ScottSA

http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~soss/cs644/projects/jacob/Why do you so persitently jam yourself into corners like this? Try, just for fun, googling "ockham's razor" What comes up? After that, note that one (1) site comes up explaining the principle, and after that its a bunch of radio stations or whatever. You can't be serious!No one said you're wrong. I clearly showed that both ways are correct. You insisting that Ockham is incorrect is nothing short of self-fellatio... In other words, just plain wrong. What I am saying is that "Occam's Razor" is the accepted academic rendering of it. Any even marginal academic knows that. No, they won't put you in jail for using "Ockham", but it's clumsy and it's not the accepted term for the principle. Why are you trying to argue otherwise?

I do. Most of my clients did. Almost anyone in Canada who's not living in a tent is in a marginal tax rate of that or more, and anyone with a half-decent job is paying an effective tax rate of around that percentage. Add various user fees, deduction interest, and GST to that and you probably do too.

Do you have any idea what that means in terms of logistics and morale? It's a bit more involved than John Wayne leaping into a Huey and singlehandedly wiping out division after division of ork-like bad guys. Just sizing the force for a specific mission is exhaustive. Seems to me it took Canada upwards of a year to limp a water purification unit over to Indonesia after the Tsunami by its "rapid deployment force," if I recall correctly.

Those were actually just nightsoil pots they buried after each decampment, but over the years, ever more thunderous urban legends grew up around them.

We will all continue to be shaken to the core. Sooner or later the core shakings will begin to jar us loose from the trite truisms we all grew up with over the last generation. What if tolerance isn't all it's cracked up to me? What if "fairness" is sometimes dangerous? What if not everyone really wants peace? What if peace is not always the best thing we ought to hope for? What if peace is sometimes just a euphemism for slavery? What if all societies are not created equal? What if we have no choice but to be unfair, and to discriminate, and to fight? What if the safety of our families and our society depends on it? In North America we'll get to watch Eurabia explode into civil war, eventually, so we'll have a second chance, even after core shakings we can't yet imagine, but we won't get a third chance.

Basically, yes. We've grown too soft to remember that, and it'll be the death of our society. We may not like it, and we may try to imagine something better, but I bet you can't think of anything better that will actually work. Trite though it may seem, the saying "If you want peace, prepare for war" is the only verifiable way to achieve peace. The barbarians aren't quite here yet, although I expect it won't be overlong before one of our eversopeaceloving Muslims manages to do away with a whack of Torontonians, so it's easy to sit here and snottily pontificate at the job our soldiers are doing in Afghanistan, but soon enough you'll be wishing there were more soldiers to protect your soft white underbelly. Try an alternate method. Go be a human shield somewhere and see what happens...not by our side, because we can still afford to have qualms, but by the other side. Or maybe go plunk yourself down in Darfur and announce to the locals that you're going to start a cult of peace and show everyone how to get along in harmonious gender-equititable peace. You'll certainly feel superior to the nasty gauche Canadian soldiers for the two and a half seconds you have before someone shoots you, beheads you, or enslaves you.

"You have heard"...LOL! More racist rants from the socialist pretenders who think they are better. I wonder if the First Nations believe that crap....'course their immediate concern is just getting potable water! Potable something, anyway...

There's not enough recent warming to explain the recent temperature rise, and there's a lag of hundreds of years for co2 to start rising after temperature. The current co2 rise is due to human emissions. Even allowing for that possibility, the only causal correlation between a rise in CO2 and GW is model based, and those are tenuous predictors at best. I mean the methane rise is due to cow's butts, and maybe methane is causing doctors to blow up airports, but shouldn't we hold off slaying all the cows until we can be sure? Incidently, the reason the temp has risen so much in the last 100 years is because the Little Ice Age ended then.

I am not sure how a weed smoking son in a speeding hybrid damages Gore's credibility. I could see your point if he was caught with a hummer full of illegally cut timber.... My thoughts exactly. Furthermore, I'm guessing Gore's son is an individual complete and separate from his dad. Not sure how his actions would affect Gore's credibility unless Gore was out pitching some line about how his whole family lives by his values. Gore's credibility can't possibly get worse. In fact, his son probably increased his credibility by proving that he doesn't breed plastic spoons and forks.

