The anti space exploration people are so predictable.

I should have known making a post in the wake of Armstrong's death about why we weren't colonizing the solar system would have brought out the Luddites and misanthropes and turned the thread into a 500-post epic flame-war filled with ignorance and allusions to "Avatar". Why do I always make such threads hoping for educated and reasonable discussions?

I have a big hole in my bathroom wall.

So, I was taking a shower this morning, I lost my balance on the wet bottom of the shower and leaned on the wall to regain my balance and a bunch of tiles and drywall caved in, and the drywall looked like it had turned into mud. Fortunately my building's resident manager told maintenance to get their asses over here ASAP.

We should have been colonizing the solar system by now.

In 1969 when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon everyone expected that we would keep going farther. But then in the mid 70s NASA got mauled by the small-minded deficit hawks who thought they did not need to keep up NASA's funding because we beat those Evil Commie Russians and that's all that mattered. It seems like all of a sudden nobody cared anymore, some even started bashing space exploration using the equally small-minded "we have more important things to do here on terra firma" argument.

I wonder if the Vietnam War and Watergate are to blame, destroying the belief in Big Government doing Big Things, making NASA a victim of the same rise of selfish Individualism that lead to the late 70s "tax revolts" in California and the election of Reagan in 1980. I suspect that also, among us on the Left that the strain of technophobic misanthropy found among many Green types who believe in the philosophy of Deep Ecology has something to do with it, thus the posts here on DU decrying space exploration as spreading the "cancer" of humanity.

According to astrophysicist Robert Zubrin a 3-year manned mission to Mars would cost $30 billion per mission and is perfectly feasible with today's technology. That is chump change compared to the "Defense" budget, and we would not have to pay all of that if it is set up as a multi-national mission. The problem is a lack of will. people either dogmatically assert that such a mission is either impossible, too expensive, or immoral, and all of those assertions are bullshit.

I don't know what the fuck to believe anymore about the Assange case.

The timing that they starting going after him is suspicious, right after he threatened to publish some stuff that would make the Banksters look bad, yet at the same time I am being increasingly nauseated by the misogyny of many of Assange's defenders, and then again I am worried that the PTB are using our own progressiveness by making us afraid be being called misogynists for defending Assange.

I'm about ready to throw my hands in the air.

Apparently 40 years of neuroscience research is a lie because...

...we cannot detect serotonin levels directly.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021153857

Sounds like the same sophistry used by Creationists to say "but you never saw anything evolve".

I really hate the "It's MY PERSPECTIVE" shit.

Something that really irks me is that it seems like in the past 40 years or so the "personal perspective" has been put on a glowing pedestal to the detriment of objectivity. If someone is offended by the world "niggardly" then it is offensive, the objective fact that it has no relationship to the N-word is simply ignored. If you correct some woo-woo's factual errors you are condemned for "not respecting their own perspective". Tell someone that menstrual cycles have nothing to do with the Moon you are condemned for preferring objective fact over "what women just know". It seems like people are pressured to "respect people's perspectives", that is, don't ever "offend" anybody by telling them they are wrong, and thus "privileging one perspective over another".

This crap seems to go hand in hand with the rise of Postmodern Social Theory in Academia, in which there are no objective truths, just narrative "realities" unique to each person.

I really hate the "It's MY PERSPECTIVE" shit.

Something that really irks me is that it seems like in the past 40 years or so the "personal perspective" has been put on a glowing pedestal to the detriment of objectivity. If someone is offended by the world "niggardly" then it is offensive, the objective fact that it has no relationship to the N-word is simply ignored. If you correct some woo-woo's factual errors you are condemned for "not respecting their own perspective". Tell someone that menstrual cycles have nothing to do with the Moon you are condemned for preferring objective fact over "what women just know". It seems like people are pressured to "respect people's perspectives", that is, don't ever "offend" anybody by telling them they are wrong, and thus "privileging one perspective over another".

This crap seems to go hand in hand with the rise of Postmodern Social Theory in Academia, in which there are no objective truths, just narrative "realities" unique to each person.

Equating mental illness with RW Extremism is NOT OK, it is BIGOTRY.

I alerted on this post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1115135

and the jury voted 2-4 to leave it:

Parking FAIL video. How did this idiot get a license?

UGH, wing-nuts are already pulling the false equivalence shit with the Sikh shooting.

So, I posted the shooting story on another message board, and this exchange ensued:


Me: The police called it an act of domestic terrorism, and a left-winger would never shoot up a Sikh temple.

RW nut: No, a left-wing extremist would be too busy working for foreign terrorists as opposed to being a domestic one.

Me: Name an example or shut up.

RW nut: How about President Obama's terrorist buddy Bill Ayers, and his Weather Underground terrorists, as an example? Or people, to a moderately lesser extent, like Jeremiah Wright who bespeak of Latin American socialist "Liberation theology" who scream "God d**n American!" and would rather see nothing but the downfall of this nation? Black Panthers are another shining example.

There's no excuse for terrorism from any side of the aisle - it's just as vile no matter where it comes from. And there's no defense of scum like the KKK or the Black Panthers.

But you're not wanting a discussion on the threat of terrorism. You're wanting to throw out a tragedy for political punches to say: "Look, I was right! Right wingers are terrorists!" so it serves your personal ideology that you constantly eschew here with throwing out words like 'racist'; "bigot"; "domestic terrorist"; "hate-monger" etc. to anyone you politically disagree with on political matters. You do it time and time again. And while it's not nearly as crass or ugly as terrorism itself feeling any modicum of "See, I told you they were all nuts!" in taking from the tragedy of others any degree of self-assurance in your ideology is absolutely disgusting.

Me: Ayer was no longer a terrorist when he worked with Obama.

And that you consider the Black Panthers equivalent to the KKK and consider Liberation Theology to be terrorism tells me that arguing with you is pointless. Sad that you call your fellow Catholics terrorists because you disagree with them theologically.

RW nut: "No longer a terrorist". So that makes it okay I guess. Hanging out with Ted Kaczynski as a buddy because he doesn't kill people any longer is okay since he's no longer a terrorist.

Yeah, you're right, having a conversation with you is pointless.





Note how he talks about our side helping foreign terrorists, and When I ask him to name names he goes off a red herring with Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.