, but they'd have continued denying anyway. The fact that they might seize on this, and twist it to their aims, is neither here nor there.
The great frost was a relatively little known event historically, to the point that wikipedia only recently got a page about it, and as of this moment, it still hasn't appeared in the page detailing the events of 1709.
Even for those who want to claim it somehow invalidates global warming, it should be noted that the great frost was followed over the next few years by a period of rapid temperature increases. If they want to somehow draw a comparable link between 1709 and 2009, you can throw that back at them as another meaningless statistic.
You'd think from increased insurance premiums alone Picard would have had ample reason to find a new Number One
As opposed to Jean-Luc "I surrender" Picard? He may have had the British accent, but you could tell he was French by how quickly he was willing to surrender. To anyone.
To paraphrase the late Tasha Yar, "He surrenders at the drop of a hat. Any hat."
Off the top of my head, there was his surrender to Q.
He tried to surrender to the Ferengi in The Last Outpost.
In The Outragous Okona, he ordered the shields dropped "In case we decide to surrender to them."
and in A Matter of Honor, he surrendered to Riker (who had taken over a Klingon ship.)
Seen on Ebay : "2nd hand Phaser inscribed "JPL". Never fired. Only dropped once."
yah, but if the CBS execs went warp 10 around the sun, they could go back and, uh...
Tell you what, if you can get CBS execs into a rocket, and aim it close to the sun, I'll happily tweak it a fraction of a degree...
does the FPS trained soldier just run into middle screaming LEEEEEEROY JENKINSSSSSS!!!!!!! ?