That's because it all depends on what you mean on 'know'. If you're talking in the scientific sense, then knowing something is pretty strong, if you're talking in the common day sense, then knowing is a bit stronger than a 'gut feeling', but vulnerable to lies like 'knowing there are WMDs in Iraq' and things that contradict 'common sense'.
Prior to "Global Warming" and its bogus Hockey Stick "study" it was Glaciation and/or Nuclear Winter
Why do you declare it to be bogus? You see, in the 20th century science has grown up. The study of science became scientific too, theories have been developed as to how to do good science, Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, Lakatos, etc. told us what is science and how it works. It is a powerful mechanism, not comparable to the middle ages where dissenting opinion was supressed, and science only existed as an underground entity next to religion.
I would have to mention that realclimate "debunked" the global cooling myth. It was never considered as a mainstream scientific belief, it only existed because of the popular press. The press gets most things wrong, can't distinguish between global dimming and global cooling. As for Nuclear Winter - thats the least of our worries if that many nukes were to be detonated in order to either cause an effect or not cause like that. It is a doomsday scenario, quite unlike global warming.
It's common for the Extreme Left, and their fellow travelers in the Media, to invent disasters from selected data so they can save us all by the application of Socialism, at the expense of our personal liberties, of course.
I have for a long time realised that categorizations like left or right don't make sense in the case of 80% of the population, especially across countries. Some of my ideas for an optimal society have socialist touches, but I also believe that personal liberties are not contradictory with them, quite the opposite. Even though the classification is quite flawed, I have to add that most of the civilized world is "extreme left" compared to the USA. Facts have a liberal bias and all that.
Anyway, back to the topic. Global warming is not the popular opinion. Or if it is, it is irrelevant. It is the peer reviewed mainstream scientific consensus. Science is powerful, and self checking. Many scientists have tried to falsify the conclusion that global warming is happening, but didn't manage to, thus we accept it as our standing theory in relation to the projected temperature change of the planet. That's how science works, by testable theories.
I think Richard Dawkins remarked something like that if doctors would undestand evolution we wouldn't have a huge crisis of drug resistant bacteria in hospitals.
I don't care what opinionated and personally involved people say about the study. The peer review concluded that the study is using the most reliable method and they think it's firm in it's conclusions.
The best methods available for surveying casualties tells us that the body count is around the most probable number of 655 thousand, which is backed by the statistical community. The iraqi body count page only operates from news reports, it is bound to be only the fraction of the real number.
So, I stand by my original post.
Also, it have to be noted that the 182k figure that you're quoting came up in the Saddam trial, which is not impartial by any standards and I wouldn't rely on it. The internationally accepted version of history attributes much less casualties to Saddam, around 55k.
I don't feel this country owes anybody else a thing.
Actually you do owe some things to the world: the USA needs to obey the international/universal human rights agreements.
IMO, if we're to go out and be the world's police, the world should pay us back (and more than just buying our Gov't bonds).
The world police expression is an extremely stupid phrase. It implies that you're doing a service, while in reality all you do is look out for your own interests aggressively - hence the world's police expression. I don't see why the world should be grateful and even supportive of the USA given the events of the last century of cowboy politics and waging wars of self interest.
He had gassed his own people, killing far more than have died in this current 'war'.
What crack are you on? There were reports coming out even years ago saying that in 2003 alone, the US led invasion on Iraq killed more people than Saddam killed in the last 20(!) years combined!
I don't think it's worth a single American life to help people who are not among our own
we are seeing people here that can actually support such a blatant blashpemy of values.
You seem to be under the assumption that the people who post here are true americans who support the american values.
It has to be concluded that slashdot is full of Al-Quaeda operatives, chinese government officials and iraqi terrorists, therefor the Bush administration feels morally justified in dumping 500 tons of nerve gas on the internets users. No true american hates freedom, so they must be terrgrorist, after all freedom is about paying lip service to that abstract ideal, while doing the contrary what they said they think when it comes to actions.
