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Everything posted by Pangloss
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The movie example was apt as typical of what these arguments really are. You singled out the veto role while misdirecting people from the role of congress in your assignment of blame. That's not "talking about reality", that's selling people snake oil. I agree. I don't think that, but I think that's what his campaign has become since he got to the front of the pack. And I doubt he'll be discussing issues again until after he wins the nomination. And, depending on the polls and the way Republicans are splitting over McCain, maybe not even then.
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Evidence? Or is that too much to ask on a science forum, "dearest sirs"?
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The OP doesn't make that argument, so I reject your question as wholesale slaughter of logic and reason. And if you put any more words in my mouth we're going to have a whole other kind of conversation. Try phrasing your argument in a more congenial way, please. What's so special about that location for wind energy? I'm not opposed to moving the military around, but just saying "they gotta move because we want wind energy here" is just another example of NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard. Give us the big picture, not the ideological slant.
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Well thank you for acknowledging that you were, in fact, blaming Republicans. But Republicans certainly didn't have the veto from 1993 to 2000. You do realize that the debt grew tremendously during that time, don't you? Sure there was a brief period of surpluss towards the end, but are you actually going to try and convince us that a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress wouldn't have spent that entire surplus, and then some, putting us in exactly the same situation we're in today? I'll grant you the Iraq war cost, but even without that we'd have overspent the surplus. And of course the veto is only part of the picture. Reagan had a Democratic congress, as did George the First. Isn't Tom Hanks in a movie right now where he plays Charles Wilson, the Democratic congressman who directly lead the drive to increase spending on intelligence and defense? I wonder if they talk about that in the movie. I'm guessing not. I think you're trying to convince people that Democrats should be elected in 2008 because they will balance the budget and eliminate the deficit and debt. And I say to you the same thing I said to Democrats in 1992 and Republicans in 2000: Be careful what you wish for. Every administration in the last 30 years has come in on that same pledge. So far NONE of them have been successful. The behavior will change when we make it change. Electing the most entertaining politician is not what will make that happen.
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I thought it best in the interest of common ground and emotion that I start this thread myself, being a well-known right-of-center member here -- this way at least it doesn't look like the thread was started by a leftie as a "in your face" kind of thing. But of course this has become a major news story now, and it has interesting political implications, so I think it's a valid subject for discussion. The far right is really beside itself over the front-runnership (for lack of a better term) of John McCain. Rush Limbaugh recently said that for the first time in his life he was considering not voting Republican! Ann Coulter reportedly said the other day that she would stump for Hillary Clinton before she would support John McCain! Holy cow! The fracturing of the right wing of the conservative base is really quite something to watch. I think the social conservatives have become so comfortable with the notion that most of the country is behind them that they don't realize that that was never actually the case. They tout figures like "80% of the country is christian" while ignoring the slim margins that Bush won by (or didn't win by, if you look at the 2000 popular vote), or those charts that show red states to be really more of a "purple" shade. 80% of the country is NOT behind their agenda, any more than it's behind the far-left progressive agenda. Most people go issue-by-issue in their decisions and feelings. Left-of-center Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne had a very insightful column on this on Friday, which received praise from conservative Cal Thomas on Sunday. He talks about how the conservative "base" over the last couple of decades has really been a coalition of social conservatives (religious right) and economic conservatives (the "country club" crowd). Unfortunately it's subscription-only at the moment, but I'll hit ya with a couple of good quotes: What surprises me most about this is this notion that they'd allow, or even support, Hillary Clinton over John McCain. Perhaps Ann Coulter's support is just a joke, but it's patently obvious that if McCain wins the nomination then they're going to have to support him or suffer a president who is decidedly left of their positions. And haven't they told us all along that they would do anything to "beat the b*tch"? I for one am overjoyed at this rift. My party of general inclination has been ursurped and controlled by the far right for years, to my intense chagrin and dismay. Time and time again I've had to endure my side of the "aisle" going the wrong way on stories like Terry Schiavo and embryonic stem cell research. How badly I've wanted the right to be on the side of science and reason is beyond words. It's become impossible to tell people that being conservative doesn't mean being stupid. Maybe this is the best thing that could happen to Republicans. Unfortunately the way politics goes, what is more likely to happen is that McCain's defeat due to lack of support will be seen as a failure by the party, and it will in reaction return to embracing social conservatives in 2012. (sigh) Sometimes you just can't win!