Let me expand on this a bit. I don't mock Islamic dress only because it is ridiculous, but also to break through the PC screen that surrounds everything social. If we are going to stop Islam, we have to get past this notion that "discrimination" is somehow evil unto itself, and that to be "judgmental" is bad. These catchphrase morays are symptoms of the multicultural ethos, and it is that ethos that keeps western society from dealing with the Islamic scourge the way it needs to be dealt with. "Mutual respect" leads to compromise. I don't respect nor want to compromise with 6th century savages. I believe the western way of life is far superior to Islamic authoritarianism, and I'm not willing to compromise it. If that leads to violence, so be it. Sometimes violence is better than compromise.

The link I provided was This One ""Listen, I recognize the surface of the Earth is warmer, and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem," said Bush." If you can't see where he says humans are contributing to the problem, I can't help you. I never said he was an expert on global warming, I was simply pointing out to you that you were wrong...and in the same post where you chastised someone else for being wrong, who actually turned out to be correct You jumped into the argument in defence of Hollus, and I assumed you were Hollus. The link Hollus provided did not say what he claimed it said. He didn't read it before he posted it.

I doubt that. Citation please. I don't need a citation. I'm a creationist and I don't reject evolution.

I hate it when people invoke Occam's razor and then mis-spell it. It just looks so...I don't know...illiterate.You're not really serious, are you?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ockham His name is William of Ockham... yikes. I believe ScottSA was trying to be serious - for what that's worth. Anyway, as near as I can tell, the odd spelling of "Occam" is apparently an American thing - seemingly fully accepted as the 'proper' spelling of the term in the USA. Without a doubt, the proper spelling would be "Ockham" given that was originated by William of Ockham and that I've never encountered the spelling of "Occam" in any reputable non-American source. Every text I have cites the "Ockham" spelling. Oh, I'm being quite serious. It is certainly not a spelling confined to America; it is the spelling used by anyone who has ever been in the ivory halls. It is named after Ockham, but has entered the lexicon as 'Occam,' and one would be hard pressed to find an academic using the spelling "Ockham's Razor." http://skepdic.com/occam.html http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/occam.html http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~soss/cs644/projects/jacob/Why do you so persitently jam yourself into corners like this? Try, just for fun, googling "ockham's razor" What comes up? After that, note that one (1) site comes up explaining the principle, and after that its a bunch of radio stations or whatever.

Guess you don't watch the news much, eh? This is surely the most unknowledgeable claim so far on these boards. Scott back down. Two wrongs do not make it right and its cowardly for any of us men to take shots at visible minority women because of their appearance. Can we please walk away from this one? I am asking you because I respect your political opinions and not because I am sort sort of righteous twit. I just think it went too far and I don't think being rude to women for any reason is called for. Well Rue, when women stop wearing blankets with windows in the name of 6th century mass murdering psychopaths, I'll stop pointing out that they're wearing blankets with windows. I can call it a summer frock, or leotards, or even six inch stilletos, if it makes you feel better, but it's still a blanket with a window. Incidently, have you seen the new spring lineup of Islamic fashions? Link Lighten up. I grew up amongst these folks.

None of which suggests manmade causation. The fact that atmospheric carbon levels have risen 35% since humans started burning fossil fuels around 150 years ago, but were relatively stable for the previousl several thousand years does at least suggest a manmade cause. No it doesn't. It suggests that atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen. The link between that and GW is specious at best and does nothing whatsoever to explain much more extreme fluctuations in temperature in the past, before and since the entrance of man onto the world stage. One thing we can be reasonably sure of is that the industrial revolution has nothing to do with the current GW on other planets.

Actually, the link says this: "Greenhouse gases trap heat, and thus warm the earth because they prevent a significant proportion of infrared radiation from escaping into space. Concentration of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have increased substantially since the beginning of the industrial revolution." You're right, maybe Bush thinks the substantial increase in carbon dioxide levels since the industrial revolution have nothing to do with humans ...and in case you don't know how to use Google, here's another Link "Listen, I recognize the surface of the Earth is warmer, and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem," said Bush." Squirm as you will, the link you supplied doesn't come close to saying what you claim it said. In any event, since you and the lefty brigades spend all your time dissing Bush, why would you cite him as an expert on global warming?

"Al Gore III" nuff said...

