birdog1960

the battle between politics and science is somewhat divorced from private entities funding research. the majority of these instances would be found in govt funded initiatives, i believe. but since you brought up private funding, your link brings up 2 interesting possible motivations for big oil supporting this. their stsaed motivation strongly infers their buying into the concept of global warming. i'll take them at their word. but the moe sinister motive of public relations is put forth. if you believe that then you must infer that big oil sees at least some potential for the theories being valid. either way its a tip of the cap to the concept. either way, it's not an example of the battle between politics and science. to use your words, try again.

when the "science" is put out by folks with doctor of divinity degrees, then yes, the results are looked at with an appropriate index of suspicion. there is a pedigreed heirarchy within the science community that while not infallable, is fairly reliable and phd's in divinity are near the bottom of the food chain. your comments on funding are somewhat misinformed i believe. the big grant allocaters like the nih, nsf, etc usually make the decisions on who gets how much. legislators generally only appropriate money to those large organizations. this is by design to stop favoritism or discrimination on a political basis. as we saw during the bush administration this system can be worked around to a degree and when cuts are considered to these big scientific organizations it's usually conservatives pushing them.

c'mon OC, i'm hard pressed to cite an example of a liberal overtly pitting politics against science. you? but i can rip off many where conservatives have. you really believe it's about grant money exclusively to put forth new models and hypotheses? might it not at least occasionally be about searching for the truth? does it not require some humility to admit your first model wasn't quite right. ergo, shouldn't the more appropriate label be "progressives"...and perhaps "apologists" or "ideologues" for conservatives? and no, we don't need more studies to prove to progressive that smoking is bad...just to convince the politicians to regulate it and tax it into extinction and get their dirty hands out of the tobacco conglomerates pockets.

thought it was a great episode...just not sure which characters i actually like any more, though. lots i feel sorry for, not many i like. the lsd scene was very entertaining. pretty far fetched that a shrink and her patient were together but it is nyc. guess it might happen. the howard johnson's scenes reminded me a of a high school new years eve party where we rented a room at the one in niagara falls. made it til about 3 am before the cops kicked about 30 people out of the room. amazing nobody was arrested or fined. ah, to be young again...i pulled that now, i'd be in jail.

well, i tried it and it works really well. no problem streaming to apple tv. the free trial version stops streaming after about 1/2 hour and then you need to manually change back from computer to apple tv for output but supposedly this isn't a problem after you pony up $15. the record feature is pretty cool. a red button icon is present and you hit that when you want to record a song you're hearing. (it seems to get the whole song even if you hit the button after it's started). it then gets put in a pandorajam playlist on itunes which is further separated by the station from which the song was recorded. pandorajam states this is the audio equivalent of time shifting - essentially tivo for audio and that is how it seems to work to me. unfortunately, i feel like doing this is depriving some starving artists (i tend to favor more obscure bands) food and gas money. so i'm gonna stick with the streaming and not the recording... and i'll keep turning my stashed loose coins into amazon vouchers and watch for fez's free download posts.

thanks!

but roku only plays the pandora stations, right? this dumps them in itunes for later listening. i don't think pandarojam would be doing anythying illegal to enable streaming to apple tv (and there are other certified apple apps that do this). i'm concerned with loading free music on to itunes from pandora which seems unique to pandorajam. it looks like pandorajam's been in existence for several years so i doubt they got a cease and desist order. i'm wishfully thinking it must be ok to do this.

was looking for options to stream pandora to my apple tv (and therefore to my home theater system) when i found this. it not only claims to do what i want but also to dump played songs, tagged in itunes. anybody familiar with this? is it likely to get my account banned from pandora or worse?

that too. well said.

neither. that the majority of criticism, disdain or disregard for "controversial" scientific findings such as those discussed in the article, by politicians, is done by conservatives. i am soliciting opinions on agreement/disagreement with this point and theories as to why that might be so.

is that a direct quote from him or are you speaking for him? if he truly felt "the discussion is over" wouldn't he have stopped ater devising "model A" for climate change rather than publishing several more including "model E"? few scientists believe "the discussion is over" on anything. questioning conventional wisdom is at the very core of good science. regarding your second point, we obviously and thankfully don't run in the same crowds. guess i've missed these types of comments being highlighted as conservative naysayers best arguments but it doesn't surprise me. what i've generally heard is what i described. and your attempt at claiming superiority based on claiming superiority is just annoying and only lessens your already weak argument.