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I like how the basic rules of science and engineering go out the window when it comes to certain elements of the progressive agenda. This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that the progressive agenda is no better than the christian conservative agenda.
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You said that Republicans are responsible for the national debt: You wouldn't let me get away with something like that, so you can hardly be surprised that I won't let you off with a casual dismissal. Why do you feel that Republicans are resposible for the national debt? Why wouldn't Democrats share that blame, both because of much greater length of time in control of Congress, and because they still got their share of votes (and earmarks!) when they weren't in the majority?
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I think we're starting to run out of good time travel jokes. This map explains time travel perfectly, I'm told:
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My wife owned a Pit Bull, and had to carry a million-dollar insurance policy to own it (a local law). It died of old age after 17 years without ever hurting a fly. In fairness, in its addage it got a little grumpy, and that sometimes scared the bejesus out of people IFF they knew it was a pit bull from earlier conversations (like me). Other than that she never had a problem. This is one of those deals people get all upset over because of the media. We don't have a nine-page thread about traffic fatalities or helmetless motorcycle riders, but we sure have one with all kinds of emotion and anecdotal, irrational "evidence" about the danger of pit bulls. Whatever.
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This isn't about TV, it's about movies. /bonk Exactly. Most DVDs are encoded with anamorphic widescreen information, which does help somewhat, and more recent releases contain much higher digitization scan rates than early DVD releases, which look AWFUL when blown up onto my 8-foot projected screen. A good example of a very good-looking regular-DVD movie would be Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings series, which has still not come out in high definition, but looks quite nice on DVD because of a 4,000-line scan resolution when they went from film to digital. (I think it's slated for Blu-Ray release this year.<slobber>) I actually own three copies of Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven". The original release, which I think I bought around 1998, was one of the earliest DVD releases, and when projected on my screen it's kinda like watching a movie on the Internet with really poor bandwidth. Yick! So after getting the projector I bought a "special edition" DVD version, which looks quite reasonable, if a bit dim. And then I have the recent HD DVD release, which has amazing color, clarity, separation and intensity. I keep all three around just to show people these differences because not everyone can really appreciate HDTV until they see it in comparison on the same equipment. Incidentally, sometimes the benefits of high definition can appear in unexpected places. I recently purchased the HD DVD version of one of my all-time favorites, Casablanca. I was FLOORED by the increased level of detail. Cigarette smoke floating about in mid-air! Definition in the shadows that I never knew was there! Stunning! Old B&W movies is actually one of home theater's biggest attractions, IMO. You get a chance to see an old classic in the way it was intended to be seen -- LARGER than life, NOT smaller. You wouldn't think it would matter, but it really does. Other classics we watched recently on the big screen include Citizen Cane and The Searchers. The Searchers is a great example of this -- much of it was shot with the cameras looking UP at the actors, so John Wayne really looms over the audience. This effect is not only lost on the small screen, it's actually disorienting, because you're looking down at your TV which is then looking up at the actors -- like they're about to fall over or something. But translate that onto an 8-foot projected image, up on the wall, and suddenly it all makes sense. Ditto Lawrence of Arabia, or 2001 -- any movie like that benefits tremendously from a big, high-mounted image. (I'll spare you all the projected-versus-backlight-is-more-like-film argument.)
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Well let me put it another way. Who is more likely to reduce government spending, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney? My heart says to vote Obama (with increasing intensity) and my historical emotions tell me to vote McCain, but my brain suggests that Romney may be what this country actually needs the most, fiscally speaking. But I'm keeping an open mind here, and I could be talked into it with a few smart choices in an Obama cabinet. That might be a good area for Obama to reach across the aisle and select for Treasury a fiscally responsible, moderate conservative with cross-class appeal, like Charlie Crist or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Why do you feel that Republicans are solely resposible for the entire national debt? Why wouldn't Democrats share that blame, both because of much greater length of time in control of Congress, and because they still got their share of votes (and earmarks!) when they weren't in the majority?
