If the Higgs field is "disturbingly like" the luminiferous aether theory, then so are electromagnetic fields. :p

Burn the heretic! Burn! Death to the heathen infidels! Burn! *chews on desk, mouth frothing* ;)

90% of scientists from the relevant field as well as 90% of all scientists agree with anthropogenic climate change. In the world of science, this is what we call a "scientific consensus" and it's a pretty overwhelming one at that. If man is indeed affecting the climate, then at the very least we can reduce the things we are doing that affect it.

I can never get over just how fervent the climate change denialist religion is. On one side of the argument, we have 90% of all scientists, representing every conceivable nationality, set of political views, economic status, and funding source. On the other side of the argument, we have a small group of "scientists" from a single political ideology from a narrow range of customers all of whom draw their paychecks from oil companies, coal companies, and/or right wing think tanks. The most prominent, most published, most cited member of this group is someone either so incompetent he literally doesn't know degrees from radians, or is a staggeringly deceitful fraudster.

http://crookedtimber.org/2004/08/25/mckitrick-mucks-it-up/

Based on work of this quality, millions of conservolibertarians have concluded that 90% of the scientists in the world are participating in a vast and incredibly complex conspiracy to... what? Make American rightists feel bad? Conservolibertarians never seem to be very clear on the goals of this massive and complex international supposed-conspiracy.

Ah well. Once someone adopts a religious view, they will cling to it no matter what evidence is presented to them.

But the reason this has traction is that Microsoft has a long history of doing sleazy things to undermine those it considers competition. I do think Microsoft has improved in this regard and finally understands how it hurts their public perception when they do underhanded things to competitors, but the public still remembers how Microsoft used to be, and you can't really blame people for jumping to these particular conclusions. If Microsoft hasn't done so many things like this in the past, then stories like this wouldn't gain traction without firmer evidence to back it up.

Look, I'm a liberal, and I found this to be funny. He was pretending to be from Microsoft and was pretending to be a FOX News zombie, and in that character he listed off a bunch of phrases that any conservolibertarian might want to block for fear that any site using such a phrase might also contain information contrary to the usual right wing propaganda. I do not believe the author's intent was to offer any actual commentary on any of the phrases nor was there any intent in trivializing any of the issues associated with those phrases. It was simply a list of phrases likely to make a right wingnut fearful and/or angry.

The target of this humor was Microsoft and to a lesser extent conservolibertarians. I do not think any slight to the severity of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was intended.

There certainly are women like that, but I don't understand how anyone could assume that all women are like that.

Good programmers can pick up new languages as needed, and do so quite quickly. Bad ones, not so much.

To conservolibertarians, there are only three political ideologies. If you agree with the right wing propaganda (FOX News, Limbaugh, rightist think tanks, etc.), you are a conservative. If you disagree with FOX News, Limbaugh, et. al. on the topic of drugs and isolationism but agree with everything else, then you are a libertarian. Every single other political view in the entire world gets lumped together under "socialism".

So from there point of view, what you mention is socialism by definition, simply because it is not in line with right wing propaganda. This also explains why they can occasionally look at two opposing positions on a particular issue and declare both to be communist/socialist. You have to remember that they may use the same words, but those words have different meanings to them.

They're not just evil, they're insane. Once released, you can't control where they go, a lesson that should have been learned from the Bubonic Plague, but apparently neither Soviets nor Americans learned our lessons from history. :(

The reason AMD's drivers suck is that they only have to be as good as nVidia's, which these days is a very low bar to meet. It used to be nVidia made good drivers and that was the main reason to purchase a nVidia card, but sadly that doesn't seem to be true any longer. Instead of forcing AMD to come up to nVidia's level, nVidia chose to sink to AMD's level.

Experts say Macs will be targeted more and more in upcoming years. Low market share is no longer protecting the platform, it seems.

If so, they're not doing a very good job. Texas is one of the most polluted states in the country.

...most creationists on this planet are Muslim or Hindu, and in case you haven't noticed, in Muslim areas, the mosque has enormous influence over not only the state, but places hard restrictions on academia in what conclusions they can and cannot reach.

Many high school teachers still teach that a scientific theory "becomes a law" after testing, when in fact theories and laws are entirely separate things. Much is wrong with our science education in this country, I'm afraid, and bronze age fairy tales are only part of the problem. :(

"Scientists" who believe in a young universe are only able to maintain their position through lies and bad logic. Most creationists have been deceived, so we can't call them liars, but YEC "scientists" are in a position to actually know better, and so it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that they are lying.

When we have two competing theories, we meticulously go through all of the evidence and see how each theory explains the evidence. In every case, the Talking Snake Theory of Creation either offers no explanation, or offers an explanation that is the opposite of what we find in the evidence. The Talking Snake Theory of Creation is falsifiable and in fact has already been falsified. It is only taken seriously by the deceivers and the deceived.