talk about strawmen...no scientist i've heard has ever said "the discussion is over" regarding climate change. nor have i heard many conservatives put their stance in such soft terms. it's usually more in the tone of "the science behind this idea is junk" with oblique citations of perceived academic dishonesty and ulterior motives. which side is really more likely to have ulterior motives on this or most any other science versus politics debate? e.g. stem cell research, evolution, genetic engineering, climate change, etc.

i think it's more than religiosity. It's mistrust in scholarship and academia that's displayed on this board almost daily. It's science not fitting a political philosophy (see climate change and bush's silencing government scientists). it's inability or refusal to think analytically and without bias in scientific areas. and it's financial and economic concerns versus natural law and scientific data and observations that threaten the status quo.

but why are the politicians almost always conservatives? "often the public does understand the science. they just don't like the answer."

yup. got the t shirt don't think i qualify as one of the herd though. the best thing about these festivals is obviously the music. but the laid back, outdoors atmosphere is a close second. with so many bands it's quite likely you'll be listening to someone like bella fleck while listening next to someone like doc watson.. very cool vibe! a similar, but less expensive festival in the fall just announced its line up. i've linked to this before and haven't missed one yet. still lots of time to plan a road trip.

line uo...as a public service to those in and around north carolina. unfortunately i can't make it this year but i'd especially like to see susan tedeschi. someone here turned me on to her in "lesser known female vocalists" thread. bet she puts on a great show.i

hiking the appalachian trail...just haven't got around to it yet, maybe when i retire. in reality, it's 27 happy years of marriage.

sounds a bit like how the civil war in libya was fought except the rebels didn't have any help initially and kept losing their castles. do you think if they were armed, trained and overseen rather than what was actually done, things would now be different? it also reminds me of how the roman empire worked when it did work. the only thing missing is to put in place an oppressive governer and later publicly disgrace him and replace him later to gain the admiration of the people. cynical but effective.

ok oc, i actually carefully read this one and it makes a lot of sense....even the immunology analogy. i accept that arming the insurgents isn't a perfect answer. yeah, libya hasn't worked out so well. but as you stated, assad having these weapons isn't a better bargain. military strategy is as foreign to me as mongolia and i'm way out of my area of expertise (but obama does have experts counseling him). it's not like we haven't fought proxy wars before in far flung lands (and it's not turned out well). i don't know the answer. i don't think a 3rd active US war is it. i suspect our leaders are in the same boat and wait uncomfortably hoping to convince russia and china to act like decent humans (longshot, at best). i do accept that their are evil, power hungry sociopaths that run things in some places in the world and that some times they need to be violently rendered ineffective. given all that, what would you do?

take this with a boulder sized grain of salt. got 82 when i said no vitamins and 85 with. i know of no evidence to support this. almost every recent study i've seen on vitamin use had equivocal or negative results. and many here will be happy to hear that a fairly well regarded study done on alcohol use showed a decreased incidence of heart disease for men drinking 1-2 ounces daily (now factor in motor vehicle accidents and it might be a wash).

some relatively good news. will see how assad responds to demonstrations tomorrow. cameron's quote at the end of this link all but rules out military intervention from europe.

do no harm is the premier guiding principle in medicine, or at least should be. you make good points. but in the middle of all this middle east upheaval, rumsfeld said "democracy is messy". and it is. if we really believe it to be the best system then we should help it play out. and it's not like all this started spontaneously without a spark. this, to a large extent, was the desired outcome of the iraqi war. i would think that affords the us some culpability and responsibility to see the process through.

brevity aint your strong suit is it? if you read as many words in the article that i linked as words that you wrote, you would have read about russia being an enabler (my word) and their motivations for doing so. guess what? much of it is economic, ie greed. from a purely machiavellian perspective, we or the europeans or anyone else could arm the rebels to the point of winning and demand payment after the overthrow of assad from the spoils they reap. still don't understand why this wasn't done in iraq or maybe it was but to big oil and not the US govt? dunno and doubt we ever will. so what's stopping everyone from flooding the insurgents with arms. my bet is economic threats to those who do from china and russia which harkens back to my original premise: greed is the root of assad's continued strangle hold on the syrians. the worlds balance sheet doesn't favor the syrian people. as far as the un, it's been proven ineffectual repeatedly. no argument here. i really can't justify it's continued existence. maybe it's accomplished things that we're unaware of. that would be the only defense for its continuation.

i'm reminded of qoutes i read from concentration camp survivors who prayed that the allies would bomb the camps knowing they were likely to be killed in such an attack. i suspect there are many syrians that feel the same way.