That is why I never use absolute statements.

Just so you know, both parties aggressively pursue the expanded police state. If anything, the Dems push the boundaries and the GOP solidifies the gains.

Strongly agree with the first sentence. Strongly disagree with the second. You do remember that the god-awful patriot act was pushed by republicans, right?

When it comes to claiming and not releasing power, I don't see much of any difference.

The only 2 planks of the republican party I agree with are smaller government...

Since when do the republicans *actually* represent smaller government? Certainly, they do no better than democrats when it comes to total spending.

As far as I can tell, when they say "small government" all they really mean is "no regulations on business."

Your argument might have more merit if you can explain how so many people who are poor and come from nothing but the clothes on their back and manage to become wealthy. Are they all, each and every one helpless to achieve without the government providing them everything?

The argument is not that it is absolutely impossible to achieve if you come from a poor background. That argument is patently false, as you well know.

I think what the previous poster was getting at was the fact that if you take two people of equal ability and plop one down in a rich family and one down in a poor family, it is extremely likely that the person in the richer family will end going to college, finding a better job, etc. whereas the person in the poorer situation is much more likely to turn to crime as the best way of getting by.

I think that to a certain extent, a certain amount of such disparity is unavoidable, but I also think that we should, as a society, try to avoid these kinds of differences as much as possible by investing in schools, healthcare, etc. to try to give each person an equal chance at success.

How to create equal opportunities is a much larger discussion...

The "improbable cell" is a very common straw man put forth by the creationists. Certainly, you are right, there is essentially zero chance that a single cell could spring into existence from nothing, which is why no scientist worth their salt would ever make such a claim.

Instead, the first cells came about only after a lot of molecular evolution happened. This is pretty common knowledge.

If indeed AGW is such a threat, such a dire situation, then everyone should be more than willing to set aside their anti-nuke bias and ignorance and embrace it as the one way we can solve this problem.

Yes, nuclear is an option, and yes, we should explore it objectively (as if that's even possible at this point..), but it is hardly accurate to say that if you accept AGW, it follows that you must endorse nuclear or you are a horrible hypocrite.

The trouble is that there has been so much FUD around AGW that we haven't been able to even have the conversation about what we're going to do about it.

Most likely, though, there isn't going to be one solution. There will be many, depending on where you live. Geothermal energy works great in Iceland, not so much in Arizona. Arizona gets a lot of sun, though, so solar is more feasible there, but not in Seattle. Seattle could use tidal energy, though, which wouldn't then work in Wisconsin. You get the idea - tap into the resource that is nearby.

you are picking a hundred year window, and saying anyone that uses a different window is wrong.

Um. No. That is nothing like what the article is saying. The article is saying that there is a natural, periodic cooling trend that runs about every 11 years. Furthermore, this trend is sitting on top of a general *increase* in temperature.

To put it another way, think of the 11-year cooling trend as a sawtooth function. If you just sample the downhill section, it will look like a decreasing function, but over time, it is constant.

Now, take the above function and overlay a positively slopped function that has a slope less than the absolute value of the negatively sloping section of the sawtooth. The result is that you can cherry pick periods of time and still claim a decrease, but if you look at a period of time beyond the known 11-year oscillation, you see an increase.

yeah, because "I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year 'reconstruction'." would mean something entirely different if it was in context.

Well, I looked at the email, and unfortunately, the rest of the email doesn't really provide much more context or an explanation of why the author of that comment dislikes that paper.

As such, we have little information, other than knowing that one scientist doesn't much like the work of another scientist. There is nothing in the criticism of this one, specific paper to indicate anything other than professional rivalry.

In fact, looking over these emails, I see evidence of frustration and a desire to convince people, but I don't see anything that indicates a widespread cover-up. As before, nothing to see here that undermines the science...

Sadly, I think we are heading towards justifiable violence as the only means to take back control of our countries and our lives. Protests and legislative bodies are accomplishing next to nothing and the situation is getting so bad, that my only choice will ultimately be violence or incarceration.

I hear your frustration, but let's give this more time. The thing about non-violent protest is that it takes a lot of time to work. Note that the African-American civil rights movement ran for 13 years.

The Arab spring and popular protests across Europe and the US haven't even hit the one year mark, but already the national (and international) dialogue is changing, as evidenced by this very thread.

Yes, there is a lot of bad shit going down, but for the first time in a while, there is reason to hope that change will come. Just be sure to take *some* kind of (non-violent) action to push that change.

They could also provide this benefit via donations to charity.

You're right. They could provide this benefit through charity, but they don't. When that changes, we can disband the government.

First of all, I agree with what you said.

On the flip side, though, there are a lot people labeling taxation as theft without recognizing the benefit (ie, roads, schools, safe food, etc.) that are purchased through taxes.

we have a perfectly functional system for overthrowing the government on a periodic basis: voting.

That is probably the funniest thing I've seen posted here for a long time. Our election system is broken. In our system, two major sources of power (ie, the political parties) pick a handful of candidates and let the people fight about which one of the pre-chosen people they want to be in power.

Furthermore, the winner is decided in part by the people, but there is a LOT of money that gets spent in elections and the more money you can spend, the more likely you are to win. Right now, the only practical political choices boil down to either a Republican or Democrat, both of which are run by a small group of elite. This is why we have things like the Bush dynasty - do you really believe that father and son were both president because of their merits and not their wealth and influence? Hell, on the other side of the coin, we almost had a Clinton dynasty starting when Hillary was showing real potential to take the oval office.

If that's not enough to start you questioning our "perfectly functional" system, I would suggest you read all of the articles posted on slashdot about the trouble with the voting machines used in most elections!

To change this, we first need enough people in the streets to generate enough political capital for someone to step up and try to represent these new voices. Even if that doesn't work, they are already having an effect. Without them being on streets, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, and the longer they stay on the streets, the more people will talk about why they are there and these ideas will start to spread.

My only hope is that this kind of movement can generate enough momentum to actually cause a change.

FYI, you would be a lot more convincing if you stopped just linking to things that you've said already. I tried to follow your argument, but I kept on seeing you do some of your own analysis of situations, then link to your analyses as fact.

You may have some very good points, but you are so deep in your own layers of thinking that it is hard to believe anything you say and I don't personally feel that it is worthwhile to spend long hours digesting every little point that some dude posted on the internet.

I get it, you want to fleece the rich.

Well, that's the strawman version of the argument.

Right now, it is possible for a single worker to produce more than every before in history. Given that statement, we may expect that right now our society is, for the average person, more wealthy and that we have more free time than ever before. It turns out, though, that all of these great gains in wealth, etc. are concentrated in the top few percentages of people.

That is the specific complaint - that the income/wealth gap is spreading and that the only solution offered by the politicians (specifically by the GOP) is to put more money in the hands of the wealthy, as if all of our economic woes are due to the rich just not having enough money, which is total, complete, utter bullshit. If that is the solution, why is there a problem?

It is painfully obvious that we need a fairly significant shift in our thinking. We also need to stop sitting around reducing the "other side" to a bunch of whiny, stupid, people. There are smart folks in the Tea Party and there are smart folks in the Green Party, and they all have valid, if incomplete, perspectives.