Come on, don't be dense. The claim here is precisely that they weren't balancing risk and reward - they were overweighting their own immediate gains and underweighting the future risks, which were mostly to other people.

From the article:

"Estimates suggest that building a passenger-capable Startram would require 20 years and a construction budget (ignoring inflation and overoptimism) of about $60 billion."

So, triple it for a realistic estimate: $180 billion. Now, that sounds like a lot of money, but when you consider that the total amount of money flushed down the toilet for the Iraq war will probably be an order of magnitude above that, it's play money. We just have to convince people that there's oil in LEO.

I was going to say the same thing, but I decided to scroll down to see whether any one else said it before. The fact that I had to scroll down nearly to the bottom of the page before I finally found it depresses me. We should have the right to choose our leaders because no one else should have the right to choose them for us, not because we make the best choices.

No, because it wasn't an argument. It's a statement which is obviously meant to communicate the poster's view of what Canadian values are.

I'm no climate denier, but what he did was unethical. He should be fired, and possibly prosecuted if any crimes were committed.

You think it is "logical" that Obama is just itching to pass a federal version of a state decency law written by a bunch of conservative Republicans? That word, "logical", I do not think it means what you think it means.

That sure worked with local control of science standards and creationism, didn't it?

Irrelevant. "Joe may have killed someone, but Frank did too, so don't complain about Joe!" Being inconsistent in your calls for better treatment is much better than never calling for better treatment at all.

The whole point of exerting economic pressure through a boycott is to make it reasonable for a company to change their behavior to get you to buy their products again. Nobody, including people protesting, want to put anyone out of business. Also, and you might be surprised by this, but China is an authoritarian country. There can be dire consequences for protesting, and so you think they are happy, but really, they are forced by the government to be "content" with their lot. We know that conditions at Foxconn's factories have been bad in the past. There's no sense in saying "Oh, but those Chinese, their HAPPY about it!"

Time is not the cause of anything. Progress takes time, but that's because there's stuff that happens in time, like protests, political pressure, inspections, etc. You think slavery just ceased to exist because we gave it enough time? That shows a tremendous lack of historical understanding.

Yes, but "life" has both definitions and meaning.

1. Human imagination imagines beyond what is possible.
2. I cannot imagine a quantum computer.
3. Therefore, quantum computing is further beyond what is possible than my imagination.
4. By (1), quantum computing is beyond the possible.


At least it's valid. If you give me half the money, I can work out rest of the kinks.

You forgot the most important tool corporations have: Government.

Yes, but they aren't defined by your usage. "Liberal", except to US conservatives, means a political position that is marked by a desire to remove constraints on peoples' behavior. In the Western world, the people who use the word "liberal" to mean that far outnumber the people who take it to mean "people who disagree with the right wing in the US."

As another scientist, you are using the word "belief" in a way that almost no one, including other scientists, would use it. Following the evidence leads to justified belief. If your beliefs are justified by evidence, then of course your beliefs can change. Faith and belief, then, are not synonyms: faith is unjustified belief.

Put another way, you prefer the word "accept". What are you accepting? You've got half a metaphor there. When you find the other half, you'll see why you're really just talking about belief.

The laws of physics work the same way there that they do here...you don't actually have to go there to know how light will pass through the atmosphere...

Most animals also don't have a problem with rape. Your point is?

Oh, right, an appeal to nature. Ugh. Is that the best you can do?

"I don't get the opposition to hunting non-endangered humans. The people I'd like to hunt (mostly developmentally-disabled people), are nowhere near endangered, so why is there just so much opposition to the people hunting? Do these anti-human hunting people really have nothing better to do with their time and money than harassing human-hunting parties? Maybe they should just get into Magic the Gathering instead, eats time and money like nothing else...."

Seriously, if you think the amount of a particular species is the only thing relevant to the ethics of killing it, you aren't thinking about ethics very hard. The fact that your post was modded up is baffling. We can disagree on whether whales are intelligent enough to make killing them unethical (I think the evidence shows they probably are, and it is better to err on the side of not killing intelligent animals unnecessarily).

And then you belittle Sea Shepherd for acting in a principled manner and putting their lives and money on the line to fight something that a strong argument can be made (whether you agree with it or not) is like murder. While you might like playing Magic, at least they're out there fighting for something that has the potential to make the world a better place not just for future people, but other intelligent species as well.