You assume that the knowledge that was public at the time matches what was known by the oil cartel which came into being rather earlier back in the times of Standard Oil. What the public thinks it knows about anything important is mostly lucrative and convenient lies foisted on them. For example, the public does not even know what oil is. Let me give you a hint: it is also being pumped up from extremely deep wells.

Ah, you have half a clue. Vast amounts of tar sands indeed. Vast amounts of oil all over the place, actually. Brazil, Cuba, Prudhoe Bay, and so on and on and on. If the public would know just how vast, they would revolt and not be prepared to pay the current excessive energy prices. That is why this Peak-oil nonsense is being sold to you time-and-again in bullshit articles such as the one above.

Reality check: land-based oil close to the surface carries a production cost of only a couple of dollars. Of that kind of oil, there are still vast supplies. In Iraq for example. That is why that country has been kept in a perpetual state of being messed up for a century now. It is even why it was created into being by drawing the borders as they were drawn by the western powers that be, with 1/3 Kurdish, 1/3 Shia, and 1/3 Sunni territory to ensure continual political instability. Guess what happened after the Iraqi's even so got their act together and elected a democratic government...

It is basic economics: the price point is determined by supply and demand. Artificial scarcity is a much better way to up the price up than trying to work on the demand side. This scam is being pulled not just with oil, but also with diamonds , land, foodstuffs, water, and so on. Think of it like hidden taxes levied by the criminals that rule you.

What if this physical reality is not as absolute as it mostly appears? What if the perception-warping effects of psychedelic drugs show that fundamentally this reality is subjective and flexible? What if it is really an adaptive stage, a credible illusion, in which we play out the role called "life"?

If true, that would certainly explain why we are so easily addicted to and feel at home in RPGs as we would be born role players.

With NVidia unable to release something competitive and therefore creating a "new" 3xx series into being through renaming 2xx series cards, the gts360m as well, those with a clue will be buying ATI for the time being.

Sadly, the average consumer will only look at higher number and is likely to be conned.

Ah yes, another attempt to sell the big lie that CO2-induced global warming is causing sea levels to rise.

I guess I should have said "if there's any good science".

That the article has caused controversy, made an editor resign, and had to be published in a non-mainstream journal in order not to be censored is predictable given its politically contentious implications. But that does not make it bad science.

Why do you not address its contents? What specifically about the experiments or methods is bad science? Oh, that's right, nothing: it presents clear-cut evidence of the presence of thermitic material in the WTC dust. The implications are obvious.

I've spent a lot of time at the various WTC conspiracy Web site and if there's any real science...

There is. Plenty of it. For example linked in the very post you were responding to. Here is that link again http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM.

Why? The Fermi-Dirac statistics hold up in dramatically inertial systems and have been reproduced in microgravity as well.

One can indeed derive very general results based on the underlying symmetry of particles. This says little about the general applicability of the aspects of quantum theory not based on symmetry argumentation: it is possible to conceive competing theories that encompass the same symmetries. Quantum theory may fall prey to falsification (once that is actually allowed), group theory is not going away.

It is actually kinda surprising that GR and QM have the accuracies they do.

Not really, given that experimental results at odds with the predictions of both theories are being censored away.

You are correct that we do not have an independent test for non-local physics of ANY sort, however we also lack any independent test for non-local intelligence so in effect arguing that local physics is only valid locally directly corresponds with solipsism.

I was not trying to argue precisely that. Instead, I was trying to indicate that applying a theory in a domain that is very different from the domain where the theory has been matched to nature is highly unlikely to yield truthful predictions. The reason for that is that physical theories are approximate descriptions of nature. As the experimental domain in which a theory is verified is extended, and supposing it does not get falsified in the mean time, this approximate description is elaborated and refined.

Take quantum theory. Early on, it was a description of electronic energy levels in atoms. Then the electron-spin was discovered, experimentally. This caused the theory to be elaborated with an additional spin term for the wavefunction. The underlying particle model (the electron postulated to be a point particle) was not changed (which is rather silly because a point cannot rotate). Instead the spin was declared to be "intrinsic". In short, quantum theory is a dubious patchwork that sort of works in the domain where it has been matched to experiment because it has been modified to accord with experiment. Applying such a theory to a wholly different domain (the dynamics of the universe as a whole instead of the dynamics of a tiny speck of matter) and expecting it to produce accurate predictions is silly.

The verification of advanced physical theories is not cheap.

High-energy physics and cutting-edge astrophysical observations definitely are not cheap. However that is intrinsic to the experimental tools used in those pursuits. Many relatively cheap table-top experiments have been done to check advanced physical theories. Take, for example, experiments in the field of quantum optics.

Why are there so many high-redshift objects in the background that do not seem to be ejecting yet higher-redshifted objects?

Because there is a distance->redshift relationship as well. Why? Maybe the universe is really expanding. Maybe one of the "tired light" hypotheses matches reality.

Why are there no high-blueshift objects in the foreground being ejected on opposite vectors or with different mass-energy states?

That would be expected if whatever is causing these non-distance-related shifts is the Doppler effect. As I argued before, that is highly unlikely because the shifts are all to the red. Moreover, as the angular distance between the "parent galaxy" and the redshifted object increases, the redshift tends to decrease: it seems that the redshift decreases as the object ages.

