Pangloss

Because he hates children. With a passion. I think he eats them for breakfast, or so I've read on some web sites. But seriously, I think it's a reasonable question. I also think his answer is reasonable. To wrongs don't make a right, Bascule. He can be a flagrant spending abuser AND think that this is a bad piece of legislation. I may not agree, but I don't think that position is irresponsible.

Right, fully trained mind readers who should be fully capable of looking at a FedEx package and knowing there's a bomb inside, so that they won't harass innocent-but-strangely-electronics-covered bystanders and instead leap straight to the fully concealed terrorists that nobody but they can see. Because, you know, we can put a man on the moon, so we can surely know from the merest glance what is a bomb and what is not!

I know it doesn't reveal the destination address to the client, but surely it has to reveal it to the DNS server or you wouldn't be able to get address resolution and thereby reach the destination page. And since the first DNS server you typically contact is a local one, possibly owned by your employer, that suggests to me that a piece of software could interfere with that resolution at that time, based on a filter. But maybe I'm missing something here.

I'm still trying to figure out how not signing a whoppingly massive increase in the budget supports the assessment that Bush "is one of, if not the most fiscally irresponsible presidents in history".

Hahaha! I love it! Funniest post I've read all week. I'm sorry iNow, if I wasn't having such a week-from-hell I would have popped back in here sooner and nipped the iNow-crucifiction in the bud. But at least I got to see that amusing reply! Spiff happens, thirty lashings with a wet noodle, let's move on folks.

Well, unlike ecoli I think you do have a point there (though he makes a good one as well), but I did just want to add that one of the nice things about this country is that I can render the above representation utterly false by simply allowing said Mexican, Laotian, and Chinese persons to repeat the following words:

You can't teach people critical thinking without directly attacking insulting their beliefs? Really? I can. In fact I do it *every single day*. 80% of my population disagrees. Look, I don't like that any more than you do, but you're missing the point completely. Why is it okay to coax and persuade EXCEPT when it comes to science, then we have to bludgeon and coerce? Why can't we lead the horse to water and HOPE it takes a drink? Why is it so g*d d*mn NECESSARY to DESTROY PEOPLE and RECONSTRUCT THEM ACCORDING TO A MORE POLITICALLY CORRECT POINT OF VIEW? Come on. That is not the liberal way. You find the truth. You show it to everyone who will listen. And if they don't listen, you shrug and you move on. That's freedom. It's been a pretty d*mn good deal for scientific advancement so far. No, you don't. You do the same thing you'd do if they asked you for your opinion on abortion or animal rights. You say "well I'm sure you have an interesting opinion on the matter, but it's not germain to this course so let's stick with the subject, please." Or you find a more appropriate line of work, because you have no business being a teacher. IFF the course directly requires such interaction, I support those answers. This course (on western history) did not. ------------------------------- You know, I think the abortion analogy I made above is incredibly apt, and an excellent display of how people are being hypocritical in this thread on this issue. None of you who are supporting what this teacher did would have supported him if he had used that platform -- in a class on western history, in which the abortion debate has been a pivotal issue -- had made the SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE STATEMENT that abortion kills a potential human life. Defend that hypocrisy if you can, folks. ------------------ What I'm saying is that rounding up all the Christians and sending them to retraining camps, er I mean "universities", with their eyelids firmly clamped open and Beethoven's 9th blaring away, is just not the best way to convince people of the benefits of science. I think that's what supporting this teacher fundamentally amounts to.

iNow did you just try to pass off a pie chart with Social Security subtracted from the budget but then label it as if it reflected the entire budget? After accusing ME of using straw men? Maybe I'm just tired and misreading, but I think you have some 'splainin' to do, Lucy.

I think the opposite. Assuming everything that even remotely looks like a bomb is a bomb is ONE OF the things that keeps 9/11 from happening again. Though it totally irks me when I have to agree with revprez, I think people forget that when we WEREN'T checking every package, the complainers, I'm sorry I mean the "experts", were telling us that NOT checking every package was a disaster waiting to happen. Now that we're doing what they told us to do, it's suddenly the wrong thing to do! Well fine, if checking every package is the wrong thing to do, can we write it down and plaster it on every bridge overpass this time, so that when we do switch back to letting everything go unchecked, this time we'll remember WHY we're letting everything go unchecked?!

