Michael Crichton's attack on global warming was particularly devastating. But what the crowd wants to believe, they simply pretend is reality and call the rest of us "ignorant."

But to deny the utter and overwhelming reality of the results of vast quantities of climate scientists (including some who came in skeptical when they started, but realized that, hey, the data say what the data say) is simply wrong.

Their conclusions are projections, not hard evidence, and they are also of unclean hands because their funding is overwhelmingly political in nature.

You are denying the bigger problem in favor of a political creation.

I normally don't tell people they're "simply wrong," but after reading your pompous reply to me, I felt turnabout was fair play.

Problem: the number of humans grows constantly on a world of finite space.

Conclusion: eventually, resources will run out, and we will commit ecocide as we try to use technology to provide enough food, water, medicine, air, etc. for our population.

However, people don't want to hear about this. It requires too much thinking.

Solution: invent a symbol for it all called "global warming."

The problem with this is that it's the same strategy anti-drug workshops use. "You better not smoke pot, or you'll end up a homeless bum with a criminal record!"

First time they smoke and that does not happen, they'll assume it's safe.

Global warming proponents have been howling about imminent apocalypse for years, and so have desensitized their audience. This is because their main point is a political symbol, not a reasoned scientific view.

A true-blue nutcase will always think of themselves first, and so they will always cover their own asses or make their own errors appear as successes.

Thus, often management will look from above or look at metrics and conclude that the psychopath is the most competent team member.

Have seen this happen a few times too...

I've worked with enough people who are nuts to think that if we're going to test the leaders, we should test everyone and put the psychopaths out of the workplace entirely.

One bad person on a team can not only make life miserable, but ruin the work output of the team, drive away anyone competent and damage everyone else's careers when they're associated with the failed team's product.

Often, "new improvements" mean surface-level improvements that don't improve use and efficiency at all.

For example, I think Microsoft's Aero and related interfaces are neat-looking, but they don't help me achieve anything using the computer. They just make it a bit slicker.

If you turn on the classic Windows interface, you eliminate a fair amount of overhead and get back to the basics of a very functional interface.

The same seems true of Linux GUIs. I appreciate what they're doing in trying to keep up with Windows and Mac OS X and the glitzy new interfaces those have implemented.

However, how much of this actually adds to the basic interface? Does it increase efficiency of the the user? I'm not so sure.

I miss the days of installing a new Linux distro on a ten-year-old machine and finding out that it ran as fast as a new machine with Windows.

Thank you for the feedback. I included those political ideologies to avoid being disingenuous and hiding the origins of our diversity mania in class warfare brought about by an ideological need for egalitarian altruism. I did not want people to feel that I was sneaking politics in a back door by not mentioning. However, your point is well-taken and I will use it in the future.

Technology improves over time.

Once there's a working prototype, it can be improved in thousands of ways that are less challenging to produce than the prototype itself.

Right now, there are some challenges in making Iron Dome into SDI. However, there's also a working model which can be refined until it has SDI-ish capabilities.

If you looked at a computer in the 1970s, you might think it could never simulate a human cell. And yet, we're almost there.

It's funny how American democracy looks more and more like the "democracy" the communist party was preaching back then.

I think it has to do with degrees of removal from reality.

When there's a realistic system in place, people go along with it because it makes sense.

When there's not a realistic system, there's usually an "ideology" used to compel people to obey.

This drifts farther and farther away from reality and as a result, the state uses more control on its citizens.

They in turn react passively by being less productive and more corrupt.

Hessian and bhlowe, are you two having fun sucking each other's dicks over there?

I'm sorry, I thought third grade was over and we'd all graduated to better things.