If something isn't falsifiable it really isn't science. That's the problem with the search for technological ET life. No matter how far, high and low you search, the universe is too large to "prove" the non-existence of ETs. And there is always some hidden other parameter the true believers can bring out like "maybe we're not looking for the right kind of life". The universe is an extremely violent place, and the more we discover, the more it's apparent exactly how lucky we are. I think if and when we manage to get to other stars we'll discover life is relatively plentiful, but technological ETs non-existent.
This is an ignorant argument Actually, not it isn't.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Um, yeah it is. Particularly when you are looking for evidence. Said another way, your argument can be applied to argue that there might be invisible pink elephants flying overhead. Which is to say, it's useless and not an argument at all.
There are a couple of solutions to the lack of evidence problem, but the most probable one is that there simply is not technological life besides us within our visible light cone. Like another poster said, the Fermi paradox is basically insurmountable. If there was advanced technological life in the galaxy, they would be here (and everywhere else) by now. The fact that they aren't strongly suggests that we're it.
In 2006 these idiots record was one of...and never left office when they said they would Some of them actually did leave office when they said they would, but you can't exactly vote THEM out of office now can you?
I think you didn't write what you think you wrote. You wrote that a listener 1 or 2 yards away from a bullet 50 meters down it's flight path still going at a supersonic velocity. Meaning, quite close to the bullet.
In any event, I don't know if you are in the United States or not, or a country where suppressors are legal. But it's pretty simple. Take a 5.56 mm weapon like an AR-15, attach a Gemtech suppressor to the end of the barrel. Shoot a 55 grain bullet that will be travelling approximately 3250 feet per second out of a 16 inch barrel. 2 meters away or 50 meters away, it won't be a "faint" sound. It won't be as loud as an unsuppressed weapon, obviously, but it'll still be loud. Not faint.
A silenced weapon is much quieter, but in many cases does not drop bullet velocity to subsonic until a good distance down range. If, say, the bullet is still supersonic at 50 meters, someone standing 1 or 2 meters from its flight path would hear a cracking noise from the sonic boom, but it would be quite faint. Negatory. That's why the technical term for "silencers" is "suppressors"...because they suppress noise, they don't silence it. Suppressors help reduce the subsonic noise, but they don't do anything for the supersonic noise (unless they slow the velocity of the bullet to subsonic levels, which some suppressors do for certain guns). They are still useful even when firing supersonic velocity ammunition because the human ear and brain are conditioned to direction find on subsonic noise, not supersonic noise. If all you hear is the supersonic crack, the first sound you will hear will be the crack from the bullet's closest point to you on it's path, immediately followed by noise that sounds the exact same originating from two different directions along the bullet's flight path. The effect is that the gunshot will sound like it's coming from all around you and make it really hard to follow the noise back to the shooter.
That sort of thing really sucks. Former President Carter actually conceded his losing election before polls had closed in California. That's because he was crushed everywhere else and there was no hope for him pulling off a victory. The 2000 Florida vote, on the other hand, was obviously very close, so close in fact that nothing short of malfeasance and collusion on behalf of Gore can explain several major networks calling it for Gore before the polls had closed.
You conveniently left out that Gore made the offer on Nov 15, after all previous recounts had failed to get the result desired. Gore wasn't being magnanimous or trying to be fair, he was trying his last gasp. And quite honestly, the state wide recount is irrelevant given the collusion between the Democrats and the media on election night, when the state of Florida was actually called for Gore before the polls closed in Western Florida, causing many people to literally walk away from the election lines. Western Florida, of course, is heavily Republican. You can usually tell what politicians are up to by what they accuse others of doing. For Republicans, it's cheating on their wives or taking drugs. For Democrats, it's committing vote fraud.
We we arested the devil incarnate for whatever... be it aiding terrorism, petty larcany, or sedition, I would expect him to be given the same rights as any other person, citizen or not Then you are establishing a legal burden that has never been followed in the past. For example, during the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans used English speaking infiltrators dressed as American soldiers. By your claim, these Germans, who were all executed as spies, were not given "their proper 5th Amendment rights". Simply absurd.