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Some of you may recall a story I've mentioned here a couple of times about convicted sex offenders forced by the state to live under a bridge here in South Florida. I thought you might appreciate an update. To summarize, because of the new restrictions on where sex offenders are allowed to live, 2500 (?) feet from the nearest park or school, and the fact that they've been under terms of probation that denied them the right to leave the area, they were effectively trapped by a bizarre catch-22. A judge "resolved" the situation by having police transport the offenders to a site undernearth the Julia Tuttle causeway, and a government official actually comes by each day to make sure they are present for a head count. Some of the "residents" were actually victimized, but the situation improved somewhat with local media attention, resulting in regular security guards and police monitoring of the area. But the situation continues, and has actually grown worse over the last year. Over 30 people have now been sent there by the state, and they gradually move away as their bizarre probation terms expire, but there are over 20 people living there right now. The story has come to be ignored by most of local media, and more or less dropped by state and local officials, except to continue to send people there. (Between this and the primary situation, I really have to wonder who the heck is minding the shop these days!) In another odd twist, an advocacy group set up a web site to promote the cause. The local independent (free) paper Miami New Times has been following the story and you can read it here (it includes a link to the group's web site): http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2008/01/sex_offenders_under_bridge_get.php
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Moved to Pseudoscience and Speculations with an expiring redirect from the original location.
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I own a first-gen HD DVD player and several dozen titles, and will be buying a BR player this year. I have a home theater with an 8-foot screen and surround sound that I've spent a fairly ridiculous amount of money on, and I'm a nut about quality, so I want every ounce of sharpness and intensity I can muster. HD DVD has been a trip, but I clearly guessed wrong and Toshiba has lost. Still, it was a good fight, and I'm 100% certain that Blu-Ray players wouldn't have dropped in price as fast as they have had it not been for this competition. Blu-Ray players today cost HALF what they cost a year ago. (Amazon has the Samsung unit for $329, btw.)
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I know you're joking -- FNC is even more repugnant to me than CNN. I peek in on BOR to see what he's blowing a gasket on maybe once a month, and I do enjoy Fox News Watch occasionally, which is their weekly media analysis show (which is surprisingly good). But when the Tivo runs over and accidentally snags a regular "anchor" or "commentator", I feel like I have to take a shower. <shudder> I assume you mean regular spending, like at a store, as opposed to buying a house, where it makes a huge difference. And you're right, except for one thing -- credit card debt. A cut in the interest rate means a lowering of debt for many (most?) consumers. The theory is that reducing that debt will prompt more spending. (How's that for an ugly truth about our society? BTW, X-Box 360, Wii and PS3 sales were all WAY WAY UP this past Xmas.) But I think your point is valid because reduced debt doesn't translate exactly to increased spending. I was surprised to see the rate cut held up as an example of the "war on recession" this past week, outside of the context of housing. The New York Times probably reprinted a press release from the White House and all thinking and reason went out the window.
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I agree with all of the above, but I am concerned that if we elect Obama we are in for a lot more "stimulus packages". Unfortunately I see no other way to send a "knock it off" message to Washginton OTHER than electing Obama.
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Not that I disagree with you, but just to add something here (that I don't know if you'll agree or disagree with), I'm not convinced that there's anything actually wrong with the economy. Or more to the point, the complaints revolve around symtoms, not diseases. I've yet to be convinced that the symptoms actually indicate disease, as opposed to just cyclical patterns execerbated by popular bad behaviors (indicating some need for increased regulation, but not a desperate cry for, say, a leap to socialism, for example). To me the situation is analogous to the US Forestry Service's decades-long policy of extinguishing all forest fires as soon as possible. Note that the lesson learned from that subject is NOT that we shouldn't put out forest fires, but that we let SOME of them burn. It's only the tree-huggers who interpret this lesson to mean that people are the problem. The sane interpret the lesson to mean that we act more responsibly.
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I think thomast1777 has a valid point. The purpose of the quote he was replying to was to support the very next sentence, in which dichotomy actually stated that it was "probably" the reason for higher fatality numbers. But the real point that I thought thomast1777 made well was that so much of this argument is based on unsubstantiated belief and emotion. Granted this happens on both sides, but this is a science forum and we ought to be able to do better than that. I feel like this thread almost belongs in Pseudoscience and Speculations, for all the legitimate scientific content it contains.
