The evidence is inadmissible in court. In most cases that is the only consequence.
Or perhaps you do...otherwise you wouldn't feel the need to qualify your ridiculous statement in such a way.
According to your logic, I can wiretap anyone I please...I just have to be mindful that anything I hear is inadmissable in a court of law.
But wait...
What are the consequences to law enforcement for collecting evidence without a warrant?
Ahh...I missed that part...apparently, 'law enforcement', unlike myself, is itself above the law. How silly of me.
I guess you really don't get it after all. Let me spell it out for you.
The necessity of getting a warrant to wiretap is not to ensure that the fruit of said wiretap is admissable in court...that's putting the cart before the horse.
Exactly why do you think wiretaps without warrants aren't admissable anyway?
BECAUSE THE ACT OF EAVESDROPPING ON A PRIVATE CONVERSATION WITHOUT A WARRANT GRANTED BY A COURT OF LAW FALLS UNDER UNREASONABLE SEARCH AND SEIZURE, AND IS A DIRECT VIOLATION OF THE SUSPECTS' CIVIL RIGHTS GUARANTEED THEM BY LAW.
I don't know how I can make this any plainer. I really don't.
Yes, and so far the investigation appears to be indicating that:
1) It was an openly-known thing to the entire Washington press core before Bush took office. 2) She wasn't undercover.
Pretty amusing how the two points in your rebuttal contradict each other. If she wasn't undercover, how could it have been an openly-known thing to the entire Washington press corps that she was?
(By the way, she was undercover...please read here for details.)
If it was so openly-known, why does the evidence point strongly enough to Lewis Libby to indict him on five felony counts?
Next time you construct an argument, try to make it a little less self-contradictory and a little more factual.
Just because a wiretap doesn't yield the information you were looking for does not excuse you from obtaining permission (a warrant) to execute said wiretap.
The fact that you think it does illustrates just how confused you are on this issue.
Exactly how does a post that reads in its entirety "No, this is not true." possibly get modded up as 'informative'???
Last I checked, the jury was out on this one. If you have additional light to shed on this issue, kindly post the relevant links. If not, kindly stop astroturfing.
Sophistry. The fact that she was a CIA operative made what they did more reprehensible, not less. It is a federal crime for anyone with authorized knowledge of the identity of an active or recently active undercover CIA operative to knowingly divulge it to persons not otherwise authorized to know it.
Next time, try educating yourself rather than basing your argument upon semantics.
If you don't think the rampant civil rights abuses our president is perpetrating upon the nation's citizens is unimportant unless it affects you personally, here's something I'd like you to read and reflect upon:
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
Substitute 'terrorist' for 'Jew', 'pornographer' for 'Communist', and 'activist' for 'trade unionist', and you get a rather disquietingly accurate view of the direction our one-great nation is going.
The president makes the laws. Therefore, anything he deems to be legal is legal.
Um...are you from America???
America is (was?) based upon the rule of law. The doctrine of "the King can do no wrong" was exactly why the Founding Fathers fought and died to found this country. The doctrine of "the King can do no wrong" is, coincedentally, exactly what the new King George hopes to secure as his God-given right through the doctrine of the 'unitary executive'.
Bush must be stopped. If not now, when? If not by us, by whom?
In one striking finding, respondents overwhelmingly supported e-mail and telephone monitoring directed at "Americans that the government is suspicious of;" they overwhelmingly opposed the same kind of surveillance if it was aimed at "ordinary Americans."
Here's the problem...the phrase "Americans that the government is suspicious of", can (and is) defined differently every day. Such vagueness virtually invites a police state.
Dubya has shown on several occasions that he cannot be trusted to protect our civil rights. That's OK, he doesn't have to be trusted....that's why we have (had?) the FISA, to ensure that wiretapping is carried out in a lawful manner. All George had to do was run his requests through the court, and everything would have been completely legal. Apparently, that's too much trouble for King George, who is aggressively pursuing the doctrine of the unitary executive, believes he is above the law of the land, and regards our Constitution as "just a goddamned piece of paper".
Trusting George and his Gestapo (that's right, I said it) to safeguard your civil rights is like employing a wild dingo to guard your baby. As of now, "Americans that the government is suspicious of" refers to terror suspects, but it could just as easily refer to foreign-born, dissidents, liberals, or slashdotters.
It's time to stop King George before he corrupts the dream of the Founding Fathers beyond redemption. It's time to draw a line in the sand and say, "this far....no farther". It's time to take back our country.