You probably voted for Bush. Twice. You'd better hope I don't meet you some day as my fists get a little uncontrollable when I hear people proudly claim they did that. You have no idea how people like you piss me off. Short-bus riding window-lickers, all of you. We want peace! We want it now! If you don't give it to us, we'll kick your ass.
If it makes you feel any better, Hillary will probably use the infrastructure set up Bush to indefinitely detain and recondition the members of the vast right-wing conspiracy once she takes office.
at has 100% nothing to do with what we are talking about. What is your point?
And, one involves a corrupt government, while the other involves laws that apply to (among other things), private healthcare companies. Well, for one, more than the "corrupt government" can conduct illegal wiretap surveilance, as the HP fiasco should illustrate. Additionally, you assume a little too confidently that such things as HIPAA laws would prevent any and all abuse by, of all organizations, medical insurance companies. We're aren't exactly talking about the most ethical of folks here.
One of these days I'm going to work up the motivation to run the numbers at a county level to see what the correlation between net Federal funds and voting trends are, and for kicks, throw in Congressional representation.
I've seen your assertion before, namely that the "socialist" Republican "red" states are leeches on the productive, capitalist "blue" states. The problem with this idea is that there are very few solidly red or blue states. California has more Republicans than any other state...they just happen to have even more Democrats. Likewise, there are a lot of Democratic voters in Texas. It would be interesting to compare a city like El Paso, Texas which went to Kerry in the 2004 election vs Fort Worth, Texas, which did not, and see which one used more Federal funds, and which one generated more economic output. There are several major sinks for Federal funds: transfer payments (recipients of whom trend poor & Democratic), military bases (trend Republican), and agricultural subsidies (trend Republican).
Humans, as we exist today, would probably survive a KT extinction level event. We are omnivorous, warm blooded, spread across the entire planet, adaptable to almost any environment, and capable of changing our environment on a micro scale in small numbers, and a macro scale in large numbers. And we have all sorts of structures above and below ground that were designed to withstand rather extreme events like nuclear explosions mere hundreds of meters away while keeping the inhabitants of the structures reasonably intact. While a large meteor or comet strike might kill 95% or more of humanity, enough people would survive to revive the SUV in short order.
How many votes will additional money for stroke researching bring? As Nixon once said, "Fuck the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway." Which is to not to say that I liked Nixon or dislike Jews, but the politics of pork determine what gets spent where. And what government money IS spent on stroke research is probably because some medical lobbyist has a relationship with a Congressman or Senator, or the bribe was sent to the right place (Duke Cunningham or Jefferson maybe) rather than any real application of rational allocation. And anyway, stroke research is simply unsexy compared to scintillating neutron detectors and other star trek sounding stuff. It's selling "de-oxylase reduction inhibitors that operate on the K- cell gateways" gobblygook vs "At 3M, we don't make the bombs, we make the bomb explosions bigger".
That's true, but we are heading rapidly in that direction. No, we are not. We're slowly moving in that direction. Personally, at the end of the day, I think we'll be able to thank Republicans for implementing the framework to crush internal dissidents, and Democrats for actually using it.
The argument that "we're still not as bad as one of the worst and so things are fine" is a poor one. You do me an injustice, sir. That's not my argument. My argument is that the original poster's idea that Russia was great because they don't have Fox news is moronic and insipid, the type of statement the left makes reflexively the same way Pavlov's dog salivated at the ringing of a dinner bell.
Except that the idea that those networks do nothing but spout Democratic talking points is just one of the many blatantly false ideas which Fox news tries to promote as real. Right. Which is why the media overwhelmingly votes Democrat in the national elections. This idea btw, namely that there is a pretty distinct Democratic bias in the US media, predates Fox news by about a decade. Several of the news outlets have slowly drifted to the right due to market pressures from Fox, but they had to be dragged kicking and screaming, and even then, it's usually a token or nominal conservative to offset a full staff of hard core Democratic operatives (e.g., Chris Matthews, former speachwriter for Carter, top aide for Tip O'Neil, now runs Hardball on MSNBC and runs "impartial" Presidential debates; George Stephanopolous...former communications director for the Clinton administration and now the senior Washington correspondant for ABC News) who transitioned seamlessly from communications positions in Democratic politics to communications positions in the news media. Maybe it was so seamless because it wasn't much of a transition or job change.
Now, the rest of the networks are crap as well, but they're crap because they are pushing corporate agendas and propaganda as well, not because they're lapdogs of the Democrats. The fact that Bush hasn't been executed for treason years ago proves that. A Basic simple honest presentation of the facts would have guaranteed that. Nice non sequitur.
Because I think it's far too late. The American people do not want honesty or integrity. And yet you think you are different...as you say:
So while there are some people like myself who actually do respect honesty and integrity, I'm in a vanishing minority. This sums up the problems nicely. I'm sure you could get 99% of Americans to agree with you on this. It's the same thing when pork barrel spending comes up. Everyone is all for getting rid of everyone else's pork barrel spending. The bottom line is it's real easy to point out everyone else's self-delusions, it's much harder to spot your own. As for myself, I try to be fair minded and rational and intelligent, but like everyone else, biases, even if it's just selection bias, inevitably filters in. You're a fool if you think that you are somehow immune, that you are the only intelligent person left in a sea of idiots, etc, etc.
We" being the vast majority. That does not include me. Sure it does. The US is a collective organism. You may be fighting against the current, but you are still part of the flow, even if it's going in a direction you don't like.
Except having a variety of choices about what sort of bullshit propaganda you watch isn't at all a good thing, let alone great. Having news media that actually tried to present the truth as accurately as possible would be a good thing, but we don't have anything of the sort any longer. Obviously, the solution then is to have government step in and make sure that the news media accurately presents the truth, because we all know that the government has a monopoly on that sort of thing...
Look, the reality is that news is a market driven affair. If you think there is a market for the "accurate truth", and that market is not being met by current news providers, nothing is stopping you from starting your own news company and competing with the bullshit propoganda organizations trumpeting themselves as news channels. Don't tell me it can't be done, Matt Drudge started off in his bedroom. And, roundabout to my original point, the difference between the US and Russia is you will not be put in jail, or beaten to death, or poisoned, or shot in the head at close range with a suppressed weapon by government agents for doing so.
All in all, people bitching about the news is not unlike people bitching about crappy political candidates. If your ideas are so great, why don't you run?
Sure we do, they're called the FCC. Absurd statement. The FCC is concerned with people saying "fuck" on TV, not running hits on reporters at the NYT who leak classified documents that the Bush administration requested they not release. The US press routinely publishes damaging and illegally communicated classified information with absolutely zero professional or legal consequences.
I certainly agree with that, but claiming that having different lies and propaganda to choose from, as opposed to having a media that helps promote an informed electorate, makes America great is just as stupid. Having choices is great. Having fewer choices or no choices is not great. Look, for every person like you that thinks Fox News is Faux News, there are two or three people in flyover country that thinks it is great. Personally, it causes a near epileptic fit when I watch it...my ADD hasn't progressed enough for me to tolerate it yet, but I at least acknowledge that there are people who don't really like watching the democratic talking points every night on CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC news. Once again, if you think the truth isn't being communicated, why don't you start doing everyone a service and communicate the truth as a public service to mankind. That's what makes America great...the fact that you can, or I can if we wanted to. In the end, we get the country we deserve. If we have a bunch of politicians and media organizations that lie to us, it's because that's what we clamor for.
I think your country is seriously fucked up, and as a foreigner, I'd fear for my safety. I think our country is seriously fucked up too, but then again, name me one that has a population over 5 million people and isn't fucked up. But the great thing about our country IS Fox news, or rather, if you don't like Fox news, you don't have to watch it. There are other media outlets to satisfy your progressive tastes. And if you are the type that likes Fox news or the 700 Club, well, that's available for you as well. We don't have some government autocrat dictating what's allowed and what isn't allowed and poisoning or beating to death dissident journalists that criticize the President and are anti-war (which has happened in Russia to people who criticized Putin and the war in Chechnya...short life expectancy, that carries). So, holding up Russia as something admirable because of the real life oppression that is there the way you do is stupid. Really stupid.
I think I might like to move there. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. I suspect though, that if you were dumb enough to actually move, you might find out what a real police state and real tyranny is. Much better, easier, and safer to bitch from your safe confines within the US.
the tools used for terrorism are not the problem, the underlying cause of terrorism in the first place *is* the problem and its consistently ignored in favor of restricting the advances of technology for "safety" and it's absolute bs. Sure. Whatever.
Look, society has no problem over reacting to low probability, low impact events like school shootings. So now we have a proliferation of "zero tolerance" policies in schools that result in suspensions and even expulsions over things like cake knives being seen in a locked car in the student parking lot or being in possession of aspirin (drugs are bad). The reason why these are low impact events is the destructive ability of a deranged school shooter is limited. The reason why it's low probability is because the probability of a student being a victim is very small.
Biowarfare agents and nuclear terrorism fall into the low probability, high impact event category. Meaning, yes, the overall probability of them happening is low, but the impact if it does happen is potentially very, very high. The reason why these things are low probability is because it takes a technically sophisticated and wealthy actor to produce the agents/weapons. Not because we lack for people willing to try. Lowering the technical threshold raises the probability. Raise it high enough, and you are no longer talking about probability, you're talking certainty.
I'm not saying there's no threat, but we need a lethal combination of angry biologists and a design for an unbelievably successful virus. The success of conventional warfare as opposed to chemical on both the battlefield and the terrorist's cities suggests that few attempts would ever be made to use such a technique. You don't really need a combination of angry biologists, and you don't need an unbelievably successful virus or bacterial agent. You just need a modestly successful one. Non-weapons grade anthrax may not kill you as fast or in as small doses as weapons grade anthrax, but it'll still kill you. And live bacteria and viral agents are the gift that keeps on giving.
Here it comes, alarmist without a clue of the field there worried about. At least your on the band wagon early with this one. Actually, I majored in biology and have done a fair amount of research into biowarfare agents. So I do, in fact, have a clue about what I'm talking about.
If I'm being alarmist about this, why not let anyone buy weapons grade plutonium or uranium and publish functional weapons designs along with the CAD/CAM instructions? After all, using your logic it's alarmist to think anyone would actually go to the trouble of actually constructing and using a bomb.
After all, the technical and monetary investment needed to build a nuclear bomb is several orders of magnitude greater than what is required to build a biological agent. If we don't have anything to worry about with biological agents, then obviously our nuke fears are overblown as well.
My computer, my kitchen utensils, and my car can't kill tens of millions of people.
This is simply a probability function. The more people that have the ability to create a biowarfare agent, the higher the chances that you'll have one released into the wild.
Consider this. The DNA sequence for the 1918 avian flu virus is public domain. You can buy base pair sequences online. It's not that difficult to add 1 and 1 to get 2. This isn't really technology you want to democratize to the masses. The number of angst ridden hate the world biochemists is much smaller than the number of angst ridden pimple faced teenagers. Given the ability, sooner or later one of them is going to think it's a cool idea to wipe out half the human species and will try.
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If something isn't falsifiable it really isn't science. That's the problem with the search for technological ET life. No matter how far, high and low you search, the universe is too large to "prove" the non-existence of ETs. And there is always some hidden other parameter the true believers can bring out like "maybe we're not looking for the right kind of life". The universe is an extremely violent place, and the more we discover, the more it's apparent exactly how lucky we are. I think if and when we manage to get to other stars we'll discover life is relatively plentiful, but technological ETs non-existent.
There are a couple of solutions to the lack of evidence problem, but the most probable one is that there simply is not technological life besides us within our visible light cone. Like another poster said, the Fermi paradox is basically insurmountable. If there was advanced technological life in the galaxy, they would be here (and everywhere else) by now. The fact that they aren't strongly suggests that we're it.
Fascist? I don't think that word means what you think it means. Hyperbole much?
I think you didn't write what you think you wrote. You wrote that a listener 1 or 2 yards away from a bullet 50 meters down it's flight path still going at a supersonic velocity. Meaning, quite close to the bullet.
In any event, I don't know if you are in the United States or not, or a country where suppressors are legal. But it's pretty simple. Take a 5.56 mm weapon like an AR-15, attach a Gemtech suppressor to the end of the barrel. Shoot a 55 grain bullet that will be travelling approximately 3250 feet per second out of a 16 inch barrel. 2 meters away or 50 meters away, it won't be a "faint" sound. It won't be as loud as an unsuppressed weapon, obviously, but it'll still be loud. Not faint.
Ah, thanks for the clarification and good point on the Carter concession.
You conveniently left out that Gore made the offer on Nov 15, after all previous recounts had failed to get the result desired. Gore wasn't being magnanimous or trying to be fair, he was trying his last gasp. And quite honestly, the state wide recount is irrelevant given the collusion between the Democrats and the media on election night, when the state of Florida was actually called for Gore before the polls closed in Western Florida, causing many people to literally walk away from the election lines. Western Florida, of course, is heavily Republican. You can usually tell what politicians are up to by what they accuse others of doing. For Republicans, it's cheating on their wives or taking drugs. For Democrats, it's committing vote fraud.
If it makes you feel any better, Hillary will probably use the infrastructure set up Bush to indefinitely detain and recondition the members of the vast right-wing conspiracy once she takes office.
One of these days I'm going to work up the motivation to run the numbers at a county level to see what the correlation between net Federal funds and voting trends are, and for kicks, throw in Congressional representation.
I've seen your assertion before, namely that the "socialist" Republican "red" states are leeches on the productive, capitalist "blue" states. The problem with this idea is that there are very few solidly red or blue states. California has more Republicans than any other state...they just happen to have even more Democrats. Likewise, there are a lot of Democratic voters in Texas. It would be interesting to compare a city like El Paso, Texas which went to Kerry in the 2004 election vs Fort Worth, Texas, which did not, and see which one used more Federal funds, and which one generated more economic output. There are several major sinks for Federal funds: transfer payments (recipients of whom trend poor & Democratic), military bases (trend Republican), and agricultural subsidies (trend Republican).
Humans, as we exist today, would probably survive a KT extinction level event. We are omnivorous, warm blooded, spread across the entire planet, adaptable to almost any environment, and capable of changing our environment on a micro scale in small numbers, and a macro scale in large numbers. And we have all sorts of structures above and below ground that were designed to withstand rather extreme events like nuclear explosions mere hundreds of meters away while keeping the inhabitants of the structures reasonably intact. While a large meteor or comet strike might kill 95% or more of humanity, enough people would survive to revive the SUV in short order.
How many votes will additional money for stroke researching bring? As Nixon once said, "Fuck the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway." Which is to not to say that I liked Nixon or dislike Jews, but the politics of pork determine what gets spent where. And what government money IS spent on stroke research is probably because some medical lobbyist has a relationship with a Congressman or Senator, or the bribe was sent to the right place (Duke Cunningham or Jefferson maybe) rather than any real application of rational allocation. And anyway, stroke research is simply unsexy compared to scintillating neutron detectors and other star trek sounding stuff. It's selling "de-oxylase reduction inhibitors that operate on the K- cell gateways" gobblygook vs "At 3M, we don't make the bombs, we make the bomb explosions bigger".