Article authors Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann were former advisers to the White House, and thus all of their publications are scrutinized by a board before they can be published
I can understand if current government employees have to go through this, or if they sign an agreement that they will allow this to happen for the rest of their lives, but come on! They are bound by law not to disclose classified information, so if they violate it, they can prosecute them, but noone should censor them! Especially when the administration doesn't understand the difference between "classified information" and "information we don't like".
I know I know. They want hype and venture capital or fame or some such, but I can't count the number of things that are just a few years away and then never materialized.
I'd be much more interested in hearing about good inventions in retrospect.
The rule of the state, in importance ranked above the people that make up society.
Scientific facts don't stop being scientific facts, just because the administration demonstrates the political need to ignore/bend/distort and supress such facts. Thus, the scientific governmental organization founded for the good of society is overruled by the good of the current administration of the state. That is a fascist method of operation.
My dream is that both republicans and democrats will condemn these attempts. My sense of reality says that will never happen.
You're wrong. While it is true that the new testament is less malicious than the old, it is only slightly so. For example:
- Ancestral (original) sin transmitted through semen. (so far old testament). So in order to impress himself, God came to earth as Jesus, got crucified to redeem humanity's sin in the face of himself, all for the tribal survival myths found in the old testament, which should be taken non-seriously?
- In order to have all this happen, wasn't Judas a necessary element in God's plan, so by what standards can he regarded as someone to be despised?
- Hating your mother, father, brethren, sisters and his own life being a prerequirement to be a disciple of Jesus. (Don't ask me, it's in there!)
do you also believe that Jesus isn't real, that he never existed?
Actually, while the generally accepted view is that he probably existed as a person, there is evidence (serious studies) to the contrary aswell. So while I side with the generally accepted scientific consensus, I would not be suprised if it turned out that he didn't exist at all.
Sorry people. I thought the humour impaired get out of the woodwork at a much later date. I'll go away in shame. Yeah, I did not know that.deb is the packaging format, after all I only use debian on my desktop for more than half of a decade...
What I ment is that banks and places of works would finally stop using SSN as an identification number. I do have an ID and I have a separate Social security card. I only need it when going to the GP (or generally in need of non lifethreatening medical help).
So finally, you have a proper document to use to identify yourself instead of a driver's license or SSN.
About c., exactly. But driving should be opt-in. It is not attainable by a lot of people so it should not be used. It puts people with disabilities at a disadvantage, even if state id exists if there is a practice to use driver's license instead.
The concept of an ID card is not bad unless you're a fascism. The problem is with fascism, not with ID cards. If you think your government tends toward fascism, solve that, not the problem that you're worried what would a fascist government do with ID cards.
I have to say I'm completely dumbfounded about the SSN practice in the USA. Here in Hungary, most official business require an ID card, which has personal details, like b.o.d, current address(actually a separate card to make it more easier to move and stuff), a photograph and a numerical code on it.
The numerical code is only for the rare case where someone lives at the same place with someone else with the same name and B.o.d, so to serve generally as an unique identifier. You cannot do anything with that numerical code in itself. You have to have the card. It is pretty forgery resistant and if you need a fake id badly, you could just bribe an official in the ministry of internal affairs to give you a new identity anyway.
So there's that. It is useful for the common person, because it proves identity and every adult has it.
Yeah, it can be misused, but everywhere it is grossly misused by the government, it is not a democracy anyway and you've got bigger problems than that anyway.
I don't get why people in the anglo-saxon countries think of the nazis immediately when the issue of national ids came up, I don't think of nazi germany when driving an Audi.
Scientific-looking "periodic table" -- with no acual periods or relation to chemicals.
Nice job on missing the point. The intention wasn't to present the periodic table. The intention was to present it in an interesting graphical format. You could also call it a little mocking of the political elite.
Only has events begining in 2001, so they only blame Bush and the Republican congress.
Yay, since you try to turn this into a political issue, now you set the scene for the political indoctrinated biases to work their way. The republicans now can just go home and ignore the whole report, because, obviously, they are against republicans so they must be democrats.
