Pangloss

People don't decide to kill themselves because handguns are readily available, they decide to kill themselves because their life sucks or whatever. If no handgun is around they'll just find some other way. I'm not opposed to stricter controls than we currently have, though, but I'm mainly interested in assault weapon bans and restrictions. Arguing about handguns feels like arguing about whether computers or televisions are dangerous. The horse hasn't seen that barn in ages.

You notice how he does that without speaking in any way ill of the religions in question? And also manages not to insult secular aid groups in the process? That's not just good politics, it's real respect.

I don't know what calling Steny Hoyer is supposed to accomplish -- the bill passed the House last week and I believe the Senate is debating it this week. It is expected to pass and be signed by the president. It doesn't explicitly grant immunity, but as I understand it it renders it all but a formality (they'll get effective immunity or a slap on the wrist).

That's a good quote. I mean, I could harp on the fact that Bush has probably said exactly the same thing, and it's a bit unfair that people believe it from Obama and not from Bush, but I can understand to some extent why people feel that way, and there may be a larger point to be gained by this -- specifically, the idea that total, 100% separation is neither necessary nor even what the framers had in mind.

That subject line ought to raise a few eyebrows around here, but I just live for stories like this! http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/07/bushs-faith-bas.html His position seems to be not that it's a violation of the separation of church and state, but that Bush didn't do ENOUGH of it, and he supported the wrong set of zealots! So, what, we're going to publicly fund "Condoms from Christ" and "Jesus Loves Pregnant Teens" now?

Interesting article in Slate today analyzing some numbers generated by comparing movie reviews compiled by Rotten Tomatoes with the box office receipts. http://www.slate.com/id/2194532/ Rotten Tomatoes aggregates reviews of hundreds (sometimes thousands) or reviewers, compiling a cumulative score for the movie. Anything 60% or higher is considered "fresh" and anything below that is "rotten" -- the idea being to help viewers decide if they should go see a movie or not (instead of having to decide based on a single review). But does it work? And are movie critics actually valuable, or are they just film snobs with no connection to the average popcorn buyer? And when he broke the numbers down even further: Interesting article.

I think you guys both need to work on being okay with dissenting opinions and differing interpretations of what the facts mean and how they should affect political decision-making. I let that particular comment from iNow go because that's a perfectly valid way to look at it. It's simply a point of view I happen not to share. But why repeat myself? And Jryan, you can beat yourself up about it, but in the end this is a predominantly left-of-center board, because that's where the scientific community is right now. But it's also a very realistic and responsive-to-evidence mind set that if you learn how to work with it can be very rewarding to communicate with. But you can't bludgeon it and you can't spin it. The very thing you find so frustrating about those GW discussions is the thing we actually like about this place. And to be blunt, I think you're stumbling over some pretty obvious preconceived ideological spin that don't seem to survive the cold light of reality. I'm not going to let people insult you over it, but you're putting it right out there and people are reading it, so it's not exactly hidden. You might as well throw quotes around half your posts and attribute them directly to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly. It's pretty obvious, guy. My advice: Go to discussion boards to listen and learn first, and speak later. If you go in thinking you're going to convince people that you're right and they're wrong, you're always going to lose.

Ok, I agree with your saying that we have to look at those things, but each of those things is either manageable or out of context at the time of the invasion, so "looking at the big picture" is as much a matter of spin as ignoring them.

In my opinion Sarin constitutes a "WMD", but it is insufficient causes belli in the case of Iraq. (Edit: Not offering that as refutation, btw, just going on record for this thread.) Crud. I just moved Phi's post into this thread, but it put it at the top instead of appending it to the bottom. Some sort of bug in VB? Edit: Ok, I get it, Phi's post predates jryan's. Makes sense now. This looks right IMO but anybody has a problem with it just holler.

These guys are apparently getting closer to production with a $40,000 variant that does 0-60 in a still-speedy 5-6 second range and seats 4-5 adults. It probably won't look like the picture, but may still be pretty sexy. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/01/tesla_motors_california_governator_grab/ As the article suggests, that may not mean a lot to Europeans, but to Americans it means a great deal. Our typical home environment for a $40,000 car buyer (the most common car buyer) is a house in the 'burbs with a full-blown garage, so overnight recharge is really no problem, and a 165-mile range is quite acceptable for the daily commute. And we sure like sexy cars. The plug-in hybrids may ultimately prove more serviceable, but I think a variety of approaches is good. I'd love to see some competition, though. Oh, the proposed 2010 ship date is interesting to me for another reason. The movie 2010 had lots of electric cars in it. Perhaps it was more prophetic than we knew at the time.

