You don't seem to be aware of the fact that Krugman has always said that the 2009 stimulus act was far too small. Another fun tidbit: the actual price tag of the act as passed is less than $800 billion, not a trillion. I believe a one trillion version was considered in congress before this smaller compromise passed, perhaps that's what you were thinking of.
Bu let's not get bogged down by technicalities. Something passed Congress. You didn't like it because you think the idea itself is bad. Krugman didn't like it because he wanted it to have been far larger. And now today you're using the results of something Krugman didn't like to say "See? Krugman is wrong!"
Noam Chomsky is America’s greatest intellectual ????????
Never mind Richard Feynman, the guy who thinks socialism works and apologizes for Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot's murdering tens of millions is America's greatest intellectual.
I am not sure if your comment about apologising for Stalin / MAO etc is aimed at Chomsky or not. But you should be aware that Chomsky is an anarchist socialist and not a Marxist. He has written and spoken some of the most illuminating and critical stuff I have read on the revolution in Russia.
Yeah, for a measly hundred billion we can get some more astronomers. Great ! It's the geniuses that do most of the science and I think they tend to gravitate there anyway.
I'm reminded of Feynman's comments on the field of gravity, back in the 60's even before grade inflation and a huge increase in the number of Phds
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I am learning nothing. Because there are no experiments this field is not an active one, so few of the best men are doing work in it. The result is that there are hosts of dopes here (126) and it is not good for my blood pressure: such inane things are said and seriously discussed here that I get into arguments outside the formal sessions (say, at lunch) whenever anyone asks me a question or starts to tell me about his "work". The "work" is always: (1) completely un-understandable, (2) vague and indefinite, (3) something correct that is obvious and self evident, but a worked out by a long and difficult analysis, and presented as an important discovery, or, a (4) claim based on the stupidity of the author that some obvious and correct fact, accepted and checked for years, is, in fact, false (these are the worst: no argument will convince the idiot), (5) an attempt to do something probably impossible, but certainly of no utility, which it is finally revealed at the end, fails (dessert arrives and is eaten), or (6) just plain wrong. There is great deal of "activity in the field" these days, but this "activity" is mainly in showing that the previous "activity" of somebody else resulted in an error or in nothing useful or in nothing promising. It is like a lot of worms trying to get out of a bottle by crawling all over each other. It is not that the subject is hard; it is that the good men are occupied elsewhere. Remind me not to come to any more gravity conferences!
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Seems to me an a guy who couldn't get hired as a physicist had a rather large effect on physics in 1905. The hiring process is a form of 'peer review'.
And Einstein would possibly have agreed with that to some extent, as evidenced by his reply in 1936 to the rejection of the only paper of his ever even subject to peer review, even then a new concept in fields unrelated to medicine. This has literally nothing to do with his inability to find work after he graduated university or the hiring process of science institutions in general. This emotional argument doesn't just not reflect Einstein on any level deeper than a Wikipedia summary of a bio, but lacks any historical perspective as well.
Einstein's 1905 works, specifically the Annus Mirabilis papers, lacked the formal review process we understand today, but were certainly reviewed by the two Nobel prize-winning physicists who selected them for publication in their journal. The formal review panel concept simply did not exist at the time outside of the medical fields, but that is not to say there was no stringent editorial control or gatekeeping in physics journals, and certainly not in Annalen der Physik. If anything, Einstein was subject to a far less fair and inclusive process.
IIRC Reagan proposed a balanced budget, had the Grace commision recommending large cuts in government spending/programs through privatization. This was completely rejected by Congress, and Tip O'Neal said the budget was 'Dead On Arrival'.
I have. The decisions of the respective bloggers to, instead of relying on facts, rely on misleading half-truths, misquotes and outright fabrications makes it difficult for me to find any reason to associate either site with skepticism. Rather, I find that both Climate Audit and WUWT are perfect examples of a sort of knee-jerk denialism that I find to be such a perversion of the word "skepticism."
The parent article, on the other hand, lists several examples of honest skeptics as well as of dishonest denialists. I would encourage people to evaluate the arguments of those skeptics, and not the pseudo-skeptics at CA and WUWT.
I wasn't talking to you. You're the guy who pulled his thread when valid arguments were brought up that didn't support your point. I'm sure that's why you feel right at home at Real Climate.
I would say it's the proponents that are doing it wrong. The supposedly independent and objective inquiry into the climategate scandal has already had one member forced to resign (the editor of Nature, btw)
http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/11/the-team-that-cant-shoot-...
"Unbiased information." That's a good one. Why I linked to realclimate.org is because, unlike so many denialist sites, they cite the actual studies and the data that are the basis of our understanding. In that sense, realclimate.org is one of the absolute least biased sites you can possibly refer to: they are biased only in that they accurately and dutifully report on the data.
By the way, when you refer to "the climategate scandal," you really don't do yourself any favors. There is no "climategate scandal" other than that a well-coordinated group of hackers (in the negative sense of the word) committed criminal acts in order to embarrass scientists and undermine the perceived validity of their work. Indeed, in that sense, "climategate" is much like the Watergate scandal, and you seem to be throwing your lot in with the villains of this story. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you aren't evil, manipulative or duplicitous, but merely ignorant. There's many good (read, well-cited) sources dedicated to debunking the poisonous myth that is "climategate," such as http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/12/the_climategat.... For more general information, please see http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to....
That article is about one of the IPCC authors validating a 'denialists' claim. It is the climategate scientists that broke the law, but the statute of limitations had expired (it is only six months, the law is seriously flawed), so they haven't been prosecuted. Here is another example of someone going directly from the raw data and finding no warming
http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.php/2010/01/global-warming/
Dude, calm down. Missionary zeal on a topic this contentious makes you look like a conspiracy nut. Be happy that reasoned skepticism is respectable again, and don't try to force other people to change their minds at a pace of your choosing.
