Pangloss

This is in direct contradition with this: Your second statement (the first one above) is the correct one -- Will wasn't supporting your position at all. We need better definitions here before anybody starts celebrating the country moving to the left -- in fact I think it's moving to the RIGHT. There is a HUGE ideological gap between redistributing wealth so that everyone gets the money, and investing in key areas for long-term, overall economic gain. One of the reasons I'm voting Democrat this year in the presidential election is because, local tree-hugging and heart-bleeding posts notwithstanding, I no longer fear that Democrats are going to turn this country into a socialist state. I hear Democrats talk about personal responsibility and fiscal necessity and cautious, deliberative change. And the result is not only my support, but the support of malleable moderates nation wide. Democrats are the Big Tent again. Even "Give 'em Hell Zell" may come back on board. But just as the Republicans lost us when they started pushing religion on us, so will Democrats lose us if they start insisting that wealth redistribution is for putting $9/hr single-mom hairdressers in $350,000 homes, or for directly attacking the gap between the haves and the have-nots. You wanna invest in the infrastructure, you have my support. You start talking about a Playstation in every home, I'm going right back to the right. And I'm taking the next election with me.

Your Commie has no regard for human life, not even of his own. For this reason men, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness! The enemy may come individually, or in strength. He may even appear in the form of our own troops. But we must stop him! There've been quite a few, but I think I have to agree that they haven't been as popular or widely spread as the anti-Obama lies. There was a bit going around a few months ago about McCain not being a US citizen (born in Panama), but that petered out pretty quickly (it certainly didn't reach the level of Berg v Obama -- a federal case based on a completely unsupported allegation!). There was also that stuff last year about his alleged affair with DC lobbyist Vicki Iseman, which seemed to bring more criticism of the New York Times' editorial policy than anything else. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to raise questions even when we can't find out the answers, but I think a reasonable case could also be made for bias at the Times and the general dirtiness of the affair allegation, coming from only one anonymous source. Even so that's a long way from the kind of crazyness people are spitting out at McCain rallies. There have been plenty of misleading and/or incorrect allegations about specific votes or political positions from the Obama campaign and/or its surrogates, but I don't think that's really what you're asking about here. I think you can find stuff amongst the Hollywood and anti-war crowds that's pretty crazy, but that stuff never seems to find much purchase really.

K. Bascule, I think we all realize it's difficult to start a thread knowing that people are going to disagree with you. When you step up to the plate like this you become a kind of target for people who don't have the guts to put their own opinions out there first -- it's easy to react, much harder to have an original thought in the first place -- it seems like everyone is just biding their time, waiting to shut you down. I have HUGE respect for thread-starters. That's why I try to be a thread-starter myself, and why I try to set an example with all of my own thread starts by being as thorough and descriptive as I can be with the problem and my opinion. What is the alternative, guy? Do we really WANT people starting threads this way, with provocative posts but no substance to speak of? "Look, it's another 700-point drop in the Dow, and George Bush is STILL in office.........." "Check out this picture of Obama having dinner with a former terrorist............" "McCain had a meeting with the religious right and we all know what that means......." You don't want that any more than I do. Now I'm closing this thread, and you can restart it whenever you like with an appropriate post.

There's a big difference between "income redistribution" that George Will would support and "income redistribution" that bascule would support...................................... ... ... That was one of their best round-tables in weeks, btw.

Why is it absurd...................

I wonder what those people are going to do after Obama is elected. Burn a cross on the front lawn of the White House, perhaps?

It is kinda sad that we have to accept scientific inaccuracy in the movies, but I do note a difference between movies that embrace and involve science and ones that reject it and twist it at whim. The whole plot of Sunshine wrapped around scientific concepts and motivations. I think that's a plus that outweighs the minuses, and from an educational standpoint I'd love to see more movies like this and less like "Saw V" or "Babylon A.D."

I'm not sure... is McCain taking questions today?

LOL! I think that one belongs in ParanoiA's "grumpy old men" topic, Sarcytos!

You've destroyed us all, ParanoiA. We're deeply ashamed.

Yeah even I (Joe's biggest defender, lol) have to admit that if you go before the cameras to tell the world that you are hoping to have your privacy back soon, you're not doing it right. (grin)

We don't normally talk about fictional movies here, of course, but I thought this one was worth mentioning. The main reason I bring it up is because the DVD features a running "director's commentary" track by Brian Cox, a physicist on the Large Hadron Collider's ATLAS project. Cox served as a scientific consultant on the film, and he gives an entertaining talk about science and space exploration and (not surprisingly) the sun. The film itself includes the usual sort of mishmash of scientific ideas mostly casually tossed aside for dramatic purposes and occasionally embraced for seriousness. But it does stop short of insulting the scientifically-minded viewer with an X-Files-like deus ex machina, at least, and it really contained quite a healthy dose of respect for science and space exploration that I thought made it rather enjoyable. And it looks absolutely stunning on blu-ray, btw. We threw it up to a massive image on the wall with a Playstation 3 and an HD projector. Kinda like having your own IMAX theater. (lol)

According to grumpy-old-man Carl Sagan in his introduction to his final book, "The Demon-Haunted World", one of the oldest essays in human history, a 4,000-year-old Sumerian text, complains about how foolish and ignorant young people are today. (grin)

I've started a thread over on the Politics board to discuss people's horror stories from this (US) election -- weird/crazy behaviors of friends, family members, coworkers, etc. I keep hearing funny stories from friends and coworkers so I know they're out there. Tell us about it! http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=36073 If you can't post there, reply here and I'll move it over (everyone can read the thread).

