For those who want more info on the polls see
http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/55. Note the first one by the UK's ministry of defence which shows that 65% of iraqis actually support attacks by insurgents on british troops. Also note the systematic bias in the IRI reports, which you can read about here.
80% percent of those "happy people" (I'm assuming you meant Iraqis) want the occupying militaries to leave immediately.
As the U.S. continues to "help" Iraq deal with the anti-democratic insurgents, areas of the country will start looking more and more like Palestine. The insurgents aren't in their "last throes"; the government reps who think a U.S. pull-out would be letting the insurgents win want to continue the same thing that's been going on for the last 40 years in Israel/Palestine in Iraq too.
The thing is, it doesn't matter what government reps want. The most legitimate polls in Iraq indicate the vast majority of the population want the foreign militaries to leave, whatever the consequences. Those were the results since the beginning the of war, and the percentage holding that opinion has only increased since. The true measure of democracy is when the policies of representative governments reflect those of the population they govern.
Here's something that might deserve a closer look:
The duel and the events leading to it are blurred by time and the phantasies of novelists and what's worse biographers. We can rule out or at least it is highly improbable that the duel was a plot of the royalists to murder him. Though this version is a favorite legend lingering in many biographies. Most probably it was Galois himself who incited this interpretation. He wanted himself to appear as a victim of the government, which should enrage the masses to revolt. He dropped remarks pointing in this direction: At a meeting of the Friends of the People and in his last letters. The most likely reason is: He was weary of life, because of his unhappy love affair, his fruitless efforts for gaining recognition for his mathematical work, his financial and work situation and he felt finished up a blind alley in politics as well. So his duel was like a staged suicide. It is still not clear who the other dueller a supposed political friend was.
One thing is clear, though it kills a favorite legend: He didn't lay down his mathematical theory in the night befor the duel. He pointed out the cornerstones of his scientific life in a long letter to his friend Chevalier, so that everything might be properly evaluated and not be lost.
Finding another job might solve the problem for yourself, but its unreasonable to expect the majority of your co-workers to do the same. People have bills to pay, moving isn't trivial, jobs aren't in surplus, and being poor living paycheck to paycheck makes it even more difficult. Unions are the way workers gain leverage on their employers. In cases where businesses have more incentive (e.g. if they can do it, get away with it, and make more money at it) to trample on workers than respect their rights, unions are absolutely necessary. If the government doesn't regulate (e.g. enforcing a living wage, not 5.15 an hour) and the employees don't organize and bargain to earn their rights, exploitation is inevitable.
America happens to have a large middle class because workers before us fought vigorously and against all odds (which you won't be taught in school). After losing that round, corporations chose to build their factories overseas where there aren't unions or government regulations, leaving behind huge abandoned factories, thousands of jobs, and ghettos at home.
So, it might be a natural cycle, and there is evidence, which we deliberatly ignored, which might support this. However, we've not noticed anything before so we aren't going to ignore it.
I'd interpret your quotation as although it remains a possibility that the increase in hurricane frequency could be a long-term cycle, there is no apparent reason to believe this to be the case and the model doesn't predict it.
I agree with you that the use of data must be scrutinized to the strictest of standards when trying to draw conclusions from it. The editors of a peer-reviewed journal are expected to be of the highest caliber in this regard, and the credibility of the journal depends on it. For example, this image, which demonstrates how accurately we can make measurements going back hundreds of thousands of years, was compiled solely from peer-reviewed publications, while the Free Republic "study" was a hackjob.
It saddens me that link made it onto slashdot's frontpage as a credible source regarding global warming. If you want to get an informed opinion, read the original article and a commentary at Science.
Most of the Free Republic article was spent summarizing the science article, which concluded as was quoted. The conclusion they reached first mentioned the observed trend from satellite data over the past 30 years: an increasing frequency of intense hurricanes. They also mentioned that this observed trend is consistent with predictions made by an extremely sophicasted simulator, such as this one(from the science article's references). The simulator's function is to provide predictions of hurricane type, location, and frequency based on as wide of a variety of climate conditions as possible, and to provide them as accurately as possible (which is tested by comparison with observations).
So the simulators can accurately predict some trends in hurricane activity. Here that trend was an increasing frequency of intense hurricanes, given an increase in CO2 concentration and an increase in ocean temperatures, which is what has been observed over the last 30 years.
Since the Free Republic author didn't like the conclusion reached by the scientist, he tries to append some non-satellite data to the beginning of the study and make his own new study. Any numbskull would notice that the data he appended is much noiser than the data in the study, and he clearly isn't qualified to attempt such a study (which is why his article wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal like Science).