While there's no disputing that speedy, accurate genome sequencing will have a significant positive impact, being the pessimist I am, I can't help but dwell on the possible downsides:
Cheap and accurate gene sequencing in the hands of insurance companies could make it difficult for a person with a genetic predisposition to disease to obtain health or life insurance.
Cheap and accurate gene sequencing in the hands of corporations encourages said corporations to discriminate in their hiring practices on the basis of genetic predispositions to everything from coronary disease to psychological problems.
Cheap and accurate gene sequencing in the hands of people searching for a spouse could lead to rigorous screenings of prospective mates for evidence of genetic 'undesirability'.
Cheap and accurate gene sequencing in the hands of governments could lead to governments investigating citizens on the basis of 'questionable genetic heritage'.
Given the alarming problem of space junk, is this a really wise thing to do?
After all, the problem is so severe that Slashdot had two stories on it in four days. Honestly, aren't the NASA folks even reading Slashdot anymore? ^_^
Therefore Intelligent Design should be taught in school (by your argument. I make no claim either way.)
That's a truly breathtaking distortion of my position. Bravo. According to this, you would have me teaching astrology and phrenology in the science classroom as well, for the simple reason that they are also falsifiable.
What I didn't mention earlier (because, honestly, I didn't think I needed to...I assumed it was a given), was that for a scientific theory to be taken seriously, it must be (a) falsifiable, and (b) not falsified as well.
Phrenology is falsifiable, and has been falsified. Accordingly, it is no longer given serious consideration in the scientific world.
Plate tectonics is falsifiable, and has not been falsified. Accordingly, it is still given serious consideration in the scientific world.
Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is neither falsified nor falsifiable. Accordingly, it is not given serious consideration in the scientific world.
Evolution is falsifiable, and has not been falsified. Accordingly, it is still given serious consideration in the scientific world.
Here's the problem, though. Showing a claim made by ID false does not falsify the theory, because IDers can always retreat to the unassailable notion that 'God made it that way'. Real scientific disciplines do not have that luxury.
All claims that IDers have made to try to support their theory that are in fact falsifiable (such as the four arguments you yourself cited) have been shown to be unequivocally false. No matter how much wool ID tries to spin about itself, when it its all cleared away, the central premise is 'God did it', which is not by any means falsifiable, and therefore has no place in the scientific world.
The total entropy of any thermodynamically isolated system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value.
- Denis J. Evans & Debra J. Searles (1994). Equilibrium microstates which generate second law violating steady states. Physical Review E 50: 1645-1648.
One idea posited by Intelligent Design is that the strong and weak nuclear forces...
The fact that the Weak Anthropic Principle is true (and it can't help being true...it's a tautology) does not mean that the Strong Anthropic Principle is true. You'll need to do better than that.
Another idea posed by Intelligent design is that there is a certain minimum amount of information needed to have life--things like ribosomes and transcriptase...
This argument is equal parts misdirection and bunk. Self-replicating molecules can work with only a strand of six DNA nucleotides. Such a self-replicating molecule could have easily formed via pre-biotic chemistry. As life developed, such self-replicating molecules would have been outcompeted and extinguished by other, more complex groups of molecules.
Did it happen in this way? Frankly, I don't know. But saying "I don't know how it could have happened....so God did it" is a classic argument from incredulity. Besides which, evolution has never purported to explain abiogenesis anyway so the entire argument is beside the point.
Intelligent Design posits that life began within one hundred million years after life became possible (shortly after cooling to the point of liquid water.) This is a short time in geological terms. However, life has not begun once since. Therefore something either actively created life once it became possible or something actively keeps new forms of life from springing up.
It should be fairly obvious that, given the fact that life has occupied every conceiveable niche on this planet, that any 'new life' will be effectively prevented from developing. In short, that 'something' that actively keeps new forms of life from springing up is the already established life.
Intelligent Design posits that life changed very slowly immediately after life began, then a profusion of new life forms came into existence during the cambrian period, and life has changed very slowly since.
Ah yes...the Cambrian Explosion argument...again, bunk. The only reason the Cambrian Explosion looks like an explosion at all is because this particular time period is when animals started to evolve hard structures such as teeth and shells....structures that fossilize easily and are easily identifible. There are plenty of Precambrian fossils, however, that developed in the same way and that argue against a sudden Cambrian explosion. Simply put, the "Cambrian Explosion" wasn't an explosion at all.
By the way, the general tone of your post is sarcastic and demeaning, and makes an excellent example the close mindedness of some proponents of Evolution.