Yuck yuck. I only bothered to check one of your links, because I know from previous experience the level of intellectual sloppiness you usually employ in these debates, and lo and behold, Bush says no such thing. Unless I'm missing something, he doesn't even come close to claiming that humans cause GW. In fact, the entire citation is a condemnation of Kyoto. Oops. Maybe you should read your links before posting them? I have no doubt that a number of the other links you supplied are suspect, and that some do indeed support the claims you make, in varying degrees and with numerous caveats. Just as I am sure I could google up a number of equally credible organizations admitting that the evidence is simply not there. Your is spelled "you're" in this context, but I don't suppose they teach that in Lemming school?

Guess you don't watch the news much, eh? This is surely the most unknowledgeable claim so far on these boards.

Aside from Iceland which predates the US by 800 or so years..... He's probably talking about groups of people who number more than 2.

You don't seem to get it. The creationists that are the target of so much distain in the media are the people that insist on a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible and ignore scientific evidence to the contrary. These people have nothing in common with people that accept the science of evolution but beleive that a deity was involved in the process some how. In fact, I suspect most people who think that a deity influenced the process would not call themselves creationists - that is a moniker reserved for the evolution science deniers that make up 47% of the US population (and 26% of the Canadian population). Nonsense. The creationists who are the target of so much distain in the media is anyone who doesn't reject the role of God, and "creationism" by no means refers to only those who reject evolution. There are creationists who think God Created the universe and then went for a walk. There are those who think God created man, have him free will and then went for a walk. There are those who think Life is a creation of God, and that's the totality of his role. A creationist is anyone who believes some element of our existence was created. I would guess that very very few people reject evolution in its entirety. Probably about the same number of people as play with rattlesnakes at church.

Got a citation for this assertion? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Wing_Authoritarianism As nice as it is to see a 911 conspiracy thread turned into something slightly less foolish than 911 conspiracy, this is a close second. "Rightwing" is a label assigned completely arbitrarly to authoritarianism for Christ's sake. Stalin was right wing? Pol Pot? Mao? Not even Hitler was rightwing, if one were to judge him by economic policy, collectivist impulse or any other measure of the political scale. Libertarianism doesn't sit at the far right of the political scale for nothing. I had no idea this leftwing fixation with sullying the name of the right with sheer nonsense had reached these heights. And Liam's complete befuddling of "conservative," and his trotting out of "psychological studies have shown,' is such tepid hogwash it's not even worth commenting on.

Ah. Another swealian incarnation. Identifiable 20 miles away by the pointless line item nitpicking.

So you admit that this was a problem in the past - and dinosaurs were admittedly more dangerous than elephants.I'll admit that facing down Adolf Hitler was different from confronting Stalin's Russia, or even Brezhnev's Soviet Union. Kissinger often stated that Marxist ideology changed the requirements of stability, and the nature of the Cold War. ScottSA, you have a good point that fanatical Muslims are unlike other fanatical religious people. They're Muslims. In a similar sense, fanatical Marxists are unlike other fanatical ideologues. Nevertheless, I'll stay with my basic premise. In Islamofascism, we in the West face more broadly the threat of obscurantism (just like in the Cold War, we faced the threat of a command society). The liberal West dealt with superstition centuries ago. It appears that we'll have to do this again for the next several decades. All things considered, I don't think this threat is dangerous (compared to the threat of a command society). Superstitious people are weak, and foolish. ---- There are two points in our favour. First, as I have noted, freedom is a popular notion. Individuals benefit when they are free to choose. It is always better to be outside a cartel than inside one. Second, the scientific method works. It ultimately gives correct answers, or at least answers that are likely to work. ---- We defeated Hitler by confronting him. We defeated Stalin by encircling him and with resolve, waiting. I think we'll defeat this Islamic threat by sheer logic, and exposure to common sense. That's how Galileo and many others ultimately defeated the Catholic Church. [Please start a clear thread on this topic. If you don't, I will. "Is Atheism the New Evangelism?" doesn't do justice to your more serious question: "Is Islam a greater threat to the west?"] You'd better start the thread. If I do, Charles may hide it in a thread about Harper's hair bills, on the basis that both threads involve the west.

I would have thought you would have long ago crawled away from this thread with your tail tucked neatly between your legs. Guess I gave you too much credit...