Pangloss

No, that cartoon is not applicable, and we're not Charlie Brown here because we weren't expecting actual militry withdrawl to take place at this time. (Not if we were paying attention, that is.) What he's asking for a delay on was not departure, but rather a slight drawn-down from the surge. A change in the rotation pattern, essentially. This is tactics, not strategy. You know, the stuff we always say we're not going to criticize for political reasons. By all means criticize Bush for not pulling the troops out, but you can't say that he's been telling us that he was about to pull all the troops out and then changed his mind.

You guys heard this story that was going around last week, right? I can't remember if it was reported here or not. Forgive me if it came up before. Story on Biblically-correct museum tours.

I appreciate the specificity and I won't even ask for a link -- I'll stipulate that there have been thousands of stories like that over the past 7+ years. But maybe we should establish for the sake of discussion how this constitutes "abuse" on "the integrity of science". What exactly does that mean? If we're saying that the information wasn't allowed to escape to the general public, well, clearly that's not the case, since we know about it. You can't even necessarily say this was the intent of the action (I'm questioning the accuracy of the word "bury"), since in most of these cases we're not talking about actual redaction, we're talking about official reports, and the substance backing those reports is typically available to the general public. What we're really talking about is spin, but the question becomes what constitutes spin, how it differentiates from interpretation or valid analysis, and so forth. And even if you statistically establish that there's more of that going on today than there has been in the past, the question then becomes whether this is a reflection of the ideological bent of the current administration or due to some other factor (or perceived factor), such as the increased transparency of the digital age, the rise of activism and special interest groups, the growing power of corporations, or the gradual erosion of the constitutional authority of certain aspects of governance. And I know this wasn't YOUR point, but just to briefly address MY concern, I have to say that as much as some people here would want it to be so, this stuff just doesn't boil down to "Bush lied, kids died". It just never does.

Faith comes in many forms. One of them is exhibited in the frustrations of otherwise logically-minded, well-reasoning people fed up with those who aren't "paying attention". Another is the immediacy of ostensibly scientific findings that turn out to be overexaggerated. Be careful what you wish for. Police states come in many forms too. (Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about because my head is shaped wrong or my skin in the wrong color or I'm taking the wrong drugs.) Let's put our own house in order, shall we? The problem isn't religion, it's lack of perspective. Science isn't "under siege", it's the physical fabric of our entire society, the shady corners of which occasionally get pulled back a little bit for political reasons. Instead of lamenting the awfulness of that fact-of-life in a free society, maybe we should instead ponder our own motivations and embrace these opportunities to reiterate what it is that MAKES science the physical fabric of our entire society. You win some you lose some. We need to be LESS demanding about outrages and attrocities that are clearly neither, and more open-minded, more non-partisan, more appreciative of the perspective of those who don't have PhDs in computational fluid dynamics.

If they did. I'm still waiting to hear. All I've heard so far is an allegation that they made an attempt to do so. It sounds like something that happened in January, but I couldn't Google up anything more recent on it. But why is this being called SELF-pardon? Why does the speaker in Blade's video say Bush is trying to pardon himself when this is a bill before congress? Pardons aren't a matter of law, they're PARDONS. The president signs them and with the stroke of a pen that person is off the hook. This is a LAW, which means over 500 representatives of the people will debate the issue and sign off on it, or not. Self-pardon my ass. Typical media nonsense and typical hit-and-run partisan posting. Blade has returned to this board since every post above this one was made, and yet has not replied. This is not DemocraticUnderground.com or MoveOn.org. Opinions are fine, but the subject of this thread is a bald statement that is not backed up by the post. Frankly it's embarassing, and I think we're better than this sort of thing.

I think it's important to distinguish between honest people, new to these subjects, who attempt to take a reasoned, logical look at the ID issue (perhaps motivated by their religious beliefs), and the organized, deeply-partisan people who manipulate those newcomers with false information. Scientists and scientifically-minded people can (and should) welcome the former, inviting them into discussion and politely pointing out the errors, helping them to find their own path to the truth. It's the one thing I regret about our banning of creationism discussions here (though I support that decision, in the interests of time and focus).

This is disappointingly Rush Limbaugh/Al Franken-level material for this board. I think it's wrong to hold Bush responsible for "everything that happens to and from that country" -- that's not a reasonable or useful standard. Hold him accountable for his decisions, actions and reactions, yes. I guess the question of the pardon issue is valid grounds for discussion, but as far as "war crimes" are concerned, the issue is a complete non-starter. Show me an objective arbiter of such a thing, and we'll talk. Otherwise it's just partisan fodder, and not a serious subject for discussion.

http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html Pretty funny stuff.

