The Dichotomous Trekkie 2.0

Well, since my blog is being weird with comments, here's a comment John sent me:

I was gonna leave a comment, but your blog won't let me... ;(
Anywho, I was mildly surprised not by your opinion of Gov. Palin, but by your how strong it was. I haven't had the chance to read the links at your blog, but I have a general understanding of the Governor's view on science (your main source of opposition, I presume). Although she doesn't share all the views you and I do on climate change, creationism, and the like, I'm not convinced that somehow she could be worse than an Obama adminsitration - especially one backed up by a Pelosi House and a fillibuster-proof Harry Reid Senate.
Creationism makez ZERO sense. "Climate change" will potentially kill all of us (I'm a skeptic,remember) [Well, humans as animals would be fine. But the whole farming thing, and if something happened to a critical food web element .... wolves in Yellowstone decreased erosion, remember!]. Embryonic stem-cell research will cure all problems. I get all of those, and I get that Palin doesn't support any/all of those as much as you like. But compared to a nuclear Iran, a loss in Iraq, tax incerases, runaway spending, and a lack of development of nuclear power, how is voting for McCain/Palin worse than Obama/Biden - espeically since Palin's at the bottom of the ticket?
Or has Berkeley finally corrupted you? ;)

I think this merits a blog response ... one that will hopefully allow comments this time!
Basically, John brings up some good points. On paper, McCain is better for tax reasons & spending, and indisputably better for nuclear power. Every metric says that he has had a longer and wider breadth of foreign policy experience. However, there are reasons to be skeptical, and reasons to be cautious with the vote.

His tax policies and Obama's are comparable for the tax bracket we are in (at least the one I am in), and both of their (proposed) policies have numerous increases in government and spending measures in a period of recession. While I strongly doubt either will balance or surplus the budget, admittedly the money must come from somewhere. This would be a moot point if I thought there was a snowball's chance in hell of McCain's proposed spending freeze went through, but I doubt it will actually happen. So what we actually have are two different large spending policies from two different candidates, and one has a realistic way to pay for it and one doesn't. Trust me, I've been burned by taxes, but I think for the overall economy it might be burned by it. Sadly, the fiscally conservative Republican simply does not exist in politics anymore. So that is why I ignore his tax and spending credentials. Also got to admit, it irritated me he didn't research the "projector" he was talking about.Planetaria star projectors are exceedingly expensive pieces of equipment.

I think that both candidates' wish to be completely independant of foreign oil within ten years is a very smart foreign policy decision, which may retard the growth of nuclear powers in the region (I do think Obama's essentially only non-nuclear renewables is shortsighted, and both endorsements of clean coal is somewhat foolish. And I wish one of them would bring up breeder reactors ...). In a way, I wish both had a stronger stance on ME nuclear developments -- something like a kick in the pants. Perhaps complete trade embargo until they remove all their centrifuges through the UN or something, and encourage our allies to do the same. I am, however, concerned about the overextension of our military from McCain (leading to a loss in Iraq) and an over-reliance on diplomacy to the exclusion of stronger effects like economic sanctions and possible military action from Obama. I think in the long run, however, a few years of over-reliance on diplomacy may garner enough international favor that more strict economic sanctions can be placed from larger arrays of nations as a nuclear development deterrent. So this is a bit of long-term strict-policy thinking on my part that doesn't put me strongly in favor of either candidate.

Obama's biggest turn-off for me is his criminally shortsighted weak endorsement of nuclear power. I would love to see 45 new reactors commissioned. Its a fools hope to think that congress with push it through without presidential backing. However, Obama has an overall better science policy. Furthermore, McCain last night implied that he suscribed to the debunked link between vaccines and autism. But, Palin one (lack of a) heartbeat from the Oval Office, and given a spot of incumbency in the 2012/2016 election is unacceptable.

Remember, as the LA Times published, Palin believes humans and dinosaurs coexisted. That level of incompetence should be relegated to a waitress or sales, not to any level of government.

Palin told him that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time,” Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said “she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks,” recalled Munger. [See: Paluxy trackway]

Newsweek has a superb article on Sarah Palin, which I think everyone should read. She is grossly incompetant, and as I have alluded to in other places, my vote this November will not be for or against any other candidate; my vote will only be against Sarah Palin.

I strongly encourage everyone who reads this blog to take a look at Sciencedebate 2008 and Nature's science interview (John McCain declined; his previous stances are listed, however).

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

Argh, its not letting the comments page be viewed on this one, either ... what the hell

Quick post for testing new permalinks. I've also fixed the weird blog redirection issue, so the URL should properly be blog.revealedsingularity.net now.

OK, I'm playing around with the permalinks .... some stuff may be broken for a while ...

Edit: Seems to be fixed, except for this post ... follow up posts seem to work, so I have no idea what's going on with this oddball.

I think that all those chance-trumpteting, crowing creationsists (aka "fundamentals" and "anti-scienctals") that can't get it through their head that evolution is not chance need to read just two sentences from On the Origin of Species:

I have hitherto sometimes spoken as if the variations — so common and multiform in organic beings under domestication, and in a lesser degree in those in a state of nature — had been due to chance. This, of course, is a wholly incorrect expression [...]^*

Evolution is not due to chance, folks. It has discrete forces acting on it. The variations arise in certain individuals through chance, but it is not chance that shapes evolution. There is a difference.

^*Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species (A Facsimile of the First Edition). President and Fellows of Harvard College. 1964. ISBN 0-674-63752-6.  pp131.

Since I've not managed to post anything in about three weeks, I'll start with another minor computer type post -- some browser benchmarks. They weren't conducted the most rigorously, but it definitely gets the idea across. Test machine was Athena, the "Weighted" benchmark is Sunspider/V8 (so it approximately squares the mean of the difference), and you can download Chrome here.