I'm sorry you percieve my demand for a rational argument to support your "theory" as demeaning. I'm also sorry you percieve those who do not abandon rationality in favor of 'God did it' at the slightest pretext as 'close minded'.
I would like to say something about your use of scare quotes around the word "theory." I think you'll find, if you look, that a theory is defined as a set of statements having two subsets--the set of statements that are acceptable (s.k.a True,) and those that aren't (s.k.a False.) Thus Intelligent Design easily meets the definition of theory, and your use of scare quotes is unwarranted.
Your definition of the word theory is disingenuous in the extreme...and sadly, par for the course for ID proponents.
Main Entry: theory Pronunciation: 'thE-&-rE, 'thi(-&)r-E Function: noun Inflected Form: plural -ries 1 : the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art 2 : a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain natural phenomena --see ATOMIC THEORY, CELL THEORY, GERM THEORY 3 : a working hypothe
In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it often does in other contexts. Scientific theories are never proven to be true, but can be disproven. All scientific understanding takes the form of hypotheses, or conjectures. A theory is in this context a set of hypotheses that are logically bound together (See also hypothetico-deductive method).
Theories are typically ways of explaining why things happen, often, but not always after their occurrence is no longer in scientific dispute. In referring to the "theory of global warming" for example, the worldwide temperatures have been measured and seem to be increasing. The "theory of global warming" refers instead to scientific work that attempts to explain how and why this could be happening.
In various sciences, a theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a certain natural or social phenomenon, thus either originating from or supported by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations made that is predictive, logical, testable, and has never been falsified.
You know, f you had completed reading my OP...in fact, if you had merely read one sentence past the one you chose to quote, you would have found that I addressed the issue of choices not having to be exclusive.
Here is the relevant sentence for you, to save wear-and-tear on your scroll wheel:
I understand that some people would like to see more than one 'theory' taught (the old 'teach the controversy' BS), but displaying the results in this manner is misleading in the extreme.
What you're advocating is the 'teach the controversy' bunkum I alluded to in the OP. Here's why it's bunkum:there is no controversy. ID/Creationism, not being falsifiable, is not science, and does not belong in a science classroom. Period. If ID is allowed into the science clssroom, then you must also include other alternative explanations such as Flying Spaghetti Monsterism and Last Thursdayism. Otherwise, you're betraying the very 'objectivity' you profess to espouse.
The two passages you quoted from my OP were intended as tongue-in-cheek. It's truly troubling how many Slashdotters are congenitally unable to detect sarcasm. Some really should set up a foundation to help these poor souls.
In the meantime, I guess I'll go back to making things painfully obvious by appending those little anime smilies that seem to enrage so many of my detractors.
To the legions of faceless AC trolls out there who cannot seem to stomach a few carets and an underscore, remember: it's now officially your own fault.
On one hand, I'm happy to see that rampant idiocy isn't a uniquely American trait.
On the other hand, however, I'm seriously troubled by this. I guess I was kinda counting on the rest of the world to bitchslap America back to sanity sooner or later, but now it appears that we can't count on the global community saving the day for rationality.
Of particular concern is the statistics quoted:
22% chose creationism
17% opted for intelligent design
48% selected evolution theory
and the rest did not know.
In other words, 39% chose creationism, as there is no discernable difference between creationism and ID. Score another victory for ID, for once again successfully obfuscating the issue.
Even worse were the statistics regarding what to teach in schools:
44% said creationism should be included
41% intelligent design
69% wanted evolution as part of the science curriculum.
Again, nice and confusing, especially when you consider that these statistics don't add up to 100%. I understand that some people would like to see more than one 'theory' taught (the old 'teach the controversy' BS), but displaying the results in this manner is misleading in the extreme. Equally confusing is the fact that the percentage of people who 'did not know' in the previous set of statistics isn't enumerated. One would assume it to be 13%, but in the light of the second set of statistics, who knows?
Ethanol need not be produced from corn...From TFA:
Instead of coming exclusively from corn or sugar cane as it has up to now, thanks to biotech breakthroughs, the fuel can be made out of everything from prairie switchgrass and wood chips to corn husks and other agricultural waste. This biomass-derived fuel is known as cellulosic ethanol.
