Pangloss

So the only difference between Richard Carmona saying "time for debate is over" and Dick Cheney saying "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction" is that one of them had proper political goals, and the other one had improper political goals? I mean, they both had plenty of "statistics" and "intelligence" -- who am I to say that one of them is right and the other one is wrong? And the proof of this is a bunch more media reports, and another interview? And this is science?

But animals are not people, and didn't that study expose those animals to VASTLY higher levels of smoke, more akin to PRIMARY smoking levels than anything we might call second-hand? I'm sorry, I don't mean to be critical of anyone here, and obviously I'm way out of my depth here (hell, I can't even quote a source for the above, it's just something I read which for all I know might have been tobacco industry nonsense). Obviously I need to read more in order to actually form an opinion on this. But you guys see my concern, right? I don't know, this thing just reeks of not even being able to pass the stink test. 50,000 people per year die just because they got a whiff from a stogey three tables away one New Year's Eve? Come on!

Folks I admit that I haven't read or understand all the science or studies on this, so please feel free to correct or enlighten me. But what I'm hearing from this thread is that I should believe what I'm told because of who's telling me, not because of any science. What difference does it make what the tobacco industry has done, or how many "experts believe"? Shouldn't the decision be based on SCIENCE? When did we set aside the notion that science has to be demonstrably true and available to everyone, and settle for the notion that we only have to listen to the most politically correct data analysts? According to ABC News, at some point in this report, the Surgeon General states -- STATES -- that 50,000 people die annually due to brief, casual contact with second-hand smoke, such as from bars and restaurants! This in spite of the fact that there is not one shred of causal evidence in this entire report! As I understand it, it's all statistical studies! But, again as I understand it, statistics can never show a causal relationship. Not ever! So how can anyone state that something is factual when only a statistical study has ever been done? Am I missing something here? Aren't we just perpetuating pseudoscience at the expense of science just because we all hate tobacco companies? What kind of nonsense is that?

Here's a link to the surgeon general's report, released today amidst great hoopla, with all the major news networks headlining tonight's broadcasts with the story: http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/report/ I haven't read it yet (so I will try to keep an open mind), but as I understand it, the report offers no new science whatsoever. No causal evidence has ever been offered that secondhand smoke causes anything at all! It's all simple statistical correlations, many of which are within the margin of error of the study! I guess I can understand the aspect of this that relates to smoking parents raising children in smoking environments. Ironically, however, that will be the VERY LAST PLACE where smoking is eliminated! Virtually everything in this report and how it was presented in the news was about smoking in restaurants and bars, where your exposure is very limited! What do you all think?

I don't think that's an appropriate question or response to this thread, and I don't see anything wrong with Herme3's question. That smells like the advent of another computer flame war, and I think his question has been answered, so I'm closing this thread. If any further questions need to be asked on this subject, pop me a note in PM and I'll reopen it. Thanks.

Acronis TrueImage is supposed to be a pretty good alternative to Ghost, and lets you burn the image to DVDs. I don't know of anything that simply converts your hard drive into an ISO without putting its own interface in between in some way. The closest thing I've seen is the corporate edition of Ghost (runs about $79), which lets you create a DVD that includes the Ghost software on the first disc, so that you can boot off the backup DVD itself and then replace the image onto the hard drive.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13528837/site/newsweek/ In short, Lieberman faces a serious challenge in August against a candidate who's almost entirely known as an anti-war candidate. Lamont, who is described here as a "wealthy Greenwich cable-television executive", is polling well and shows every sign of being able to beat Lieberman in August. But this quote is particularly revealing about Lamont's true nature: Nonsense. There's absolutely no indication that the Iraqi forces are either being held back or are holding themselves back in any way. None. Everything we know about the situation in Iraq indicates that they're standing up as fast as they possibly can, gradually taking on increasing responsibilities and moving towards being able to take over. Experts have been constantly telling us that it will take a very long time for these forces to become ready. Well obviously if they're not ready, they can't stand up.

(grin) Actually I was thinking of the Freud quote.

I don't believe the purpose of killing Zarqawi was to lower gas prices, and consider that suggestion to be pretty far below our debate standards here. It's intellectually dishonest, predicated on a speculative assumption, and insufficiently supported. There's certainly nothing wrong with noting correlations between events, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Yeah I don't think they'll get a lot of sympathy even in South Florida. But I suppose it's possible they'll get support from their local community. These guys lived in Liberty City, which is a low-income, predominently African-American area, famous for the 1980 Liberty City riots, which happened after five white police officers were acquitted of the beating death of a black motorcyclist.

