Tee Believes Media have immunity bubble from criticism

[Plane]

I don't mind Canada being Canada.

I would really not like the USA to become Canada.

Nor do I want the USA to become stale and unchangeing , if whenever we ever do adopt some Canadian habits , I hope they are appropriate to us.

In Canada there are definate and widely accepted ideas about what is good government , the USA idea of good government is quite diffrent and is less homogionous across our states than your territories. This may not be something that can be objectively evaluated .

But if you ,as a Canadian ,can trust to give the Government extremely great controll over your life and reachdeep into your pocket to support its project of makeing your life comfortable ,... 

...this does not absolutely prove that I as an American can also.

After all ,in Canada you guys are never going to elect a government that you disagree with very strongly , in the USA our pendulum swings more widely . As sure as shooting , soon after we give a pleasant government a grand power , we will elect an unpleasant president to use it.

[Lanya]

:::Stands and claps:::

I knew a kid in high school whose dad was a poor kid from North Carolina I think.  I'm not sure of all the details but he became  one of Oppenheimer's students or proteges, and he was a scientist at Los Alamos.  I believe he was involved in the human genome project.

I want people who have such talents to have a good chance. 
To receive medicine and medical care, education, to have good water and clean air and meat and veggies free from e. coli. 

But you can't tell from looking who is going to be that special person, the one whose invention or insight will free us from heart disease or cancer, or the person who will be the best pediatrician for our child, or the best teacher and so on.   
We have government of the people, by the people and for the people so that we will have a chance.  All of us. 
We are good enough to invest in, aren't we? 

PS....Not to say that people who are not tremendously gifted don't also need a chance to thrive and grow.  But if you're fighting cancer, you really hope that illness or poverty or lack of medical care didn't kill off the person who could have a real breakthrough one day and find a cure.  If you're fighting an enemy like we were in WW2, or trying to find alternative energy, you need your most valuable resources, your citizens. 

[Michael Tee]

<<But if you ,as a Canadian ,can trust to give the Government extremely great controll over your life  . . . >>

plane, that's NOT "extremely great control."  They designed a universal health care scheme and figured out how much it would cost and how the citizens would pay for it.  You are making it sound like some totalitarian society in which they have cameras in my bedroom, locator chips embedded in my forehead and a permanent ID tattoo etched into my left forearm.  The fact is it's just like any other government project, designed, budgeted, integrated with the revenue-raising apparatus of the state and then executed.  The fact is, you gave up more "extremely great control over your life" when you allowed your government to wage war against Viet Nam and draft young men to die in that struggle; or more recently, with the Patriot Act.

<<and reachdeep into your pocket to support its project of makeing your life comfortable ,... >>

Nowhere near as deep as the U.S. government reached for the war on Iraq.  Half a trillion dollars to date.  $10 billion a month, on-going.  $3 trillion total cost, according to the estimates of Dr. John Stieglitz, a Nobel Prize winner.

<<...this does not absolutely prove that I as an American can also [trust my government to take great control over my life and reach deep into my pockets].

As I've said, the control required is actually pretty shallow, compared to the war-making power, the power of the draft and the powers granted under the Patriot Acts.  And your government has in fact reached much deeper into your pockets without a peep of protest from you.

<<After all ,in Canada you guys are never going to elect a government that you disagree with very strongly , in the USA our pendulum swings more widely . >>

<<As sure as shooting , soon after we give a pleasant government a grand power , we will elect an unpleasant president to use it.>>

Well, we keep coming back to this "grand power," which is basically nothing more than the power to design and budget for some socially beneficial programs, fund them properly from the tax base, collect the taxes and put them to work.  Nothing at all extraordinary about any part of it.  You insist on talking about it as though it involved an investiture of some kind of sweeping dictatorial powers.  Your take on the whole thing is extremely unrealistic and unhelpful.

[crocat]

As an aside, Michael....
"Nowhere near as deep as the U.S. government reached for the war on Iraq.  Half a trillion dollars to date.  $10 billion a month, on-going.  $3 trillion total cost, according to the estimates of Dr. John Stieglitz, a Nobel Prize winner."


Did you know that the Nobel family wants to do away with the 'honored' awards?

They say it has become more a political ploy and hollow of the true meaning.

[Michael Tee]

I didn't know that about the Nobel family, cro, and I thank you for the information, but here are two questions for you:

1.  Who established the Nobel Prizes, the late Alfred Nobel or "the Nobel family?"

2.  If the Nobel Prize were to be abolished tomorrow by the Nobel family, if in fact they could, would that suddenly make Dr. Stieglitz an idiot?

[Amianthus]

1.  Who established the Nobel Prizes, the late Alfred Nobel or "the Nobel family?"

Some were stipulated by Nobel in his will, others were created by the prize foundation.