Well I figure I was "pregnant" last week, so I might as well stick with the theme. (lol)

Oh sweet, a new title. Thankee!

Yeah that's the rub, though -- it doesn't actually require better drivers, it only requires that they be signed. So either the WHQL process is flawed, or it isn't looking at the right stuff. I suspect that's what a lot of those internal memoes were about. My desktop runs great, as does my classroom full of Dell Precision workstations running 64-bit Vista on Xeon. Our laptops, however, are a Lovecraftian horror story. <shudder>

Wouldn't this be gambling?

I think you're talking about a basic property of all human beings, not just Americans. I've always considered that to be at least one of the reasons why the American experiment has worked as well as it has -- its flexibility in the face of that inherent human uncertainty and unreliability. The system has to be flexible, because there's just no rule you can make that cannot be subverted with sufficient power combined with sufficient control over information. Ultimately it's not the rules, but the people who enforce them, and wield the power we trust them with, that matter.

Well, it was helpful in giving me something to do with my mod hat on.

What IA said. What else could it be? "Random crashes while doing things" are the very hallmark of driver-related issues. That's always either heat, lack of power, bad hardware, or buggy drivers. I agree with the posts above -- load Ubuntu or Windows XP (whatever you've got drivers for) and see if the same computer produces the same problems. If it does, it was obviously a conflict between Vista and its drivers, and you'll already have the problem solved.

Um, that's one of the funniest posts I've read here in a while, doG, although I don't think you really meant it to be funny.

Well I'm not trying to cast aspersions on anybody's opinion, I just don't get this desire to lump congress into it when the little info they had was all created and directed from the same predetermining, non-listening source. I think what drives a lot of this blame-congress business right now is the desire to hold either Hillary or McCain accountable (depending on whom you ask) and prevent them from reaching the White House, and the rest of it is motivated by a desire to defend President Bush's legacy. Thankfully history, unlike politics, just doesn't work that way. Over the fullness of time we've come to understand how little congress knew, how carefully that information was controlled, and how powerless they (or anybody else) were to do anything about it. Over time this will eventually reach the level of public understanding, but at the moment I think we're still in a politicized mode.

Those sound like driver issues to me (in the OP). Obviously most Vista users are able to open the system control panel without immediately crashing. (grin) But I do empathize -- these driver issues have very much been the bane of Vista's existence and I think it's perfectly valid to chuck it in favor of a different OS if you like the hardware or don't think it's time to upgrade it, and the manufacturer isn't updating the drivers. Go for it. There's a story running around the net right now about a collection of leaked Microsoft internal emails that seem to indicate that almost a third of Vista issues in 2007 were due to one particular family of nVidia graphic drivers alone -- the biggest video card maker! Yeeeeesh.

No, I agree they could have asked better questions, and chose not to. But they had no reason to ask those questions, at least until they had a basis for thinking the information they were given was false, and by then the invasion was a fait accompli. So says Republican Senator Chuck Hagel in his new book. I haven't absolved anybody, but by that reasoning then you and I equally guilty, and while you seem to support that notion above a couple posts back, I DON'T. I will accept responsibility for voting for Bush in 2000, but I changed my mind in 2004 in part because of Iraq, so I don't think Iraq is ultimately my fault, even though I had access to the same intelligence and the opportunity to ask the same questions as Congress, and roughly the same degree of control over the situation (by our votes) that congress did. Why I think that way is because I expect a system of checks and balances on intelligence analysis to work as written, and not be subverted by a predetermined goal that automatically rejects contrary evidence. I don't know, this blame-shifting just smells like reactionary partisanship to me. I get that it sucks that your man gets attacked by Michael Moorons, but so what? Let's deal with truth and let the chips fall where they may, guys. That's why they call them the lessons of history.

Hehe, somebody's got a toddler going through a construction phase. Poor guy.

doG, did you miss my reply to you earlier? If you're going to restate your position and pretend I didn't say anything, I feel obligated to repeat my response. What's up with that? http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showpost.php?p=399393&postcount=3

Wait... I missed ponies?!

I agree it's not the same, mainly because Congress was fully aware of the difference and wanted it that way, in part because the White House retained most of the responsibility. We're talking about 500 savvy politicians (and mostly lawyers!) here. (grin)

Which is why I didn't do that. That's a nice picture, but it lacks sound. If it did have sound, what you would hear are the people in the room chanting "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada."

Student loans.