Merlyn_LeRoy

Ed, what examples do you have of public money supporting churches?

This is just more fallout from the Dale decision. The BSA stated it was a private organization, not a public accommodation. You can certainly have private organizations, but they pay market rates, they don't have taxpayers subsidize their private clubs. The BSA is keeping the Philly case alive because they're arguing that they somehow DO have a right to be a private club supported by public money.

You can't just meet some of the standards; you need to meet all of them. James Dale certainly met a lot of the standards, but since he was gay, he was kicked out anyway.

Philadelphia has standards that must be met for organizations to qualify for below-market leases. The BSA doesn't meet those standards, so they can pay regular market rates, or move out. If you don't meet the requirements, you're out of luck. Sounds familiar.

But Ed, leasing public property to a discriminatory organization for $1/year is in violation of the Philadelphia Fair Practices Ordinance, which dates back at least 40 years. The city can't legally give the BSA a sweetheart deal like that.

So Ed, you're saying the BSA should have been kicked out long ago?

I'd say it's the Boy Scouts who forgot that they were leasing public property for $1/year, and deciding to become a private, discriminatory group, shot themselves in the foot. Pick one: government largess/discrimination.

And that the city owns the building? Part of the arrangement to allow it to be built on public land was turning over ownership to the city as soon as it was built.

vol_scouter writes: I was just pointing out that the definition you were applying to GW would not allow climatologists to be scientists. Not at all. If they develop models that make predictions and refine them based on how well or badly the predictions work, that's science (and that's what they do). So GW's definition is a valid one. I haven't said anything about GW's definition; I pointed out that his examples of how "science" has been wrong were not examples of science. The four elements as a physics explanation was not derived using the scientific method, so it's senseless to hold it up as an example. It's like criticizing the FAA by pointing out how many times the Wright brothers crashed. Once again, the climate models though improving cannot predict what is going to happen in the next decades. Well, of course they can, the question is how accurate are they. Some but not all models seem to point to worsening warming. However, the earth has been cooling for the last ~18 months (from my memory) with climate models now predicting an impending ice age. We do not clearly understand solar cycles and their impact on the climate models. To ruin our economy in order to decrease warming that we are not actually causing is folly. We will only know the correct answer retrospectively but I cannot support ruining our economy based on our current data and models though I could be wrong. Wait, are you saying weather models are iffy, but economic models are perfect? You can say for certain that, say, a large government project to develop more efficient and new energy sources similar in magnitude to the space program would necessarily ruin the economy, instead of being a big technological boost to the economy? I don't think you can.

vol_scouter writes: By your definition of science, the climatologists are not doing science - they are collecting data and making observations. If their observations aren't used to distinguish between competing weather models, then no, they aren't doing science. But I'd say they, or at least the people who developed the models to start with, actually did compare how well various models agreed with observations, and kept refining their models to get better ones.

vol_scouter writes: Many of the world's top scientists did not believe that atoms existed at the turn of the 20th century. I haven't said anything to contradict that. I was pointing out GW's error in saying "to claim that substances were made up of of unseeable particles was heresy." The Greek idea was that any given material, i.e. element, could be divided just so many times before a smallest subdivision was reached. It is similar to the atomic theory but not the same either. I didn't say it was the same, I said the idea was around and advocated, not prosecuted as heresy. Some of them also glommed onto the similarities of packed sand = solid, loose sand = liquid, and dust = gas. GW has the gist of the scientific method. He only leaves out control of the experimental conditions. Which is what the Greeks also left out, which is why calling what they did "science" is not a valid comparison to what is called "science" today.