[crocat]

I didn't know that about the Nobel family, cro, and I thank you for the information, but here are two questions for you:

1.  Who established the Nobel Prizes, the late Alfred Nobel or "the Nobel family?"

2.  If the Nobel Prize were to be abolished tomorrow by the Nobel family, if in fact they could, would that suddenly make Dr. Stieglitz an idiot?

nope just another guy that's opinion is held in the same regard as every other person of his field not garnering additional accolades because some group decide to bestow an honor because every year they have a quota.

Something like grading on the bell curve

[Plane]

<<But if you ,as a Canadian ,can trust to give the Government extremely great controll over your life  . . . >>

plane, that's NOT "extremely great control."  They designed a universal health care scheme and figured out how much it would cost and how the citizens would pay for it.  You are making it sound like some totalitarian society in which they have cameras in my bedroom, locator chips embedded in my forehead and a permanent ID tattoo etched into my left forearm.  The fact is it's just like any other government project, designed, budgeted, integrated with the revenue-raising apparatus of the state and then executed.  The fact is, you gave up more "extremely great control over your life" when you allowed your government to wage war against Viet Nam and draft young men to die in that struggle; or more recently, with the Patriot Act.

<<and reachdeep into your pocket to support its project of makeing your life comfortable ,... >>

Nowhere near as deep as the U.S. government reached for the war on Iraq.  Half a trillion dollars to date.  $10 billion a month, on-going.  $3 trillion total cost, according to the estimates of Dr. John Stieglitz, a Nobel Prize winner.

<<...this does not absolutely prove that I as an American can also [trust my government to take great control over my life and reach deep into my pockets].

As I've said, the control required is actually pretty shallow, compared to the war-making power, the power of the draft and the powers granted under the Patriot Acts.  And your government has in fact reached much deeper into your pockets without a peep of protest from you.

<<After all ,in Canada you guys are never going to elect a government that you disagree with very strongly , in the USA our pendulum swings more widely . >>

<<As sure as shooting , soon after we give a pleasant government a grand power , we will elect an unpleasant president to use it.>>

Well, we keep coming back to this "grand power," which is basically nothing more than the power to design and budget for some socially beneficial programs, fund them properly from the tax base, collect the taxes and put them to work.  Nothing at all extraordinary about any part of it.  You insist on talking about it as though it involved an investiture of some kind of sweeping dictatorial powers.  Your take on the whole thing is extremely unrealistic and unhelpful.

I don't know how you do it , but a large bite of my week is spent working for a buck ,this is the time of my life .

A large and growing perportion of this time is spent earning money that I will be required to hand over with no choices , the amount that I contribute , pay or invest with the input of my own intellect is shrinking , but you have even less controll but you are content?

The implanted chip is in testing , I expect it to become a substitute for low security imprisonment at some point.

[Michael Tee]

<<nope [a Nobel Prize winner is] just another guy that's opinion is held in the same regard as every other person of his field not garnering additional accolades because some group decide to bestow an honor because every year they have a quota.>>

I see, so the Nobel Prize is virtually meaningless in assessing the qualifications of an expert.  Well, that's OK, I'll have to see if Dr. Stieglitz has won any other badges of distinction.  Maybe he made the Dean's list at Bob Jones University . . .

[BT]

Perhaps he was a recipient of a Soros Grant.

[crocat]

<<nope [a Nobel Prize winner is] just another guy that's opinion is held in the same regard as every other person of his field not garnering additional accolades because some group decide to bestow an honor because every year they have a quota.>>

I see, so the Nobel Prize is virtually meaningless in assessing the qualifications of an expert.  Well, that's OK, I'll have to see if Dr. Stieglitz has won any other badges of distinction.  Maybe he made the Dean's list at Bob Jones University . . .

sarcasm will get you no where...(you know what they say about that... it is just anger sqeaking out of a small hole.)   What I am saying, Michael, is that because Dr. Stieglitz won a Nobel prize it does not make him the be all end all authority.   Many people go through life that are just as 'brilliant,' just as 'caring,' but just not as lucky.  You just fail to see the validity of the statement so you make snap judgements about my comment.   I don't believe anyone based solely on the labels they carry around.

[Michael Tee]

cro, to be perfectly honest, I've never seen anyone question the credentialling value of a Nobel Prize before, either right-wing or left-wing.  It was quite surprising.  There are other very impressive awards, of course, and nobody is claiming that the Nobel confers automatic infallibility on anyone, but generally speaking, the Nobel Prize is considered the gold standard in academic achievement all over the world.  To belittle it because you don't like the conclusions of a recipient is kinda like shooting the messenger, isn't it?