Obviously, some new physics is required to model this aspect of nature as the current theoretical framework in no way allows for such redshifts and galaxy spawning dynamics. It also implies that the current theoretical framework is woefully incomplete to an extent that I consider tantamount to falsification.

In any case, to really understand why the collection of epicycles that is modern cosmology is being kept alive and patched up, instead of revised from the ground up, you have to look at what is important. Cosmology as such is not important on a human scale. However, cosmology is founded on physics, and physics is very important to everyday human endeavors. The BB model is the poster-child application of GR: it is in defense of GR that the BB cosmology is being kept alive. If one of the many falsifications of GR is ever going to be acknowledged instead of censored, the BB model will finally go where it belongs: in the trashcan together with GR. And then we will finally be able to have some proper physics instead of the current farce.

That is: when scientist A finds anomalous results, it is expected -- and good science -- for scientists B, C, and D to find evidence for or against the anomalous results.

Sure, if scientists B, C, and D are as impartial as you imply. However, in practice when sacred dogma is being challenged by anomalous observations or experiments done by scientist A, well-funded scientists B, C, and D pop up to produce "evidence" to cast doubt on the anomalous finding. And for good measure, scientist A is subjected to character assessination. See for example what happened to Rusi Taleyarkhan. http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/bubblegate/BubblegatePortal.shtml

In short: science is in part about persuasion, and the highest quality of evidence is (almost always) the most persuasive argument available.

You have too rosy a view of scientific practice. Scientific practice is also about perception, and the highest level of funding tends to determine what people can be made to believe. See for example how the anthropogenic global warming theory was pushed.

The scientific method is what grounds science in reality. The further scientific practice deviates from a pure exercise of the scientific method, the less faith one should put in the truthfulness of the models and theories produced thereby,

"Silly" is something you should justify if you expect to be taken seriously. Name-calling is the least persuasive argument available.

It is silly on multiple levels. For one, it is a complex addition to the BB model with weak theoretical and observational grounding. On the scale of the universe, quantum theory has not been tested experimentally. Applying it to the universe as a whole is therefore quite a leap of faith. Moreover, there is a lot of theoretical leeway in which you can. Also, it has not been possible to marry quantum theory to general relativity. This makes it likely that at least one of the two is wrong. So applying both at the same time is excessively risky.

You know that reading this sentence strictly, an obvious answer is "relative motion introduces a Doppler shift", right?

Looking at Arp's observations, the interpretation that high-redshift objects are being ejected from "foreground" galaxies seems inescapable. For a Doppler shift to explain that, the objects would always have to be ejected away from our line of sight at fair fraction of the speed of light. Utterly implausible. The redshift must have a different origin.

You seem to imply that when a majority of observations js in accordance with a theory, this somehow outweighs a minority of observations that are at odds with it. The scientific method is not about majority voting.

I understand that people like to have a viable alternative theory. However, I hope yo will agree that even without providing an alternative theory, it is perfectly valid to engage in falsification.

I concur that theories and models of nature, even though falsified, can still be useful approximate descriptions. However when you have to apply patches and band-aids to keep a model viable, as has happened to the BB model with silly things like "inflation", it is time to either discard the model as having been falsified, or to take a close look at the basic assumptions, postulates, and theories underlying the model.

Arp's work shows that there must exist other causes for redshift than expansion/distance. This means that all of the interpretations of observations that include the automatic redshift->distance assumption have to be revisited. Also, it means that big chunks of basic physics underlying cosmology are missing: how can you claim to have any kind of theoretical certainty if you do not know what is causing these strange red shifts?

Arp's observations should have been the killing blow for an already shaky edifice. In addition, it should have caused serious soul-searching in theoretical physics.

he appears to enjoy continuing to focus on a hypothesis which looks increasingly dead.

So? That Arp has not been able to come up with an alternate cosmology that has stood up against falsification does not mean that his observations have not falsified the Big Bang cosmology. You seem to imply that someone falsifying a theory has to have a viable alternative theory. The scientific method requires no such thing

Do elaborate, please.

As you ask so kindly, I will.

Just how much science is bunk, anyway?

Most of astrophysics and climate science, about half of physics, and a small part of chemistry is bunk. Biology is not so much bunk as well as very incomplete.

How do you define the threshold of "most" science?

Science is being practiced within the interpretative context of accepted theories. When such a theory has been falsified, the whole edifice of scientific endeavor built on top of it should be discarded. I am basically looking at what fraction of a particular scientific field is built on top of falsified theory and thereby judge whether it is somewhat or mostly bunk.

What exactly is in the set of ideas you're labeling "science"?

In principle, I view science as the collection of knowledge derived using the scientific method. Science in the Popperian sense, that is. However, in my post I was referring to science as the practice that has emerged: a sadly human endeavor influenced by agendas, funding, strife, and belief that even so poses as the ultimate authority on truth because of its supposed founding in the scientific method.

Since you "know of many clear and unambiguous experimental and observational falsifications of sacred theories and models", please list them or provide links.

For a falsification of Big Bang cosmology, see Halton Arp's work. For one of the many different falsifications of relativity theory, see Dayton Miller's work, a good overview of which can be found here http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm For a falsification of the fossil oil genesis theory, look no further than the many deep oil wells the Russians have taken into production. To read up on the proper theory, see here. The list goes on...