The best thing to do in these situations is school yourself and then come to your own conclusions on this matter.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who want more info on the polls see http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/55. Note the first one by the UK's ministry of defence which shows that 65% of iraqis actually support attacks by insurgents on british troops. Also note the systematic bias in the IRI reports, which you can read about here.
As the U.S. continues to "help" Iraq deal with the anti-democratic insurgents, areas of the country will start looking more and more like Palestine. The insurgents aren't in their "last throes"; the government reps who think a U.S. pull-out would be letting the insurgents win want to continue the same thing that's been going on for the last 40 years in Israel/Palestine in Iraq too.
The thing is, it doesn't matter what government reps want. The most legitimate polls in Iraq indicate the vast majority of the population want the foreign militaries to leave, whatever the consequences. Those were the results since the beginning the of war, and the percentage holding that opinion has only increased since. The true measure of democracy is when the policies of representative governments reflect those of the population they govern.
Here's something that might deserve a closer look: The duel and the events leading to it are blurred by time and the phantasies of novelists and what's worse biographers. We can rule out or at least it is highly improbable that the duel was a plot of the royalists to murder him. Though this version is a favorite legend lingering in many biographies. Most probably it was Galois himself who incited this interpretation. He wanted himself to appear as a victim of the government, which should enrage the masses to revolt. He dropped remarks pointing in this direction: At a meeting of the Friends of the People and in his last letters. The most likely reason is: He was weary of life, because of his unhappy love affair, his fruitless efforts for gaining recognition for his mathematical work, his financial and work situation and he felt finished up a blind alley in politics as well. So his duel was like a staged suicide. It is still not clear who the other dueller a supposed political friend was. One thing is clear, though it kills a favorite legend: He didn't lay down his mathematical theory in the night befor the duel. He pointed out the cornerstones of his scientific life in a long letter to his friend Chevalier, so that everything might be properly evaluated and not be lost.
Finding another job might solve the problem for yourself, but its unreasonable to expect the majority of your co-workers to do the same. People have bills to pay, moving isn't trivial, jobs aren't in surplus, and being poor living paycheck to paycheck makes it even more difficult. Unions are the way workers gain leverage on their employers. In cases where businesses have more incentive (e.g. if they can do it, get away with it, and make more money at it) to trample on workers than respect their rights, unions are absolutely necessary. If the government doesn't regulate (e.g. enforcing a living wage, not 5.15 an hour) and the employees don't organize and bargain to earn their rights, exploitation is inevitable.
America happens to have a large middle class because workers before us fought vigorously and against all odds (which you won't be taught in school). After losing that round, corporations chose to build their factories overseas where there aren't unions or government regulations, leaving behind huge abandoned factories, thousands of jobs, and ghettos at home.
A good alternative is worker-owned factories.
A self-reproducing thermodynamic work cycle. Video of Kauffman's explanation
I'd interpret your quotation as although it remains a possibility that the increase in hurricane frequency could be a long-term cycle, there is no apparent reason to believe this to be the case and the model doesn't predict it.
I agree with you that the use of data must be scrutinized to the strictest of standards when trying to draw conclusions from it. The editors of a peer-reviewed journal are expected to be of the highest caliber in this regard, and the credibility of the journal depends on it. For example, this image, which demonstrates how accurately we can make measurements going back hundreds of thousands of years, was compiled solely from peer-reviewed publications, while the Free Republic "study" was a hackjob.
Most of the Free Republic article was spent summarizing the science article, which concluded as was quoted. The conclusion they reached first mentioned the observed trend from satellite data over the past 30 years: an increasing frequency of intense hurricanes. They also mentioned that this observed trend is consistent with predictions made by an extremely sophicasted simulator, such as this one(from the science article's references). The simulator's function is to provide predictions of hurricane type, location, and frequency based on as wide of a variety of climate conditions as possible, and to provide them as accurately as possible (which is tested by comparison with observations).
So the simulators can accurately predict some trends in hurricane activity. Here that trend was an increasing frequency of intense hurricanes, given an increase in CO2 concentration and an increase in ocean temperatures, which is what has been observed over the last 30 years.
Since the Free Republic author didn't like the conclusion reached by the scientist, he tries to append some non-satellite data to the beginning of the study and make his own new study. Any numbskull would notice that the data he appended is much noiser than the data in the study, and he clearly isn't qualified to attempt such a study (which is why his article wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal like Science).
The best thing to do in these situations is school yourself and then come to your own conclusions on this matter.