As I understand it, when these miscreants tried to contact Al Qaeda, what they got instead was an undercover FBI agent trained to pretend he was an AQ agent, and he strung them along to the point where they had a full understanding of what the group was trying to accomplish, then they moved in for the arrest. (My information may be faulty here, as it was based mostly on brief news reports I heard during my various air flights today.) So I guess the suggestion there would be that the FBI set them up, and that they were actually harmless. That's certainly what the men's families are saying, but of course the obvious flaw in this reasoning is that they made the attempt to contact AQ, and if the FBI hadn't been there then they may well have accomplished that goal. What do you all think?

It also runs on Vista, which is where I've used it. (It's already installed when you load Vista.)

Well, I don't want to belabor the point, and sometimes I'm accused (perhaps rightfully so) of fixating on minutiae, which is really not my intent. The main points I wanted to make would be these: 1) I certainly agree that the Wikipedia is not an authoritative source, and as we have discussed here many times, it should not be used as such in this forum. We have established, however, that it may be used to inform other readers of background information and to suggest a kind of "starting point" for their own investigations. It may also be used for simple definitions. Those are our guidelines, and I expect you to respect them if you're going to dwell here with us (which I hope you continue to do). 2) I understand and support what you're saying about the issue, and as I mentioned before I have no problem with your opinion. I don't happen to share your conclusion, but I respect it. I don't think you're a crazed lunatic or an ideologue. We've had this discussion many times here, and I've posted many times along the lines of "you may well be right" on this subject (most notably after I read Woodward's Plan of Attack last year). 3) At risk of making this thread too much about our argument and not enough about the issue, I think something you'll figure out when you've been here a while is that I try to skew the debate here (in the Politics sub-board) to be as objective and open-minded as possible, mainly because the Internet is chock full of forums where hasty conclusions are given truck. This forum being about science, I feel (as do the other admins and mods) that the highest possible standard of objectivity and non-partisanship should be maintained when it comes to statements of fact, definitions, laws of science, legal matters, and so forth. To that end, I felt that a point needed to be made that there is a difference between stating that the administration might have committed a deceit, and stating that it had knowingly done so. I recognize that there is a language problem here, in that people often express opinions in the form of statements, and I try to recognize them as such, but I believe it's important to distinguish between mere expressions of opinion, and occasions when our members state what other people are expected to believe. When I sense that it might be one of the latter times, I generally open my mouth to remind everyone of that tricky-to-define, but very important, boundary. I hope that clears up where I'm coming from, but if you have any questions I'll be happy to try and answer them. Getting back to the subject, to answer your question... well let me quote it directly: Nope, and I think that's a fair question. I don't think it's one that's been entirely answered yet. Frontline and Woodward's book didn't answer it, they simply showed where the answer may lie. More information is needed in order to answer the "deception question" definitively. I can elaborate further on this if you would like. Very nicely put! I applaud your comparison.

Please provide a link to a definition of the phrase "false pretenses" that precludes the knowledge of the perpetrator. I've not accused you of taking an ideological line. You quoted my response to bascule, not to you. Please review forum practices and read more carefully before replying.

I'm a big Frontline fan, and I have this on my Tivo. I watched the first part of it just now, and I'll get around to the rest of it as soon as I can, but so far it looks like more or less a rehash of previous episodes, reworked into a new assessment/approach. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it does key into my pet peeve about Frontline's last couple of seasons. But that's another discussion.) Anyway, yeah, I need to watch the rest of it, but it does look like a pretty good assessment. Of course, unless there's some great relevation waiting for me in the denouement, it doesn't PROVE that false pretenses were used, but it certainly supports that opinion. It clearly and explicitly stops short of proving that they knew the intelligence was wrong. And it also supports the notion that they thought the intelligence was right, and were simply mistaken. I think Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack touches on this as well, and I highly recommend that book to any objective-minded reader who's interested in the effort to uncover truth regardless of one's ideological desires (hint hint).