Cellulosic ethanol requires little far machinery and no pesticides. From Renewable Energy Access:
We can't remember how many times we've been asked the question: "But doesn't ethanol require more energy to produce than it contains?" The simple answer is no-most scientific studies, especially those in recent years reflecting modern techniques, do not support this concern. These studies have shown that ethanol has a higher energy content than the fossil energy used in its production. Some studies that contend that ethanol is a net energy loser include (incorrectly) the energy of the sun used to grow a feedstock in ethanol's energy balance, which misses the fundamental point that the sun's energy is free. Furthermore, because crops like switchgrass are perennials, they are not replanted and cultivated every year, avoiding farm-equipment energy. Indeed, if polycultured to imitate the prairies where they grow naturally, they should require no fertilizer, irrigation, or pesticides either. So, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, for every one unit of energy available at the fuel pump, 1.23 units of fossil energy are used to produce gasoline, 0.74 of fossil energy are used to produce corn-based ethanol, and only 0.2 units of fossil energy are used to produce cellulosic ethanol.
Between its lesser environmemtal impact (up to 80% reduced emmisions) and its cost-efficiency, cellulosic ethanol is far more environment-friendly than fosil fuels.
We can't remember how many times we've been asked the question: "But doesn't ethanol require more energy to produce than it contains?" The simple answer is no-most scientific studies, especially those in recent years reflecting modern techniques, do not support this concern. These studies have shown that ethanol has a higher energy content than the fossil energy used in its production. Some studies that contend that ethanol is a net energy loser include (incorrectly) the energy of the sun used to grow a feedstock in ethanol's energy balance, which misses the fundamental point that the sun's energy is free. Furthermore, because crops like switchgrass are perennials, they are not replanted and cultivated every year, avoiding farm-equipment energy. Indeed, if polycultured to imitate the prairies where they grow naturally, they should require no fertilizer, irrigation, or pesticides either. So, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, for every one unit of energy available at the fuel pump, 1.23 units of fossil energy are used to produce gasoline, 0.74 of fossil energy are used to produce corn-based ethanol, and only 0.2 units of fossil energy are used to produce cellulosic ethanol.
Slashdot Mirror
Capone was convicted of tax evasion.
You really don't get it, do you?
The evidence is inadmissible in court. In most cases that is the only consequence.
Or perhaps you do...otherwise you wouldn't feel the need to qualify your ridiculous statement in such a way.
According to your logic, I can wiretap anyone I please...I just have to be mindful that anything I hear is inadmissable in a court of law.
But wait...
What are the consequences to law enforcement for collecting evidence without a warrant?
Ahh...I missed that part...apparently, 'law enforcement', unlike myself, is itself above the law. How silly of me.
I guess you really don't get it after all. Let me spell it out for you.
The necessity of getting a warrant to wiretap is not to ensure that the fruit of said wiretap is admissable in court...that's putting the cart before the horse.
Exactly why do you think wiretaps without warrants aren't admissable anyway?
BECAUSE THE ACT OF EAVESDROPPING ON A PRIVATE CONVERSATION WITHOUT A WARRANT GRANTED BY A COURT OF LAW FALLS UNDER UNREASONABLE SEARCH AND SEIZURE, AND IS A DIRECT VIOLATION OF THE SUSPECTS' CIVIL RIGHTS GUARANTEED THEM BY LAW.
I don't know how I can make this any plainer. I really don't.
Yes, and so far the investigation appears to be indicating that:
1) It was an openly-known thing to the entire Washington press core before Bush took office.
2) She wasn't undercover.
Pretty amusing how the two points in your rebuttal contradict each other. If she wasn't undercover, how could it have been an openly-known thing to the entire Washington press corps that she was?
(By the way, she was undercover...please read here for details.)
If it was so openly-known, why does the evidence point strongly enough to Lewis Libby to indict him on five felony counts?
Next time you construct an argument, try to make it a little less self-contradictory and a little more factual.
Just because a wiretap doesn't yield the information you were looking for does not excuse you from obtaining permission (a warrant) to execute said wiretap.
The fact that you think it does illustrates just how confused you are on this issue.
Exactly how does a post that reads in its entirety "No, this is not true." possibly get modded up as 'informative'???
Last I checked, the jury was out on this one. If you have additional light to shed on this issue, kindly post the relevant links. If not, kindly stop astroturfing.
We're in contact now, aren't we?
Sophistry. The fact that she was a CIA operative made what they did more reprehensible, not less. It is a federal crime for anyone with authorized knowledge of the identity of an active or recently active undercover CIA operative to knowingly divulge it to persons not otherwise authorized to know it.
Next time, try educating yourself rather than basing your argument upon semantics.
