Wow. *There* are some words I've not heard before. How do you *like* an organization made entirely of bureaucrats and lawyers?
Don't get me wrong: the ACLU serves a purpose, which is arguably very important, and every once in a great while they do something useful.
Your second sentence answered your own question:)
I'd disagree with the "once in a great while" bit. I think they do quite a bit of good. However, even if all of their cases consisted of "making an unholy nuisance", they'd still be providing a valuable service simply by challenging the status quo. Complacency and conformity can be serious concerns - it's always good to have someone stirring the pot.
On the other hand, I'd always considered them to be generally rational people. This bit of FUD they're pumping out is disappointing in that respect, but makes their work no less important.
Coming from a twit who's trying to convince me that magical water can solve our energy issues? Heh. What can I say. Thanks? Don't forget to tip your homeopath!
Kind of an aside, but identifying races and profiling racial differences are not legitimate research paths.
Why not? You don't think that sickle-cell anemia is a disease worth studying?
Race has long been determined to be a social construct, not a biological fact.
I know you mean well... but that's retarded. Maybe "race" is a poor choice of words to describe the observed differences between various subsets of the human race, but it's the word in common usage, and it does refer to an actual phenomenon.
Modern physical anthropology has much better language and approaches to genetic differences between groups of people.
No argument there. Changing the language doesn't change the science, though. This re-defining of "races" is an attempt at influencing society - it's being done in order to try and get people to be more tolerant of each other. It has little to do with the underlying reality.
I dunno - 'cos lots of morons misuse quotation marks?
Animals eat for more than just energy.
Yeah, that's OBVIOUSLY because they don't have Magic-Water (tm). Sheesh. Don't you know anything?
People used to think that solids could only shrink when compressed. We now have solids that expand under pressure. Things change as our understanding of the universe changes.
Yeah, that's the standard woo-woo response, so I'll ignore it.
Again, according to yours (and Feynmans) beliefs, I should be okay to eat gasoline - after all, it's got more energy than the salad I had at supper.
Obviously you have no idea what either I of Feynman were saying. I don't give a shit what YOU eat for supper - the fact of the matter is that, since oil is a source of energy, there should be species out there which can eat oil. And guess what: THERE ARE.
Feynman also believes there's only one electron, one proton, and one neutron in the whole universe, and they cycle back and forth in time - we see a cross-section of those multiple paths as our current universe. Do you buy that too?
Feynman is dead, so I very much doubt that he believes anything. I'm not going to address some jackasses perceptions of the supposed beliefs of a man who can no longer defend himself.
One word: Catalysts. Meditate on it. NO, don't start now... meditate on it. For at least a week.
Those of us with an IQ over 70 prefer to actually research, think, analyze, and experiment. We leave the "meditation" to the micro-cephalics.
Enjoy!
Why not polywater? Even if it's just for the lulz?
Why not jump off the empire state building buck-ass-naked, and fly? Even if it's just for the lulz?
Well? Why not?
I'll be waiting at the bottom. I hope you'll sign an autograph for me!
Fortunately, the same blocking software lets me proceed by certifying that the access is work-related. The military should have that same freedom for unclassified work.
Heh. Yeah, that will work. "Yeah, Sarge, I swear... I need this midget-bestiality-bukkake in order to fulfill a mission requirement!"
Polywater is supposed to be one of those "unobtaniums", theoretically impossible - but then again, bees have been "proven" not to be able to fly.
People like you make my head hurt.
It's just mind-boggling to me that such an obvious and completely asinine urban legend is STILL being repeated some 70 years after it was first invented. I can understand young children repeating everything they're told... but judging by your user number, you're probably older than I am. Stop and think before you speak!
What I find interesting is that this opens up at least the possibility of that old sci-fi standby (really old - I haven't seen a reference to it in modern sci-fi) of polywater.
No, it doesn't. As Feynman said, if pollywater were possible, we'd have an animal that doesn't eat. It would just drink normal water and excrete polywater, living off of the energy released in the process.
I made clear that the levels of radiation involved are important, here.
Yes, because when people say:
I don't see how radiation of any kind is safe for long-term exposure.
it's clear that they're excluding low-level radiation.
