Pangloss

I'm not sure the debate we're proposing will let you sleep easier, because it seems to me that the problem your having is one of faith, and the "evidence" only seems compelling because it's not challengable. The debate we'd have on this would be a remarkably one-sided one. You'd say something, and I would respond with "cite his source", to which you would respond with silence. Or you'll convey a circumstantial point (violating the rules of the debate), to which I will respond, "demonstrate how this proves collusion", for which you will have no reply either. In short, all I'm doing here is providing the critical thinking you should have already done before drawing the conclusion you've drawn. (You need to stop saying you haven't drawn any conclusions, by the way, because you keep going on to indicate that you've done exactly that. You're not splitting that hair very effectively at all.) So in short, I'm not trying to offend you -- if you want to believe that, by all means, more power to you. But the grounds for the debate I outlined above do not appear to exist at all. Again, I'm not really interested in a "where there's smoke there's fire" debate. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying I'm not interested. From my point of view, it would be like trying to convert a True Believer. Pointless. If you desire my participation, the onus is on you to demonstrate that you have something more than unanswered and unanswerable (on our part) allegations. (If you don't, no biggie, I won't think any less of you.)

So... it's okay to be offensive and attack people personally, when you've been offended?

Really. Okay. What (specifically) do you feel was contained in the above post (post #1) that you would consider to be "evidence"? And what (specifically) do you feel that it is evidence of? Not "that the government was collusive", I mean specifically what you believe that means they were actually doing that is evidence of collusion with the terrorists. Note that you used the word "evidence". I expect you, therefore, to either (a) adhere to the rules of evidence, or (b) choose a different word. What I'm looking for from you here is something along these lines: "Artifact #264 indicates markings of an unknown origin. I believe this indicates proof that aliens landed in Roswell in 1947." As opposed to something along these lines: "Nobody was actually looking at the sky on that fateful day in Roswell in 1947. Therefore I believe this is evidence that aliens landed." The key word here is "specific". Where-there's-smoke-there's-fire arguments carry zero weight with me. You can storm the castle all you want -- more power to you -- but you'll be storming it on your own.

18 things learned from the Schiavo case: 1) Jeb Bush, George W. Bush, and Tom Delay are all world renowned neurologists. 2) 22 successive court battles that all ended in exactly the same way means there is something wrong with the courts, not the Schindler's case. 3) Mike Schiavo is after money which is why he turned down 1 million dollars and 10 million dollars to sign over guardianship. 4) Congress and the State Legislature of Florida has nothing better to do than pry into the private medical affairs of others. 5) Pulling life support is bad in Florida when authorized by the legal next-of-kin, but pulling life support is good in Texas when you run out of money and the mother pleads not to pull the plug on her baby. 6) Medical diagnoses are best performed by watching highly editted videotape made by Randall Terry rather than in person by trained physicians. 7) Minimum wage making nursing assistants are more qualified to diagnose a persistant vegetative state than experienced neurologists. 8) Cerebral spinal fluid is a magical potion that can mimic the entire functions of a missing cerebral cortex. 9) 15 years in the same persistant state is not really enough time to make an accurate diagnosis. 10) A feeding tube that infuses yellow nutritional goop is not really "life support". 11) Jesus was wrong when he said that a man and woman should leave their parents and cleave only to each other. 12) Marriage is the most sacred of all unions, except when it isn't. 13) Interfering in a family's private tragedy is a great reason to cut short a vacation, but getting a memo that warns a known terrorist is determined to strike inside the US is cause to relax and finish up some R&R. 14) Pro-lifers are really compassionate people which is why they are hoping that Michael Schiavo dies a horrible painful death. 15) The Supreme Court of the United States and the State Supreme Court of Florida mean "Maybe" when they are saying "No!". 16) Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a bleeding heart liberal. 17) 7 Supreme Court Justices were appointed by republican presidents, so it's Clinton's fault. 18) A judge who makes rulings based on the law is obviously an atheist, liberal, democratic activist even though he is a conservative, republican, Southern Baptist

No, Syntax, he's saying that it's ample evidence that TT has plenty of words to express. He's not defending his position on the 9/11 commission. (grin)

Well put Phi. TT, you just blew by something really important at 80mph. You agreed with Phi that special interests are too dominant in Washington, and then went on to try and tell us that special interests are trying to hammer this point home. Are you not aware that those "activists and protesters" are special interests? Why would you view them as being any different from corporate lobbyists?