Of course, if someone without a Nobel, say a renowned professor of economics at a distinguished Ivy League university, or even Ami here, wants to take issue with the Nobel Prize winner, that's fine with me.  Scientific progress is made all the time by upstarts challenging authorities.  The Wright brothers, two real nobodies, had the God-damned nerve to challenge the conclusions of the widely published and  world-renowned flight authority Otto Lilienthal, built their own wind-tunnel, conducted their own experiments and proved him wrong, before they could build their first flying machine.

Still and all, as far as most people are concerned, a Nobel Prize still means something, and the general presumption is that the guy who holds one is not some drooling idiot whose opinions can be safely dismissed out of hand.

[crocat]

cro, to be perfectly honest, I've never seen anyone question the credentialling value of a Nobel Prize before, either right-wing or left-wing.  It was quite surprising.  There are other very impressive awards, of course, and nobody is claiming that the Nobel confers automatic infallibility on anyone, but generally speaking, the Nobel Prize is considered the gold standard in academic achievement all over the world.  To belittle it because you don't like the conclusions of a recipient is kinda like shooting the messenger, isn't it?

Of course, if someone without a Nobel, say a renowned professor of economics at a distinguished Ivy League university, or even Ami here, wants to take issue with the Nobel Prize winner, that's fine with me.  Scientific progress is made all the time by upstarts challenging authorities.  The Wright brothers, two real nobodies, had the God-damned nerve to challenge the conclusions of the widely published and  world-renowned flight authority Otto Lilienthal, built their own wind-tunnel, conducted their own experiments and proved him wrong, before they could build their first flying machine.

Still and all, as far as most people are concerned, a Nobel Prize still means something, and the general presumption is that the guy who holds one is not some drooling idiot whose opinions can be safely dismissed out of hand.

I am not belittling anyone for anything, Michael.   I am antiplatonic, antidogmatic, and a skeptic.  There is a great deal of comfort there because you find yourself very prepared for any kind of news.  My point is simply that often people are the lucky recipient of popular acclaim not because of what they know but who they know.   There are thousands of people just as bright, just as caring and yet people like you would not give them a moments notice because they are not dragging the gigantic achievement medal around with them.    Consequently, I am likely to discount these awards as lucky breaks rather than the absolute authority.

I once wrote a research paper in college for my 2nd year creative writing class.  I decided to do one on how today's morality compared to the morality of a more puritanical time.  My comparison was to use a writing of fiction, Young Goodman Brown, and then compare it to today's mor'es and support it with research.  I did this to the tune of a 4 point grade with additional written accolades from my professor.  Here is the catch, Michael.  I researched and pulled sentences from all over, both in poetry and pschological papers and completely supported my surmise.  Suffice it to say that I pulled from here and there and completely supported and convinced my readers that my supposition was correct.  It was all bullshit.  Well written, well researched, but bullshit.

Cro

[Michael Tee]

I think, cro, that I've made it pretty clear in my last post that I'm prepared to give anyone a fair hearing with or without a Nobel Prize and even against a Nobel Prize winner.

<<Of course, if someone without a Nobel, say . . . Ami here, wants to take issue with the Nobel Prize winner, that's fine with me.  Scientific progress is made all the time by upstarts challenging authorities.  The Wright brothers . . . had the God-damned nerve to challenge  . . . Otto Lilienthal . . . and proved him wrong . . . >>

So I think that your following remarks are unfair and unjustified:  <<There are thousands of people just as bright . . .  yet people like you would not give them a moments notice because they are not dragging the gigantic achievement medal around with them. >>

You said, <<My point is simply that often people are the lucky recipient of popular acclaim not because of what they know but who they know.>>    We are talking about a Nobel Prize, not mere "popular acclaim."  Nobel Prize recipients, as far as I know, survive a rigourous and exhaustive vetting program and are not simply awarded the prize on the basis of "who they know."  While I can see how "politics" of one kind or another could give one recipient the edge over a better qualified or more deserving competitor, I really can't see how the Prize could be awarded to some fucking idiot.    Whoever gets the Prize in the end will have to be very well-recognized and well-respected in his or her field, otherwise a terrible academic scandal would result.

[crocat]

Michael admonishes vehemently....Nobel Prize recipients, as far as I know, survive a rigourous and exhaustive vetting program and are not simply awarded the prize on the basis of "who they know."  While I can see how "politics" of one kind or another could give one recipient the edge over a better qualified or more deserving competitor, I really can't see how the Prize could be awarded to some fucking idiot.    Whoever gets the Prize in the end will have to be very well-recognized and well-respected in his or her field, otherwise a terrible academic scandal......."

Hummmn..... I don't believe I called him a fucking idiot, or any other person that has received the honor.  What I said was that I think your top down thinking is limited.  You foisted his award in order for me to question myself and think... OMG, I must be wrong, he won a Nobel prize.   I said NO.