How about you figure out what argument you want to make, and then get back to me? I was about to jump on your "microwaves" thing but, really, there's no point.
He was trying to show that just because something is widely-used and accepted as safe doesn't necessarily mean it's safe. People used many of the items the GP quoted for a long time before realizing they were very bad for the public's health. Hence why many items were pulled from everyday use.
I understand what he was trying to do - I'm saying it's asinine, and, as I said, he's spreading FUD.
If I make the case that X is safe, you don't get to say "well Y and Z are unsafe, so X might be too". That's just stupid. The reason we know that Y and Z are unsafe is because we have evidence to support that premise. The time to be worried about X is when we have similar evidence concerning it's safety. If you simply ignore evidence, you have no choice but to assume that everything is unsafe, and you certainly have no way of making proper risk assessments.
Call me paranoid, but I don't see how radiation of any kind is safe for long-term exposure.
Ok, you're paranoid. And, by the way, you should probably stop using computers if you want to be consistent about your paranoia. Not to mention that it's more than a little asshat-ish to advocate unsupported anti-technology viewpoints through the use of a computer and a global communications network.
FYI, everything emits radiation. YOU emit radiation. Being in the military allowed me to see a practical demonstration of that fact - IR devices detect infrared radiation being emitted by whichever object you're looking at. You'll even continue radiating when you're a corpse, it just won't be actively generated by your body any more.
Wow. Thank you... you've just completely emasculated his argument with a flow and passion that I could never have managed. You've got me all misty eyed and beaming here.:)
Exactly what part of my post comes off to you as something being said by "a paranoid nutjob"?
Everything in between "Is that why" and "widely deployed".
to which I replied by pointing out a hand full of examples of unregulated, widely available and extensively used products which have been scientifically proved to cause quite a lot of health problems
No, you replied with a bunch of FUD, completely devoid of any context. It's as if the OP had claimed that being out in the sun is good for you, and you screamed back "OMFG DONTCHU KNOW NUTING, SUNLIGHT GIVES U CANCER AND CAUSES FOREST FIRES!!!!". Except in that case your reply would at least have been relevant to his original statement, whereas your actual reply went off on a complete tangent.
How is health care, and more generally looking after the country's citizens, not mandatory spending?
Why should it be?
If the government is responsible for providing healthcare, why not also provide food? Shelter? Clothing? Where do you draw the line?
To those of us who have grown up with tax funded health care, your statement sounds ridiculous.
I grew up with a tax funded health care system, and I think your statement sounds ridiculous. Moreover, I think you're an ass for presuming to speak on behalf of millions of people. I'd be quite happy if my nation decided to abandon socialized health care, or at least allowed a private option.
Look to your neighbors in the great white north, they spend less per capita than the US on health care and I can get medical treatment without paying a dime other than taxes.
Yeah, and the quality of care and the amount of time you have to wait are directly related to how much less we're spending.
The concept that the government is not responsible for healthcare, as so many people are saying here, is so foreign to me that I had to re-read the sentence several times, just to make sure I got it.
I'm sorry to hear that. Any semi-intelligent individual should be familiar with the socialization vs. privatization argument.
A government's primary responsibility is to see to the welfare of its citizens and to space exploration farther down the list.
If the Canadian government were following that logic, they'd treat other markets the same way they do health. You wouldn't be able to buy food from private suppliers - you'd get "free" food at government owned stores. After all, we can't have people starving now can we? You'd also get "free" clothing, and "free" transportation - all of it equally rationed, of course, with no private option.
I don't know about you, but the reason I love Canada is because of the liberties and opportunities which it affords me. I don't need a government to babysit me. Getting rid of the socialized medical system - or at least allowing a private alternative - would only make it an even better place to live.
Yep. That's because you made a information-free comment designed to start pointless arguments, while the followup commenter provided some decent well thought out points, meant to stimulate productive discussions. Weird how that works, huh?
As has been said often, it's good to be open-minded, but you have to be careful not to let your brains fall out.
This "we can't be certain of anything so we don't know anything" mindset is completely fucking ridiculous. I really feel sorry for those who view the world that way. You must get scammed all the time.
If you think those claims aren't credible, you have no idea how the US works.
