First the Superconducting Super Collider, now the James Web Space telescope?

In
-sep
tember.org wrote:

Bert wrote:
In Chris L Peterson
wrote:

Our country has never gone through such a period of focused
anti-intellectualism, especially as directed towards science.

Anti-intellectualism?

You want The State to support your pet projects with money taken by
force from the citizens and you have the nerve to talk about
anti-intellectualism?

Sounds like a good idea.

What sounds like a good idea?

At the same time you should stop churches being given tax breaks with
money forced from those not in their congregations.

Sure; in an honest system of taxation, there's absolutely no reason for
the exception.

--
St. Paul, MN

On 24 Aug 2011 19:58:55 GMT, Bert wrote:

Anti-intellectualism?

You want The State to support your pet projects with money taken by
force from the citizens and you have the nerve to talk about
anti-intellectualism?

Thank you for making my point, knuckle-dragger!

In Chris L Peterson
wrote:

On 24 Aug 2011 19:58:55 GMT, Bert wrote:

Anti-intellectualism?

You want The State to support your pet projects with money taken by
force from the citizens and you have the nerve to talk about
anti-intellectualism?

Thank you for making my point, knuckle-dragger!

Thanks for making my point, blood sucking parasite.

--
St. Paul, MN

On Aug 24, 10:17*am, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 08:34:25 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote:

But to choose to live and work in China instead of the United
States... the movie "Ship of Fools" comes to mind.

Why? It has a high standard of living and is making huge investments
in science and technology. It's a good place to work if you're in
certain sciences. Its star is certainly on the rise.

If you will recall where the ship in the 1965 movie "Ship of
Fools" (and the 1962 novel by Katherine Anne Porter on which it was
based) was headed, you will realize what aspect of the People's
Republic of China it is that I consider an overriding concern.

John Savard

On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:55:39 -0400, "Richard Setters"
wrote:

Well, maybe that's because the "common man" doesn't see any benefits as a
result of science...

Then that just points to the gross ignorance and lack of reasoning
skills of the "common man", because the benefits of science pretty
obviously outweigh any negatives.

Is education declining, or is the family crumbling because people no longer
have the backbone to stay in their marriages, raise their kids with morals
and standards, and both parents are working 12 hour+ days?

Personally, I think that moral standards in general are much higher
now than they have been in the last hundred years or more. The ability
of people to easily get out of marriages is a big step forward, and
has produced healthier families. I do think people are generally
poorer at some aspects of raising children. Many commit a form of
abuse by taking kids to church, and too many fail to get involved in
their education. Those are certainly difficult problems.

To start a ":recovery" is going to first require much more "made in the USA"
products once again, which will mean cutting ties with China, etc, building
families with a firm foundation rooted in love and caring environments, and
ousting the current, corrupt political systems.

That's not going to happen unless we radically change the laws that
govern how corporations operate.

Bring God back into the schools, along with the flag salute.

Both of these are a big part of the problem, certainly not part of any
solution. Remove gods completely from society, and change the idea of
what patriotism really means. But I don't see those things happening.
They have already happened in most of the developed world, of course,
which is why most other countries are doing much better than the U.S.

On Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:09:23 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote:

If you will recall where the ship in the 1965 movie "Ship of
Fools" (and the 1962 novel by Katherine Anne Porter on which it was
based) was headed, you will realize what aspect of the People's
Republic of China it is that I consider an overriding concern.

Having never seen the movie or read the book, I don't really
understand your concern. I did read a synopsis online, but if I
understand it (and you) correctly, I can't really agree with your
assessment.

Chris L Peterson:
Our country has never gone through such a period of focused
anti-intellectualism, especially as directed towards science.

Bert:
Anti-intellectualism?

Yes. Those who don't want to know anything they can't find in a
3,000-year-old book are bound to fear intellectuals and reject
intellectualism. Their last presidential candidate ranked 894th of 899
graduates in his class at the USNA and could not possibly have been
admitted on merit--daddy was an admiral. No need to discuss his running
mate.

