Posts by Andre Alessi
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We should definitely get a prize for that, Alistair!
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From TPM:
From the GOP handbook of Maryland politics:
(1) Recruit homeless men in Philadelphia;
(2) Bus them into Maryland;
(3) Arrange for the Republican governor's wife to greet them upon their arrival;
(4) Outfit them in hats and T-shirts for the governor's re-election campaign;
(5) Have them pass out flyers in heavily Democratic areas that erroneously identify the GOP candidates for governor and U.S. senator as "Democrats."Wow. Just...wow.
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What leaves me staggered is that there is so much evidence of corruption and cronyism in the Bush administration yet the mid-terms will still be a close call. Seems the fundies will stick together no matter What Jesus Would Do.
"Sure the Republican party is corrupt and filled with hypocritical adulterers, but the Democrats want to teach evolution in schools and let gay people marry, there's no way I could support a party with policies like that!"
I was trying to make that sound like parody, but it just didn't turn out that way...
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I'd be suprised if this was an ihug specific problem, the one thing they've always been known for is keeping their hardware and network ticking along.
I know Xtra's had similar spam issues in the last month, leading to them announcing they'd be filtering outgoing emails for spam (to head off the trojans) and on a related tack blocking port 25.
My work servers (I work for The Evil One, or at least I will until next month) have been similarly flooded, I get roughly 30 spam emails (not all of the image variety) straight through into my work email.
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Problem with Xtra, or with the Herald? Or (shush - don't say it too loud) with our Mac? Any advice?
My suspicion is that it is specific to the Go Large package, as I can load up the Herald in no time on the Pro plan.
I've been hearing a lot of complaints from people on Go Large that their speeds generally have gone up the duff since they switched.
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As encouraging as I think the polls are in favour of the Democrats, I think the great unknown in modern American elections is still voter apathy.
Dirty tricks tend to encourage people to stay at home, not vote the other way, so I don't know how accurate the polls can be considered to be.
Can't think of any Republican senator quite as self-absorbed and self-righteous as Mr Lieberman.
Hi, meet Rick Santorum!
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Will it come with lions? I'd be all for lions...
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No, I'd definitely agree there, Jackie.
Doesn't stop me leering, though. like the weak-willed man I am.
(Just not at her face. Her scary, scary man face.)
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The climate change denial culture, ironically, reminds me of the anti-GE movement online, in that you see the same tropes go around and around, even after the majority of scientists have done with them and moved on.
There's a scary symmetry between Chris de Freitas (global warming skeptic) and Peter Wills (anti-GE campainger) in that regard.
Both are based at UoA, of course (and I've had both as lecturers-Chris is easy-going, Peter is demanding) and both, while regularly being pushed to the front of their corresponding movements as examples of "scientists who agree with us!" write opinions that, while quite clear, are miles distant from what their supporters often put forward. They hold to their positions based on well-thought out scientific positions that are nevertheless viewed as idiosyncratic within their own fields.
Wills, for example, doesn't consider GE inherently unethical, and many of his arguments revolve around complicated views of how microevolution works (or at least it did a few years ago-I've never quite been able to get my head around his position, to be honest.) de Freitas started out disputing global warming was happening at all (pointing out discrepancies between surface based and space based temperature monitoring) but now seems to accept it, although he still states it's A) inevitable and B) not completely historically unprecedented (i.e. humans aren't really causing it, or not so much anyway.)
The fact that these two are often used as the "scientific face" of their respective movements illustrates more than anything, I think, how fundamentally divorced most of the debate around these issues is from the hard science that made them issues in the first place. If these were genuine debates focused on science, we'd never have to put up with some of the more ridiculous assertions entering the public discourse in the first place. ("Eating GE tomatoes will give you frog genes!", "'Global warming' isn't real, we've just got better thermometers now!")
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Lovelock's always worth reading, even if you don't agree with him.
I agree with the idea that nuclear power is going to become increasingly important (and environmentally friendly) but my main objection to it is economic and practical: a country like ours with no preexisting nuclear infrastructure is going to face massive overheads getting nuclear power set up. There's simply no way around that fact, so if something else pops up that's cheaper, we should consider it. We also don't have the expertise needed to set up a functioning nuclear power infrastructure easily, and gaining enough skilled workers might not be possible in the next few years given the current global political climate.
I personally thought the reference to a religious framework was not entirely serious, but in any event it creeped me out a little. The idea of rational people, even with the best intentions, using religious forms to convince people who wouldn't otherwise be swayed by reasoned debate is to my mind highly unethical. Lovelock's always worked from that viewpoint, though, and I don't think he's crossed the line yet.
It's also self-defeating: we want people to think critically about these things, about science and the world around them. That is the ultimate goal of any scientist.