If you don't think the rampant civil rights abuses our president is perpetrating upon the nation's citizens is unimportant unless it affects you personally, here's something I'd like you to read and reflect upon:
Substitute 'terrorist' for 'Jew', 'pornographer' for 'Communist', and 'activist' for 'trade unionist', and you get a rather disquietingly accurate view of the direction our one-great nation is going.
Valerie Plame
The president makes the laws. Therefore, anything he deems to be legal is legal.
Um...are you from America???
America is (was?) based upon the rule of law. The doctrine of "the King can do no wrong" was exactly why the Founding Fathers fought and died to found this country. The doctrine of "the King can do no wrong" is, coincedentally, exactly what the new King George hopes to secure as his God-given right through the doctrine of the 'unitary executive'.
Bush must be stopped. If not now, when? If not by us, by whom?
From TFA: Here's the problem...the phrase "Americans that the government is suspicious of", can (and is) defined differently every day. Such vagueness virtually invites a police state.
Dubya has shown on several occasions that he cannot be trusted to protect our civil rights. That's OK, he doesn't have to be trusted....that's why we have (had?) the FISA, to ensure that wiretapping is carried out in a lawful manner. All George had to do was run his requests through the court, and everything would have been completely legal. Apparently, that's too much trouble for King George, who is aggressively pursuing the doctrine of the unitary executive, believes he is above the law of the land, and regards our Constitution as "just a goddamned piece of paper".
Trusting George and his Gestapo (that's right, I said it) to safeguard your civil rights is like employing a wild dingo to guard your baby. As of now, "Americans that the government is suspicious of" refers to terror suspects, but it could just as easily refer to foreign-born, dissidents, liberals, or slashdotters.
It's time to stop King George before he corrupts the dream of the Founding Fathers beyond redemption. It's time to draw a line in the sand and say, "this far....no farther". It's time to take back our country.
While there's no disputing that speedy, accurate genome sequencing will have a significant positive impact, being the pessimist I am, I can't help but dwell on the possible downsides:
Brave new world, indeed.
Given the alarming problem of space junk, is this a really wise thing to do?
After all, the problem is so severe that Slashdot had two stories on it in four days. Honestly, aren't the NASA folks even reading Slashdot anymore? ^_^
Therefore Intelligent Design should be taught in school (by your argument. I make no claim either way.)
That's a truly breathtaking distortion of my position. Bravo. According to this, you would have me teaching astrology and phrenology in the science classroom as well, for the simple reason that they are also falsifiable.
What I didn't mention earlier (because, honestly, I didn't think I needed to...I assumed it was a given), was that for a scientific theory to be taken seriously, it must be (a) falsifiable, and (b) not falsified as well.
Here's the problem, though. Showing a claim made by ID false does not falsify the theory, because IDers can always retreat to the unassailable notion that 'God made it that way'. Real scientific disciplines do not have that luxury.
All claims that IDers have made to try to support their theory that are in fact falsifiable (such as the four arguments you yourself cited) have been shown to be unequivocally false. No matter how much wool ID tries to spin about itself, when it its all cleared away, the central premise is 'God did it', which is not by any means falsifiable, and therefore has no place in the scientific world.
Actually, the second law of thermodynamics is:
- Denis J. Evans & Debra J. Searles (1994). Equilibrium microstates which generate second law violating steady states. Physical Review E 50: 1645-1648.
Here's the reference for the six-nucleotide self-replicating molecule reference:
One idea posited by Intelligent Design is that the strong and weak nuclear forces...
The fact that the Weak Anthropic Principle is true (and it can't help being true...it's a tautology) does not mean that the Strong Anthropic Principle is true. You'll need to do better than that.
Another idea posed by Intelligent design is that there is a certain minimum amount of information needed to have life--things like ribosomes and transcriptase...
This argument is equal parts misdirection and bunk. Self-replicating molecules can work with only a strand of six DNA nucleotides. Such a self-replicating molecule could have easily formed via pre-biotic chemistry. As life developed, such self-replicating molecules would have been outcompeted and extinguished by other, more complex groups of molecules.
Did it happen in this way? Frankly, I don't know. But saying "I don't know how it could have happened....so God did it" is a classic argument from incredulity. Besides which, evolution has never purported to explain abiogenesis anyway so the entire argument is beside the point.
Intelligent Design posits that life began within one hundred million years after life became possible (shortly after cooling to the point of liquid water.) This is a short time in geological terms. However, life has not begun once since. Therefore something either actively created life once it became possible or something actively keeps new forms of life from springing up.