If you think those claims are credible, you have no idea of the logistics involved behind organizing and running a 500,000 man army. The rest of your comment is irrelevant (and completely nuts, too, as evidenced by the fact that it's a massive diatribe without a single citation).
That much is clearly documented by official government testimony.
No.
I wouldn't be surprised if they funded the entire affair, but there isn't any reasonable evidence that that's what happened, so they may just have known what kind of thing was in the wind, and taken maximal advantage of it.
I'm getting this cartoon image of you standing in front of a line between reality and crazy-land, and gingerly touching your toe to the ground on the other side.
I know you want to believe this stuff - that much is obvious - but you're obviously too rational to just swallow it completely. I'd suggest you go re-check your sources. There's no evidence to support any of what you've claimed, let alone "official documentation" of such events.
Twits/trolls like you are the reason for the first part of my sig, but what the hell:
So there are still millions of Americans who believe that surgical strikes and smart bombs only kill the bad guys and that it's OK to get involved in military adventures for corporate interests.
Fine me ONE. I've tried. They aint there. It doesn't matter how stupid you are, nobody believes that smart bombs only kill bad people. However, apparently idiots do beleive that others believe that.
There isn't anyone quite as stupid as those who think they're smarter than everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would you settle there in the first place, when it's a barren rock?
I dunno, ask the guys who built it.
Wow. *There* are some words I've not heard before. How do you *like* an organization made entirely of bureaucrats and lawyers?
Don't get me wrong: the ACLU serves a purpose, which is arguably very important, and every once in a great while they do something useful.
Your second sentence answered your own question :)
I'd disagree with the "once in a great while" bit. I think they do quite a bit of good. However, even if all of their cases consisted of "making an unholy nuisance", they'd still be providing a valuable service simply by challenging the status quo. Complacency and conformity can be serious concerns - it's always good to have someone stirring the pot.
On the other hand, I'd always considered them to be generally rational people. This bit of FUD they're pumping out is disappointing in that respect, but makes their work no less important.
Coming from a twit who's trying to convince me that magical water can solve our energy issues? Heh. What can I say. Thanks? Don't forget to tip your homeopath!
Kind of an aside, but identifying races and profiling racial differences are not legitimate research paths.
Why not? You don't think that sickle-cell anemia is a disease worth studying?
Race has long been determined to be a social construct, not a biological fact.
I know you mean well ... but that's retarded. Maybe "race" is a poor choice of words to describe the observed differences between various subsets of the human race, but it's the word in common usage, and it does refer to an actual phenomenon.
Modern physical anthropology has much better language and approaches to genetic differences between groups of people.
No argument there. Changing the language doesn't change the science, though. This re-defining of "races" is an attempt at influencing society - it's being done in order to try and get people to be more tolerant of each other. It has little to do with the underlying reality.
Why do you think I put "proven" in quotes?
I dunno - 'cos lots of morons misuse quotation marks?
Animals eat for more than just energy.
Yeah, that's OBVIOUSLY because they don't have Magic-Water (tm). Sheesh. Don't you know anything?
People used to think that solids could only shrink when compressed. We now have solids that expand under pressure. Things change as our understanding of the universe changes.
Yeah, that's the standard woo-woo response, so I'll ignore it.
Again, according to yours (and Feynmans) beliefs, I should be okay to eat gasoline - after all, it's got more energy than the salad I had at supper.
Obviously you have no idea what either I of Feynman were saying. I don't give a shit what YOU eat for supper - the fact of the matter is that, since oil is a source of energy, there should be species out there which can eat oil. And guess what: THERE ARE.
Feynman also believes there's only one electron, one proton, and one neutron in the whole universe, and they cycle back and forth in time - we see a cross-section of those multiple paths as our current universe. Do you buy that too?
Feynman is dead, so I very much doubt that he believes anything. I'm not going to address some jackasses perceptions of the supposed beliefs of a man who can no longer defend himself.
One word: Catalysts. Meditate on it. NO, don't start now ... meditate on it. For at least a week.
Those of us with an IQ over 70 prefer to actually research, think, analyze, and experiment. We leave the "meditation" to the micro-cephalics.
Enjoy!