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Is that just the 12 legal time physicalities, or all 27 temporal arondisements? And are you including the 47 global war eras between the 20th and 27th centuries? Obviously after the 27th it doesn't matter, of course, since the planetary inhabitants are no longer classified as "human".
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Way to go, Lockheed, bumping a thread from 2013. Yeesh!
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The point of the OP seems to be learning the lessons of history. What is history teaching us in this case? The OP poster seems to be saying that the lesson of history is "modernization is bad for our health". I don't think that lesson is supported by the evidence. For every example of McDonald's Happy Meals or lead poisoning there are ten miracle drugs or land fertilization techniques. This is also one of those interesting areas where the progressive agenda conflicts with basic scientific reasoning. An example is the "quality of life" argument shown in a post above, which never seems to quite be quanfitiable. How convenient. What's more likely is that as life expectency has gone up, deaths due to what would have been obscure reasons a hundred years ago have risen to the top of the statistical heap, not because more people are, say, getting cancer, but because fewer people are dying of factory accidents or lead poisoning in their food. So rather than punishing ourselves with moody remonstrations and grand gestures like lamenting "modernization", doesn't it make more sense to modernize further? Since, after all, it seems to be working so well? I'm thinking this thread belongs in Pseudoscience, btw. Convince me it doesn't.
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What's wrong with the existing ban? Oh right, you don't know about it yet. Wups.
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Watching the developing political situation surrounding the economic stimulus package seems to be providing a unique insight into the difficulties that pervade the current US Congress. Bipartisan agreement that the package is needed, combined with the always-present need amongst politicians to be seen as "doing something", produced an agreement in the House in near-record time. But now the bill has reached the Senate, and the brakes have been applied. At a superficial glance this may seem odd, because even in the Senate there seems to be bipartisan support. Both the Democraitc majority leader and the Republican minority leader spoke in favor of the bill being passed as it exists from the House. But from the Senate's perspective there are two factors holding things up: 1) It isn't good enough to actually accomplish what it purports to accomplish (stimulating the economy). 2) It is desperately crying out for some serious earmarking. The first reason is one of those reasons that actually sounds pretty good at first blush. If the current wave of opining economists is correct, the senate is right in saying that the package doesn't have sufficient impact, and that it would have more impact if it carried two specific areas of additional benefit: Extending unemployment benefits, and an increase in food stamps. These factors alone, to the extend discussed in the previously-debated version of the Senate bill, could have almost as much economic impact as the rest of the stimulus package put together. But that impact -- the improved impact being suggested by the senate -- still amounts a ridiculously small drop in a very large bucket: $150-200 billion in a fourteen trillion dollar economy. All we can reasonably expect from this bill is that some of the money will be spent in strategically useful enough places to make a little bit of difference. And it's all deficit spending -- it's not like we budgeted for this money. It's being slipped in the back door right off Air China 777s. (Oh well, at least Boeing's getting paid.) The real disappointment is the second point. Earmarking a supplemental spending bill in the middle of a war and a period of massive deficit spending is just lower than low. Are we going to let them get away with that? It's almost a GOOD thing that the senate had to halt action on this in order to wait for three of its own to finish their Super Tuesday campaigns. That makes it a good time to email your senator and tell them what you think! http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm What I think is just that it's an interesting example of politics at work. When they have universal agreement on an issue, and spend anyway, in fact seeing spending as a solution, it really shows you what Washington is all about.
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We've come a long way since the American settlers. So how come we haven't been wiped out? Doesn't the reality of modern science actually indicate the opposite of what you suggest -- that people are healthier, live longer, grow stronger than they did a century ago?
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Some of you may have caught a news item the other day about some kids in a brand-new BMW who drove off the end of a private runway in a little community in central Florida where actor John Travolta happens to live. The incident was widely reported. Well apparently the driver was a regular poster in an online community of BMW owners and enthusiasts. After the accident some of the members of that forum put the pieces together and realized they had lost one of their own. An editor at Edmunds (a popular automobile web site) puzzled out the story and wrote about it in his column: http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Columns/articleId=124526