Dak, what I object to is the ongoing, systemic, socially-accepted view on this web site of conservatives as backward, unintelligent boobs. That point of view has been put forth and supported in this thread, and it is every bit as ignorant and moronic (not to mention immature and sophmoric) as it would be for a conservative to bash liberals in the same way. But for some reason it's accepted here when it's done to conservatives. Accepted and supported as if it were some sort of universal, undeniable truth. So what does that make Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas? An ignorant boob? A stupid non-thinker? Incapable of rational thought? Unable to string two sentences together? A complete half-wit? ORLY? That guy came out of absolute poverty and went on to graduate at the top of his class and get a JD from YALE. Could he be merely mislead? Perhaps he's simply not considered all the issues fully? The sheer audacity of such comments are utterly astounding coming from a group of people that prides itself on intelligence and scientific objectivity. ASTOUNDING. Not to mention irresponsible, immature, and just plain knuckle-headed. I am disappointed beyond words.

I think you could stop *ALL* secure traffic by just blocking all https requests, couldn't you? That's interesting about addressing. I guess it makes sense, though -- you've still got to get DNS name resolution somehow.

And I don't think he was, because that's an opinion that's irrelevent to the subject matter of the course. Whether Adam and Eve is a true story has no relevence to the fact of their influence on western history. Would we even be having this conversation if he'd told the students to write down 18,000 reasons why religious belief is false, or would we THEN realize that he was wasting their time on irrelevencies? BTW, there's a huge difference between "opening minds" and "tearing blinders off". One has a place in the class on western history; the other belongs in a class on the detrimental effects of religious belief. This was the former, not the latter.

If you think I've used a straw man, point it out and we'll discuss it. Don't just slander me and call it a day. And for Pete's sake grant me the courtesy of allowing me to express my opinion without asking me if that opinion is "necessary". That's just rude.

No, I didn't miss it, I ignored it because it was dissmissive, pejorative, and irrelevent.

Do you know how they do it, swansont, or if it can be circumvented?

Whew, I knew Sisyphus would come to my aid. To answer yourdadonapogos' question, one example of conservatism in science is peer review, as mentioned above. We don't just fly off the reservation every time we hear something that sounds like a great idea. Look at how many drugs have had to be recalled after further studies were done. Look at how many times we've gotten excited about breakthroughs of all kinds, only to find out later that somebody made a mistake. Conservatism is IMPORTANT. And I like how he balanced liberalism into the equation -- that's very true in my opinion. This is what I think has made our society great -- not our ideologies, but our abilities to find common ground BETWEEN them, and still find a way to move forward even though it often feels like dire and dangerous compromise. We're GOOD at it. And recognizing what we're good at is an important part of moving society forward. ------- By the way, I don't talk very often about those things which SFN has changed my mind about over the years, but it seems like a good time to mention one of them. Between SFN and my own return to academia (finishing my bachelors, completing a masters, and now working on a PhD), I have rediscovered something I had forgotten about liberalism and the moderate left, which is that it has an element of common sense that the right wing likes to pretend is in their own domain. Don't get me wrong: I actually think Rush Limbaugh and CTR (conservative talk radio) has done a great service to this country in re-awakening common sense and critical thinking (yes, critical thinking) amongst the masses -- far more than academia and the left-wing elite have done in recent years! I know I'm practically alone in this crowd in thinking this, but my opinion on it is unswayed. That having been said, there's a HUGE difference between the kind of left-wing ideologues that show up for anti-war protest rallys and the kind of moderate lefties and liberals that typically congregate in the halls of academia and the research labs of this country. To be more specific, I feel that this board represents that important part of our culture which is so often ignored by the popular culture: Intelligent, thoughtful, introspective, critically-thinking people who support societies community efforts while embracing the culture of individualism. There are a few nut cases who invariably get mixed in with this crowd, and we've seen that right here on SFN (just drop by the Pseudoscience board and see). But they don't represent the majority of this culture, and Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh can't change my mind about that anymore than this crowd can change my mind about that CTR contribution. I think that's terrific, and frankly it's what's kept me hanging around here over the years. I don't get that point of view *anywhere* else.

No no, quite right. I also haven't heard it said that all civilian security contractors are having these problems. Whether that's because Blackwater gets the toughest assignments or because of an institutional culture problem I don't know. I know you're not, but I think we have to hit the larger subject here because must of what's driving this story is far-left propaganda. Not just the peaceniks but the whole ABB alliance, which you know as well as I do bends over backwards to make hay out of anything and everything going on over there. What I'm suggesting is that the job was too big for the amount of force we were willing and able to commit to the task. I think we all agree on this. I don't accept the premise of the last question. We don't know that they're more expensive, less acountable, or poorly controlled. All we have at this point are nightly news straw men -- specific incidents whose relationship to the whole performance picture is unknown. Show me a peer-reviewed academic study of a comprehensive data selection and I'll answer that question. (Why is it that we're so adamant about peer review and academic integrity when it comes to scientific subjects like the environment or medicine, but when it comes to political decisions as vast and awesome and incredibly important as WAR and DEATH we could care less about objective analysis, and happily go along with whatever the mass media says?)