You want The State to support your pet projects with money taken by
force from the citizens and you have the nerve to talk about
anti-intellectualism?

There is no "State." I want the People to pool their financial
resources for the betterment of the human condition and the achievement
of noble aims. I'm talking about the People who pooled their resources
and wiped out smallpox, yellow fever, and polio; who pooled their tax
dollars to fund the WWII GI Bill that is the direct and verifiable
cause of this country's unprecedented in world history economic success
pre-Reagan. The people who pooled their resources and built the
Interstate Highway System and who funded the space program. I like it
when my money is pooled with that of my fellow citizens to relieve the
suffering of victims of disasters, misfortune, and predatory
capitalists whose greed knows no bounds.

Your nonsensical talk of the "State" forcibly taking money from its
citizens marks you as a tee-pee fool and a liar.

Davoud

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

Britain has seen an increase in Physics and science students. They
think this is due to a popular astronomy and science, TV programme
headed up by Dr Brian Cox. He was young, good fun, prepossessing,
passionate and obviously highly intelligent. Not a grey old boor
mumbling down to his captive audience. People could relate to Cox and
absorb what he said and showed on his global travels.

Communist dictatorship denies good men the right to question the evil
they see everywhere in the crude and totally corrupt system of
control. Communism values control above all else to allow its corrupt
hierarchy to milk the people of every right they were born with. A
social pressure cooker waits to explode. Or a grey world of misery
where drunkenness and bribery rule.

Religion denies good men the right to speak out about the evil they
see everywhere in this crude and corrupt system of control. Western
religions value wealth above all else. They will use their evil
influence to build obscene property folios and treasures. In poverty-
ridden Greece the church owns a very large fraction of the entire
country. Why?

Nationalism denies good men the ability to speak out about the evil
they see all around them. To do so means that a flagpole will be used
to beat them into silence. Knee jerk national loyalty, auto-religious,
mumbo jumbo and flag waving are precisely where America fails. Its
crippling Achilles heels denies it the ability to progress beyond the
worship of money. The Dream is a nightmare for tens of millions.
Meanwhile you have locked your voting system into he with the most
advertising money, the most nationalism and the most religious
bull****. It doesn't seem to be working for most of you. Does it?

You have a massive illegal drugs culture and it pays far better to
sell drugs than to study. Or to steal instead of working. Rather than
work for minimum wage for an untaxed billionaire. One who stashes his
wealth offshore to avoid ever paying his way like everyone else has
to. Has reducing taxes for the rich provided more jobs? European
billionaires are publicly demanding to be taxed more. As have some
American billionaires. So much for the ultra-selfish here who spout
their demands for dictatorship and brain damaging of the poor by
beating them into silence with flag and cross. How about offering just
a little respect and self respect for ordinary men and women in
exchange for the taxes which are handed straight to the rich?

One's nationality and religion are purely accidents of birth.
Deformities which can be utilised to crudely control the masses. While
the world's elite live the lives of Egyptian Pharaohs. Untouchable by
taxes, daily concerns and even quite ordinary justice. They enjoy
global diplomatic immunity entirely as a result of their wealth.

In Davoud wrote:

There is no "State."

Going beyond "anti-intellectualism," we now have "delusional."

--
St. Paul, MN

On Aug 24, 6:00*pm, Chris L Peterson wrote:
I did read a synopsis online, but if I
understand it (and you) correctly, I can't really agree with your
assessment.

The People's Republic of China is a dictatorship. Thus, terrible
things happen there to innocent people all the time, and there is no
recourse; and to survive there for any length of time, one has to be
willing to be complicit in that.

Despite economic progress, life behind the Bamboo Curtain in Hu
Jintao's China is still a nightmare, just as it was in Khruschev's and
Brezhnev's and Andropov's and Chernenko's Russia in addition to
Stalin's Russia.

Those who have the good fortune to live in a country where freedom and
justice reign, where injustices can be openly discussed, so that the
people can work to right them... should not throw that away.

John Savard