I didn't hear the original quote,did you? in context? (I have a vague recollection of having come across the quote and that it seemed to be more aimed at users of drugs that are illegal than at people who misuse legal drugs, but that is a vague recollection, but that could be an incorrect recollection.
Big fucking distinction...sheesh! Talk about a fig leaf of an excuse. The fact that he even rails on about "illegal" drugs goes to illustrate that he favors a nanny state. What happened to the "rugged individualist?" He and his kind are afraid of real freedom.
He wasn't calling on me to change my behavior). More importantly has he been outspoken about all illegal drug users going to jail since he was caught abusing drugs?
So even HE realized how hypocritical that would sound. Amazing.
Al Gore still claims that greenhouse gases are the greatest threat to humanity
Actually I think the Theocratic wing of the republican party is the greatest threat to humanity. Look what you folks have wrought upon the world. The ones responsible for this and their supporters should hang their heads in shame...if they had any. Or are they so blind they cannot even see this?
and that all Americans must make great sacrifices
I have not heard that. If you had a brain you'd realize that what Al Gore talks about is not being pig-headed with the Earth's resources. Is that such a fucking terrible idea? Is efficiency not a good thing? But I find that the most critical of Gore have never really bothered to see what he really thinks. They get their info from Mr. Megadittos and his ill informed, mendacious ilk.
to reduce them even after being shown to do more to generate greenhouse gases at ONE of his mansions each month than the average American does in a year (even going so far as to justify this behavior).
See how ill-informed you are? Al Gore pays extra costs per kilowatt hour because he uses green energy. He also runs two fully-staffed offices in his home. Just for giggles, care to guess how much Dick Cheney's electric bill is?
My point was in reply to a poster who said that conservatives say "Do as I say, not as I do." The fact of the matter is that I can name more liberal elites who express this attitude publicly than I can conservative elites.
Even if that is the case, most liberals I know, and I am one, think that consenting adults can do pretty much as they please. Liberals are not the ones moralizing. One more aside: I think liberals govern a fuck of a lot better than you right-tards. Liberals brought us the weekend, the powerlines to the red-state America, they did something about rivers in ohio that were catching on fire, and islands of heavy metals being poured into Lake Erie, they forced corporations to adopt safety standards (actually Nixon created the EPA. He is a liberal now?), and you know what else? Life is just better under Democratic administrations . This has been my experience overall. Furthermore, I have been around the world. I have been around the US. We could learn a lot from Europe, but folks like you cry socialism (but for some reason, you guys tend like the army and NFL, to very socialist-like organizations) and we learn nothing. Life is also better in liberal cities, I know this is subjective, but conservative places tend to be drab, cookie-cutter, conformist, christian communities devoid of cultur
Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect. Why don't you move there and report back to us your findings? Seriously though, it is not just "warming" that has me concerned, but it's secondary effects (runaway greenhouse effect not withstanding). When I look at the declining healthof theoceans, the disappearance of honeybees, the loss in the bird population (we are actually seeing a lot of extinction of species right now), it is an alarming trend. I think these phenomena are indicative of the poor health of our planet and I fear humanity is too arrogant, ignorant, and complacent to actually do anything about it.
"Currently, the concept of "Solely Man-Made Global Warming" is not independently verifiable! The entire discussion smacks of politics, and that's what's got a bee in Mr. Chrichton's bonnet. This is NOT an outrageous request to make. We simply want All the data available, and have it put to a totally open, and independently verifiable test. Are you aware that Michael Mann, the scientist that came up with the famous "Hockey Stick" graph, has YET to release his data and methods for peer review? What kind of science is that? No review? Community consensus without discussion? THIS IS NOT SCIENCE, IT IS POLITICS. Clear and simple.
I agree with your assessment, that one should not believe everything one reads, but the spying on King and others was well documented by the Church Commision. I only used the previous link because it was succinctly stated and did not wish belabor the reader with unneeded verbosity.
> Using it as an excuse for ex post facto warrants and attempts at all encompssing listening systems should not be tolerated.
