Reader Tips

I note that Russia, France and the US are doing their utmost to support their nuclear industries, but no mention of our very own AECL. Did we go out of business while I wasn't paying attention?

http://tinyurl.com/ohcandu

heh - very nice quote, vitruvius. Certitude is a state of mind, while certainty refers to the evidential support of a proposition.

We are back to the themes of the 'fixation of belief' and 'confirmation bias'.

How about Bertrand Russell and his 'the problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves but wiser people so full of doubts'.

“The way of a fool seems right to him, but the wise man listens to advice.”
-Proverbs 12:15

just like the winter olympics?? I wonder how many of these folks show up on time for the opening ceremony.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/coalition-leader-tony-abbott-slams-aboriginal-tokenism-by-kevin-rudd/story-e6frf7l6-1225840871960

Some good quotes tonight by Vitruvius, ET, and gord. In addition, Vitruvius gets a stand-up double for the back to back nightly quotes. Last night's was worthy of a repeat:

"An attitude of permanent indignation signifies great mental poverty. Politics compels its votaries to take that line and you can see their minds growing more impoverished every day, from one burst of righteous indignation to the next."
-- Valery

Alberta took the brier in Halifax this evening. That is certain.

same sacks marriage

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4099262/man-marries-pillow

An amusing ditty about the Wall Street Crisis:

"Jump, you f**kers"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yge311sFhC8

I missed the apology to Momar last week.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704416904575121710380216280.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

all this from a guy named after Mohammeds flying horse.

Caesar: The ides of March are come.
Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but not gone.

Happy Ides of March all. Time to unpack those togas.

Aargh. I came here to get away from LGF drama.

Anyway, here's a link to an article claiming that if you take pension obligations into account, every Western country is bankrupt six times over. I'm not sure I buy the math, because I don't think multi-year budgets work that way, but there's a handy little graphic that shows just how bad off everybody is.

Extremist thinking
By David Warren

It does not matter whether you are a man or a woman: if you oppose feminism, you must expect to be smeared. If one is a man, one will certainly be accused of "misogyny," or hatred of women -- which is another thing entirely from opposition to the feminist ideology.

http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/

Article on how Canadian climate change scientists feel muzzled by their government about speaking to the media. Don't these clowns get it that they and their ilk LIED for years and still do. Almost every nature show I watch still goes on about how climate change is destroying the environment.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2682162

"Scientists have noticed a major reduction in the number of requests, particularly from high profile media, who often have same-day deadlines,"
Are these the same same-day deadlines that kept high profile media from reporting on Climate-gate for weeks????
Is the high profile media realizing that they are being scammed by the scientists and possibly the readers are tired of the same alarmist BS message?

Those of you following the dust up over the "al Qaeda 7" (Or is it 9? Or 10?) ad by "Keep America Safe" will want to read Andrew McCarthy's post yesterday on "The Corner, this morning's WSJ article by Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn, and McCarthy's post this morning, as well as the linked piece by Bill Gertz.

For those who have yet to figure it out, this excellent reportage tells us what sort of man now lives in the Whitehouse. How much more will it take before the scales fall from the eyes of those who still can't stare the truth in its face? Or won't: Its beginning to look like willful blindness.

(Via Danger Room) Real-life Hurt Locker: how bomb-proof suits work

The "EOD ensemble," as Borkar calls it, is not simply a body-condom version of a Kevlar vest: "It's a complex composite product consisting of both rigid and soft armor systems." These two fundamental layers are designed to defeat the two main threats in an explosion: the overpressure pulse, or shockwave; and the fragmentation, commonly known as shrapnel.

The overpressure wave is actually the more dangerous of the two. A microsecond after a bomb goes off, the explosion compresses the surrounding air and blows it outward in a lightning-fast shockwave that ripples through clothing and literally flattens internal organs...

Tragically, a young man was killed at the St. Patrick's Day parade in Montreal. Expect sweeping new laws and regulations mandating increased safety gear, procedures, risk assesments, training, and insurance requirements for future parades.
http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Tragedy+mars+parade/2684033/story.html

some well dressed out teens , in control and well behaved. sadly the DND is cutting back on this sort of thing.

http://www.armycadethistory.com/Regional_Activities/SZAb_drill_comp_2010.htm

http://www.globaltvcalgary.com/video/index.html

Oh my!

"Environment Minister Jim Prentice wants to know what Canadians think about a proposed new strategy to ensure the environment is taken into consideration when the federal government develops policies and programs."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/bureau-blog/jim-prentice-reaches-out-amid-climate-backlash/article1500876/

and here: http://www.ec.gc.ca/dd-sd/default.asp?lang=En&n=E19EE696-1

A flood is in order.

Another good conspiracy movie. With a surprise ending for the global elite bad guys. Be not deceived.

http://snardfarker.ning.com/profiles/blogs/videos-shadow-government-full?xg_source=msg_mes_network&id=2649739%3ABlogPost%3A156135&page=2#comments

More movie fun. Fall of the Republic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebOTc-7shU

The anti-Semites are out in full force at CBC today. _http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/12/f-vp-macdonald.html

Unbelievable.

