I call Maher a Luddite because of his abhorrence of a particular technology, in this case, modern vaccines.

>> ^longde:
My god what a douche, luddite, and a hypocrite.


"Luddite" isn't an insult from my perspective, and has nothing to do with denying the results of scientific research.

It is disheartening to see Maher so off the mark in this case. Atheism isn't just giving up religion, it's giving up dogmatic thought. I'd even say that the latter is more important than the former.

My god what a douche, luddite, and a hypocrite. After hearing week after week of him condemning people who don't believe the science of evolution, he leaps into the same trap of sophistry.

>> ^NetRunner:
OMFG, what a tool this guy is.
MG, you made his point for him in far better, and far shorter way.
The representative from Texas just sounds like a luddite grandstanding, or a shill for energy companies, trying to make it sound like making an effort to conserve energy is downright dangerous.
Had he been less of a demagogue, he might get people to agree with him on the merit of his argument (which ultimately is a good one), without trying to use fear.


No, he's not trying to make it sound like the conservation of energy is a dangerous thing; rather the lack of infrastructure surrounding the safe disposal and recycling of these lightbulbs, the lack of knowledge surrounding the (valid) dangers of these lightbulbs (broken or unbroken), and the willingness of congress to pass these laws without thorough examination of what the law will implicate.

*nochannel

*politics
*fear
*controversy
*eco
*comedy
*wtf

>> ^shiner_man:
Wow! Somebody took a bunch of clips and put them together. This is brilliant! I mean, this isn't propaganda or anything.


As if you would know what propaganda was, unless somebody spelled it out for you.

And even then, I guess they'd have to pepper their rhetoric with the xenophobia, jingoism, and Luddite sensibilities that pass for conservative wisdom.

Are you familiar with the psychological term "projection"?

It seems guaranteed that each religion will split, with their reasonable wings adapting, and their luddite wings becoming isolated from mainstream society, similar to the Amish.

Moderates will adapt because, in the end, people are practical, and they don't want to be the only ones in society who don't have a 500 IQ.

>> ^KnivesOut:
WP your argument is based entirely on the preconception that humans have to continue to use at least as much if not more energy that we currently do.
With the increasing cost of energy, the demand for it will be reduced. Economics 101.


The global population is not decreasing, it's growing exponentially. Add to that the fact that developing countries like China and India have done a u-turn and are now more capitalist than we are. That is enabling more of them to outbid us for resources to power their new cars and homes and appliances, we didn't have to compete with that before. There is a global shift of capital happening from the deeply indebted and welfarist west to booming capitalist countries in Asia. If you tax fossil fuels here, Asia will be happy to take them off our luddite hands. You cannot artificially induce a transition to technologies that are hopelessly inefficient and expensive, you will be kicking people out of their cars, homes, off their computers.

70% of our oil is imported and we haven't built a nuclear power plant in decades to prepare for a transition to electric cars. Even if it were possible to snap our fingers and make every car and tanker electric, our electric grid is completely incapable of that load, we're getting blackouts in California already. How are we going to keep the cost of transportation and products as cheap as it is now without a massive, massive amount of nuclear power?

With the increasing cost of energy, the demand for it will be reduced. Economics 101

World & US power demands will increase. The economies, populations, standards of living, manufacturing, production, and distribution models of every developed nation depend on it. Emerging nations need it even more. Developing nations need more energy to move out of the stone age & thereby eliminate thier political instabilities.

Increasing the cost of something does indeed reduce its consumption. That is a fact that you have correctly identified. What you are not recognizing is the results of that truism when it is applied to energy.

If Obama (or anyone) successfully increases the cost of energy 4X-5X then the result will be reductions in GDP, tax revenues, manufacturing, production, and agriculture. It will create impossible debt obligations with resultant decreases in education, public works, medical care, transportation, standards of living, and (finally) population.

Only a luddite would that. The cap & trade proposals and carbon taxes would not be so much a tightening of the energy belt as they would be a disemboweling of the U.S. way of life. Maybe that's the goal given the neo-lib socialist background, education, upbringing, philosophies, and associations of most environmentalists like Al Gore et al. Though they never include themselves on the list of people that need to 'scale back'.

ahoy! I replied to this note, and attempted to maintain civility. cheers!

In reply to this comment by BansheeX:
Forget about stupidity on both sides, you people always pick a punching bag who can't defend their position to make your own dumb viewpoint seem like the right one.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/co2_fairytales_in_global_warmi.html

CO2 is a fundamental building block of life, and current levels are NOWHERE NEAR where they have been in the past. Moreover, the correlation of CO2 and Earth temperature is deeply flawed. It's far more likely that temperatures rise and fall in the short term as a result of solar cycles or some other phenomena, and that increased CO2 levels are a corresponding RESULT of temperature change rather than the cause. That's what gives the idiots that nice correlating graph where they can claim the opposite. A more detailed look at ice core graphs show us that temperature changes occur BEFORE changes in CO2 levels. The global warming crowd has it completely reversed that CO2 is driving temperature.

Moreover, the last century's warming trend has been a mere .8 celsius, well within natural expectations given the last 1000 years. I suppose the vikings were also somehow responsible for the even larger climactic swing in temperature known as the Little Ice Age from 1000 to 1200 AD? From 1940 to 1970, there was a cooling trend which led to a global cooling scare. We were all supposed to be frozen in ice by now.

