Leadfoot
 
  1  
Tue 5 Jan, 2016 05:13 am
@Setanta,
Quote:
Leadfoot wrote:
"I don't know where Set gets the 'holy roller that don't give a ****' stuff about me."


Listen clown, if you've got a problem with something i've said, quote the post in which i said it. Don't just make sh*t up, attribute it to me and then expect me to defend it. In short, you're a liar.
I was refering to the general tone and content of many posts you have directed at or about me on this and other threads, not any specific one. Anyone who has read and remembers them knows that my statement was accurate.

Your name calling antics are very revealing though. Rave on..

Olivier5
 
  1  
Tue 5 Jan, 2016 05:33 am
@Leadfoot,
I think you are pretty pathetic.

I repeat: where are Musk and co. in space? Just sending cargo for the US government... That's 55 years (and counting) after the soviets sent their boy Gagarine onto orbit...

Look at the rise of China as the second world economy - that was done by a powerful and dedicated government. It wasn't done by the Musks and the Gates off this world.

You talk of the fuel economy standards being a good thing, but they were enacted by the US government... Coherence, anyone?

Bottom line is: fossil fuels can and I believe must be taxed to pay for the transition and to raise their cost / lower their use. You are welcome to come up with other suggestions but the mere idea that governments can't do nothing is just propaganda, an illusion, a lie, a myth. Reality says otherwise. Reality says that without governments, life can be very very hard for folks.

It does not even reflect YOUR own thinking, or you would be TRYING to live in a place without government. The fact that you don't proves that you value government, deep down, and don;t want to live in anarchy. This is not "love it or leave it", it's about highlighting your hypocrisy.
Setanta
 
  1  
Tue 5 Jan, 2016 05:37 am
@Leadfoot,
As for raving on, you certainly would be an expert at that. On more than one occasion you have erected straw man fallacies, and then arrogantly attempted to claim that someone's "tone" justified your remarks. Dealing with specifics: at no time have i stated or implied that holy rollers are opposed to the use of alternative sources of energy. (You remember, don't you? The utterly false accusation you made?) When you make accusations for which you have no foundation, anyone who reads them knows that you're lying. If you tell lies, referring to you as a liar is not name calling, it's simply descriptive.

You're a mess. Rave one indeed.
0 Replies
 
Leadfoot
 
  1  
Tue 5 Jan, 2016 06:47 am
@Olivier5,
Quote:
but the mere idea that governments can't do nothing is just propaganda, an illusion, a lie, a myth. Reality says otherwise. Reality says that without governments, life can be very very hard for folks.
The subject is not anarchy. You have drifted too far off topic and anything I've said to make it worth responding.
Olivier5
 
  2  
Tue 5 Jan, 2016 07:06 am
@Leadfoot,
You are the one who started the tangent about governments capabilities.

Bottom line is: you asked for practical suggestions about what could be done; I gave you one very simple and practicle option; and you started to argue ideologically against it, contradicting yourself in the process... Try and be less cocky and more coherent next time.
Leadfoot
 
  1  
Tue 5 Jan, 2016 07:33 am
@Olivier5,
Nope, I gave you specific reasons why the government imposed tax you suggested was not good economic policy and then pointed out the falicies in your rebuttals.

Rejection of the need for government was never brought up by me. That was all you.
Olivier5
 
  2  
Tue 5 Jan, 2016 07:37 am
@Leadfoot,
No "specific reasons" were offered, just a blanket ideological statement that governments are not good at investing.

As I proved through a number of examples, governments can do a lot, including go to the moon or create the world second largest economy. And corporations can fail too, you know?
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Tue 5 Jan, 2016 11:23 am
@Olivier5,
China may be the second largest economy, but there are many inherent problems with it. Pollution, economic disparity, and corruption are common in their country.
Olivier5
 
  3  
Tue 5 Jan, 2016 12:38 pm
@cicerone imposter,
Still, the story of South Korea, China and the other asian dragons over the past few decades is about state-led capitalism, and it disproves the myth that governments cannot invest succesfuly in the economy. They can; it's being done all the time.
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Tue 5 Jan, 2016 02:40 pm
@Olivier5,
I know; there are many examples of government led economies that are successful.
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  2  
Wed 6 Jan, 2016 06:21 am
The argument that increased fuel taxes are regressive is fine, as far as it goes. It just doesn't go far enough. If government applies that additional revenue to public transportation, it would foster a more responsible use of fossil fuels. The tax need not be over-broad--it could be applied to fossil fuels for transportation while exempting home heating, a not inconsiderable issue in the northern hemisphere. I see far too many people simply saying, in so many words, it's too hard, and by implication saying to do nothing, to leave things the way they are, because the task might be difficult. Allegations about economic upheaval similarly suggest that it's too hard, so let's not do anything. The only significant economic upheaval will be for those heavily invested in the energy sector. The rest of us will be fine.
0 Replies
 
ehBeth
 
  3  
Thu 17 Mar, 2016 12:59 pm
@Setanta,
http://billmoyers.com/2015/10/29/the-gop-and-the-rise-of-anti-knowledge/

Quote:
The GOP and the Rise of Anti-Knowledge


Quote:

In the realm of physics, the opposite of matter is not nothingness, but antimatter. In the realm of practical epistemology, the opposite of knowledge is not ignorance but anti-knowledge. This seldom recognized fact is one of the prime forces behind the decay of political and civic culture in America.

Some common-sense philosophers have observed this point over the years. “Genuine ignorance is . . . profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open mindedness; whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish waterproof to new ideas,” observed psychologist John Dewey.

Or, as humorist Josh Billings put it, “The trouble with people is not that they don’t know, but that they know so much that ain’t so.”


Quote:
PERSPECTIVES
The GOP and the Rise of Anti-Knowledge
October 29, 2015
by Mike Lofgren
submit to reddit6K
This post was first published at Consortium News.

In the realm of physics, the opposite of matter is not nothingness, but antimatter. In the realm of practical epistemology, the opposite of knowledge is not ignorance but anti-knowledge. This seldom recognized fact is one of the prime forces behind the decay of political and civic culture in America.

Some common-sense philosophers have observed this point over the years. “Genuine ignorance is . . . profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open mindedness; whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish waterproof to new ideas,” observed psychologist John Dewey.

Or, as humorist Josh Billings put it, “The trouble with people is not that they don’t know, but that they know so much that ain’t so.”

Ben Carson, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination who opposed a Muslim being elected president. (Credit: Marc Nozell / Flickr CC 2.0)
Ben Carson, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination who doesn’t believe in evolution and says it is “scientifically politically correct” and a theory “encouraged by the adversary [Satan].” (Credit: Marc Nozell / Flickr CC 2.0)

[Ben Carson] is anti-knowledge incarnated, a walking compendium of every imbecility ever uttered during the last three decades.Fifty years ago, if a person did not know who the prime minister of Great Britain was, what the conflict in Vietnam was about, or the barest rudiments of how a nuclear reaction worked, he would shrug his shoulders and move on. And if he didn’t bother to know those things, he was in all likelihood politically apathetic and confined his passionate arguing to topics like sports or the attributes of the opposite sex.
There were exceptions, like the Birchers’ theory that fluoridation was a monstrous communist conspiracy, but they were mostly confined to the fringes. Certainly, political candidates with national aspirations steered clear of such balderdash.

At present, however, a person can be blissfully ignorant of how to locate Kenya on a map, but know to a metaphysical certitude that Barack Obama was born there, because he learned it from Fox News. Likewise, he can be unable to differentiate a species from a phylum but be confident from viewing the 700 Club that evolution is “politically correct” hooey and that the earth is 6,000 years old.

And he may never have read the Constitution and have no clue about the Commerce Clause, but believe with an angry righteousness that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.

This brings us inevitably to celebrity presidential candidate Ben Carson. The man is anti-knowledge incarnated, a walking compendium of every imbecility ever uttered during the last three decades. Obamacare is worse than chattel slavery. Women who have abortions are like slave owners. If Jews had firearms they could have stopped the Holocaust (author’s note: they obtained at least some weapons during the Warsaw Ghetto rising, and no, it didn’t). Victims of a mass shooting in Oregon enabled their own deaths by their behavior. And so on, ad nauseam.


<snip>

Quote:
Anti-knowledge is a subset of anti-intellectualism, and as Richard Hofstadter has pointed out, anti-intellectualism has been a recurrent feature in American life, generally rising and receding in synchronism with fundamentalist revivalism.


<snip>



much more at the link
0 Replies
 
parados
 
  3  
Wed 13 Jul, 2016 03:08 pm
Wow.. an opinion piece from the National Review is evidence of science not being objective?
Do you have some actual science you can point to that would show it isn't objective? Otherwise we are simply relying on lack of objectivity in a claim that there is lack of objectivity.
Below viewing threshold (view)
parados
 
  3  
Wed 20 Jul, 2016 08:18 pm
@AugustineBrother,
Your original claim which you seem to have deleted was that science wasn't objective.

When experiments are done to see if the results can be duplicated that would be the very definition of objectivity.
0 Replies
 
 

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