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I honestly have no idea how to do that calculation so I am unqualified to check your work. Have you considered emailing GISS and asking for their opinion, or posting this on the ClearClimateCode mailing list? http://groups.google.com/group/ccc-gistemp-discuss

Well, you're certainly sounding like Fox News at this point. A bunch of Wall Street fat cats took unnecessary risks and trashed the entire economy. There are many people who, through no fault of their own, lost their jobs because of this. This is the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression. You think having a safety net in place to support people through it is a bad thing? Does it diminish "personal responsibility"? Even if you think it does, is that necessarily a bad thing? I think "personal responsibility" is little more than a euphemism for "every man for himself," and I think that's a terrible philosophy. I wonder how many conservatives are watching Glenn Beck rant against socialism and argue for "personal responsibility" as they collect unemployment checks from the government.

You might look into automating the screen scraping process. As a bit of reverse skepticism about data errors, are you sure you didn't introduce one in the process of manually copying and pasting the station data? In Ruby, I'd use a tool like Mechanize to do this: http://mechanize.rubyforge.org/mechanize/

Sure, although the Republicans implemented socialist programs too. Also: socialism isn't a bad thing. In America, yes, because 'the right' has been so vociferous about slandering socialism. Elsewhere in the world many political parties stick 'socialist' right into their party name.

Yep, that sounds fairly spot on. Also note this description doesn't really fit the Democrats, who are more totalitarian and often try to restrict civil liberties (e.g. gun ownership, free expression in music)

Here's a decent synopsis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_Rights_Act So basically, they're amending the DMCA in a manner that would require companies like Clear Channel to pay more money to the RIAA. I don't see what's wrong with that. So where is all this horrible spin that jackson33 was injecting in the OP coming from? Here: http://www.noperformancetax.org/ It's clear the corporations who would have to pay more money because of this bill are spinning it as a "tax" because they know it will get people like jackson33 all riled up. The web site makes claims like it will "kill local radio", which is ironic because Clear Channel already killed local radio. However, it sounds like smaller stations and non profits will remain largely unaffected. QFT

I've taken tests like this several times. They show I'm an extreme liberal and a strong libertarian.

You seem to be confusing "correct" with "archaic" Yes, I'm certain you're capable of judging that with your limited time on these forums. I'm a lower case l libertarian, or more specifically a civil libertarian. I think my reputation on defense of civil liberties is well-established around here.

Considering "my version" is the contemporary standard usage, I certainly will. If you want to take back the turn-of-the-century meaning, keep reaching for that rainbow. I'm also a libertarian, although I prefer the term liberaltarian

You really enjoy living in the past, don't you? Nowadays liberal and progressive are more or less synonymous. I think the recent trend in liberals referring to themselves as progressives comes in the way of conservatives bandying about the word "liberal" disparagingly.

There's a vast difference between a populist and a progressive. Glenn Beck can be considered a populist (or at least portrays himself as one during his nightly theatrical performances). I think John McCain is more of a populist than your average Republican. He certainly isn't a progressive, which is more or less a euphemism for "liberal". He's progressive by Republican standards, I guess.

Your argument was that Republicans' "business-friendly policies raise the GDP to cover the shortfall," and you cite Reagan? Zuh? Yes, that would be the national debt, as a percentage of the GDP, skyrocketing under Reagan. This is certainly not evidence of your assertion that the Republicans' "business-friendly policies raise the GDP to cover the shortfall". If anything it is a blatant counterexample.

I'm sorry, were you not paying attention during the past decade? Their "business friendly policies" lead to one of the worst financial crises in history, a monumental drop in tax revenue, and a staggering increase in the budget deficit.

It's certainly better than cutting taxes and spending more money, which is what the Republicans did. You mean like reinstating PAYGO, whereas the Republicans let it lapse, shortly before a costly and unnecessary war with no plan to pay for it, and creating a huge new entitlement? They are not exactly the same, Pangloss. The Democrats tax and spend. The Republicans cut taxes and spend. Clearly one of these strategies is better than the other.