The idea that mankind is capable of affecting earth's temperature is just laughable. If it was even possible to have globally banned coal and oil the last 200 years, the only thing you'd have accomplished is a complete eradication of 200 years of human progress towards cleaner, more efficient technologies like nuclear (which you luddites have also blocked while countries like China and France kick our freaking asses).

http://www.dailytech.com/Chinas+Nuclear+Power+Efforts+Surge+Ahead/article14911.htm

So what exactly are we supposed to do? We can't do nuclear because you boneheads don't want to recycle or store the voluminously small captured waste, you'd rather burn your fuel and disperse it into the atmosphere than put something in a single mountain for a thousand years until we jettison it into the sun. You herald wind power, which takes massive amounts of steel, land, and maintenance for relatively little power output. You'd have to cover an area the size of Montana with windmills just to meet TODAY'S domestic power demands. That's how bloody inefficient it is relative to nuclear, and unless you magically discover a magical material like steel that is way cheaper and 1% as heavy, it's going to hit a wall pretty soon. Wind is fine for the wind belt and rural areas in Iowa, solar is fine for the desert in Arizona. But to say that wind and solar can themselves provide even a majority of our national need for cheap power is pure insanity. It's pure insanity, and anyone who's looked at the numbers knows it.

Forget about stupidity on both sides, you people always pick a punching bag who can't defend their position to make your own dumb viewpoint seem like the right one.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/co2_fairytales_in_global_warmi.html

CO2 is a fundamental building block of life, and current levels are NOWHERE NEAR where they have been in the past. Moreover, the correlation of CO2 and Earth temperature is deeply flawed. It's far more likely that temperatures rise and fall in the short term as a result of solar cycles or some other phenomena, and that increased CO2 levels are a corresponding RESULT of temperature change rather than the cause. That's what gives the idiots that nice correlating graph where they can claim the opposite. A more detailed look at ice core graphs show us that temperature changes occur BEFORE changes in CO2 levels. The global warming crowd has it completely reversed that CO2 is driving temperature.

Moreover, the last century's warming trend has been a mere .8 celsius, well within natural expectations given the last 1000 years. I suppose the vikings were also somehow responsible for the even larger climactic swing in temperature known as the Little Ice Age from 1000 to 1200 AD? From 1940 to 1970, there was a cooling trend which led to a global cooling scare. We were all supposed to be frozen in ice by now.

The idea that mankind is capable of affecting earth's temperature is just laughable. If it was even possible to have globally banned coal and oil the last 200 years, the only thing you'd have accomplished is a complete eradication of 200 years of human progress towards cleaner, more efficient technologies like nuclear (which you luddites have also blocked while countries like China and France kick our freaking asses).

http://www.dailytech.com/Chinas+Nuclear+Power+Efforts+Surge+Ahead/article14911.htm

So what exactly are we supposed to do? We can't do nuclear because you boneheads don't want to recycle or store the voluminously small captured waste, you'd rather burn your fuel and disperse it into the atmosphere than put something in a single mountain for a thousand years until we jettison it into the sun. You herald wind power, which takes massive amounts of steel, land, and maintenance for relatively little power output. You'd have to cover an area the size of Montana with windmills just to meet TODAY'S domestic power demands. That's how bloody inefficient it is relative to nuclear, and unless you magically discover a magical material like steel that is way cheaper and 1% as heavy, it's going to hit a wall pretty soon. Wind is fine for the wind belt and rural areas in Iowa, solar is fine for the desert in Arizona. But to say that wind and solar can themselves provide even a majority of our national need for cheap power is pure insanity. It's pure insanity, and anyone who's looked at the numbers knows it.

American culture has a way of celebrating ignorance. And evolutionary theory is often presented as being incompatible with religious belief systems. So people don't mind looking like Luddites (that's potentially a plus) to avoid pissing off their noodly savior.

Media stooge: "THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! BUSH IS WASTING MONEY ON EXPENSIVE TOYS WHILE PEOPLE ARE HOMELESS!"

Media lackey: "Excuse me, Bush is out of office. It's President Obama's phone."

Media stooge: ... "Unlike that Luddite Bush, the President absolutely needs this important device to stay connected to the 21st century. Can he get a new RINGTONE?! heeheehee!"

Alsome, that's a *quality first sift talk. Fingers crossed they don't keep embeds disabled forever. Would it be sinful to get people to rip their clips and resubmit them to get around the block?

I like the quote from B16:
"New technologies have an extraordinary potential, if used to favour understanding and human solidarity.

These technologies are a real gift for humanity: therefore we have to make sure the advantages they offer are put to the service of all peoples and communities"


There you have it - Luddites and trolls got the smack down from the POPE in one message. Brilliant.

wow. an internet neo-luddite. pretty dated.

^what if I am a luddite? or amish? is that money well spent? im sorry but just because it is $1.66 per person (by the way this number is wrong the correct number is greater than $76 per person - $23 billion 2007 general science budget divided by 300 million people) doesn't make it permissible. If you are going to use numbers...use the correct numbers...

you are still evading all of my points.