It is my understanding of FISA that getting a warrant after the fact is perfectly legal if the warrant is obtained within 72 hours. The Bush administration refused to even do that! The reason FISA exists is so that someone outside the administration (i.e., at least one federal judge) is aware of who and what is being wiretapped and will hopefully keep them from abusing the power of the intelligence services as had been the case from WWII to Watergate. During the 1960's the government was spying on the likes of Martin Luther King, Vietnam War protesters, and many others who did not warrant it. The government even had the audacity to attempt to use the information gathered about King to coerce him to commit suicide.
"These are the same people who will use bold text, *enclosed asterisks*, or CAPS to help bring the point home (because they find it difficult to express important ideas solely with unemphasized words)."
I guess those dummies on the Supreme Court are just as bad with their clause to denote emphasis to a particular portion of an opinion: (emphasis added).
It seems the the right-wing authoritarians are always the culprits behind book burning and banning. This country (the US) was founded upon Liberal values and conservatives have had their panties in a bunch trying to micromanage the population ever since. They expend their energy attempting to dictate what the citizenry may or may not put into their bodies, what reading material they may peruse, who can enter into a marital contract, what consenting adults can do with their genitals, etc., etc. When people mention the "American Taliban", I do not think of John Walker Lindh, I think of Pat Robertson, George W. Bush, The American Family Association, James Dobson, Anne Coulter, et. al. I really wish these people would realize there is already a paradise on Earth where conservative ideals are already put into law and there is no seperation of church and state. There they will find no pornography, no seditious literature, and no (apparent) gays, and religiousity is mandatory under punishment of law. This place is called Saudi Arabia and all they need to do is change the book of fairy tales under which they worship. I really wish they would just go there and leave the rest of us the fuck alone.
Where the result is a 2D plot of their political point of view with the x-axis being left/right and the y-axis being libertarian/authoritarian. Of course the candidates would need to take it too. Then their vote would be cast for the candidate whose coordinates were closest to their result.
Yea, right. Why do you republicans always have such a difficult time dealing with reality? If your leadership is not busy creating wars based on fantasy, they are creating policies and laws based on an ancient mythology.
I think Jon Stewart and The Daily Show are on to something. I remember reading a finding that watchers of The Daily Show were more politically aware than a lot of viewers of other major news outlets. I think it was here. Maybe some of these techniques could be adopted for use in the classroom?
No. Add "am" to the sentence: "Smarter than I am." It is grammatically correct. See: http://www.drgrammar.org/faqs/
"What are you saying is possible because of open source? Using old software, or getting updates? How is either due to the fact that it's open source?"
What I am saying is it is possible for some entity other than the original vendor of a product that said vendor has declared to have reached its end of life and to begin supporting security updates. This is not possible with something like Win2K because if you do not have access to the source.
"Your point is that for once they're putting 100% of all their efforts into keeping their latest release bug-free? Is that a bad thing(tm)? I think 4 or 5 years is fair to say, "You're on your own.""
Yes. It is a bad thing. If the folks at Fedora have the resources to back port fixes to old versions of Redhat, then MS certainly has no excuse.
"So what you're saying is, if you know how to use something, then you know how to use it. Otherwise, you don't. Brilliant."
If you'd read my post more carefully, you'd have seen that what I was trying to convey is that even if you do know what you're doing in the Windows world, you are still plagued, on average, with many more problems than in the Linux world. The reason that you feel that "...Linux is for those with more free time to figure things out than computer-based tasks to complete." is because you do not know what you're doing.
"Do you really believe that in the mythical land of Linux-on-every-desktop, nobody would create viruses or exploits for Linux? If you believe that, sorry, but you've been fooled."
Of course people would do this, but they'd be far less effective. As I said earier, OS-X and Linux have far better segregation between user space and the OS and the apps typically used tend to have better track record wrt security and are more diverse.
"People smarter than you or me have already pointed out that the increasing numbers of viruses and exploits targeting Linux and MacOS are proof that they're becoming more popular; therefore, the more popular Linux gets, the more (not fewer) problems Linux will have."