Well, keep in mind that manner of physics puzzles was a huge part of the HL2 gameplay too.

Yes, we've already discussed that in other threads. So... good! I like PAYGO. However, I never said anything about PAYGO, so that's a bit of a red herring here. There was no plan to pay for the Iraq War. None whatsoever. The plan was to borrow money and let some future government figure out how to pay it off. Do you at least agree that having some plan is better than no plan at all?

The moral issues of spending a trillion dollars to help tens of millions of Americans versus spending a trillion dollars to kill foreigners in an unnecessary war aside, there's actually a plan to pay for the healthcare bill. There was no plan to pay for the Iraq War. The plan was: borrow money, which was pretty much the MO under the Bush Administration.

I don't really know about that, and part of what makes Portal so interesting is its use of physics puzzles powered by the rather game changing physics from the Source Engine, which was developed for Half-Life 2.

Yes, I am confused. That's quite a detailed analysis, however you didn't provide any context. How does that compare to the other subforums? Is 1.1 topics unusually low? Also, are topics per month really a good metric of popularity? How many posts are there in each of those threads? Just a quick survey of some of these threads (I got tired of copying and pasting these URLs but there are more threads with >100 posts): 652 posts: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=32699 122 posts: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39013 111 posts: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=32225 319 posts: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26669 214 posts: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=30057 When was the last time a subforum like, say, Microbiology and Immunology got over 100 posts in a single thread? Answer: never. Here's a hypothesis: global warming threads have an unusually high number of posts because there's no subforum for discussing it. So people flock to any thread named "global warming" (notice there are quite a few named just that) and instead of getting topical discussions, you get long meandering conversations with no overlying topic. People just join and say whatever they want on the issue. Also, while you eliminated false positives from my search (which wasn't intended to be exhaustive, merely to lead you to the relevant information) you're causing false negatives for threads on climate science that don't include the term "global warming" in their title, such as this thread: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=47938 ...which is hard to find in the first place, because it's categorized under "Ecology and the Environment", both of which are rather vague terms which don't mean "climate science". Also, it's filed under the Biology forum. All of that said... Given your analysis, do you really conclude that there's no need for climate/atmospheric science-related subforums? I think the above threads demonstrate that climate science/climate change/global warming is a heavily discussed topic with thousands of posts and at the very least deserves its own subforum. Conflict of interest: I worked in atmospheric science, so I suppose the lack of any specifically atmospheric science-related subforums is a bit personal for me.

Ever played Half-Life 2?

That's not how it works at all. Some of the people who are deepest in debt have the best credit. I have about $250,000 worth of debt and excellent credit. I'm guessing that's more debt than you're in, and chances are I probably have better credit. A trillion dollar war and you just laugh? Republicans let paygo lapse and spent lots of money, both on war and other spending bills, like the aforementioned Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. They also cut taxes, decreasing revenue. Spending more money while decreasing revenue is a great way to accumulate massive debts.

On the contrary (for perhaps the 10th time this thread), I think knowledge of history gives one a proper appreciation of the present. I would instead contend that those who idealize the past often don't have a proper understanding of it. It's easy to conjure up pastoral scenes of a simpler life, but that ignores the constant threat of death by disease or injury amidst a life of constant toil and backbreaking labor. Let me bring this thread back on track and return my comments to their proper context: talk radio is a staple of conservative information sources, and not a particularly good one compared to more modern sources like the Internet.

You seem to be confused. Earth science is one of the most popular topics on these forums, except for some reason the threads seem to be erroneously scattered among biology, general discussion, and politics.

Unfortunately the Democratic ADD is currently going for the more expensive approach of not including a public option, because, well, I guess a public option is socialism, or something? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I'm curious if you had similar concerns about the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act

You are not doing a very good job of making your case that conservatives aren't living in the past. Any interest in Starcraft II or Civ 5?