Stop with the distractions and just admit you were wrong. While I certainly acknowledge KLB's point that a billion spent there is a billion that could have been spent elsewhere, this ultimately has little to do with the budget deficit, because we'd have to cut a lot more than the war in Iraq in order to bring spending inline with earnings. And other things could certainly be cut instead of the war in Iraq, if people were actually serious about cutting spending. So while that's an interesting discussion in itself, and certainly an important one, it's obvious that you've only raised it here as a distraction. I also happen to think that the war in Iraq doesn't HAVE to be sustainable. Pushing that angle is basically just the Vietnam comparison all over again. That's about "Making Sure We Lose in Iraq Because a Republican Made it Happen, 101". Sorry, not interested in blatant ideological posturing. Maybe you can sell that over at DemocraticUnderground.com, but not here. And by the way, that's exactly what I'm talking about when I accuse you of putting your ideology ahead of your intellectual honesty and integrity. Thanks for rendering us another example. Now will you answer my question? I asked you why you think it's okay to begin from one ideological viewpoint as a basis of assumption. Care to take a shot at defending your approach in this thread, instead of just throwing out defensive irrelevencies and obscuring what you said?

Sorry for the late reply (just got back from a wife-imposed-no-internet vacation). I thought the point KLB brought up about the partnering of christian groups was interesting -- thanks for passing that along. Regarding Senator Clinton, I know this is a little late, but it's worth noting that froma political perspective, she and her team seem to have identified this issue, along with issues like pornography and (especially) video games as areas where she can increase her appeal with the moderate middle. Since the Democratic nomination is considered all but done, she's working hard on moderate conservatives and these are some of the few areas where a Dem can have any appeal these days. And it's especially important to lay out this ground work early because she'll likely be spending most of the year 2008 working on the "can a female be president" issue. Of course, this will come back to hurt her if Al Gore or someone similar throws his hat into the ring.

The event in Miami this week would seem to have relevance in this discussion. What did you guys think about that? Was it an example of the FBI doing a great job "preventing another 9/11" (i.e. the subject of this thread), or was it an example of the FBI setting up a small time operation to make itself look good? Couple of links for those not familiar: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C06%5C25%5Cstory_25-6-2006_pg7_35 http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13529483/site/newsweek/ http://www.sptimes.com/2006/06/23/State/Miami_terrorists_wish.shtml

Too many options to really derive any interesting statistics from this.

Hey, back from vacation. I wish I didn't have to drag up old business again, but it's clear that my last post (here) wasn't read. Let me reiterate by way of reply: I'm at a loss how you can say that since you actually quoted me saying that my source was NOT the Wikipedia, but rather the famous 11th edition Brittanica. I also gave you more recent sources, which you quoted and again ignored. This is not a good sign of comprehension or serious debate interest (as opposed to mere proselytization) on your part. I'd appreciate it if you would please respond to what I actually said. I've never had a problem with you believing that we went to war under "false pretenses" (the inclusive phrase which you seem to want everyone to assume that everyone else parses as separate words rather than a specific phrase with a specific meaning that you happen to not like). That's your opinion, and you're welcome to it. I happen to disagree with you on that point, but that's no reason to ignore and then distort my sources. What I have a problem with is people spreading misinformation, such as what you are doing when you claim that it is a fact that we went to war under false pretenses. It isn't a fact. It's an opinion.

I'm gonna go with a thumbs-up on the tabs. It could use a little HCI tweaking, but it's pretty good and it feels like a small step up from Firefox. Firefox fans should be overjoyed with IE7. Competition only works when minds are open and objective. If you're a Firefox fan and are dissing IE7 without even a look-see, you can no longer -- ever -- claim that competition is a good thing, because you're not participating in it. 'Nuff said.

I've been testing Vista for a while now with my clients and students in mind, and I'm leaning towards recommending that everyone wait a few months after release before upgrading to Vista. None of my clients will get an "upgrade" endorsement from me until I've had a chance to test all of their applications under the final release of Vista. This is in stark contrast, by the way, with where I stood with my recommendations for Windows XP. I was very optimistic about XP. I am not optimistic at all about Vista for casual users. (Or Office 2007, for that matter.) Specifically, the new interface is going to require some employee training (not a huge deal, but necessary), and I see major issues regarding the new 3d environment and hardware requirements for businesses (especially smaller firms that rely on cheap hardware).

I happened to catch it live while I was eating my lunch that day, as a matter of fact. I generally agree with your interpretation of the purpose of the vote, but I also think it's important for congress to contribute to the debate in this manner. Bear in mind that their vote in support of the war itself was of exactly the same nature, but nobody can say that that vote was not important, because were it not for the faulty information they would be just as accountable as the president for this war (and as such, votes like this are therefore important). I hate to post and run, but I'm running out the door and won't be back for a week. I may get a chance to pop in for a few minutes here and there, but we're on vacation so I won't have time to say much. You guys have fun and be good in here.