Maybe they're smarter than you, I do not think they are smarter than I because it is not true. Windows is fundamentally flawed in a way that Linux and OS-X are not, e.g., everything is integrated into everything. None of the Linux or OS-X viruses have ever gone anywhere, by the way. Anyone can write a virus for anything, but for the above reasons, they will fail to be effective.
"If you use an almost-5-year old OS revision, expect problems. What if you used a Linux release from the same era?"
I have production servers that are running RedHat 7.2 that are still receiving their updates every night via the Fedora Legacy Project. This is possible because it is Open Source.
"Are you saying that with minor patches and no major OS revisions, I'd be any safer?"
If you were using Linux, yes.
"But I digress. I'll make a deal. Point me to where they said there was a patch for Win2k, and I'll find it for you. I bet there's not a patch for Win3.1 either. Slackers."
Precisely my point. There is NO patch for Win2K, which still has a large installed base.
"In my own limited linux experience, up2date is a joke. I once installed 3 different linux flavors, and the first thing I did was try to run up2date and get all updates. Swear to God, none of the 3 completed. I could have figured out why, but then I'd be proving your parent post's statement, spending hours to figure out how to upgrade it. I'll get back to it some day, but not today."
Well up2date used to have some issues, they are now resolved. Anyway, apt is my personal favorite. It is and has been extremely robust for years now.
"If Windows is for those with more money than sense, then it's fair to say Linux is for those with more free time to figure things out than computer-based tasks to complete."
Not if one knows what they're doing. I am the Linux and Unix admin for the physics department at my university. I am very glad that I am not the Windows admin because he is always burning the midnight oil. I just sit and watch my machines hum along with no trouble. Oh yeah, and I can maintain everything from home 99% of the time.
This is FUD. Linux and OS-X have much better segregation between user space and the OS. If what you say is true, then why are there so many exploits for IIS and not Apache? Even the ones that do exist for Apache do not buy you much, because Apache typically runs as its own user. Most exploits I've seen for IIS buy you SYSTEM access. Not only that, but the user base for Linux and OS-X are far less monolithic in terms of what folks use to read mail, browse the web, etc., and the typical applications seem to have far fewer security issues. E.g., compare the secuity track record for Mozilla versus MSIE.
"Oh, and the same blocking could be done with a Windows web-proxy server. You don't need Linux, unless you aren't smart enough to figure out how to work Windows."
I do believe you have this precisely backwards. By the way, please note that if people used Linux or OS-X, we would not *need* to block all this shit in the first place.
"They don't need to. You click a button, and it keeps you up to date. Someone with automatic update wouldn't even need to know what SP2 is, but they would be up to date.
Can you point me to the patch for Win2k then? Thanks.
And they wouldn't have to spend hours trying to figure out how to upgrade their OS like they do with Linux."
Never heard of apt, yum, urpmi, or up2date? And as a bonus for Linux users, we do not have to reboot either, save for a kernel update.
"That's rich. I've seen more liberals act this way than conservatives."
Then they're not really Liberals, are they? I can say I am a tuna fish sandwich, but it does not make it true. And let me be very clear, I am not talking about true conservatives. They realize that the Earth is worth conserving. For example, who do you think created the EPA? Real conservatives are much more pragmatic then the modern version. What we call conservatives today are actually radicals. I can only guess that they think they can pollute all they want because Jesus will either come and invoke the rapture or otherwise "fix" the environment via some miracle (yes, I've actually been told this by supposed conservatives).
What did I say that had anything to do with liberalism? I am only speaking to the current lot in power. They want us to all live like a bacteria culture in a petri dish which just grows unchecked until it either dies from drowning in its own waste products or from exhausting all of its resources. I am simply saying that greed is negating rational judgement.
Perhaps we need to restate the issue in a way that will resonate with greed: I would imagine many a conservative would find it unprofitable if the surface temperature if the Earth was hot enough to melt lead (like on Venus). Until they figure that out, they will continue on their current course.
"Agreed, 100%. The "other side" tends to be those causing the pollution. However, that's just how they are, right now, when their ultra-expensive coastal home is above water. If CO2 levels are spiralling rapidly, it's unlikely to remain that way."
This is the unfortunate thing about the so-called neoconservative mindset. Modern conservatism is nothing more than the rationalization of greed, avarice, and self-interest. The only time you see these folks change their mind about issues such as gay marriage or stem cells is when it touches them emotionally such as when Dick Cheny's daughter is gay or Nancy Reagan's husband develops Alzhiemer's. Global warming has not affected them adversely yet, so therefore they will always take the decision that allows them to continue their quest on attempting to collect more shiny things then their neighbors.
Atheist \A"the*ist\, n. [Gr. ? without god; 'a priv. + ? god:
cf. F. ath['e]iste.]
1. One who disbelieves or denies the existence of a God, or
supreme intelligent Being.
2. A godless person. [Obs.]
I am a disbeliever. I am without belief. Agnostic is this:
Agnostic \Ag*nos"tic\, n.
One who professes ignorance, or denies that we have any
knowledge, save of phenomena; one who supports agnosticism,
neither affirming nor denying the existence of a personal
Deity, a future life, etc.
I do deny the existence of a personal Deity, a future life, etc. by default as I have no reason to believe them because the burden of proof lies with the theist. I think I am actually closer to atheist.
I call myself an Atheist, but I do not think it requires any beliefs. Atheism (to this atheist, anyway) is the lack of belief. To make an analogy, If religion were a hair color, I'd be bald. Furthermore, I am completely open to believing in a god, but I simply see no reason to do so.
Look, you guys are closer than you think. Christians believe all gods but the Yahweh (and his avatar Jesus) are false. Atheists just don't make an exception for that last one.
Slashdot Mirror
I asked for two, not one.
Ok here are a few from the top of my head:
I didn't hear the original quote,did you? in context? (I have a vague recollection of having come across the quote and that it seemed to be more aimed at users of drugs that are illegal than at people who misuse legal drugs, but that is a vague recollection, but that could be an incorrect recollection.
Big fucking distinction...sheesh! Talk about a fig leaf of an excuse. The fact that he even rails on about "illegal" drugs goes to illustrate that he favors a nanny state. What happened to the "rugged individualist?" He and his kind are afraid of real freedom.
He wasn't calling on me to change my behavior). More importantly has he been outspoken about all illegal drug users going to jail since he was caught abusing drugs?
So even HE realized how hypocritical that would sound. Amazing.
Al Gore still claims that greenhouse gases are the greatest threat to humanity
Actually I think the Theocratic wing of the republican party is the greatest threat to humanity. Look what you folks have wrought upon the world. The ones responsible for this and their supporters should hang their heads in shame...if they had any. Or are they so blind they cannot even see this?
and that all Americans must make great sacrifices
I have not heard that. If you had a brain you'd realize that what Al Gore talks about is not being pig-headed with the Earth's resources. Is that such a fucking terrible idea? Is efficiency not a good thing? But I find that the most critical of Gore have never really bothered to see what he really thinks. They get their info from Mr. Megadittos and his ill informed, mendacious ilk.
to reduce them even after being shown to do more to generate greenhouse gases at ONE of his mansions each month than the average American does in a year (even going so far as to justify this behavior).
See how ill-informed you are? Al Gore pays extra costs per kilowatt hour because he uses green energy. He also runs two fully-staffed offices in his home. Just for giggles, care to guess how much Dick Cheney's electric bill is?
My point was in reply to a poster who said that conservatives say "Do as I say, not as I do." The fact of the matter is that I can name more liberal elites who express this attitude publicly than I can conservative elites.
