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I'll accept that concern to a degree, except the thing about the NLM coverage is it's just one guy, and he has several "outtake" reels of interviews that don't make the main video because there's simply too much stupidity to fit into a short clip. But yes, they should be taken with a grain of salt...

Yes, the .COM bust, DAMN YOU CLINTON (or rather, Greenspan)! 9/11 had nothing to do with it. I would too. Meanwhile the teabaggers want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare. That seems like a very backhanded way of referring to Obama's spending freezes... What exactly was it that Bush did to combat the deficit, exactly? Thank you for making my point about teabagger partisanship. That these people were dumb enough to refer to themselves in such a context in the first place? Sure. They called themselves teabaggers. I don't see anything wrong with using the same expression.

Uhh, not that I support this sort of thing as I think a troop increase in Afghanistan is warranted, but the anti-war crowd is protesting Obama: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/20/thousands-protest-in-dc-f_n_507159.html You're talking about the same Cindy Sheehan who was arrested for helping lay coffins outside the White House at that same protest last month? At least eight people, including activist Cindy Sheehan, were arrested by U.S. Park Police at the end of the march, after laying coffins at a fence outside the White House. Friday marked the seventh anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. *facepalm* Have you ever watched video of the 9/12 protests? You should really watch the one in my previous post. Their concerns aren't exactly legitimate or well-reasoned. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Okay, among other things, at the same time the tea party people whine about the deficit, they also think Obama has already raised or is going to raise their taxes, even though their taxes have gone down under Obama: http://winstongroup.net/2010/04/01/behind-the-headlines-whats-driving-the-tea-party-movement/ That's just one of many cases of teabagger doublethink. These people do not have a logical or coherent position. They don't have actual specific grievances with the government. They speak in vagueries that have no logical cohesion. Pangloss, have you watched videos of their protests? I watched your video. I think you are giving the teabaggers far too much credit.

The deficit is high right now because tax revenue is down, not only because of tax cuts, but because of lost tax revenue due to the recession. This is opposed to increased spending while maintaining low tax rates when the economy was certainly not in need of additional stimulation. Granted the deficit is deplorable now, but it's not something that's easily addressed. Meanwhile Bush mananged to rack up the most debt in history during times when we weren't in a recession. I'm not sure what context in which you're talking about "the Republicans" being rational, but I can assure you the teabaggers are not: pilG7PCV448

Okay, so you recognize the blatant partisanship and hypocrisy going on at the tea parties... ...but still write it off as partisan spin? (even worse, redundantly as your remarks are almost identical to the ones ParanoiA made) If the teabaggers really believed what they claim to believe now, they should've been protesting the republicans as well. But they didn't.

If that were the case, why didn't the tea party protest the Republicans too?

It's human nature, as MJ told me to tell you.

Yes, I do recall reading about that many years ago. If a virus with the lethality time and incubation time of Ebola Zaire and airborne transmission were weaponized it'd be quite a bad situation. Specifically in regard to that article, variola is a DNA virus. If an outbreak were to occur, a vaccine could be created, and since variola is a DNA virus it evolves comparatively slowly compared to things like rhinovirus, influenza, and HIV which are RNA viruses. Once immunized, the population would effectively be safe against such a virus, and I'm wondering if existing smallpox immunity would provide additional protection. That's not to say that someone couldn't engineer an airborne killer RNA virus. That situation would be far worse because creating a vaccine would be harder and the virus could evolve. That said, I trust the power of modern epidemiology to quarantine such a virus. Drastic measures would have to be taken, but people here are seriously arguing that it could wipe out every human on earth. I don't think such a scenario is remotely realistic.

Except again, the anti-war protests were protests of the war, and the Tea Party is a protest of Democrats.

One option the FCC is considering is to reclassify ISPs as telcos, which would make them subject to common carrier regulations In a common carrier scenario, you are paying them for a service, and as part of that business relationship they are responsible for the delivery of data you have requested. If they fail to deliver that data they are liable. They cannot indiscriminately forge responses from other servers to block access to certain protocols, like Comcast did with BitTorrent traffic. I expect as much from any ISP. If I'm paying for Internet access, and not getting Internet access, that's fraud.

Oh please, among the entire world population? No. No, you are wrong. One biological agent could not wipe out the entire world. Do ideas like "immunology" and "quarantine" escape you?

Okay, fine, conceeded, enjoy your nuclear-powered post-nuclear holocaust fallout shelter! Sure hope humans think to build something like that before the nuclear holocaust happens. I really can't see a population of humans surviving long enough to outlive the fallout cloud though, and even then what do you do? Your chances of rebuilding civilization are pretty much shot on a planet where everything is covered with nuclear fallout. 10,000 nukes exist today. Does a genetically engineered virus capable of wiping out humanity exist today? Strongly doubt it, and even if it does, you can't prove it. It's a hypothetical. 10,000 nukes are not (although all of them going off at the same time, maybe) All that said, a much different argument and far more practical argument would be: the detonation of a single megaton nuke in any major population center would send the entire world into a deep depression. Nuclear explosions in multiple population centers would be the undoing of modern civilization. Look at the effect 9/11 had on the world, and that was only two skyscrapers. Imagine if a megaton nuclear blast occurred in downtown Manhattan. It's hypothetically scary, but you seem to be forgetting we live under Damocles atomic sword today.