This is one of the things I've been wondering. This company used to implement web site filtering, but it was very easy to get around it using proxy sites. They seemed to figure that out and eventually dropped the filtering. What I'm wondering is if new technology has come along that is impervious to filtering controls. In short, can they actually prevent someone from accessing Hotmail, Gmail, etc?

The adjective in the broadest sense of the word, which is being attacked as a negative value across the board in this thread.

That's not what I'm suggesting and you know it. This thread has become about conservative-bashing against all reason and logic. And it's disturbing to see that kind of childishness in this forum. And it's hypocritical, because it wouldn't be allowed to stand if the same kinds of things were said about liberalism. I find it astonishing that people can't think of a single positive aspect of being conservative. This in spite of the fact that conservatism is INHERENTLY NECESSARY in the pursuit of scientific endeavors. Hello, peer review? Hello, scrutiny of data? Hello, careful analysis of methods? Left-wing hypocrisy at its worst, right here in this very thread.

They seem to be going back and forth on the issue of kicking them out of the country. I thought the latest was that the Iraqi president said they could stay, but that was a few days ago so there may have been another change since then. Also I don't think it's been objectively determined that Blackwater has "a long history of needless aggression" or that they were wrong in this case. As with US military any time a gun is fired the cameras are there, ready to find us a straw man I mean innocent victim. But getting to the subject at hand, movie director Brian DePalma said in a recent interview that his purpose in making his soon-to-be-released movie about US troops who killed a bunch of Iraqis (I forget the specific incident being depicted in the film) was -- now get this -- to show how the war in Iraq was wrong and needs to be stopped immediately. That goal is absolutely exclusive from the subject matter of his own film! The two *cannot* be logically connected in any meaningful way other than absurdly over-emphasizing the humanitarian issue over any other possible goal. In other words, peace at any and all cost. Life is more important than ANYTHING. Well it ISN'T, and Iraqis are showing us every day how life is NOT more important than freedom from repression and tyranny, whether it's a brutal dictator or a fascist religious zealotry. Freedom isn't free. To that end, civilian security contractors are an unfortunate necessity. I agree that there are concerns here that should be analyzed and addressed. If private contractors are skirting the rules then they should face the same kind of prosecution that US soldiers potentially face. Corporate contracts should see more scrutiny than they currently do. But in the end the approach is a reasonable one, especially given our inherent unwillingness as a society to put forth the necessary military effort.

Absolutely wrong. Dak's suggestion was both historically and critically reasonable. So much for john5746's suggestion above that scientific reason created tolerance for religion! The subject of the course is history of western civilization, not demonization of organized religion. Shoe-horning a module on faulty logic in the Bible into that course would be ideological revisionism at its worst. I thought it BOTHERED scientists to see faith-based reasoning in the classroom. And yet look at where this thread has gone!

That neatly sidesteps the basic perjorative of ku's post, but it still resorts to crude stereotyping. I find it disturbing and disappointing that a group as intelligent as this can't think of ANY positive aspects to conservatism. I think you can, and I think you should, if for no other reason that to disabuse me of the notion that you're adhering to political correctness! Can anyone respond to this challenge? (I'm gonna turn this car right around! Don't make me come back there!)

What scares me more is the thought of who gets to determine whether the person in question is "scientifically illiterate". But if there were such a thing as a presidential candidate whom I agreed with 100%, I'd probably have to resign due to the conflict of interest raised by the fact that I was running for the highest office in the land.

They weren't, IMO, but the basis for their complaint is valid, which is that he insulted the students over an issue not related to the course. Yes, the fact that he made the statement that the Bible must not be literally interpreted. That's not a relevent point for a discussion on the historical context of the Bible. The accuracy of the Bible is not relevent to determining its impact on history. (I'm assuming that's an accurate description of what happened (or did I misread something?).) But it wasn't his job to do that. It's a HISTORY course, not a science course. What, so the determination of the law of gravity was impossible without Newton FIRST analyzing Genesis and determining that it couldn't possibly work? Based on WHAT? Nonsense. Realization of religious contradictions FOLLOW scientific discoveries. Not vice-versa. And THAT's a valid reflection on the history of western civilization, but frankly it's an unnecessary one. We're leading horses to water, not forcing them to drink. You show students the path to the answer, you don't bludgeon them over the head with it and smack them in the face if they disagree. Do you want blind followers or critical thinkers? Choose.