Even if that is the case, most liberals I know, and I am one, think that consenting adults can do pretty much as they please. Liberals are not the ones moralizing. One more aside: I think liberals govern a fuck of a lot better than you right-tards. Liberals brought us the weekend, the powerlines to the red-state America, they did something about rivers in ohio that were catching on fire, and islands of heavy metals being poured into Lake Erie, they forced corporations to adopt safety standards (actually Nixon created the EPA. He is a liberal now?), and you know what else? Life is just better under Democratic administrations . This has been my experience overall. Furthermore, I have been around the world. I have been around the US. We could learn a lot from Europe, but folks like you cry socialism (but for some reason, you guys tend like the army and NFL, to very socialist-like organizations) and we learn nothing. Life is also better in liberal cities, I know this is subjective, but conservative places tend to be drab, cookie-cutter, conformist, christian communities devoid of cultur
Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect. Why don't you move there and report back to us your findings? Seriously though, it is not just "warming" that has me concerned, but it's secondary effects (runaway greenhouse effect not withstanding). When I look at the declining health of the oceans, the disappearance of honeybees, the loss in the bird population (we are actually seeing a lot of extinction of species right now), it is an alarming trend. I think these phenomena are indicative of the poor health of our planet and I fear humanity is too arrogant, ignorant, and complacent to actually do anything about it.
"Currently, the concept of "Solely Man-Made Global Warming" is not independently verifiable! The entire discussion smacks of politics, and that's what's got a bee in Mr. Chrichton's bonnet. This is NOT an outrageous request to make. We simply want All the data available, and have it put to a totally open, and independently verifiable test. Are you aware that Michael Mann, the scientist that came up with the famous "Hockey Stick" graph, has YET to release his data and methods for peer review? What kind of science is that? No review? Community consensus without discussion? THIS IS NOT SCIENCE, IT IS POLITICS. Clear and simple.
...not to mention wrong:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11
I agree with your assessment, that one should not believe everything one reads, but the spying on King and others was well documented by the Church Commision. I only used the previous link because it was succinctly stated and did not wish belabor the reader with unneeded verbosity.
> Using it as an excuse for ex post facto warrants and attempts at all encompssing listening systems should not be tolerated.
It is my understanding of FISA that getting a warrant after the fact is perfectly legal if the warrant is obtained within 72 hours. The Bush administration refused to even do that! The reason FISA exists is so that someone outside the administration (i.e., at least one federal judge) is aware of who and what is being wiretapped and will hopefully keep them from abusing the power of the intelligence services as had been the case from WWII to Watergate. During the 1960's the government was spying on the likes of Martin Luther King, Vietnam War protesters, and many others who did not warrant it. The government even had the audacity to attempt to use the information gathered about King to coerce him to commit suicide.
"These are the same people who will use bold text, *enclosed asterisks*, or CAPS to help bring the point home (because they find it difficult to express important ideas solely with unemphasized words)."
I guess those dummies on the Supreme Court are just as bad with their clause to denote emphasis to a particular portion of an opinion: (emphasis added).
It seems the the right-wing authoritarians are always the culprits behind book burning and banning. This country (the US) was founded upon Liberal values and conservatives have had their panties in a bunch trying to micromanage the population ever since. They expend their energy attempting to dictate what the citizenry may or may not put into their bodies, what reading material they may peruse, who can enter into a marital contract, what consenting adults can do with their genitals, etc., etc. When people mention the "American Taliban", I do not think of John Walker Lindh, I think of Pat Robertson, George W. Bush, The American Family Association, James Dobson, Anne Coulter, et. al. I really wish these people would realize there is already a paradise on Earth where conservative ideals are already put into law and there is no seperation of church and state. There they will find no pornography, no seditious literature, and no (apparent) gays, and religiousity is mandatory under punishment of law. This place is called Saudi Arabia and all they need to do is change the book of fairy tales under which they worship. I really wish they would just go there and leave the rest of us the fuck alone.
Sometimes I think we should give a test before people vote. But one like this:
http://politicalcompass.org/questionnaire.php
Where the result is a 2D plot of their political point of view with the x-axis being left/right and the y-axis being libertarian/authoritarian. Of course the candidates would need to take it too. Then their vote would be cast for the candidate whose coordinates were closest to their result.
Scum also rises to the top. I think this is more befitting metaphor for Mr. Balmer.
Yea, right. Why do you republicans always have such a difficult time dealing with reality? If your leadership is not busy creating wars based on fantasy, they are creating policies and laws based on an ancient mythology.