Right Winger writes: Mervyn, it was the orthodoxy of then which is far different from the orthodoxy of now No, it was never orthodoxy. You keep asserting that, but you don't back it up. I even had to track down who purportedly said it FOR you. At one time, the idea that there four elements of earth, air, fire and water was considered science It wasn't considered science by today's use of the word, because the scientific method hadn't been invented at that time. You can't just handwave and call anything "science," you have to follow the methods, so now you're just equivocating. and to claim that substances were made up of of unseeable particles was heresy. No it wasn't. There were Greeks who were atomists, like Epicurus and Democritus. That's why the word 'atom' is derived from ancient Greek. Eeesh. "I honestly beleave it iz better tew know nothing than two know what aint so." -- Josh Billings

Gold Winger writes: Depends on what you consider orthodoxy, it changes continually in the world of science. Yes, and you obviously are willing to take random bits of folklore and urban legends and pretend they are orthodox science as a bizarre way to show how "wrong" it can be, even though it's your ignorance of real science history that's at fault.

Well Gold Winger, Lardner also claimed that steamships couldn't carry enough coal to cross the Atlantic. Sorry, that was never part of "the great orthodoxy of science."

Still with the childish insults, eh? While you were using all your brainpower to try and come up with an insult (and failing, given how repetitious and lame your insults are), I actually tracked it down to a Reverend Doctor Lardner referring to Stephenson's Rocket. By the way, you still haven't shown how the "great orthodoxy of science" once believed this.

Gold Winger, you claimed it was orthodox science at one point; I don't recall who supposedly claimed that "man cannot live at such speeds" but they didn't think about it. But science obviously isn't your field at all; you much prefer childish insults. It doesn't take any effort to show how ridiculous it would be for the "great orthodoxy of science" to assert that the air would be sucked out of train cars at 30 MPH, because that would mean the air would get sucked out of a stationary horse-drawn coach when the wind exceeded 30 MPH, and this is easily shown to be false on a very windy day (that's not even gale force winds). Any competent scientist (hell, any competent layman) would realize that. (This message has been edited by Merlyn_LeRoy)

Just pointing out once again that you're wrong, Gold Winger, and that if you'd have thought about it for about 10 seconds, you might have realized how ridiculous and obviously false your urban legend was. But, as usual, you have absolutely nothing useful to contribute.

Gold Winger writes: Remember that the great orthodoxy of science once believed that man couldn't go faster than 30 mph or he'd suffocate. No, that was one idiot who couldn't even make simple observations; horses can go that fast carrying a rider. But people who fall for crank science can't tell the difference between real science and quackery, or folklore for that matter. I'll go with real science.

response to Non sequitur OGE (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

GaHillBilly writes: The man claimed to be God, to be the actual Creator of the universe. As Lewis observes, you've got very limited choices: He's telling the truth and is God, or he's lying and he's a Charles Manson, or he's nutty as a fruitcake and needed to be locked up (the precise conclusion his mother Mary and his brothers reached, at one point). Those aren't all the choices. Lewis' lord/liar/lunatic is a well-known false trilemma. It makes no allowances for simple things like inaccurate retellings of stories over decades by bronze-age sheepherders.

The 19th amendment would still prevent it.

While that would have similar problems, voting actually ISN'T a right in the US. If it was, ex-cons probably couldn't lose it.

It would be simpler if all referenda, and all laws, that passed were constitutional. I think any challenge on constitutional grounds against a referendum or law that hasn't yet passed would just be rejected by a court on grounds of mootness. There's really nothing to challenge before it passes. Since marriage is a right under Loving v. Virginia, it looks like it might be hard-to-impossible for state constitutions to carve out limitations. Imagine if a bunch of conservative Muslims managed to pass a state constitutional amendment that said women may not speak to men; it's clearly infringing on their first amendment rights, and pointing out that they still have a first amendment right to speak to other women doesn't "make up" for it. Yet banning gay marriage is limiting the right of marriage based on the sex of the people involved in exactly the same way.

OGE, the difference between the will of the people in electing the president vs. referenda is that these acts have different standards to meet. For president, there are still some people who claim Obama isn't a native born American; if he isn't, there goes the will of the people, right? Obama would not meet the requirements to be president. For referenda, state constitutional amendments have to be passed according to the amending requirements of that state constitution, and state constitutions can't violate the federal rights of citizens. Prop 8 is being challenged on both these grounds. If prop 8 is somehow invalid along these lines, again, the will of the people isn't carried out because the proposition didn't meet the requirements.

Gold Winger, go ahead and start such an organization. It's perfectly legal.