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=A0 =A0 Mikek

I don't see any problem with either statement?

killing Osama wouldn't make anyone safer, he's been busy hiding for ten years But it is still the biggest scalp the US has gotten in the war on al- Qaida

-Lasse

is

Collateral damage? Invading countries and wreaking havoc on the world's financial system. Encouraging profit-taking sans production to suck the energy out of the system. Spending like no tomorrow, and killing tens of thousands of innocents along the way. Biggest scalp? You're killing yourselves both morally and financially.

Grant.

On May 4, 12:13=A0pm, "amdx" wrote: =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0

Dishonest? Yes. Intellectual? No.

Yeah, her only skill is political manipulation.

Imagine letting people like this make important decisions about public policy, economics, and cultural issues. It's terrifying.

John

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The intellectual dishonesty is all in the comparison. There's no inconsistency between the two statements.

Killing Osama bin Laden hasn't made the world any safer - he hasn't done anything for years. But killing him is a historic victory, though only at the symbolic level. Since al-Qaida is essentially a theatrical organisation - organising attention-getting events (featuring lots of innocent blood and gruesome photo-opportunities) to attract recruits and to get publicity and support - this is a very useful kind of victory. And Pelosi is right that it should have happened much earlier than it did - and it probably would have if Bush and Cheney had been willing to trust their intelligence organsiations to collect data slowly and carefully, rather than bullying them into resorting to kidnapping informants pretty much at random and flooding the system with unreliable "information" that had been tortured out of these people who mostly didn't actually know anything.

Killing bin Laden will probably make the world a bit more dangerous - for a while - as al-Qaida is provoked into revenge attacks, which will be less well-prepared than if they had been carried out when al-Qaida felt free to dictate the timing, and correspondingly more likely to be detected and blocked, further eroding al-Qaida's prestige and recruiting power.

And there's something ironic in misspelling "intelectual" when accusing someone of intellectual dishonesty. Amx isn't exactly famous for his intellectual insight.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

You'd prefer Sarah Palin or Donald Trump?

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Sarah, for sure. Trump is absurd.

John

If you had any measurable influence on the world, you'd be as dangerous as Nancy. Luckily, her influence is seriously diminished, and you have none.

John

Trump is a tolerably successful business-man, Palin failed as governor of Alaska. Would you like to provide some kind of rational basis for your preference?

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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=A0 =A0 =A0 Mikek

Since you seem to consider any kind of preference for rationally-based decision-making as dangerous, this is actually a back-handed compliment. Like being called stupid about politics by Rich Grise.

After the mid-term elections, the lunatics do seem to be closer to running the asylum.

Not very much, but then again you don't have much influence either, which is something to be grateful for.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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I have a lot of influence on my employees and my customers. And my customers have a lot of influence on something like a trillion dollars worth of worldwide activity. Ranting about public policy, in an obscure newsgroup, probably has the reverse of the desired effect.

Building good electronics for important things matters. I have no interest in wielding political influence, and I don't care to vote.

There is a pattern among leftists to try to change the world at large, but do nothing concrete within their personal sphere. Which is why so many inspirational revolutionaries and artists and politicians are such rotten spouses and parents, and why so many have vile drug and alcohol addictions, and leave trails of misery in their real lives.

Scale up that sort of behavior, and the world gets worse, not better. Scale up individuals doing good, perhaps modest, work and helping the people immediately around them, and things get better. So you keep preaching and insulting, and I'll keep working and teaching.

John

Actually, no. Would you like to talk about electronics?

John

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Sure. Why haven't you ever got around to even trying out a heat pipe?

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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=A0 =A0 =A0 Mikek

Or so you'd like to think.

You have no interest in understanding political questions, as you regularly make obvious by your uncritical recycling of the rightwing rubbish you find in the news media that you seem to read, and we can only be grateful that you don't vote. It's a somewhat irresponsible attitude, but if you prefer to focus your entire interest on electronics, that's your choice.

How many? Where's your source data? Do you have any specific examples in mind?

Are right-wing poltical leaders models of virtue? Is Belusconi a left wing or a right wing politician? And the current - right-of-centre - president of France has a slightly chequered history.

The most left wing president they've had - Mitterrand

did manage to stay married to his wife while having a long term relationship which lead to an extra-marital daughter, but nothing suggests that he left a trail of misery - everybody involved seems to have cooperated in keeping the matter private.

First find some sort of statitical evidence that right- and left-wing politicians differ in this respect. There is evidence that powerful people have more extra-marital flings than the less powerful, but I've yet to see any evidence that right- and left-wing politicians behave differently.

Perhaps. But you've still got to establish that this correlates with political stance.

"Teaching"? If your claim about left-wing politicians being uniquely immoral were to be interpreted as an example of setting up a well- founded argument, you'd be banned from contact with the young and impressionable.

And you will read that as an insult ...

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Nancy Pelosi is not a person, it is just a talking head.

Can a politician pass the Turing Test?

The algoritms that generate their comments seem to be finite state machines.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen