The Republicans should then bring out the things about Hillary & Bill like selling out to the ChiComms, renting the Lincoln Bedroom, etc.
Why in the name of all that is good and holy, why? First of all, I voted for Dole in '96 because I was tired of the corruption I saw in the Clinton administration. Why in the world does that excuse corruption in the Bush administration? Forget which one was *more* corrupt; why is it OK for the Bush administration to be corrupt at all, regardless of how corrupt the Clinton administration was?
Dawkins' famous quote that everyone is an atheist about most of the world's gods, he just takes it one god futher seems to apply here. The problem with a political left-right line is that it breaks down a high-dimensionality space into 1 dimension. The political compass breaks it down into 2 dimensions. The first time I ever took one of these tests (not that long ago), it ranked me as moderately authoritarian, and moderately on the right. This time, it ranked me as moderately libertarian, and moderately on the left (near Gandhi). My views have not changed between the two times I took the test, although it was no doubt from a different site.
I would love to see someone try to do a principal components analysis and get more meaningful axes. I suppose 3 is the highest number that we could easily visualize, although one could imagine a four-dimensional analysis where you have 2 dimensions plotted in one graph and 2 more dimensions plotted in another.
I also think people like Rove, Libby, and Goodling understand it's only illegal if you get caught.
I'm not trying to defend either person, but I hardly think you can put Rove and Goodling in the same bucket. Rove is a political genius, whereas Goodling graduated from a fourth-tier law school. It just so happened that she graduated from the right fourth-tier law school, but that was not due in any part to her genius.
For the people who like to say that donations are speech and not bribery, I have to ask, how is bribery not also speech? That $100 I slipped to the police officer was just my way of expressing to him that I'd rather just get a warning and not a ticket. Freedom of speech!
To bring out that old expression, "Freedom of speech does not mean you're allowed to yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater."
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
The median and the mean are two simple statistics to look at. Since Bush took office, the median income has dropped (meaning the "typical" American makes less money) while the mean income has risen (meaning that the upper half gained more than the lower half lost). Ideally, both the median and mean income would increase, of course. Here's a interesting chart of historical median income, which I believe has been adjusted for inflation. Here's another version with additional percentiles. Interestingly enough, in that version it's hard to make the argument that the rich are getting richer (although these are medians of each percentile, so if the top 1% got ridiculously richer that would explain how the mean could still go up). I was unable to find a comparable curve to back up my claim that mean income has risen during the Bush years (while median income has dropped) so do take it with a grain of salt.
Of the paltry 31 who did submit the information about earmarks, fully 21 of them were Republicans. Poor showing for the Democrats, especially considering it was their initiative.
What if you post as AC from a different computer? What if you just log out first from the computer you were previously using? Actually, I thought that even if you don't log out, you can post in a forum you've moderated as long as you post AC. (I could be wrong about that, but that still doesn't address the first question at all.)
But then you threw in the bit about Rockefeller, the Khmer Rouge and 6502 and gave it away. What's the name of that law that says it is virtually impossible to distinguish a parody of a conservative from the real thing? (To be fair, I really wasn't certain until the 6502 reference.)
If, on the off chance, you are being serious, you should realize that within the geek community, 6502 has a different reference than whatever you're thinking of.
Are you saying that's true because:
(a) people will want to elect Pelosi as president,
(b) people will have felt that we've met our "woman as president" quota for the century, OR
(c) Pelosi will do such a terrible job that no one will ever want a woman for president again?
I seriously can't tell which of these you're implying. I think (a) is unlikely, (b) is very cynical (but possibly accurate), and (c) is probably wrong (that Pelosi would do such a terrible job) and cynical (that it would then get attributed to all women candidates).
However, there's also a lot of people who don't like her because she's too much like a Republican. She supported Bush's invasion of Iraq and has never admitted that this was actually a mistake. She likes to play with words around this (much like the current president) and talk about how if she knew then what she knew now, yada, yada, but she has actually come out and said it wasn't a mistake given what she knew then. That seems like an awful lot of posturing, and an awful lot like someone else we know who never seems to admit to mistakes.
Otherwise, I'm not sure if Chelsea will have enough experience to serve when her turn comes (after Jeb). Naturally, this would be followed by one of the Bush daughters...
(This does mean that either they have to remain unmarried, or they have to keep their maiden name after marriage.)
Heck, maybe we could even throw in Mary Cheney (Dick Cheney's daughter), just for laughs. It would be real interesting seeing her run as a Republican...
I have to say that saying that Hillary would not make a good president is not at all the same thing as dodging the initial problem of "corruption in the White House". Hillary would make a better president than Bush, to which I suspect garcia would agree. That's kind of like saying she's taller than Napoleon, though.
It's also important to note that historically our country has done best when power has been divided - whether it's a Democratic president and a Republican congress or vice-versa. One might call the current trend the exception to the rule, but I'll point out two things: (1) the current congress is still relatively young, and (2) Bush is one of the worst presidents we have ever had, if not the worst.
Personally, I like Barack Obama a lot better than Hillary Clinton. I like Richardson better than Clinton. I like Paul better than Clinton. There are a few Republican candidates I like less than Clinton, but I can't think of any Democratic candidates I like less than Hillary (although I'm not trying very hard, either).
Well, perhaps it's partly that some people pre-reject themselves, too. I.e., you don't submit to a journal that has a 1 in 5 rejection rate unless you feel very comfortable about what you've written. In my case, perhaps my adviser does that for me, although I suspect the rejection rate just isn't as high in our field (hippocampal research and/or computational neuroscience). Although I respect Science and Nature, I think that much of our research is a little esoteric for their typical reader. Perhaps that could be said of many of their articles, however.
I'll grant you that it's a higher bar if you're going against the grain, and the harder you go against the grain, the higher that bar is. Still, if you have compelling evidence and present it in a precise way, it will get published. Carl Sagan's statement that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is obviously *more* true if that extraordinary claim goes against conventional wisdom. Some might say this is a feature, not a bug. Conventional wisdom, although it can definitely be flawed, has a lot more people gunning for it than various novel theories. The bigger the prey, the bigger the trophy. That said, this does not transfer completely to climate science where politics seem to have broken it down into two different camps, as opposed to the n >> 1 camps that exist in most disciplines.
I say this as someone who feels like he usually has very good evidence, but is not always good at presenting it in a clear and precise way (for scientific journals).
So there always some "grounds" to reject papers, something that was not modeled, some assumption that was not taken into account, some parameter that should have been a different value.
How often are papers rejected outright instead of sent back for revision? I don't think I've ever had a paper rejected outright, although I have heard it happen to people (actually only 1 person first hand) who have published a lot more. I.e., if the "outright rejection" rate is 1 out of 500 papers, then you'll probably have to have published more than I have before one would expect such a rejection, even under the assumption that younger authors are more likely to be rejected.
It's a fairly general argument, and you're absolutely right that, just like evolution, there's a spectrum of varying theories. The publications that show a low or minimal interaction, really just show that there's at least a low or minimal interaction, but they make no attempt to rule out a stronger interaction (to the best of my knowledge). They say the evidence for a stronger interaction is inconclusive, which certain people in the industry take to mean that AGW isn't real. On the other hand, a relatively recent article in Science demonstrates the validity of some of the previous predictions made using an AGW model.
Obviously, you don't understand it. Saying the majority [of scientists] is usually right is not the same thing as saying something is right merely because the majority agrees with it. Do you understand the difference?
First of all, I've written two grants (i.e., as PI), and helped author several more, so I know what's involved with grants (although I'll admit I'm no "expert", either). I've had a few articles published that are not "conventional wisdom" (although they weren't exactly controversial, either) and am familiar with how to do so.
If you think that articles won't be published in climatology journals simply because they don't support AGW, then I would argue that it's probably your own bias leading you to that belief. First of all, Lindzen publishes articles from time to time. Secondly, accept the possibility that the reason those articles don't get published is because they're not using sound methodologies.
One should never trust the popular media's presentation on anything. You can use it to help guide you in where to get primary source information, but even that can be dangerous. The serious layperson should look into the specialist publications and make up his or her own mind. The uneducated policy maker should have on his staff a serious scientist that he or she trusts to be reasonably unbiased and do that type of research.
Absolutely, breakthroughs are pretty much always caused by a minority, if not a lone individual. However, in this case, non-AGW is not exactly a "breakthrough" - it's more reactionary. Furthermore, for every genius who produces a breakthrough, there are probably well over a thousand cranks. I'm not saying the science should be discounted, but if you're incapable (or unwilling) to understand the science the safer bet is almost always to go with the majority. Please note that I'm advocating two different approaches based on one's ability (or willingness) to understand the science. The scientific community (including serious laypersons) should investigate most (if not all) new approaches. Uneducated policy makers (and I don't mean this in a mean way) should use the best science of the time, even if that means acting as if phlogiston exists.
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Why in the name of all that is good and holy, why? First of all, I voted for Dole in '96 because I was tired of the corruption I saw in the Clinton administration. Why in the world does that excuse corruption in the Bush administration? Forget which one was *more* corrupt; why is it OK for the Bush administration to be corrupt at all, regardless of how corrupt the Clinton administration was?
Dawkins' famous quote that everyone is an atheist about most of the world's gods, he just takes it one god futher seems to apply here. The problem with a political left-right line is that it breaks down a high-dimensionality space into 1 dimension. The political compass breaks it down into 2 dimensions. The first time I ever took one of these tests (not that long ago), it ranked me as moderately authoritarian, and moderately on the right. This time, it ranked me as moderately libertarian, and moderately on the left (near Gandhi). My views have not changed between the two times I took the test, although it was no doubt from a different site.
I would love to see someone try to do a principal components analysis and get more meaningful axes. I suppose 3 is the highest number that we could easily visualize, although one could imagine a four-dimensional analysis where you have 2 dimensions plotted in one graph and 2 more dimensions plotted in another.
For the people who like to say that donations are speech and not bribery, I have to ask, how is bribery not also speech? That $100 I slipped to the police officer was just my way of expressing to him that I'd rather just get a warning and not a ticket. Freedom of speech!
To bring out that old expression, "Freedom of speech does not mean you're allowed to yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater."
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
That's an interesting definition of down you have.
The median and the mean are two simple statistics to look at. Since Bush took office, the median income has dropped (meaning the "typical" American makes less money) while the mean income has risen (meaning that the upper half gained more than the lower half lost). Ideally, both the median and mean income would increase, of course. Here's a interesting chart of historical median income, which I believe has been adjusted for inflation. Here's another version with additional percentiles. Interestingly enough, in that version it's hard to make the argument that the rich are getting richer (although these are medians of each percentile, so if the top 1% got ridiculously richer that would explain how the mean could still go up). I was unable to find a comparable curve to back up my claim that mean income has risen during the Bush years (while median income has dropped) so do take it with a grain of salt.
Obviously, it's Atari Super PONG, Cookie Dough, and (large) Dogs. Anyone else is delusional.
Of the paltry 31 who did submit the information about earmarks, fully 21 of them were Republicans. Poor showing for the Democrats, especially considering it was their initiative.
What if you post as AC from a different computer? What if you just log out first from the computer you were previously using? Actually, I thought that even if you don't log out, you can post in a forum you've moderated as long as you post AC. (I could be wrong about that, but that still doesn't address the first question at all.)
But then you threw in the bit about Rockefeller, the Khmer Rouge and 6502 and gave it away. What's the name of that law that says it is virtually impossible to distinguish a parody of a conservative from the real thing? (To be fair, I really wasn't certain until the 6502 reference.)
If, on the off chance, you are being serious, you should realize that within the geek community, 6502 has a different reference than whatever you're thinking of.
Are you saying that's true because:
(a) people will want to elect Pelosi as president,
(b) people will have felt that we've met our "woman as president" quota for the century, OR
(c) Pelosi will do such a terrible job that no one will ever want a woman for president again?
I seriously can't tell which of these you're implying. I think (a) is unlikely, (b) is very cynical (but possibly accurate), and (c) is probably wrong (that Pelosi would do such a terrible job) and cynical (that it would then get attributed to all women candidates).
However, there's also a lot of people who don't like her because she's too much like a Republican. She supported Bush's invasion of Iraq and has never admitted that this was actually a mistake. She likes to play with words around this (much like the current president) and talk about how if she knew then what she knew now, yada, yada, but she has actually come out and said it wasn't a mistake given what she knew then. That seems like an awful lot of posturing, and an awful lot like someone else we know who never seems to admit to mistakes.
Otherwise, I'm not sure if Chelsea will have enough experience to serve when her turn comes (after Jeb). Naturally, this would be followed by one of the Bush daughters...
(This does mean that either they have to remain unmarried, or they have to keep their maiden name after marriage.)
Heck, maybe we could even throw in Mary Cheney (Dick Cheney's daughter), just for laughs. It would be real interesting seeing her run as a Republican...
You owe me a new keyboard!
I have to say that saying that Hillary would not make a good president is not at all the same thing as dodging the initial problem of "corruption in the White House". Hillary would make a better president than Bush, to which I suspect garcia would agree. That's kind of like saying she's taller than Napoleon, though.
It's also important to note that historically our country has done best when power has been divided - whether it's a Democratic president and a Republican congress or vice-versa. One might call the current trend the exception to the rule, but I'll point out two things: (1) the current congress is still relatively young, and (2) Bush is one of the worst presidents we have ever had, if not the worst.
Personally, I like Barack Obama a lot better than Hillary Clinton. I like Richardson better than Clinton. I like Paul better than Clinton. There are a few Republican candidates I like less than Clinton, but I can't think of any Democratic candidates I like less than Hillary (although I'm not trying very hard, either).
Well, perhaps it's partly that some people pre-reject themselves, too. I.e., you don't submit to a journal that has a 1 in 5 rejection rate unless you feel very comfortable about what you've written. In my case, perhaps my adviser does that for me, although I suspect the rejection rate just isn't as high in our field (hippocampal research and/or computational neuroscience). Although I respect Science and Nature, I think that much of our research is a little esoteric for their typical reader. Perhaps that could be said of many of their articles, however.
No problem, and thanks. :)
I'll grant you that it's a higher bar if you're going against the grain, and the harder you go against the grain, the higher that bar is. Still, if you have compelling evidence and present it in a precise way, it will get published. Carl Sagan's statement that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is obviously *more* true if that extraordinary claim goes against conventional wisdom. Some might say this is a feature, not a bug. Conventional wisdom, although it can definitely be flawed, has a lot more people gunning for it than various novel theories. The bigger the prey, the bigger the trophy. That said, this does not transfer completely to climate science where politics seem to have broken it down into two different camps, as opposed to the n >> 1 camps that exist in most disciplines.
I say this as someone who feels like he usually has very good evidence, but is not always good at presenting it in a clear and precise way (for scientific journals).
How often are papers rejected outright instead of sent back for revision? I don't think I've ever had a paper rejected outright, although I have heard it happen to people (actually only 1 person first hand) who have published a lot more. I.e., if the "outright rejection" rate is 1 out of 500 papers, then you'll probably have to have published more than I have before one would expect such a rejection, even under the assumption that younger authors are more likely to be rejected.
It's a fairly general argument, and you're absolutely right that, just like evolution, there's a spectrum of varying theories. The publications that show a low or minimal interaction, really just show that there's at least a low or minimal interaction, but they make no attempt to rule out a stronger interaction (to the best of my knowledge). They say the evidence for a stronger interaction is inconclusive, which certain people in the industry take to mean that AGW isn't real. On the other hand, a relatively recent article in Science demonstrates the validity of some of the previous predictions made using an AGW model.
Obviously, you don't understand it. Saying the majority [of scientists] is usually right is not the same thing as saying something is right merely because the majority agrees with it. Do you understand the difference?
First of all, I've written two grants (i.e., as PI), and helped author several more, so I know what's involved with grants (although I'll admit I'm no "expert", either). I've had a few articles published that are not "conventional wisdom" (although they weren't exactly controversial, either) and am familiar with how to do so.
If you think that articles won't be published in climatology journals simply because they don't support AGW, then I would argue that it's probably your own bias leading you to that belief. First of all, Lindzen publishes articles from time to time. Secondly, accept the possibility that the reason those articles don't get published is because they're not using sound methodologies.
One should never trust the popular media's presentation on anything. You can use it to help guide you in where to get primary source information, but even that can be dangerous. The serious layperson should look into the specialist publications and make up his or her own mind. The uneducated policy maker should have on his staff a serious scientist that he or she trusts to be reasonably unbiased and do that type of research.
Absolutely, breakthroughs are pretty much always caused by a minority, if not a lone individual. However, in this case, non-AGW is not exactly a "breakthrough" - it's more reactionary. Furthermore, for every genius who produces a breakthrough, there are probably well over a thousand cranks. I'm not saying the science should be discounted, but if you're incapable (or unwilling) to understand the science the safer bet is almost always to go with the majority. Please note that I'm advocating two different approaches based on one's ability (or willingness) to understand the science. The scientific community (including serious laypersons) should investigate most (if not all) new approaches. Uneducated policy makers (and I don't mean this in a mean way) should use the best science of the time, even if that means acting as if phlogiston exists.