KaskadskyjKozak

Because my graduate coursework had nothing to do with the humanities or soft-sciences. There were right and wrong answers that had nothing to do with politics. And I avoided social conversations geared towards the latter.

Since when is an 18-year-old a child? Give me a break.

In the past, not being applied "equally" meant getting out of having to serve completely. And you're dreaming if you think there is a way to force "equality" of fighting on the front lines. It's not "equal" as it is.

It's the egomaniacs who call attention to the bias and make it so unpalatable. If they went away, the bias would not matter much. I applied for a full-time teaching position at the UW and was not hired - not because of bias, but they preferred a candidate with a PhD to an MS. I taught two courses as a pre-doctoral instructor prior to that and enjoyed it greatly. Unfortunately there are not so many opportunities to teach when universities (i.e. *research* universities) focus more on research and an elite set of researchers, rather than those skilled in *teaching*. My experience as both an undergraduate and a graduate student was that college is more a place where you learn to teach yourself, rather than a place where you are "taught". This was especially true in engineering and the hard-sciences.

I wonder if FDR would have dropped the bomb?

Even if a draft is applied equally, strings will be pulled regarding where/in what capacity draftees are assigned. Not everyone serves a combat role on the front line.

when the US has had a draft, it has led to more loss of life and less restraint, IMO

yeah it works so well for Russia! Israel has mandatory military duty for all citizens - probably a better example than Rossiya.

Canadian Politicians

if you go ad hominem, expect a response

Few members of the left wing would agree with a lot of my opinions on education. For example, I support well-rounded education, including lots of humanities - what the right would consider "useless" or "unnecessary".

Agreed. In other countries, there is a whole different perspective on this AND the politics don't cut the same way as the do in the US, proving that the situation in the US is not necessarily the way it has to be.

fuck you

Nice try, Torquemada.

Intellectuals and academics can be the most selfish, ego-centric, callous people out there. The self-delusioning left cracks me up without fail. Keep stroking your egos and rationalizing your inherent "goodness". Your holier-than-thou self-righteousness rivals that of the most vocal evagelical that you hate so intensely.

I've met just as few liberals who "consider" opinions outside their dogma as conservatives. As for "learning", much of this in higher education demands walking a narrow path of "acceptable" view-points. This is not only true in technology and "hard science", where there is a "right" and a "wrong" answer, but to in the softer social sciences, where subjective grading mandates parroting the opinions of your professor or teaching assistant to succeed.

Nah, let's just make military service mandatory for every war protestor. After they pay their dues fighting for a year or two, then they have the right to protest in good faith.

What he said.

My fallible writing skills, your bias and lack of understanding has allowed you to make an erroneous inference of a conclusion I do not assert. Can you support this hypothesis taking into consideration the political leanings of educational institutions? DeChristo:

Looking for thread drift? As if there aren't enough posts already?

That's the conclusion I draw until science can show me otherwise. Ditto for the next mass extinction.

so, your interpretation of a program on cable about migrations to America is the evidence you provide to support your claim of a systematic political bias w.r.t evolution or climate change? I've provided more substantive information for dialog than you have "j_b". You're capable of lame, contentless snipes - and nothing more. I have given you an example of institutional bias in the scientific community - something which you claim is not possible in your sacrosanct, infallible, scientific religion. You find a "cable" show laughable? Google it. Look in some research journals. It's all there too. Easy to find, verify, and corroborate. I doubt you're capable of it though.

Define "major". Quantify it. All I suggest is that you read and think a little deeper. If you look at the debate, you'll find a lot of unanswered questions and glaring omissions. From what I have read and processed, the trend of global warming is currently not a reversible process. The Kyoto treaty - or anything like it - will only SLOW warming; the warming process will still occur. People who jump on this hysterical bandwagon about the need for draconian cut-backs in the use of our resources all seem to think this is a silver bullet to SOLVE the problem, when all it does is prolong an irreversible trend. As for "expertise", I am commenting on the scientific process in general, not individual data measurements or research papers by specific atmospheric scientists. I have spent plenty of time reading summaries of their conclusions and how they got them. As someone who was significant education in science, has worked in the life sciences, and has read and conducted research, I have plenty of ammunition to understand how they have arrived at their conclusions and question the deductions (often by others! - policy makers, environmentalists, etc) made based on the "science". Anyone educated in critical thinking and the scientific process has a right and an obligation to challenge any "expert", especially on fundamental questions of the basis for how they make their conclusions.

Happy? I think the climate is changing, the consequences will be dire, and we have little control over reversing that trend. How is that a "happy" scenario? As for simplicity, you must be joking, if anything my propensity is to complicate, not simplify.

If you look at plots of the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (as ascertained from ancient glacial ice) to world temperatures, you will see that the two are linked - and are cyclical in nature. Moreover, the recent increases in temperature and green house gases are part of a trend that started over **10,000** years ago. Since, man-made emissions have only been significant in the last 100+ years, one must ask how to explain the trend starting 10,000 years ago, and how it has repeated itself earlier in the Earth's geologic history when man could NOT have been a factor. In other words, how can current data prove man is the cause of a current trend that has repeated itself in the absence of man, and how can measurements taken over a short period of time (geologically speaking) explain a 10,000 year-old trend? It seems to me that the "bad" science regarding this issue revolves around huge, leaping conclusions (and concomitant policy recommendations) that are made based on studies that can truly only "prove" much more restricted sets of facts (i.e. in the last ten years temperatures have gone up x degrees on average, the polar ice is x millimeters thinner than 10 years ago). When I see data and reports on global warming, I conclude that a lot of this is out of our control. The earth's temperatures rise and fall over time, and, although we may contribute to it, I am not convinced we cause it, or that we can reverse the trend (short of launching all our atomic weapons and inducing a "nuclear winter"). The predominant reporting out there seems to claim as FACT that humans caused global warming and just cutting emissions by some magical percentage will be a silver bullet to make it all go away.