It is entertaining to compare a real coverup attempt such as this to what conspiracy theorists say happen, e.g. at Roswell or during 9/11 or whatever else.

The government can't even keep a few website security flaws secret, but conspiracy theorists expect us to believe they can execute a controlled demolition of the WTC and hide it from everyone except that Loose Change nut?

Too bad you don't have any facts on your side, then, isn't it?

You people are as bad as the creationists with your science denial. There's overwhelming evidence that the earth is warming, that it's caused by mankind, and that it's going to be really bad for us in another one or two hundred years. It's so overwhelming that 97% of climate scientists agree with that.

And then you like to point out irrelevant local phenomena as "evidence" against this, like the antarctic sea ice extent increasing this year while ignoring the actual volume of it, ignoring arctic sea ice, ignoring greenland ice melt. Or you like to point to 1998 as being a very hot year and saying "look, we've only had a couple of years hotter than that" while ignoring the trend lines, as if one year of temperature means everything.

Which is why you're as bad as the creationists. You think your tiny little facts, like an incorrectly dated fossil, or some scientific misconduct around one hominid fossil, disproves an enormous body of evidence. You've got your head in the sand and you seem to like it there.

This is why I find this discussion so absurd.

If the US really was concerned about Snowden giving US secrets to Russia, why not reinstate his passport so he can leave? They're the reason he's stranded in Russia, not because Snowden wanted to go there.

given that you're confusing the manifesto you _claim_ to have read with the youtube video that you're actually quoting from

I started out by saying your reading comprehension skills weren't very good. Glad you're able to prove that again. Hint: I never claimed to have read the 141 page screed he wrote, and I never claimed that the YouTube video transcript and the longer screed were the same. Why would I bother when he comes right out and tells us why he killed those people in the YouTube video transcript? I even quoted it for you. Why are you so hesitant to believe what he plainly tells us directly and forthrightly?

In any case, see my reply to the anonymous coward cross thread. I think every word applies to your response here. I'm not the one who's fitting things to my pre-held position.

I also find it amusing how I'm the one excluding large portions of what's happening here when you, along with so many others, are happy to ignore the fact that this guy is a product of our culture, and the only thing that's special about him is the degree he was willing to go to. People like you feel better when they can pretend he's a one-off. He's not. He's just a more frustrated (and better armed) version of the football player who rapes a college student and tapes it, or the boy who shames a girl who sexted him so much that she commits suicide.

If you want to spend your time digging through his writing in the desperate hope that you can prove his plainly stated reasons for doing what he did wrong, then by all means, have at it. But let's not call it anything other than what it is: motivated reasoning.

I apologize for missing a link. #6 was supposed to link to this graph.

You "snipped" a bunch of examples of NON-sexually driven narcissism, then claim that all his narcissism was sexual in nature. Utter fail.

Because I never claimed he was a good person, not a narcissist, and not any number of things.

Also, NONE of the quotes you provided are in his manifesto.

I've heard the YouTube video and the associated transcript referred to as his manifesto and I was doing the same thing here. But if you'd rather I call it something else, then by all means, provide a better word.

They ARE in his last YouTube video, which is a much shorter and more focused document, and is indeed heavily misogynistic.

Good. Perhaps you have some basic reading comprehension skills after all.

If that were the only record he'd provided you would have a point. But the 141 page document he left that was LINKED ABOVE tells a fairly different story, and you appear to be ignoring it entirely (and claiming to have read it when you clearly haven't).

Indeed? So you decided his stated reasons for the shooting didn't match up with your worldview, so, you, Mr. Amateur Psychoanalyst, decided to go off and read his 161-page crazy town document and tell us all how he wasn't really serious when he made that YouTube video? Cool story, bro.

#yesallwomen pretty quickly morphed into #killallmen

Oh yes? That must be why my Twitter timeline is full of that #killallmen hashtag. Oh wait, it's not. In fact, I just checked the top several hundred #yesallwomen tweets on Twitter, and guess what? Not a single #killallmen hashtag.

You seem to be suffering from a persecution complex. Again, I tell you. Try to listen, and stop getting so defensive.

And even if some women are using that #killallmen hashtag on Twitter, so what? Do you really see many women out killing as many men as possible? OTOH, do you even have any idea how many women are raped, beaten, or otherwise abused at the hands of men? If you think a few morons using the #killallmen hashtag is at all equivalent to the things the women in this discussion are protesting, you're so out of touch with reality, I can't imagine where you've been living.

Even your weird statement of "misogyny hurts men too" was made, and a lot of people got pissed that it was "derailing the conversation". That's the part that's bigoted.

I'm so amazed by the ability of people like you to latch on to one or two things you might find objectionable about something and so miss the point completely. Let's grant for a moment that some large percentage of women really did do what you say - a point I find extremely unlikely - then, so what? Does that make the harm that is done to women any less objectionable, or any less real?

I say again, stop being so god-damned defensive about everything and try to see the point they're making and understand it.

You must prove your case, which has not happened.

Oh yes? Has it not?