Any hoots from CTV/Owliver, et al on this?
…-

“Name dishonest researchers, government urges

The federal government has been pushing Canada’s largest research council to release the names of scientists who fudge research results, plagiarize reports or misspend grant money, according to federal documents obtained by Canwest News Service.

But the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council has yet to change its rules, despite pointed recommendations from its political masters. The council, which distributes $1 billion in federal funding every year to thousands of researchers across the country, says federal privacy laws prevent it from identifying scientists involved in misconduct.

Jim Prentice, who used to be industry minister and in charge of the council, was so concerned about the “rogue researcher issue” in 2008 that he asked the council to strengthen its rules and start naming offenders, according to the documents obtained through access-to-information requests.

Rather than keeping details of misconduct secret, Prentice, now minister of the environment, wanted the council to get tougher on enforcement “so you can overturn a university decision and publish names like in the U.S.,” says one memo.

“Most people find it quite unacceptable that people found guilty of research misconduct are not exposed,” says an e-mail to NSERC from Industry Canada official Karen Corkery, who was working on the file for Prentice. “And I suspect finding a quick solution to this would show great responsiveness to the minister’s concerns.”

Corkery suggested NSERC might get “out from under the Privacy Act” by asking researchers, as a condition of receiving grants, “to agree to have their names made public if they are found to be in breach of research integrity policies.”"

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Name+dishonest+researchers+government+urges/2683360/story.html

http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2010/03/14/oliver-watch/#comment-77285

"Certitude is not the test of certainty."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"Doubt is not the test of profundity".
-- Me No Dhimmi, Sr.

But, me no dhimmi sr..without doubt, you'll never arrive at profundity.

"Doubt is not the test of profundity".
-- Me No Dhimmi, Sr.

Amen, brother!

O'liver Watch.

Liberal Iffy’s Harvard buddy has fallen.

Owliver/TVC/CBCPRAVDA/Goabl, etc., has promised a full report.
…-

“Obama protesters line street outside Strongsville speech

STRONGSVILLE — Opponents of President Barack Obama’s health care proposals turned out early to protest outside the Walter C. Ehrenfelt Recreation Center here where Obama delivered a speech Monday afternoon.

Protesters stretched for several blocks leading to the president’s Monday afternoon speaking location in Strongsville.

They waved to passing vehicles and held signs including “Don’t stick me with your Obamacare” and “Kill the bill.”"

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=132486&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClevelandHeadlinesFromWkyccom+%28Cleveland-

"I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb"

Richard Feynman, 1965 Nobel Laureate in Physics.

http://www.indian-skeptic.org/html/fey2.htm

ET: " ... without doubt, you'll never arrive at profundity."

But what about your having gone through a long period of doubt, then arriving at certainty?

There always seems to be the supposition, particularly in the spiritual realm, that if one is sure of one's convictions, absolutely certain of G*d's existence and His presence in one's life, these convictions have always been certainties -- and, therefore, are suspect and lacking in profundity.

Often, that's not the case: One has experienced deep doubt and uncertainty, and/or a period of constant questioning and skepticism, and, then, for any number of convergent reasons, there is a point of clarity, a Eureka moment, where one knows, with absolute certainty, that everything one has doubted and felt skeptical about is true, has a profound integrity and reality upon which one can stake one's life.

Too true, ET. You DO need to go through doubt.
Now, I'm just joshing here, but you strike me as a woman not noticeably racked by doubt!
Believe it or not, I'm pretty well tortured by doubt on most stuff, esp., as a libertarian, WAR!

batb: Though I think of myself as at best a deist (if not a non-militant atheist) I have no problem concurring 100% with what you say above. Tho I'm not a "believer" I've come to have enormous respect for many believers (like yourself, and lookout ... and where is she?) which sentiment I often summarize as: I believe in belief!

me no dhimmi - thanks for the josh, but I begin my thoughts with doubt and questions and wondering 'what is going on'...rather than with certainty about, eg, the psychological nature of various ethnic groups.

I'm a fan of the various types of logic and also, of the American 19th c philosopher Charles Peirce, who wrote a very great deal about how we arrive at our beliefs.

So, I'm sceptical, for example, of batb's outline of arriving at ultimate certainness or certitude. I'm not at all saying that it doesn't happen; it does. I'm only questioning whether that arrival is also an arrival at The Truth - which is what Vitruvius' quotation was all about.

"The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing
    when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors."
-- John Stuart Mill

Onward and upward with socialism.
Maarx Brothers.
...-

"CNN: Are there any countries in the world that are taking the right approach?

Zakaria: We are at a unique moment. If you were to look at the countries that have significant problems with their public finances ... where their debt to GDP ratio is, 60, 70, 80, 90 percent of GDP, they're by and large all the richest countries in the world: The United States, Japan, France, Britain."

"World faces a day of financial reckoning"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2471636/posts

WOW, how did he arrive at the "half" mark Vitruvius? Did he have a database of all mens' errors at hand?
Could he be intimating that the other half of the errors are due to remaining doubtful when no reasonable doubt should remain in a reasonable person's mind?

So, JSM tosses us a toss-up?