Yeah but that was the stuff that was cleared out after the first Gulf War and was being openly and actively monitored prior to the 2003 invasion. It can hardly be used to justify the second war.

He was also interesting (though underutilized) in Ridley Scott's American Gangster, as one of Denzel's brothers. And of course the very creative Cuaron SF flick Children of Men. Yes, he was impressive in Serenity, both stealing the scenery and chewing it up at the same time. Just glancing at the Wikipedia, it looks like Ejiofor is staring as Thabo Mbeki of the ANC in the upcoming Endgame, about the last days of Apartheid. That might be interesting.

Fair enough, thanks.

Cool. Incidentally, I happened to be flipping channels tonight, and ran across one of my favorite "perfect" movies -- The American President -- and was amused to be reminded that its central plot point was a bill to "reduce fossil fuel emissions by 20%". The movie came out in 1995 (just long enough to notice the subsequent aging in its actors), and it's also interesting to note the change in word usage (from 1995's "fossil fuels" to today's "greenhouse gases"). Kind of a "no matter how things change..." moment. We do seem to be in a long-term struggle with this one.

Sorry, I missed something here, iNow, are you saying you believe hurricanes are now proven to be affected by global warming? Or just that there is good evidence now that suggests there may be a direct connection? I agree with the latter, and I believe that's the general consensus amongst hurricane experts as well. They see the evidence, and they're concerned about it and want to see more work done in this area, but it's too early for an IPCC-like consensus.

Sorry guy, this is politics rather than science. No offense intended. I left a redirect in Environment.

Well it is known for short runs when ratings is low, you're right. I was just surprised at the suggestion that it hasn't had any hits to speak of, or hits in the science fiction field. The X-Files ran for 9 seasons, after all. But they've historically given more green lights to SF type shows which the majors wouldn't touch, so it's kind of a pros-and-cons deal. The current picture is different from the historical picture, though. As noted above, with the rise of original programming on "cable" networks like SciFi, Bravo, Turner, etc, there's a lot more opportunity (it's stunning how much entertainment we've come to consume in this country). And the hallmark for those networks is a much lower tolerance for ratings, since their expectations weren't as high to begin with, and they have DVD sales to look forward to. Sometimes cancellation is a good thing, though. Just look at how long SciFi dragged out Showtime's old Stargate franchise. You wouldn't think they could manage ten seasons, two movies and two spinoff series out of a single faded photocopy of a rejected Star Trek script.

Incidentally, Amazon's DRM-free selection is really huge now, and they're 256-bit variable bit rate MP3s, so they sound great too. A lot of iTunes users these days do a quick search on Amazon before smacking the buy button in case the price is lower, especially for the whole album. Also Rhapsody just launched a new DRM-free service, and if you sign up by July 4th you can get a free album. I'm still a big believer in DRM'd subscription downloads, by the way. I didn't have to pay for every song, but the typical iTunes song owner has to authorize just like me, so what did they get for all that extra money anyway? If you're going to pay for every single song, you might as well get it DRM-free.

I didn't mean it as a perjorative, it's just a reference to the fact that you're a supporter of the no-bid selection of Halliburton, defending the administration's position. I'm percolating on the rest of your post, but I wanted to remind you all that I can't really pick out pieces of posts and move them to new threads, so keep that in mind if you stray to other subjects. It's cool with me, but if you want to really dig in you should start a new thread.

80% is the number I typically hear (I could probably find a source on that if anyone wants). That's a good number, and it is supposed to reflect the overall balance, as opposed to, say, a percentage of the number of contributors. Which is an enticing statistic, though it certainly still leaves room for special interest influence. Jryan is correct, by the way, about that collection method. It's very common and frequently reported-on. I don't know what percentage of Obama's money comes from that approach, but perhaps some of those links might be useful for figuring that out (especially the Open Secrets web site, which is surprisingly useful). But I think it also has to be said that just because people donate money in that fashion doesn't mean the campaign is being coerced into specific policy decisions. It seems to me that such an approach is less likely to produce a policy decision that more traditional lobbying and contributing.