The way I see things is that the organization presented their findings now, because they noticed a huge drop of respect for science since the previous administrations. That's only a rep. vs dem. issue if you let it be one.
The articles describing each incident are cleverly weasel-worded, to make it sound like a big conspiracy, but if carefully parsed, doesn't seem to hang togther (That is, if read carefully, it doesn't say very much at all about who told whom say or not say what.)
This description of yours fits into the "it was written by DEMS, don't listen!!!!111" conclusion you seem to be advocating.
Good excuses for not listening to a bunch of Nobel laureates. Especially since because only about 7% of them believe in any personal god at all, so they must be stupid atheist too, right? What do they know?!
Hopefully the morons who decided that non-profit copyright infringement is a criminal offense will reconsider.
No, they won't, unless you make them to. Make copyright (and relaxation of rules or abolishment of it) a campaign topic and show that a lot of regular folk are willing to vote politicians out of office based on that. Then they'll care.
No offense. I do believe it happened, but... it happened. Making fun of Bush now is a lot like beating up a man with broken arms and legs. Sure, you could, but... why bother? What else can you do to him that hasn't already been done?
Oh, but you bring up a good point. Bush doesn't have his arms and legs broken yet and he's not sitting in a cell with no habeas corpus. Just, so you know, comparable treatment to what he is doing for alleged war criminals.
Alternatively the death penalty could be used on him, but I object to it on a moral basis. But the fact is, Bush is not lame at the moment - he's still the president unfortunately.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because it all depends on what you mean on 'know'. If you're talking in the scientific sense, then knowing something is pretty strong, if you're talking in the common day sense, then knowing is a bit stronger than a 'gut feeling', but vulnerable to lies like 'knowing there are WMDs in Iraq' and things that contradict 'common sense'.
I would have to mention that realclimate "debunked" the global cooling myth. It was never considered as a mainstream scientific belief, it only existed because of the popular press. The press gets most things wrong, can't distinguish between global dimming and global cooling. As for Nuclear Winter - thats the least of our worries if that many nukes were to be detonated in order to either cause an effect or not cause like that. It is a doomsday scenario, quite unlike global warming.
I have for a long time realised that categorizations like left or right don't make sense in the case of 80% of the population, especially across countries. Some of my ideas for an optimal society have socialist touches, but I also believe that personal liberties are not contradictory with them, quite the opposite. Even though the classification is quite flawed, I have to add that most of the civilized world is "extreme left" compared to the USA. Facts have a liberal bias and all that.
Anyway, back to the topic. Global warming is not the popular opinion. Or if it is, it is irrelevant. It is the peer reviewed mainstream scientific consensus. Science is powerful, and self checking. Many scientists have tried to falsify the conclusion that global warming is happening, but didn't manage to, thus we accept it as our standing theory in relation to the projected temperature change of the planet. That's how science works, by testable theories.
I think Richard Dawkins remarked something like that if doctors would undestand evolution we wouldn't have a huge crisis of drug resistant bacteria in hospitals.
I don't care what opinionated and personally involved people say about the study. The peer review concluded that the study is using the most reliable method and they think it's firm in it's conclusions.
Here is a link discussing the media distortion issue, btw.
So you like playing with matrioska dolls?
So, I stand by my original post.
Also, it have to be noted that the 182k figure that you're quoting came up in the Saddam trial, which is not impartial by any standards and I wouldn't rely on it. The internationally accepted version of history attributes much less casualties to Saddam, around 55k.
Actually you do owe some things to the world: the USA needs to obey the international/universal human rights agreements.
The world police expression is an extremely stupid phrase. It implies that you're doing a service, while in reality all you do is look out for your own interests aggressively - hence the world's police expression. I don't see why the world should be grateful and even supportive of the USA given the events of the last century of cowboy politics and waging wars of self interest.
Your own what? Race? A more important human?
If you've got nothing to hide...