Look, the reality is that news is a market driven affair. If you think there is a market for the "accurate truth", and that market is not being met by current news providers, nothing is stopping you from starting your own news company and competing with the bullshit propoganda organizations trumpeting themselves as news channels. Don't tell me it can't be done, Matt Drudge started off in his bedroom. And, roundabout to my original point, the difference between the US and Russia is you will not be put in jail, or beaten to death, or poisoned, or shot in the head at close range with a suppressed weapon by government agents for doing so.
All in all, people bitching about the news is not unlike people bitching about crappy political candidates. If your ideas are so great, why don't you run? Sure we do, they're called the FCC. Absurd statement. The FCC is concerned with people saying "fuck" on TV, not running hits on reporters at the NYT who leak classified documents that the Bush administration requested they not release. The US press routinely publishes damaging and illegally communicated classified information with absolutely zero professional or legal consequences. I certainly agree with that, but claiming that having different lies and propaganda to choose from, as opposed to having a media that helps promote an informed electorate, makes America great is just as stupid. Having choices is great. Having fewer choices or no choices is not great. Look, for every person like you that thinks Fox News is Faux News, there are two or three people in flyover country that thinks it is great. Personally, it causes a near epileptic fit when I watch it...my ADD hasn't progressed enough for me to tolerate it yet, but I at least acknowledge that there are people who don't really like watching the democratic talking points every night on CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC news. Once again, if you think the truth isn't being communicated, why don't you start doing everyone a service and communicate the truth as a public service to mankind. That's what makes America great...the fact that you can, or I can if we wanted to. In the end, we get the country we deserve. If we have a bunch of politicians and media organizations that lie to us, it's because that's what we clamor for.
I think I might like to move there. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. I suspect though, that if you were dumb enough to actually move, you might find out what a real police state and real tyranny is. Much better, easier, and safer to bitch from your safe confines within the US.
I'm not sure there is anything we CAN do about it. Hence my original comment "just what we need..."
It is what it is, and to some extent the genie is already out of the bottle.
Look, society has no problem over reacting to low probability, low impact events like school shootings. So now we have a proliferation of "zero tolerance" policies in schools that result in suspensions and even expulsions over things like cake knives being seen in a locked car in the student parking lot or being in possession of aspirin (drugs are bad). The reason why these are low impact events is the destructive ability of a deranged school shooter is limited. The reason why it's low probability is because the probability of a student being a victim is very small.
Biowarfare agents and nuclear terrorism fall into the low probability, high impact event category. Meaning, yes, the overall probability of them happening is low, but the impact if it does happen is potentially very, very high. The reason why these things are low probability is because it takes a technically sophisticated and wealthy actor to produce the agents/weapons. Not because we lack for people willing to try. Lowering the technical threshold raises the probability. Raise it high enough, and you are no longer talking about probability, you're talking certainty.
If I'm being alarmist about this, why not let anyone buy weapons grade plutonium or uranium and publish functional weapons designs along with the CAD/CAM instructions? After all, using your logic it's alarmist to think anyone would actually go to the trouble of actually constructing and using a bomb.
After all, the technical and monetary investment needed to build a nuclear bomb is several orders of magnitude greater than what is required to build a biological agent. If we don't have anything to worry about with biological agents, then obviously our nuke fears are overblown as well.
My computer, my kitchen utensils, and my car can't kill tens of millions of people.
This is simply a probability function. The more people that have the ability to create a biowarfare agent, the higher the chances that you'll have one released into the wild.
Consider this. The DNA sequence for the 1918 avian flu virus is public domain. You can buy base pair sequences online. It's not that difficult to add 1 and 1 to get 2. This isn't really technology you want to democratize to the masses. The number of angst ridden hate the world biochemists is much smaller than the number of angst ridden pimple faced teenagers. Given the ability, sooner or later one of them is going to think it's a cool idea to wipe out half the human species and will try.
A biowarfare construction kit distributed to the masses.