I propose this:
"We have morals, so we don't need ethics."
I attribute this idea to my friend Bart.
I think Jon Stewart and The Daily Show are on to something. I remember reading a finding that watchers of The Daily Show were more politically aware than a lot of viewers of other major news outlets. I think it was here. Maybe some of these techniques could be adopted for use in the classroom?
Don't forget the criminal junta and its moronic figurehead in the Whitehouse.
That should be "smarter than me."
No. Add "am" to the sentence: "Smarter than I am." It is grammatically correct. See: http://www.drgrammar.org/faqs/
"What are you saying is possible because of open source? Using old software, or getting updates? How is either due to the fact that it's open source?"
What I am saying is it is possible for some entity other than the original vendor of a product that said vendor has declared to have reached its end of life and to begin supporting security updates. This is not possible with something like Win2K because if you do not have access to the source.
"Your point is that for once they're putting 100% of all their efforts into keeping their latest release bug-free? Is that a bad thing(tm)? I think 4 or 5 years is fair to say, "You're on your own.""
Yes. It is a bad thing. If the folks at Fedora have the resources to back port fixes to old versions of Redhat, then MS certainly has no excuse.
"So what you're saying is, if you know how to use something, then you know how to use it. Otherwise, you don't. Brilliant."
If you'd read my post more carefully, you'd have seen that what I was trying to convey is that even if you do know what you're doing in the Windows world, you are still plagued, on average, with many more problems than in the Linux world. The reason that you feel that "...Linux is for those with more free time to figure things out than computer-based tasks to complete." is because you do not know what you're doing.
"Do you really believe that in the mythical land of Linux-on-every-desktop, nobody would create viruses or exploits for Linux? If you believe that, sorry, but you've been fooled."
Of course people would do this, but they'd be far less effective. As I said earier, OS-X and Linux have far better segregation between user space and the OS and the apps typically used tend to have better track record wrt security and are more diverse.
"People smarter than you or me have already pointed out that the increasing numbers of viruses and exploits targeting Linux and MacOS are proof that they're becoming more popular; therefore, the more popular Linux gets, the more (not fewer) problems Linux will have."
Maybe they're smarter than you, I do not think they are smarter than I because it is not true. Windows is fundamentally flawed in a way that Linux and OS-X are not, e.g., everything is integrated into everything. None of the Linux or OS-X viruses have ever gone anywhere, by the way. Anyone can write a virus for anything, but for the above reasons, they will fail to be effective.
"If you use an almost-5-year old OS revision, expect problems. What if you used a Linux release from the same era?"
I have production servers that are running RedHat 7.2 that are still receiving their updates every night via the Fedora Legacy Project. This is possible because it is Open Source.
"Are you saying that with minor patches and no major OS revisions, I'd be any safer?"
If you were using Linux, yes.
"But I digress. I'll make a deal. Point me to where they said there was a patch for Win2k, and I'll find it for you. I bet there's not a patch for Win3.1 either. Slackers."
Precisely my point. There is NO patch for Win2K, which still has a large installed base.
"In my own limited linux experience, up2date is a joke. I once installed 3 different linux flavors, and the first thing I did was try to run up2date and get all updates. Swear to God, none of the 3 completed. I could have figured out why, but then I'd be proving your parent post's statement, spending hours to figure out how to upgrade it. I'll get back to it some day, but not today."
Well up2date used to have some issues, they are now resolved. Anyway, apt is my personal favorite. It is and has been extremely robust for years now.
"If Windows is for those with more money than sense, then it's fair to say Linux is for those with more free time to figure things out than computer-based tasks to complete."
Not if one knows what they're doing. I am the Linux and Unix admin for the physics department at my university. I am very glad that I am not the Windows admin because he is always burning the midnight oil. I just sit and watch my machines hum along with no trouble. Oh yeah, and I can maintain everything from home 99% of the time.
This is FUD. Linux and OS-X have much better segregation between user space and the OS. If what you say is true, then why are there so many exploits for IIS and not Apache? Even the ones that do exist for Apache do not buy you much, because Apache typically runs as its own user. Most exploits I've seen for IIS buy you SYSTEM access. Not only that, but the user base for Linux and OS-X are far less monolithic in terms of what folks use to read mail, browse the web, etc., and the typical applications seem to have far fewer security issues. E.g., compare the secuity track record for Mozilla versus MSIE.
"Oh, and the same blocking could be done with a Windows web-proxy server. You don't need Linux, unless you aren't smart enough to figure out how to work Windows."
I do believe you have this precisely backwards. By the way, please note that if people used Linux or OS-X, we would not *need* to block all this shit in the first place.
"They don't need to. You click a button, and it keeps you up to date. Someone with automatic update wouldn't even need to know what SP2 is, but they would be up to date.
Can you point me to the patch for Win2k then? Thanks.
And they wouldn't have to spend hours trying to figure out how to upgrade their OS like they do with Linux."
Never heard of apt, yum, urpmi, or up2date? And as a bonus for Linux users, we do not have to reboot either, save for a kernel update.
Windows is for those with more money than sense.
Why?
Fortunately, most of them never collect enough shiny things to begin collecting the neighbors. This is why you've probably never heard of this...
"That's rich. I've seen more liberals act this way than conservatives."
Then they're not really Liberals, are they? I can say I am a tuna fish sandwich, but it does not make it true. And let me be very clear, I am not talking about true conservatives. They realize that the Earth is worth conserving. For example, who do you think created the EPA? Real conservatives are much more pragmatic then the modern version. What we call conservatives today are actually radicals. I can only guess that they think they can pollute all they want because Jesus will either come and invoke the rapture or otherwise "fix" the environment via some miracle (yes, I've actually been told this by supposed conservatives).
What did I say that had anything to do with liberalism? I am only speaking to the current lot in power. They want us to all live like a bacteria culture in a petri dish which just grows unchecked until it either dies from drowning in its own waste products or from exhausting all of its resources. I am simply saying that greed is negating rational judgement.
Perhaps we need to restate the issue in a way that will resonate with greed: I would imagine many a conservative would find it unprofitable if the surface temperature if the Earth was hot enough to melt lead (like on Venus). Until they figure that out, they will continue on their current course.
"Agreed, 100%. The "other side" tends to be those causing the pollution. However, that's just how they are, right now, when their ultra-expensive coastal home is above water. If CO2 levels are spiralling rapidly, it's unlikely to remain that way."
This is the unfortunate thing about the so-called neoconservative mindset. Modern conservatism is nothing more than the rationalization of greed, avarice, and self-interest. The only time you see these folks change their mind about issues such as gay marriage or stem cells is when it touches them emotionally such as when Dick Cheny's daughter is gay or Nancy Reagan's husband develops Alzhiemer's. Global warming has not affected them adversely yet, so therefore they will always take the decision that allows them to continue their quest on attempting to collect more shiny things then their neighbors.
Atheist \A"the*ist\, n. [Gr. ? without god; 'a priv. + ? god:
cf. F. ath['e]iste.]
1. One who disbelieves or denies the existence of a God, or
supreme intelligent Being.
2. A godless person. [Obs.]
I am a disbeliever. I am without belief. Agnostic is this:
Agnostic \Ag*nos"tic\, n.
One who professes ignorance, or denies that we have any
knowledge, save of phenomena; one who supports agnosticism,
neither affirming nor denying the existence of a personal
Deity, a future life, etc.
I do deny the existence of a personal Deity, a future life, etc. by default as I have no reason to believe them because the burden of proof lies with the theist. I think I am actually closer to atheist.
I call myself an Atheist, but I do not think it requires any beliefs. Atheism (to this atheist, anyway) is the lack of belief. To make an analogy, If religion were a hair color, I'd be bald. Furthermore, I am completely open to believing in a god, but I simply see no reason to do so.
Look, you guys are closer than you think. Christians believe all gods but the Yahweh (and his avatar Jesus) are false. Atheists just don't make an exception for that last one.