It has to be concluded that slashdot is full of Al-Quaeda operatives, chinese government officials and iraqi terrorists, therefor the Bush administration feels morally justified in dumping 500 tons of nerve gas on the internets users. No true american hates freedom, so they must be terrgrorist, after all freedom is about paying lip service to that abstract ideal, while doing the contrary what they said they think when it comes to actions.
I know I know. They want hype and venture capital or fame or some such, but I can't count the number of things that are just a few years away and then never materialized.
I'd be much more interested in hearing about good inventions in retrospect.
I think that's one of the reasons why Bush is still alive.
I ment voters and not parties. And I agree with you.
The rule of the state, in importance ranked above the people that make up society.
Scientific facts don't stop being scientific facts, just because the administration demonstrates the political need to ignore/bend/distort and supress such facts. Thus, the scientific governmental organization founded for the good of society is overruled by the good of the current administration of the state. That is a fascist method of operation.
My dream is that both republicans and democrats will condemn these attempts. My sense of reality says that will never happen.
For example, did you know that 99.99% of high school students can't read Perl?. Shameful, shameful.
[foot icon here]
You own me a keyboard for the damage the mineral water out of my nose did to it... :)
You're wrong. While it is true that the new testament is less malicious than the old, it is only slightly so. For example:
- Ancestral (original) sin transmitted through semen. (so far old testament). So in order to impress himself, God came to earth as Jesus, got crucified to redeem humanity's sin in the face of himself, all for the tribal survival myths found in the old testament, which should be taken non-seriously?
- In order to have all this happen, wasn't Judas a necessary element in God's plan, so by what standards can he regarded as someone to be despised?
- Hating your mother, father, brethren, sisters and his own life being a prerequirement to be a disciple of Jesus. (Don't ask me, it's in there!)
Sorry people. I thought the humour impaired get out of the woodwork at a much later date. I'll go away in shame. Yeah, I did not know that .deb is the packaging format, after all I only use debian on my desktop for more than half of a decade...
...good solution for them. Or should I call it apt?
So finally, you have a proper document to use to identify yourself instead of a driver's license or SSN.
About c., exactly. But driving should be opt-in. It is not attainable by a lot of people so it should not be used. It puts people with disabilities at a disadvantage, even if state id exists if there is a practice to use driver's license instead.
The concept of an ID card is not bad unless you're a fascism. The problem is with fascism, not with ID cards. If you think your government tends toward fascism, solve that, not the problem that you're worried what would a fascist government do with ID cards.
I have to say I'm completely dumbfounded about the SSN practice in the USA. Here in Hungary, most official business require an ID card, which has personal details, like b.o.d, current address(actually a separate card to make it more easier to move and stuff), a photograph and a numerical code on it.
The numerical code is only for the rare case where someone lives at the same place with someone else with the same name and B.o.d, so to serve generally as an unique identifier. You cannot do anything with that numerical code in itself. You have to have the card. It is pretty forgery resistant and if you need a fake id badly, you could just bribe an official in the ministry of internal affairs to give you a new identity anyway.
So there's that. It is useful for the common person, because it proves identity and every adult has it.
Yeah, it can be misused, but everywhere it is grossly misused by the government, it is not a democracy anyway and you've got bigger problems than that anyway.
I don't get why people in the anglo-saxon countries think of the nazis immediately when the issue of national ids came up, I don't think of nazi germany when driving an Audi.
Yay, since you try to turn this into a political issue, now you set the scene for the political indoctrinated biases to work their way. The republicans now can just go home and ignore the whole report, because, obviously, they are against republicans so they must be democrats.
The way I see things is that the organization presented their findings now, because they noticed a huge drop of respect for science since the previous administrations. That's only a rep. vs dem. issue if you let it be one.
This description of yours fits into the "it was written by DEMS, don't listen!!!!111" conclusion you seem to be advocating.
Good excuses for not listening to a bunch of Nobel laureates. Especially since because only about 7% of them believe in any personal god at all, so they must be stupid atheist too, right? What do they know?!
Alternatively the death penalty could be used on him, but I object to it on a moral basis. But the fact is, Bush is not lame at the moment - he's still the president unfortunately.