I'd suggest On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. He originally invented the Palm Pilot, then returned to studying biology and neurology in hopes of one day creating AI which is strongly rooted in the same principles as the brain.

I strongly doubt bioweapons are capable of unintentionally killing most of the world population. Ebola exists and so far has not managed to unintentionally kill most of the world population. I guess the key point I keep reiterating that everyone talking about some pie in the sky risks of bioweapons is that humanity has strong defenses against disease. Humans have diverse immune systems. The CDC exists. The WHO exists. And for that matter, "superviruses" like Ebola Zaire exist. But that doesn't really matter because of the former. The chance of causing a major outbreak inadvertently is even less likely. The existing defenses are set up for that sort of thing. The one scenario I can't argue against is a coordinated attack with a weaponized virus. What if terrorists were to intentionally deploy a virus like Ebola Zaire in every major western international airport? I really can't imagine what would happen in such a scenario. But unintentionally killing off most of the world's population? Sorry, that isn't a credible threat. Completely in the realm of hypotheticals, nanotech and a grey goo scenario is about all I can see causing that problem, and that's still a decade off if not more. We're talking about a situation where you couldn't go outside without breathing radioactive fallout for several years at the very least. I don't see how humans could survive in such conditions. Perhaps if someone actually stockpiled enough supplies to last until the fallout cleared they could survive. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Since you seem to have trouble following the previous conversation, let me quote the relevant portion of my previous post:

The air waves belong to everyone. While I don't support the FCC censoring the radio, I at least understand their rationale. No, I am far more concerned ISPs will unduly regulate content.

That several nuclear weapons could kill everyone on earth (everyone being humans)

No, that's not what you were discussing. As a reminder, here's what you were discussing:

As was established earlier, the current stockpile of nuclear weapons does have sufficient potential to kill all humans on earth. This is because humans and all other animals evolved in a environment where they were constantly attacked by disease, however we did not evolve in a fallout-ridden high radiation environment like one that would exist after a massive nuclear catastrophe. The detonation of the current nuclear stockpile of ~10,000 nukes, geographically distributed around the world, would create a fallout cloud capable of killing every human on earth.

That doesn't change the fact that nuclear weapons produce fallout and fallout is deadly. So can fallout Diseases can be contained. Fallout cannot. That's generally not how biology works. You'd be hard pressed to find any sort of biological agent, even in lab conditions, that can kill 100% of a large population of organisms. Now, consider a modern population of humans with state-of-the-art immunology and organizations dedicated to fighting outbreaks of disease. Horrible diseases exist. Ebola exists. If someone weaponized ebola it would be bad. However, weaponizing a disease to the point it can exterminate all humans on earth? I don't buy it whatsoever.

Pretty much every tech savvy person I know, including many conservatives, supports net neutrality. It's just common sense. It's how people expect the Internet to work anyway. That's not really an apt comparison. PayTV systems are closed networks. HBO and Showtime have direct distribution agreements with your PayTV provider. The Internet is an open network. The service you pay for is access to an open network. Would you really want to pay $5 extra a month to Comcast to have access to Google? Without net neutrality there's nothing stopping Comcast from doing something like that, and none of the money would actually go to Google.

Well, that seems to be the subject under discussion here. Pangloss seemed to be trying to make a point about Democrats in general. I have never heard of Maxine Waters before and the she doesn't represent me. I also don't know of anyone on these forums specifically complaining about Republicans egging on the teabaggers (unless those Republicans happen to work at Fox News) Yes, in that video, she is being a hypocrite. Case closed? I don't see how you can apply this case instance to "Democrats" generally as Pangloss is trying to do in the OP.

Comcast already did it when they forged TCP reset packets to interrupt BitTorrent traffic. That was until the FCC told them not to. Given the PR debacle that resulted I can't see Comcast attempting this again, but this certainly isn't a hypothetical problem. The only thing keeping that speech free is the fact that ISPs aren't maliciously manipulating traffic. There's no laws in place to do it. Right now it's completely voluntary. That is not the same situation with the telephone system, where we have laws to ensure telephone service providers can't maliciously manipulate traffic.

Whoops, sorry how that was phrased, that was not directed at you but rather it was directed at the people you were responding to.

Censorship is free speech! War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Should telephone companies owned by liberals be allowed to block calls coming from Republican political candidates? It *is* their equipment! I think that sort of thing should be illegal. I strongly believe in common carrier laws and think they should apply to ISPs as well.

You two are seriously defending across-the-board comparisons between the teabaggers and the Iraq War protests? I don't think I can overemphasize how much I don't buy it. Fred Phelps protests stuff too. Why don't we lump him in because he's protesting too? All protests are the same.