What progress would that be? As far as I can tell, the only successes that the UN has had under his leadership have been sporadic humanitarian efforts that should never have been necessary in the first place if the UN was working. I'm not saying the UN should be disolved, I'm just wondering how we can view Anan as being successful. This is a leader who seems to operate on the fundamental principle that peace is necessary at all costs, and should never, ever have any kind of teeth or force behind it, period, end of story. How does that ever work, exactly?

Well I'm going to respecfully disagree about Anan. He's an ineffectual leader with a long history of ineffectualness in programs that really could have used some.... (uh oh, caught by my own poor choice of adjectives)... effectualness. He makes Clinton's teflon look like the bottom of a 1978 Jeep Wrangler that's been parked on the Jersey shore for 20 years. The guy has that wide-eyed "don't blame me, it's the system" look down to a science. I definitely agree with your suggestions about defining some of these things. They have tried to do that, but thus far without success. Lack of leadership and the tragedy-of-the-commons attitudes by the member nations are why.

There you go again, off like a rocket, making Oliver Stone proud. You need to stop letting Syntax draw you out so much that you keep falling off the deep end. You sound like one of those chiropracters who try to stick with simple back massage but who secretly believe that subluxions are real. This is an amusing last-word contest, but it lost its discussion value several pages ago. Flip a coin or something. Loser gets the last word in the next one.

Yes. Although how the peoples of the post-apocalyptic world are going to manage all that intercontinental travel is beyond me. Cash in their frequent-outrigger miles, I suppose.

David Brin explores this a bit in "Kiln People", which is a good read (nominated for a Hugo, as I recall).

Maybe this thread has ALWAYS been here.....

You're right, that could be a tipping point thing. I like that idea. I'll try to remember to bring it up again here when the mid-term election comes around and we can all start chain letters or something. I've flipped through a couple chapters of that book but I've got a couple others stacked on top of it at the moment. It does look interesting.

People who vote for Democrats or Republicans often feel like they're throwing their vote away as well. That's one of the perceptions we need to work on. One thing I started to do in 2004 (and to a much lesser extent in 1999) is to email all my friends and family members over the months before the election and remind them about voting. Letting them know it's important for them to do it, and that it also matters to me. I figure it probably means a lot more coming from a friend or relative than it does coming from some celebrity on "Rock the Vote". I always made sure not to impose my opinions about whom they should vote for, and I included a number of links to election information for their area, including how to register, how to find out where they should go to vote, and (most importantly!) sites where they could read non-partisan issue summaries. (Several threads I posted here on SFN back in the summer and fall of 2004 was straight out of the stuff I collected for friends and family. I actually learned a lot myself while doing this, and it really wasn't a lot of work at all.) Anybody reading this is probably pretty familiar with the Internet, and I'll bet all of us have friends and/or relatives who are completely helpless with a computer. Take a few minutes and collect some information for them. Why not? It really doesn't take much work, and it could make a big difference to someone.

oh snap!

Not sure I understand the question.

Yeah, that's not really a concern. The kind of things you'd want to watch for would include: - Stepping on decayed/rusted components and/or getting otherwise punctured by them (tetanus, lead poisoning, etc) - A broken/crushed/melted components (capacitors, for example, usually have pretty toxic and corrosive substances inside, such as tantalum pentoxide, which are pretty nasty if they get ingested) - Batteries leaking fluid (same deal, and virtually every computer has at least one battery inside) In short, a fairly advanced state of decay. Your desktop computer is unlikely to be rusted out, for example. Your main concern is not being electrocuted. Make sure it's plugged into the wall, but turned off, and you'll be fine.

Some valid points there, Flareon. But do we need someone to unify us, or do we need to stop behaving like children and unify ourselves? W doesn't exist in a vacuum.... (It's... like... surrounded by 25 other letters... ar ar)

Wow, I kinda pushed the vicious button with that subject line, didn't I? I came back to the board and just noticed that someone had started a really mean-spirited thread about Tom DeLay, and then remembered it was me! (hehe) I must be channeling Al Franken today or something. (grin)

Another way of looking at it might be to point out that it happens, in the end, with every computer, which is why recycling efforts have been particularly strident about computers. Dell has a deal where you can ship them any old computer and they'll dispose of it (look it up on their web site, it's an interesting program). The problem is that we tend to ship the problem overseas rather than actually dealing with it. The "recycled" computers tend to go to big international corporations which ship them to countries with low-wage labor (often barefoot children) who break them down in a very unsafe manner. There was a story going around a couple of years ago about Chinese children being contaminated by pollution from busted-up American computers. This has been well documented by western media but might be a little obscure to find. Run some searches on Google and mix up the keywords a good bit. In general if a US dump site is properly contained and maintained, it's not a problem, you can put ANYTHING in there. They keep those things far from ground water and actually put containment liners around them to keep that stuff from spreading. The EPA has a lot of regulations about that. I think the recycling of computers has been more or less a mixed bag -- we've ended up dumping the problem on other countries when we should have just dumped them in a landfill. But that's the politics of recycling for you.

The Wall Street Journal, in today's official editorial, has finally thrown in the towel on Tom DeLay. As you may know, the Journal is one of the few strongly conservative editorial voices in the mainstream print media (the Washington Times and the New York Post are the other two "big" names that leap to mind, but the Journal really has the most clout). They do a very good job of offering counterpoint on their op/ed pages, but their official opinions are always strongly conservative. Because of those alternate voices (it's quite a popular thing for well-known liberals and moderates to write op/eds for the Journal), the "Opinion Journal" is one of my regular stops on the Internet. (http://www.opinionjournal.com -- one of the two places on the Internet worth registering for, IMO, the other being the NY Times) (The Journal, by the way, is where Bernard Goldberg slit his own throat rather spectacularly, accusing his own network of media bias, leading to his ouster at CBS News and a new career as a writer. But it's amazing how many famous people of leftward persuation have written op/eds for the Journal. Former presidents often write for this page. I think it has just become generally accepted that it's a conservative paper, but as I said, they are extremely consistent about offering liberal op/ed of extremely high quality, very often. Much like the way the New York Times offers conservative op/ed.) http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006479 It requires registration to view, so I'll quote some highlights below. You can also get a login name and password from http://www.bugmenot.com. The key thing here is that they're basically saying DeLay is f*cked. Look for this to more or less mark the end his career. When the Wall Street Journal throws in the towel on a conservative politician, you pretty much know it's over. It's also a pretty good run-down and general summary of the issue, in terms of what exactly he did and why it's a problem. (It's worth noting that they don't say anything about DeLay using Terri Schiavo as a distraction. That's probably because the Journal supported the parents rather vociferously. They were almost as ardent about it as Fox News Channel.)

I voted for the Libertarian candidate for US House for my district in November. Lincoln Diaz-Ballart (a strongly conservative Republican) was (and still is) my current representative. I had some problems with his position on various issues, most recently when he refused to prop up the assault weapons ban not long before the election. I wrote him about that, and received a letter back saying they were going to pursue a new bill on that after the new year. (Not surprisingly, no such legislation is on the horizon. The issue has been forgotten completely.) He had no Democrat running against him -- like I believe about half the House, he was essentially running unopposed. I ranted about this at great length -- basically the Presidential election sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere. Oh well. But I'm generally not a vote-against guy -- I much prefer to vote for a candidate. Which leads us to one of the problems with third-party candidates. It's really hard to get information about them.

I don't want to digress too far, but I don't believe that the President's purpose is to "do his best to reduce freedoms". That's the unintended effect of bad policy instituted for the wrong reasons. Most of the time he's trying to accomplish goals which are, as stated, good or at least benign. Interestingly, that's not really the case here -- there's no way he could have signed that Texas law without considering the possibility of a case like the one discussed above -- that was the entire purpose of the law! So his position on Schiavo is (and can only be) hypocritical. You can't really say that about, say, the Patriot Act. The water is relatively muddy there -- it's possible for a politician to be mislead. Anyway, if we want to get into this further, it should really be on the Politics board.

Thanks! The bit with the guy telling you to cry to Joe Lieberman, and Sayo asking what that would do, was classic SFN. (grin)

Interesting points. Obviously not a 100% correlation (since many factors can cause despotism), but the relationship is quite clear. Well put.