Why not polywater? Even if it's just for the lulz?
Why not jump off the empire state building buck-ass-naked, and fly? Even if it's just for the lulz?
Well? Why not?
I'll be waiting at the bottom. I hope you'll sign an autograph for me!
I actually liked the ACLU until I followed that link. Thanks a lot. Now I'm starting to wonder if they're any less crazy than the Ron Paul fanatics.
You list 4 legitimate research paths, and then yell about big brother?
Could you at least try to mentions something SCAAAARY before invoking the boogyman?
Fortunately, the same blocking software lets me proceed by certifying that the access is work-related. The military should have that same freedom for unclassified work.
Heh. Yeah, that will work. "Yeah, Sarge, I swear ... I need this midget-bestiality-bukkake in order to fulfill a mission requirement!"
So .... Taliban Light?
New school motto:
When you want all of the religious extremism, with none of the pesky beheadings, try Taliban Light (tm)!
Polywater is supposed to be one of those "unobtaniums", theoretically impossible - but then again, bees have been "proven" not to be able to fly.
People like you make my head hurt.
It's just mind-boggling to me that such an obvious and completely asinine urban legend is STILL being repeated some 70 years after it was first invented. I can understand young children repeating everything they're told ... but judging by your user number, you're probably older than I am. Stop and think before you speak!
What I find interesting is that this opens up at least the possibility of that old sci-fi standby (really old - I haven't seen a reference to it in modern sci-fi) of polywater.
No, it doesn't. As Feynman said, if pollywater were possible, we'd have an animal that doesn't eat. It would just drink normal water and excrete polywater, living off of the energy released in the process.
Seriously though, from WIMPs and MACHOs, I wouldn't be shocked in the least if the next generations physics students are learning about thingies.
I sure hope so. Maybe then they'll actually start reproducing.
I made clear that the levels of radiation involved are important, here.
Yes, because when people say:
I don't see how radiation of any kind is safe for long-term exposure.
it's clear that they're excluding low-level radiation.
How about you figure out what argument you want to make, and then get back to me? I was about to jump on your "microwaves" thing but, really, there's no point.
He was trying to show that just because something is widely-used and accepted as safe doesn't necessarily mean it's safe. People used many of the items the GP quoted for a long time before realizing they were very bad for the public's health. Hence why many items were pulled from everyday use.
I understand what he was trying to do - I'm saying it's asinine, and, as I said, he's spreading FUD.
If I make the case that X is safe, you don't get to say "well Y and Z are unsafe, so X might be too". That's just stupid. The reason we know that Y and Z are unsafe is because we have evidence to support that premise. The time to be worried about X is when we have similar evidence concerning it's safety. If you simply ignore evidence, you have no choice but to assume that everything is unsafe, and you certainly have no way of making proper risk assessments.
Call me paranoid, but I don't see how radiation of any kind is safe for long-term exposure.
Ok, you're paranoid. And, by the way, you should probably stop using computers if you want to be consistent about your paranoia. Not to mention that it's more than a little asshat-ish to advocate unsupported anti-technology viewpoints through the use of a computer and a global communications network.
FYI, everything emits radiation. YOU emit radiation. Being in the military allowed me to see a practical demonstration of that fact - IR devices detect infrared radiation being emitted by whichever object you're looking at. You'll even continue radiating when you're a corpse, it just won't be actively generated by your body any more.
Wow. Thank you ... you've just completely emasculated his argument with a flow and passion that I could never have managed. You've got me all misty eyed and beaming here. :)
Exactly what part of my post comes off to you as something being said by "a paranoid nutjob"?
Everything in between "Is that why" and "widely deployed".
to which I replied by pointing out a hand full of examples of unregulated, widely available and extensively used products which have been scientifically proved to cause quite a lot of health problems
No, you replied with a bunch of FUD, completely devoid of any context. It's as if the OP had claimed that being out in the sun is good for you, and you screamed back "OMFG DONTCHU KNOW NUTING, SUNLIGHT GIVES U CANCER AND CAUSES FOREST FIRES!!!!". Except in that case your reply would at least have been relevant to his original statement, whereas your actual reply went off on a complete tangent.
