Comments on: Memo To Chuck Todd and NBC: Your Science Coverage Is Awful, Too

By: Ed Driscoll » Weapons Of Matt’s Disagreement

Ed Driscoll » Weapons Of Matt’s Disagreement — Thu, 13 May 2010 00:02:23 +0000

[...] “Memo To Chuck Todd and NBC: Your Science Coverage Is Awful, Too.” Filed under: Liberal Fascism, Oh, That Liberal Media!, The Future and its Enemies, War And [...]

By: AlistZ

AlistZ — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:43:40 +0000

Fiber is a little passe at this point. TW and CC are definitely running monopolistic broadband networks through T1 and T3 lines without competition in geographic areas. They are also major content providers. They are also working quietly toward defeating Net Neutrality so they can control search results. They will also Bias towards leftist content.

By: EdSki

EdSki — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:53:15 +0000

Let me put it this way, I work in the internet security industry, so I have a fairly different definition of the internet. Time-Warner is the largest ISP to the public, but I don't know if they actually have wide area internet routers.

And if not, they are just a middle man providing the interface to the public. When I worked at IBM years ago, they even had an ISP business for a while, just like AOL and ComCast. But eventually they got out of that business and sold it and their global network to AT&T. I believe AT&T also provides Time-Warner's ISP. The IBM site I worked at had fiber run to Time-Warner, but ended up on AGNS (ATT Global Network System).

One of the beauties of the internet is its the exact opposite of central planning and control. No one organization controls everything. Of course that drives the statists absolutely bat sh!t crazy. They can't stand the thought of something that isn't under complete and total control, which is why they love government.

But its not, so they can't do it, and that's exactly why its so great and wide spread. Just because people don't follow certain rules, and do things the way certain people think they should, doesn't mean it doesn't work. In many cases it works much, much better.

And the internet is a prime example. Which is why the feds are drooling at the chance to get their grubby paws on it.

By: AlistZ

AlistZ — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:27:39 +0000

The largest internet Providers? Time-Warner, Comcast are media conglomerates.

By: M.Jorgensen

M.Jorgensen — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:26:45 +0000

I am a programmer who spent a five-year stint in climate research in the 1980s. During that period I worked on acid rain and tropospheric ozone research and was knowledgable about stratospheric ozone depletion and global warming, the claims and the data. It was widely known in the field that the "warming" claims had substantial problems, for example, rural-only temperatures in the continental United States showed no warming trend — an inconvenient fact yet to be explained! After twenty-five years as a researcher and programmer for "scientists" in eight departments, I saw that the fraud, incompetence, deception, marketing, etc. were pervasive across the disciplines. It is time that the research university bubble be popped, which, of course, has been massively financed with federal tax dollars.

By: RCjr

RCjr — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:36:57 +0000

You give the MSM too much credit. They don't have to be at all technically or scientifically inclined, knowledgable or capable. All they need to be is honest enough to always apply three items that are the sine qua non of legitimate science:
1. Data, algorithms, data manipulation techniques, etc are all freely available to anyone who asks (in the age of the internet the absence of this is inexcusable)
2. Peer review of experiments/data gathering techniques in completely neutral professional publications
3. Replication of results by completely unconnected researchers

If any of these items are not true then the presumption is that science has NOT taken place and the results are completely invalid until proven otherwise by fullfilling these requirements.

By: Kyle Reese

Kyle Reese — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:09:40 +0000

I agree that most MSM doesn't have a clue about science and goes with the biggest sob story by default. I do want to point out one exception to that - on MSNBC of all things. Alan Boyle who does the Cosmic Log science blog for MSNBC.com http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/ does a nice job. I have an interest in new space/commercial rocket development and check his blog regularly for updates on that field. He is one of the few mainstream media guys who covers that and knows what is what when things happen, like the new NASA budget. His blog has not been about the enviroment that much, probably because if it was he would lose readers one way or another. Still, gotta put in a good word for a Science focused guy at MSNBC. Strange but true.

By: dphorstick

dphorstick — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:19:48 +0000

when do we get to go full Mussolini on that greedy ,lying fraud Algore. String him up in Harvard Yard.

By: EdSki

EdSki — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

That's usually what happens when socialism is put to the test. Fortunately in America, they don't have the guns to make us go along.

By: AriTai

AriTai — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:49:59 +0000

re: discount rate: think about goods we value and use today that we bought 100 years ago. Or things we’d purchase today that we expect will have significant value in 100 years. Consider that it took (just) 20-30 years for Lake Erie to be mostly cleaned up – and the Cuyahoga to stop burning. Ditto for the LA basin where the air leaving a modern car engine has long been cleaner than it was on entry. The Panama canal is being rebuilt, it may just make it to its 100 year anniversary. In a 100 years, the new one will likely be refit if not abandoned when technology and even less-expensive energy changes the rules again. It's important to be humble about what we see beyond our headlights. Especially when the next catastrophe happens and we find "if only we'd been more aggressive about growth more of the population would have survived because of …" (plot death by wealth per type of disaster, natural and man-made).