Paralysis by analysis? Procrastination?
Both of which I have a far more than passing acquaintance with, damnit!

Love your new boxed quotes!
Your remarks about "righteous indignation" continue to stimulate much thought this end? Your buddy HL Mencken, did he carry too much indignation, in your view?

Sorry, no more boxed quotes: the experiment failed. The signal to noise ratio in Reader Tips was already bad enough, and judging by the way some people treated this new boxed quote feature last night (I had to unpublish 27 comments this morning), and the way some apparently still are treating it, it's not worth my trouble to have manage the problem any further.

Canada's first Paralympic gold 'eight years in the making'

Brian McKeever is legally blind, but he knew exactly where he was going when he set out on a 20-kilometre race with his brother, Robin, as a guide

http://www.ctvolympics.ca/paralympics/sports/cross-country-skiing/newsid=55350.html#mckeever+wins+canadas+first+paralympic+gold?cid=rssctv

Cheers

Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief

1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North"

Vitruvius, what are you TALKING about? What's failed about this experiment -- except your thinking that you have to "manage" it?

Don't micro-manage it: Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be ... there will be an answer [or not], let it be ...

The quotes are GR-8, lots of food for thought. Everyone doesn't have to agree with you or be on your wave length to benefit from them ... do they?

Kaaa-choo-choooo.

VJ PachauriPCC.
...-

"Delhi officials unveil giant public air freshener to scrub atmosphere clean

Officials in Delhi have unveiled a radical solution to tackle the increasingly noxious smog hanging over the city: a giant public air freshener that scrubs the atmosphere clean.

The seven-tonne Systemlife Citta costs about 25 million rupees (£357,000). It sucks in 10,000 cubic metres of dirty air an hour, subjects it to a filtering process, and then emits clean air.

Delhi officials say that more of the machines will be bought if the current one, installed at one of Delhi’s busiest traffic junctions as part of a pilot project, proves a success. “We will evaluate its efficacy after three months,” P.K. Sharma, health chief of the New Delhi Municipal Council, told The Times. “If it works, we will buy more.”

Delhi is the second dirtiest city in the world in terms of the amount of particulate matter in the atmosphere, according to the World Bank."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7063117.ece

It wasn't about agreeing with me, BATB, in any fashion whatsoever. I barely participated in the fiasco, and criticized no-one. All evening, I unpublished nothing, in the name of, as you say, letting it be. And then it got worse & worse: off topic chatting, extended debates, and gratuitously insulting me (where I wasn't even involved). It had nothing to do with reader tips, completely drowning out those actual reader tips which the good and decent SDA readers posted here. Nope, sorry: you can ask Kate to change the rules as you like, but I'm sticking to the job I agreed to, which includes managing the application of the extant rules in the Reader Tips entries (as requested by Kate). As to those commenters who are too irresponsible to care about the rules ~ I don't need that crap ~ comments in Reader Tips that are in violation of the rules are toast. As to SDA pages other than Reader Tips: nobody asked me to manage them, so discussing that further here would be off topic.

Sorry you're getting so much grief, Vit. I'm hoping I haven't added to it, but sometimes I'm confused about what's admissible and what's not.

Tips, provided by readers, preferrably with some sort of reference link, that don't quote huge amounts of copyright material, and that aren't run-on screeds (get your own blog for that, write the essay there, and then post a reader tip to the essay), as well comments on extant reader tips (of which the LNR show is the seed tip), to a limited degree, that avoid excessive profanity, chatting, extended debates, and flame wars, are within the rules for Reader Tips, BATB.

People need to understand: Reader Tips isn't like the other SDA pages because there really isn't a particular "topic" for the page, rather, the topic is collecting reader tips so they don't clutter up other pages. As such, if people start four or six debates or even long discussions on different tips, as if they were open topics, the whole Reader Tips page becomes an incomprehensbile mire.

So we don't do that here. Notice the comment by Daniel Ream at 1:32 this morning: Aargh. I came here to get away from LGF drama. That was in response to the muck I had to unpublish this morning. Well, I agree with Daniel too: enough with the drama queens.

One last thing. Look, I admit, one of the problems is probably that I've never written up a sort of Tips for Reader Tips page that is linked to the LNR entry every night. I had rather not wanted to have to do that. But I would like to bring the boxed quotes back. Maybe I can do them both at the same time. Hmm. Well, let me think about it some more (though we're just starting a critical phase at work, so it may take a while).

Vitruvius: "All evening, I unpublished nothing, in the name of, as you say, letting it be."

Well ... err ... almost nothing (the Certitude ≠ Confidence post vanished). That's what's so great about the Ides of March.

I can see where a line has to be drawn, but I really can't see much difference between a post on a LNR piece and a post on a quote.

Correct, ∞²: it is inappropriate to get carried away in either case. However, the LNR show is part of the job I agreed to do. (It's funny how some people who have no understanding of the history of a blog sometimes just feel free to jump right in and make fools of themselves, isn't it ~ present company excluded, of course.) The boxed quotes experiment was not part of that agreement, and therefore I can more easily jettison the temptation it apparently provides to those who should know better and yet apparently don't.