I started this as a reply but I think I'll make it a new thread. How bad is this election? How are your friends and family members dealing with the stress? What kind of emails have you been getting from friends? I thought it was bad four years ago, but it's far worse this time around. I'm actually kinda glad I went through the whole argue-with-your-friends-about-politics thing the last couple times around, so I knew better than to fall into that trap again, but I've seen some real knock-down, drag-outs between some of my friends, and my in box has been flooded with "absolutely essential" information from partisan friends on both sides of this thing for months now. And the ironic thing is, when I talk to them about the destructiveness of partisanship, they invariably nod their heads and immediately ask why it is that the other side does such things. line[/hr] What, nobody has any stories? Friends who send you email unsolicited, demanding that you take action in this most important election year? Family members who can't understand why anybody would vote the way you plan to? Coworkers who INSIST on talking about politics but haven't the foggiest notion of how little grasp they have of the issues and seem offended when you straighten them out? Bosses who inform you that if you vote for Obama that at least two of you will be laid off before inauguration day due to his tax policy? (Heard that one on the radio today.) Come on now, let's hear those stories!

Interesting article in Time magazine yesterday about what's behind and ahead of us on the price of oil: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1853775,00.html?imw=Y In a nutshell, they focus on the rather astonishing drop in demand in the US, which has fallen another 10% in just a matter of weeks. Furthermore, the Department of Transportation and many analysts are saying that the fall in US demand may be permanent. And the drop in demand apparently extends to foreign markets as well, including China, which has been hit hard recently by the looming US recession, resulting in Chinese factory closures at an unprecedented rate (there were several stories on this last week). Unfortunately I think we have to be realistic and recognize that with these foreign markets it's hard to call this "demand destruction". As iNow and POM and others here have pointed out, countries like China and India have a long way to go. And therein lies the problem -- what happens to demand, and the price per barrel, once the recession ends? American drivers may settle in at a lower rate, or even continue to decrease, but is that really likely with countries like China and India? So I think we have a temporarily startling situation with the price of a barrel falling 50% from its high and showing signs that it might even hit the $50 mark soon. But I think it's clear that this is not an oversupply glut, but rather a reflection of the economic crisis. And if that's the case, and everyone agrees that fixing the economy is a desirable thing, then I think we have to consider the strong possibility that that price per barrel is going to fly upward once again at some point in the not too distant future. What do you all think?

I think if you have a pre-formed opinion about whether a party is being silly or irresponsible then you can't really offer us a useful or objective assessment about whether this new story is further evidence. Certainly you're entitled to think what you want, but you're not fooling anyone that you had an open mind about it.

Started a poll here for predicting who will actually win. Stickied both threads.

Who do you think will actually win? (Bascule has a thread started here where you can cast your vote for who you think SHOULD win. This one is for who you think will be declared the winner.)

Really, Bascule, this is completely beyond the Palin.

Yes, it's possible, and that would likely not matter if people paid more attention to the voting process with lower-tier candidates. I don't think absolutes really work very well in this argument, for either side. No matter what you do, you lose somewhere along the line. Any action is a compromise, and so we have a compromise -- some criminals lose their right to vote; others do not, based on the severity and nature of their crimes. Way it goes.

Try here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=35878

Just caught a little more of this on the TV, and there's actually a point at which Waxman asks Greenspan if he's basically saying that his ideology had failed him, and Greenspan confirms this to be the case, saying that it had worked for him for more than 40 years, but failed him when it came to trusting these banks. Wow. You really don't see public figures getting their entire ideologies shot down in flames on camera very often!

Hey, I resent the suggestion that Florida would ever have anything less than a perfect grasp of how to hold an elec-... er... Never mind.

Alan "Ayn Rand is Rolling in Her Grave" Greenspan said today that he made a mistake in trusting the real estate mortgage market to police itself, and that it should have been more tightly regulated. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html?bl&ex=1224993600&en=da694ed4921c5e8b&ei=5087%0A IMO this is a staggering blow for the Austrian/Libertarian crowd. I'd love to find out what my Austrian economist-professor cousin thinks of this, but he's not on speaking terms with me since I told him I'm voting for Obama, whom he thinks is an actual communist. (lol)