It should be fairly obvious that, given the fact that life has occupied every conceiveable niche on this planet, that any 'new life' will be effectively prevented from developing. In short, that 'something' that actively keeps new forms of life from springing up is the already established life.
Intelligent Design posits that life changed very slowly immediately after life began, then a profusion of new life forms came into existence during the cambrian period, and life has changed very slowly since.
Ah yes...the Cambrian Explosion argument...again, bunk. The only reason the Cambrian Explosion looks like an explosion at all is because this particular time period is when animals started to evolve hard structures such as teeth and shells....structures that fossilize easily and are easily identifible. There are plenty of Precambrian fossils, however, that developed in the same way and that argue against a sudden Cambrian explosion. Simply put, the "Cambrian Explosion" wasn't an explosion at all.
By the way, the general tone of your post is sarcastic and demeaning, and makes an excellent example the close mindedness of some proponents of Evolution.
I'm sorry you percieve my demand for a rational argument to support your "theory" as demeaning. I'm also sorry you percieve those who do not abandon rationality in favor of 'God did it' at the slightest pretext as 'close minded'.
I would like to say something about your use of scare quotes around the word "theory." I think you'll find, if you look, that a theory is defined as a set of statements having two subsets--the set of statements that are acceptable (s.k.a True,) and those that aren't (s.k.a False.) Thus Intelligent Design easily meets the definition of theory, and your use of scare quotes is unwarranted.
Your definition of the word theory is disingenuous in the extreme...and sadly, par for the course for ID proponents.
Here is the actual definition of theory, from Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary:
Your post illustrates that you do not understand what a "theory" is in the context of science.
From Wikipedia:
Hope this helps.
Intelligent Design is falsifiable, thus is science, and thus should be taught in the classroom.
Care to explain how? Care to give just one example of an experiment that can be performed to falsify the 'theory' of Intelligent Design?
We're all waiting...
You know, f you had completed reading my OP...in fact, if you had merely read one sentence past the one you chose to quote, you would have found that I addressed the issue of choices not having to be exclusive.
Here is the relevant sentence for you, to save wear-and-tear on your scroll wheel:What you're advocating is the 'teach the controversy' bunkum I alluded to in the OP. Here's why it's bunkum:there is no controversy. ID/Creationism, not being falsifiable, is not science, and does not belong in a science classroom. Period. If ID is allowed into the science clssroom, then you must also include other alternative explanations such as Flying Spaghetti Monsterism and Last Thursdayism. Otherwise, you're betraying the very 'objectivity' you profess to espouse.
The two passages you quoted from my OP were intended as tongue-in-cheek. It's truly troubling how many Slashdotters are congenitally unable to detect sarcasm. Some really should set up a foundation to help these poor souls.
In the meantime, I guess I'll go back to making things painfully obvious by appending those little anime smilies that seem to enrage so many of my detractors.
To the legions of faceless AC trolls out there who cannot seem to stomach a few carets and an underscore, remember: it's now officially your own fault.
On one hand, I'm happy to see that rampant idiocy isn't a uniquely American trait.
On the other hand, however, I'm seriously troubled by this. I guess I was kinda counting on the rest of the world to bitchslap America back to sanity sooner or later, but now it appears that we can't count on the global community saving the day for rationality.
Of particular concern is the statistics quoted:
In other words, 39% chose creationism, as there is no discernable difference between creationism and ID. Score another victory for ID, for once again successfully obfuscating the issue.
Even worse were the statistics regarding what to teach in schools:
Again, nice and confusing, especially when you consider that these statistics don't add up to 100%. I understand that some people would like to see more than one 'theory' taught (the old 'teach the controversy' BS), but displaying the results in this manner is misleading in the extreme. Equally confusing is the fact that the percentage of people who 'did not know' in the previous set of statistics isn't enumerated. One would assume it to be 13%, but in the light of the second set of statistics, who knows?
Come now, this is Slashdot. You really ought to know better than to try to pull something like this.
Provide references to support your point, or admit you don't have a point. It's that simple.
(And no, random name-dropping does not count as providing references.)
Ethanol need not be produced from corn...From TFA:
Cellulosic ethanol requires little far machinery and no pesticides. From Renewable Energy Access:Between its lesser environmemtal impact (up to 80% reduced emmisions) and its cost-efficiency, cellulosic ethanol is far more environment-friendly than fosil fuels.
All the biologists and physicists I've spoken to say no.
Really? All of them? Care to provide a list of these sources?
It has a much lower fuel efficency, and it is still non-renewable.
Wrong and wrong. From Renewable Energy Access: