You're conflating two tangential issues; freedom of speech with the morality of the substance of said speech. As distasteful as it may be, I support someone's (or some group's) right to boycott a company (using such "strong arm" tactics, if you will) even if it is in support of an immoral (or just plain wrong) ideal. I reserve MY right to call them out on it and to ignore their boycott, too.

Social pressure has always been used as a tool for change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but it, in and of itself, is a good thing.

Looks like he was spot on with his addressing of EXACTLY what you said that he quoted. It ain't a strawman if it came out of your own mouth (or from your own hand, anyway).

I am not sure where you are going with this, but I think, much like Al Qaeda, Che was a monster of our own making. I wouldn't glamorize Che for what he did, but I would for the origins of why he did it. The standard and expected (perhaps in hindsight, anyway) effects of American imperialistic practices in Latin America radicalized him, and he acted. Maybe he didn't choose the best expression of his righteous outrage, but there is little doubt that his outrage was appropriately righteous.

Yes, it also applies to rowdy teenagers who just want to stay up all night on a school night and their fascist parents ordering them to bed.

No, it only really matters at the government level, when the threat of violence, imprisonment, and death can be brought to bear. Social pressures do not come anywhere NEAR that level of severity and seriousness.

That's all the Freedom of Speech covers in the Constitution -- against the government denying it (and only in America and a handful of other countries with similar protections to boot). It doesn't apply to all other (private) situations, legally.

No one had to enter his mind to patrol his thoughts -- he expressed them and acted on them publicly for all to see.

I love it when people try to spin things like this as "attacks" on "religious freedom". No one said he couldn't hold his opinion or his personal beliefs. However, he didn't just hold the belief, he acted on it. Also, there is nothing saying that having any particular personal belief (or lack of) entitles you to employment, let alone in a leadership role.

Holding demonstrably wrong beliefs should be at least challenged, if not penalized; otherwise, what's anyone's incentive to change them?

It isn't bigotry to be intolerant of bigotry, or, if it is, then there is a good kind of bigotry. Your choice.

Far worse? Perspective check, please. He supported Prop 8 monetarily. The calls for his resignation or that he address his bigotry were words.

As for the rest, you're treading dangerously close to standard professional victimhood claims.

I don't know..

Would you feel the same if he was a supporter of white supremacy and gave money to the KKK? Or if he was a holocaust denier and gave money to anti-semitic groups? If it was just a freedom of speech issue, would even these extreme positions make a difference?

If he felt strongly about his position, I think he should have defended it with vigor. The problem is that his position is both logically and morally indefensible, so even if he did defend it with vigor, it would have only made things worse.

It isn't about being a standout/maverick in a position of authority, it is about being wrong in a position of authority.

I find it more reprehensible that more people authority don't understand this concept.

As far as you know? Have you bothered to look?

First off, you need to realize that there are a lot of different climate models, modeling different parts of the climate system. No one model is representative of the entire climate system, as it is too big and complex for a single statistical model -- so far. That said, there are a number of models which do very well, both in terms of hindcasting and forecasting for the specific area they were created to model. Quite a few of them are overly conservative, meaning that they under-projected the deviations due to climate change.

If you want to really understand how to interpret how the models work and what their output means, I would suggest starting here.

This is woefully inaccurate. I don't know of any models which assume only positive feedbacks (well, I guess there are a few very old models pre-1990 which might, but I don't think anyone uses or references them any longer).

Yes, the Earth's climate is a fairly stable system, HOWEVER there have been periods of rapid change which cannot be accounted for by simply considering "more CO2 = hotter". The science behind both positive and negative feedbacks in the climate system is still a bit nascent, at least in terms of determining where the "tipping points" are, but the physics behind the feedback processes is pretty well-established at this point.

I don't consider myself a "warmist"; I simply follow the science with a skeptical eye. I have yet to see anything that I would consider discounts AGW/CC wholesale, but I am always looking. In the meantime, I am going to go on the premise that it is largely correct and change my lifestyle to address it, and urge others to follow suit.

After all, if climate science turns out to be completely wrong, I won't have any remorse for creating a better world as a result.

Even without the projections, it makes sense to eliminate using otherwise human food for gas tanks. It is a stupid and immoral policy that should have never been given the green light in the first place.

It isn't, by the very definition of the word "religion".

Disagreement with a basic fact of language isn't a very good basis for an argument, respectful or not.

The key word in your assertion is "currently". There is little evidence to suggest that global T is in a long-term levelling-off trend, and plenty of evidence that it will rise significantly in the near term, just like it has repeatedly in previous periods.

To simply look at a very small window of data and infer long-term trends (or the lack thereof) from it is the epitome of cherry-picking, hence:

The Escalator

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." -- Inigo Montoya

anarchy
[an-er-kee] Show IPA
noun
1.a state of society without government or law.
2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy. Synonyms: lawlessness, disruption, turmoil.
3.anarchism ( def 1 ) .
4.lack of obedience to an authority; insubordination: the anarchy of his rebellious teenage years.
5.confusion and disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith. It was impossible to find the book I was looking for in the anarchy of his bookshelves. Synonyms: chaos, disruption, turbulence; license; disorganization, disintegration.

Now, you can call yourself whatever you want, but if you support any government regulation, you're not an anarchist, by definition.

I'm part of the "regulations crowd", and I most assuredly DO get it.

You point to a number of things in your propaganda which are patently false or misleading.

The first thing is that regulations are not intended to "create some magical inviolate barrier" to fraud and other shenanigans. They are designed to lessen such things, and bring them to light sooner than without. That's all that regulation can really do -- to foster an environment where such things are minimalized, even if they can't be totally eliminated.

The second thing is that the financial sector has been massively DE-regulated over the last two decades (and even farther back than that, if you want to include the removal of usury ceilings in the 70s). The prime reasons why the recent massive financial meltdown occurred aren't due to a failure of regulation, but of a failure TO regulate.

As it relates to BitCoin, REAL regulation would provide that their accounting and security methods were audited regularly, and that they maintain proper reserves of money to meet the payment demands of their clients.

While regulation wouldn't prevent the exchange from failing, it likely would have been caught sooner, and less people would have been impacted for less money.

At the very least, I would never assent to put any significant amount of money in any BitCoin exchange unless it submitted to some kind of third-party auditing and financial standards, absent real regulation. To do otherwise is simply throwing your money down a drain.

Now would you call the science on that subejct "settled"? Would it still have been "settled" if he proved himself wrong with that stunt?

The point is that science isn't ever "perfect", but at some point, it is good enough to be useful. At that point you can call it "settled". It doesn't mean that all research and understanding of the subject is complete, but, for at least some aspects of it are well enough understood to the point where further argument of them becomes fruitless.

I also think you are grossly mischaracterizing what amounts to healthy scientific skepticism of his hypothesis until he had evidence to back it up. Yes, he was right, and the research eventually supplied the needed evidence to validate his claims. That's the way science works, and should work. You can't just make a claim and expect people to accept it on your say-so alone. Up until then, the science had been "settled", just as it is now with his work, and, until the next person comes along and upsets the applecart, it is "settled".

I think the problem is in the way lay people (mis)use and/or (mis)understand scientific terms, like "theory", not with the method and practice of science itself.

Maybe I am just old-school, but I don't see the attraction to F2P games (in terms of alternate monetization methods -- not totally free games). I would much rather pay a fair (but not exorbitantly high) price up-front for a game I think I would like, or have heard about, or even played the trial version of, rather than downloading for free, and dealing with micropayments, in-game advertising, or other bullshit when I just want to relax and get a little entertainment, an escape from all that crap.

This is the model I plan to use for all my games as well, and I have no plans to use Steam in their distribution, either.