Pangloss

Exactly. Like getting your hands on some grant money.

This issue is political hay, nothing more. Perfectly legitimate political hay, but that's it. Sure has been a while since I heard anything about that "first 100 days" legislation. I guess the press considers that a complete success and old news, in spite of the fact that not one single piece of it has yet become law. The press is so obsessed with Iraq and whatever controversy is around this week that it's completely forgotten to hound the administration about something that actually matters: SIGNING OR VETOING THE LAWS THAT ARE PUT BEFORE IT. Duh!

I loved that show, but I thought it was at its best after Roddenberry passed away and the show began to explore the obvious flaws in its own ideology. Societies "left by the wayside while the glorious Federation feeds only its own", etc. The point being not that Roddenberry was wrong, but that there's no such thing as utopia. Even his vaunted Federation only works because of hard work and dedication. When that's lost, people starve just like under any other system.

"Deregulation failing" -- in other words people are too stupid for their own good, so the government has to tell them where to live, what they can sign, and ensure that everyone has a new home and a BMW, no matter how high our taxes have to be. I have no problem with extending a helping hand here and there, and if you want to show me an investment opportunity in our future, that's fine as well. But this isn't going to crash the economy (anymore than stagflation or the S&L crisis did -- great example there of something that DIDN'T end up hurting us in the long run, in spite of all the doom and gloom!), the sky is not falling, and people who sign contracts and then can't pay are simply going to have to deal with the consequences. Enough with the "Shiela, a single mother of three, can't afford to make her ballooning house payments!" nonsense.

I didn't, I just thought it was interesting that the people in question this time happen to BE liberals. This time it's liberals falling for Jesus Camp-like brainwashing. Similarly, not all conservatives are christian fundamentalists.

It defies logic to think that fire cannot melt steel. How to people think steel is made? Arguing with true believers holds no interest for me, but what I do find interesting is how the 9/11 attacks called upon our perception of engineering forces on a large scale. I found the whole thing just morbidly fascinating. People will be debating the exact details of the WTC collapse for many years, and learning all sorts of interesting things from the way those forces acted and interacted under those conditions. It's one of the few consolations we can take from that day.

There are perhaps other subforums it could have been placed in. I'm afraid I've loaned the world's smallest violin to the world's only conservative scientist, though, so I'll probably never see it again.

Whatever. Do you or do you not agree that the left is just as susceptible to brainwashing as the right?

Nobody? You both just used the word "nobody", at yet two people in that thread WERE arguing exactly that. (I don't mean Mokele or Phil.) This underscores the point I made that you guys sweep your eyes right past posts like that without realizing what they're saying. THAT's political correctness.

Kinda like televangelists.

Is one better or preferable over the other? And if not, then how are liberals more aligned with science than religious conservatives with their "Jesus Camp"? Was it not liberals who gave us everything from "primal scream therapy" to the popularization of hallucinatory drugs? In short, doesn't this suggest that having one ideology over another is no guarantee of immunity to these kinds of mental traps? (But oh no, scientists just HAVE to be liberal, I'm told.... They couldn't POSSIBLY go any other way!)

Oprah's support for "The Secret" was blasted in parody a few minutes ago on Saturday Night Live, by the way. Funny stuff. It'll probably show up on their web site.

Interesting idea. That might be kinda fun. We could cover some of the more interesting threads currently under discussion. One of the biggest problems I think our members have is digging through subforums to find interesting threads in subject areas that they might not normally delve into. Hearing someone talk about what makes thus-and-such thread interesting might help there. It could also cover major science news stories and such as well, of course, and that would probably be your primary focus.

I don't either. But it's a bit obvious that the scientific and engineering community is less than optimal at shaping public opinion in the modern world. The predominence of people who are good at shaping public opinion aren't interested in shaping it towards the truth. We're simply out of our league.

Ok... how is "the Secret" different from "Jesus Camp", exactly? I mean, aside from the children aspect -- I'll grant you this isn't aimed specifically at and exclusively for kids.

Moderators have bolded names in the left panel, btw.

Interesting points. It kinda raises the question of what a typical reporter is thinking in his or her head when they use the term "scientific concensus". Are they reporting the interesting fact that scientists more or less agree on the subject and are persuing hypotheses under that aegis? Seems likely not.

IT isn't liberal, any more than Jesus was conservative. But it's being paraded around by very prominent and influential liberals, very much like the evangelist movement is identified with conservatives. And if you don't think there are liberal people who vote Democrat and are "born again", think again. Jimmy Carter comes to mind. And he went to Georgia Tech, where he majored in Nuclear Physics (though he actually finished his B.S. at Anapolis). I just saw Jesus Camp the other night, and was shocked just like anybody else. But one of the most shocking things about it is that some people think that sort of nonsense is limited to the unintelligent, the religious, and/or conservatives.

I've recently switched to NOD32 as well. All those big commercial products have just gotten outrageously beefy in recent versions. Like I've got nothing better to do with my CPU cycles than look at their pretty interface. Pfft.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=secret+self-help&btnG=Search Come on. Tell me again how it just makes SO much sense for scientists to be liberals. Do it. This nonsense -- all about how you can cure your own cancer and lose weight just by THINKING it -- was apparently featured on Oprah TWICE over the last week. Yeah. Liberals would NEVER do anything like Jesus Camp! Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

Somebody read my mind -- I was just about to start a thread on compact fluorescent light bulbs. I read over at SciAm that swapping one 75-watt lightbulb for a compact fluorescent saves 55 pounds of CO2 per year (source). Not to mention the personal savings and the convenience of not having to change bulbs as often (one of my personal pet peeves -- we have high vaulted ceilings, and I'm tired of dragging a ladder around my house every couple of weeks!). I've just ordered a stack of these to try out around the house, and I'm just curious if anybody else here has tried these things out. There was a big news story last week about manufacturers considering actually phasing out incandescents over the next few years -- quite a shocker!

I don't see much temperature variation where I live, and I patently disbelieve the straw man media reports which seem to vary between "warmest winter on record" and "MASSIVE SNOWSTORM AND WE'RE ALL ABOUT TO DIE." So I pretty much have to rely on what other people say here. But I have to admit I'm a bit confused about this. I was just reading this short article at Scientific American and it talked about tiny fractions of degrees. Interesting scientifically, but how can one relate that to local perception? Couldn't we just as easily have the coldest winter on record and have plenty of people experiencing "no winter this year"?

Interesting blog post by George Musser at Scientific American: "Please stop talking about the global warming consensus" In a nutshell, he suggests that talking about a consensus makes sense from a scientific perspective, but may be rubbing laypeople the wrong way. Given the current political climate of the country, as well as the deep-seatedness of christian conservatism, I think perhaps he has a point. We should always do our best to educate positively rather than negatively, and encourage people towards the truth.

I celebrated briefly about 6.361 hours into the day.

I gues that makes sense (what was Al Gore's electrical bill last month?). It'd be a shame if it never happened, though, because it's just such a rare perfect fit for mass transit in this country. You've got a large group of people covering difficult terrain on a regular basis with no desire to do any driving-around once they get there. It's textbook. That's interesting about the light rail link between Denver and Boulder, but there of course you go back to the usual problem of people needing to get around once they arrive at the "destination". Which suggests to me the usual result.