AGW makes a handful of claims. First, that the earth is getting warmer.

Second, that the oceans are getting warmer.

Third, that sea levels will rise

Fourth, that arctic ice will retreat.

Fifth, that Greenland's ice will melt..

Sixth, that antarctic ice will melt.

I could go on, but let's make #7 that man is causing it.

So do tell what's missing here. Again, please use scientific evidence in the peer reviewed literature. Most of the links I've provided above refer you to their sources and extra reading and come from such things as IPCC reports. And again, I'll wait.

Most reasonable folks don't believe all the doomsday is impending scenarios because many have already been proven wrong

Oh, really? Name three. Please provide citations of peer reviewed scientific research, not whatever bullshit you read in the popular press.

Don't worry, I'll wait.

* Snip lots of unrelated, pointless crap *

So then why is it that the outcry over this tragedy has immediately become slanted towards "violence against women!! men are terrible!!" The kid had horrific attitudes toward literally everybody around him, and was clearly an entitled little shit in every aspect of his life. In his world view all women were sluts and all men were intellectual nitwits and brutes, and NONE of them deserved to live if they got in his way. He outright said as much. Yet the social reaction to this not only emphasizes the effect it has on women, it actively EXCLUDES people from talking about the effect it has on men, and implicitly tries to lump all men in as perpetrators of the distorted mindset that Elliot Rodger had toward the world. It's divisive and bigoted, and frankly it's fucking disgusting.

If you believe that's what's happening, I can only assume your reading comprehension skills are pretty terrible. Talking about misogyny in no way excludes you from talking about how his beliefs are harmful to men, too. In fact, I've seen several women say as much -- that this tragedy proves that misogyny hurts men, too.

And if you think that it was his narcissism to blame more than his misogyny, I'm not sure what manifesto you read. I read the one where he said this:

I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.

And this:

You throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men, instead of me, the supreme gentlemen. I will punish all of you for it.

And this:

You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one. The true alpha male.

His narcissism is sexually driven, to my eye, and a result of his deeply held belief that women owe him sex because he's better. In other words, the problem is as much his inability to grant agency to women as his narcissism.

And if you think that talking about this in some way is bigoted against men, then frankly you're part of the problem. Just like that other guy who said there's no point in having this conversation because people already agree with us, you're completely oblivious to the problems that are right in front of you, and you can't see past your own defensiveness when someone tries to explain it to you.

To you, I say, shut up and really try to listen, and don't assume it's all about you. Are you really so narcissistic that you believe that these women who are speaking out are talking about you?

On top of that, you've completely missed the point that most of the women I've read are making -- that the alpha male culture that encourages misogyny is the cause of this, not the misogyny itself. We raise men to be narcissistic and misogynistic and to be "alpha males," and then we're surprised when they shoot people or rape women or beat the shit out of the gay kid in class. There's a reason the vast, vast majority of mass shooters are men, and it's not that women don't know how to shoot straight.

There was a really great video where Aron Ra talks about the effects of this poisonous culture on boys here. I'd recommend you watch it before you spend any more time accusing people of being bigoted against men just because they decided to talk about women's problems for a change.

Sincerely, go fuck yourself.

You're as bad as the people who say, "Do we have to talk about gun control now, after that recent mass shooting?"

This is a conversation that's long overdue, and it needs to happen. If you want to class these people as trolls - these people who face discrimination every day, who are afraid to speak out on the internet because of what happens to women who do that, who deal with these creeps on buses and trains and in alleys day in and day out, who have a one in three chance of facing some form of abuse in their lives - then I'm ashamed to share the planet with you.

Go away and let the adults talk. We have a problem and people like you are making it worse.

As long as you've found someone to hate. That's what's truly important. Might want to be a little careful with that "mindless" adjective, though.

I'm terribly sorry for asking a philosophical question that went beyond your essential engineering considerations. After all, no good can possibly come in considering the wider implications of engineering decisions. And I'm even more terribly sorry for posting this on a website that depends on page views for revenue. I didn't realize this was an important design discussion. Next time I'm on break, I shall check with you to ensure I'm only talking about things that are on the approved conversation list and are essential topics for debate for the next product launch. I'll get right back to testing that hardware, boss.

Actually, this raises a more interesting question (at least to me) which your little thought experiment approaches. What if my autonomous car decides that the action to take that is likely to cause the least harm is to kill the driver? For example, what if the car has the opportunity to swerve off the side of a mountain road and drop you 1000 feet onto some rocks to avoid a crash that would have killed far more people than simply you? Is my autonomous car required to act in my own best interest, or should it act in the best interests of everyone on the road?

Uh-huh. You know what The Washington Post, the L.A. Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The New York Times have in common? They aren't scientific journals. Do you believe the press does an accurate job representing scientific consensus today? Probably not, if you've been paying any attention. So why do you think they were doing a better job 40 years ago?

That's the problem with people who get their science from the front page of Time magazine and such. They confuse journalists with actual scientists. Actual scientists have known for a long, long time that the earth is warming and will continue to warm. Journalists continue to get it wrong.