Is that why it has been observed that children living under power lines had a 70% increased risk of leukemia?
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/emf.html
Is that why DDT has been sprayed directly onto people as a standard anti-mosquito practice?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria
History has a pretty long damning list of cases where the dangers are only known after the stuff that causes them is widely deployed.
So your solution is .... avoid everything? How much does it cost to live in a clean-room, anyway?
Just out of curiosity, I gotta ask ... why do you hate science?
How is health care, and more generally looking after the country's citizens, not mandatory spending?
Why should it be?
If the government is responsible for providing healthcare, why not also provide food? Shelter? Clothing? Where do you draw the line?
To those of us who have grown up with tax funded health care, your statement sounds ridiculous.
I grew up with a tax funded health care system, and I think your statement sounds ridiculous. Moreover, I think you're an ass for presuming to speak on behalf of millions of people. I'd be quite happy if my nation decided to abandon socialized health care, or at least allowed a private option.
Look to your neighbors in the great white north, they spend less per capita than the US on health care and I can get medical treatment without paying a dime other than taxes.
Yeah, and the quality of care and the amount of time you have to wait are directly related to how much less we're spending.
The concept that the government is not responsible for healthcare, as so many people are saying here, is so foreign to me that I had to re-read the sentence several times, just to make sure I got it.
I'm sorry to hear that. Any semi-intelligent individual should be familiar with the socialization vs. privatization argument.
A government's primary responsibility is to see to the welfare of its citizens and to space exploration farther down the list.
If the Canadian government were following that logic, they'd treat other markets the same way they do health. You wouldn't be able to buy food from private suppliers - you'd get "free" food at government owned stores. After all, we can't have people starving now can we? You'd also get "free" clothing, and "free" transportation - all of it equally rationed, of course, with no private option.
I don't know about you, but the reason I love Canada is because of the liberties and opportunities which it affords me. I don't need a government to babysit me. Getting rid of the socialized medical system - or at least allowing a private alternative - would only make it an even better place to live.
No. It's like saying that we should clean all the sand off our feet before leaving the beach, or there'll be less sand on the beach for others to use.
I know that you think you're making a legitimate point .... however, your rephrasing of his comment is every bit as ridiculous as what he said.
And since when is oil as common and cheap as sand on the beach?
If we were burning beach-sand at the same rate that we're burning oil, we'd run out of sand a LOT sooner than we'd run out of oil.
Yep. That's because you made a information-free comment designed to start pointless arguments, while the followup commenter provided some decent well thought out points, meant to stimulate productive discussions. Weird how that works, huh?
Thanks. There's nothing I can say at this point to make you look any more ridiculous.
As has been said often, it's good to be open-minded, but you have to be careful not to let your brains fall out.
This "we can't be certain of anything so we don't know anything" mindset is completely fucking ridiculous. I really feel sorry for those who view the world that way. You must get scammed all the time.
If you think those claims aren't credible, you have no idea how the US works.
If you think those claims are credible, you have no idea of the logistics involved behind organizing and running a 500,000 man army. The rest of your comment is irrelevant (and completely nuts, too, as evidenced by the fact that it's a massive diatribe without a single citation).
That much is clearly documented by official government testimony.
No.
I wouldn't be surprised if they funded the entire affair, but there isn't any reasonable evidence that that's what happened, so they may just have known what kind of thing was in the wind, and taken maximal advantage of it.
I'm getting this cartoon image of you standing in front of a line between reality and crazy-land, and gingerly touching your toe to the ground on the other side.
I know you want to believe this stuff - that much is obvious - but you're obviously too rational to just swallow it completely. I'd suggest you go re-check your sources. There's no evidence to support any of what you've claimed, let alone "official documentation" of such events.
Twits/trolls like you are the reason for the first part of my sig, but what the hell:
So there are still millions of Americans who believe that surgical strikes and smart bombs only kill the bad guys and that it's OK to get involved in military adventures for corporate interests.
Fine me ONE. I've tried. They aint there. It doesn't matter how stupid you are, nobody believes that smart bombs only kill bad people. However, apparently idiots do beleive that others believe that.
There isn't anyone quite as stupid as those who think they're smarter than everyone else.