Seriously? Has slashdot finally succumbed to "old man" disease, and can't resist rehashing the same old boring "news"?

We have the beginning of a face-eating (zombie) up-rising, the incipient demise of the euro, and a daily barrage of advances in science, medicine, and technology -- and all slashdot can come up with is that a whole bunch of Americans are weird? The fact is that the US is economically, culturally, and militarily the world's superpower. When you're not only #1, but #1 over the next two or three *combined*, only a fool would sneer at your "stupidity". For all anyone knows, the qualities that make the US insanely great require "irrational" optimism and exhuberance.

So, how about them zombies?

Bring up the obligatory hot/crazy scale.

I think we are seeing in Greece and Italy the downsides of a more fair and accurate representation. As we have seen, voters do not always do what is in their best interests. The multitude of parties in these countries means that outright majorities are all but unknown, and that in order for a coalition to get enough support to form a governemnt, it must do things that are not always wise. We've seen this in the last few years when the Conservatives in Canada were having to do things to appease opposition parties.

On the other hand, there is the example of Germany, which still seems to have its financial head screwed on right, and I don't have an answer for that. Maybe there are some constitutional guards, or maybe it has something to do with German character, whatever that is.

Agree and disagree. Governments in Canada have overstepped their legislated or constitutional authority, but they eventually get hauled back into line by the courts. On the whole, though, I don't remember that the over-reach has ever had a lasting effect -- other than getting the political party in power turfed out at the next election.

There seems to be a constant drumbeat that the Conservative government is hellbent on destroying freedoms and kicking the poor onto the streets. For myself, however, I think the real threat to the "Canadian way of life" would be if the socialist NDP should ever form government.

The Conservatives, and their traditional counter-weight, the Liberals, have been in and out of power for decades. They have a fair sense of what the general public will let them get away with. What's more, both parties have had reasonably steady hands on the fiscal side. In contrast, the NDP have never been in federal government. They believe, like Greece, that deficits don't matter. Moreover, with their new power base in Quebec, they have every incentive to drain the wealth of the rest of Canada in order to appease Quebec's insatiable maw. (For a sense of the privilege that Quebeckers feel, students in that province are current on the warpath because their tuition fees, the lowest in Canada, are set for a modest increase.)

Brilliant!

But you forgot "Think of the Children!" and "Oh, the humanity!"

"Oil sands" is the term used by the Alberta and Canadian governments, because not only does it sound better, but it's technically correct. "Tar sands" is the term used by environmentalist extremists, presumably because it sounds dirty. That Hansen uses the latter term clearly shows that his role is more advocacy than science. If he were an honest dealer, he would step down from his position at NASA so he could practice advocacy full-time, or at the very least he would insist that reporters not mention his affiliation when he gets on his extremist soapbox.

My guess is that someone (not too intelligent) in that campaign office went off the rails. There was another news story of evidence given to Elections Canada of some guy there talking to others about the twisted stuff going on in the States. I'm guessing he decided to import American values on the sly. With any luck, he'll get himself hauled into court.

Maybe this is an indication that degrees are over-rated. Or to be charitable, that it isn't particularly important exactly what you learn.

I'm surprised this comment hasn't been rated Insightful.

Perhaps the reason this hasn't been done is because there has not been adequate research on the actual impact that remediation efforts would have. My own guess is that the answer is 'little', and that that would be a Good Thing. Anything that we can do that would have a large impact on the climate also has the potential to make things worse -- and not only a little worse. In programmer parlance, we do not have the luxury of testing things first in a sandbox before deploying to production.

This is evidenced by the vitrio directed at the sceptics. Where real science is concerned, on the other hand, for example if someone questions the existence of gravity, the common reaction is puzzlement: "are we talking about the same thing?" No one wants to burn down the questioner's house.