Interesting post, jryan. Well iNow and Peak Oil Man are going to love the irony of me posting this reply, but I'll take a crack at it anyway. I harp constantly about people ignoring ideologically similar replies that go farther than they do and then replying to replies to those more severe positions unfairly, so I think I'd be a hypocrit if I didn't reply here, even though I largely share your view. First off, all demand is presently being met. What's driving the increase is speculation that the demand will soon NOT be met. So what we've really been asking OPEC to do is to produce amounts OVER demand in order to lower prices. Why should they do that if demand is rising? Would you do that? Of course not. They're only going to increase production for the purpose of lowering prices if that's actually in their best interests. Second, OPEC isn't stupid, they know that if they can't meet demand then demand will (for one reason or another) eventually trail off. So WHEN the demand is there or there's a good reason for them to want lower prices, they DO increase production. Why do you think Saudi Arabia announced a production increase last week? It's no accident that came just days after a new report showing six straight months of decrease in consumption in the US. They may now realize that lowering the price is to their benefit again. No, the actual "conspiracy" argument (or at least one of them) is more like this: Well-informed speculators, connected to the oil companies, have conspired to put a lot of money into buying up oil futures, which drives up the per-barrel price. Now, the reason I don't think that argument holds water is that it doesn't take into account the weakening of the dollar (which I've read accounts for as much as 20-30% of the current price of a barrel of crude!), and it doesn't take into account the fact that other commodities markets have surged following the collapse of the real estate flipping market as well. IMO this is just another investment "bubble", and it just happens to neatly mesh with fears over the future of the hydrocarbon-based society in light of global warming. Hell those investors probably feel GOOD about their investments. Helping to ween us off the oil teat, etc. The jerks. I agree, I think they just deceived themselves. But they appear to have deliberately ignored evidence they didn't want to see, which is why I feel it's a hair's bredth from "lie" (because that's still a violation of the public trust). But it's still a pretty important hair, I agree. I completely agree with you there. Occam's Razor, right? That's one of the reasons I get somewhat peeved about these things, because on a science board you would think that people would be all about direct, irrefutable evidence before coming to a conclusion. But I guess that would make for some pretty dry political discussion. Right, that one bugs me as well, for the same reason. It irks me when I hear people talk about the cost benefits of cutting that proverbial red tape and then complain when somebody actually does it. I wonder how much we'd have spent in Iraq if we'd actually HAD competitive bidding -- could it have been MORE? I don't know the answer, but I'll bet nobody else knows the answer either, even if they say they do. But even you have to admit that when you take away oversight abuses are more likely to happen. The people have a right to know their money hasn't been wasted, and even without partisan grandstanding a lot of these questions we've been hearing would probably still be asked.

Ah. Pardon me, I misunderstood. I got it now. Well you're right, if we do nothing to stop that from happening. I do agree with those who point out that military actions alone cannot solve that sort of thing. It takes an across-the-board effort, which I believe was undermined by our efforts in Iraq. We can still do something about that, though. I understand your pessimism, but I don't share it. But I guess I've said that before and I don't mean to last-word you on this, I mainly just wanted to clear up my misunderstanding from before.

Well, at risk of mischaracterizing my oppponents' arguments (but in an attempt to be fair), I think we've actually moved past the concept of "steal their oil and put it in our own cars" on to a more developed idea of "drive the price of oil up high so ExxonMobil and the House of Saud will make a pile of cash". So it's not really an "absence of evidence", at least in the sense that hindsight would seem to support that point of view. This is always the problem I personally run into when pondering these positions, because I understand that it's more than just partisanship (even if it may be partisanship-driven in cases like Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh when they use it). In a nutshell, historical inspection over time may ultimately prove them to be correct, jryan. Or put another way, lack of evidence does not mean that a thing didn't happen. I feel the same way about the insistence from some quarters that "Bush lied" about WMDs. That has been a particularly punishing subject from my perspective, because my initial feeling was that it was all completely wrong. But over time, as more and more information came out (e.g. Woodward's books), and through discussion and basic reasoning, I had to fall back to a position that today is just a hair's bredth from "lied". Even setting aside the obvious ego blow of having argued a position that was basically wrong, I end up questioning whether I did the right thing in asking for conclusive evidence instead of just making the same short leap that others found intuitively obvious. After all, I can't say that I'm not guilty of the same intuitive leaps myself from time to time -- I'm no heroic example of perfect objectivity. But in the end I think it's the right thing to do, asking for those clear, unequivocal connections. I'm a huge believer in "the judgment of history", both its inevitable authority and its greater accuracy vs current media interpretation. (Though I admit I can be a bit of a jerk about it sometimes; I will work on that.) That's another good reason to respect other people's opinions. You never know when they may turn out to be right.

CBS News ran a great piece this morning focusing on Cato's Robert Levy and his efforts to bring this case to fruition. They have it on their web site in both text and video form. (It's about a 7-minute video piece.) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/29/sunday/main4217235.shtml It ended with a great quote. The reporter asked Levy if it bothers him that people will die as a result of this decision. A very realistic point of view.

NBC ran the very first episode of Saturday Night Live last night, which was hosted by Carlin, who opened with a version of his football/baseball routine. The recording was in very poor (seemingly telecine) state, but it was cool to see it.