Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
|
|
|
Oct 13, 2013 - 01:53pm PT
|
By Jingo! They got Clancy?
To convert Ron from being he
Would be a welcome prize
A hero you just may be
Like one who "saves" gay guys
Stick to yer guns, Ron--it's good to see someone play the devil's advocate with such passion and stubbornness. I have lots of popcorn, thank God. Maybe not enough to outlast the shutdown, but lots.
Everyone knows better than you, you know. :)
Be Henry Stamper all you like, but you'll never get far with the way you are talking here. Insults never win arguments. They start feuds.
More science up in smoke.
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059988704
|
|
Lynne Leichtfuss
Sport climber
moving thru
|
|
|
Oct 13, 2013 - 02:49pm PT
|
donini, unfair, "tea party types have the Bible for comfort." Seems like Matthew 5,6 and 7 does not support the "tea party types."
Oh, and your friend stopped by TPR this summer and gave me your howdy, that was nice. :D lynne
|
|
Michelle
Social climber
1187 Hunterwasser
|
|
|
Oct 13, 2013 - 03:08pm PT
|
Ed, I'm sorry you've gotten the big shaft too :(
I'm assuming security wasn't furloughed there or especially NM..
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Oct 13, 2013 - 03:10pm PT
|
... General contractor licensed in two states... sorry for my misunderstanding, rick, that explains why you have a "need-to-know" about the president's briefings... obviously just being a "real estate agent" doesn't cut the mustard.
|
|
Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
|
|
|
Oct 13, 2013 - 04:36pm PT
|
The sooner we return to a pre-1863 rural, agrarian slave-owning feudal culture the sooner we can dispense with such outmoded doctrines as scientific research and technological progress. Why invent and design a dishwasher when you can keep a human one out back in a barbed-wire cage? More free time to drink and party and have illegitimate children with the local peasant women. Why pay taxes for a US army when I can hire a bunch of local goons to beat the heck out of any non-land owners who dare to raise their voices against my power and authority? Back to traditional values.
|
|
FRUMY
Trad climber
Bishop,CA
|
|
|
Oct 13, 2013 - 04:54pm PT
|
^^^^^^^^^^^
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Oct 13, 2013 - 10:37pm PT
|
The sooner we return to a pre-1863 rural, agrarian slave-owning feudal culture the sooner we can dispense with such outmoded doctrines as scientific research and technological progress.
You would really have something had you specified the end of technical process at a year prior to the invention of the cotton gin.
Take care on what you wish for. At the least think it over carefully.
|
|
FRUMY
Trad climber
Bishop,CA
|
|
|
Oct 13, 2013 - 10:44pm PT
|
Actually slavery was on it's way out - the cotton gin is what solidified slavery & started the term white trash.
|
|
zBrown
Ice climber
Brujo de La Playa
|
|
|
Oct 13, 2013 - 11:41pm PT
|
What did Oppenheimer say to Teller?
"Tim McVeigh died for our sins."
|
|
klk
Trad climber
cali
|
|
|
Oct 14, 2013 - 12:06am PT
|
sorry, ed. that sucks.
stay healthy.
|
|
Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
|
|
|
Oct 18, 2013 - 02:49am PT
|
The term "government tit" has been used as an insult by the right for quite some time.
And aren't a lot of that conservative right people who also suck the government tit, or do the Republican congress people pay for their jobs out of their own pocket and do not collect a pay packet from the government.
I am confused, and I like it that way. Ignorance is bliss.
Ed, "cut the mustard"?. I haven't heard that phrase in a long time, actually had to look it up to find the origins.
Jim, climbing skyscrapers can be unhealthy. Stick to the mountains. ;-)
So it looks like the government is back on track, so to speak. But the damage done - financial, personal and our image in the world, just to name a few - by the intransigence of some politicians should not be forgotten or swept under the carpet, or is that rug?
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Oct 18, 2013 - 02:52am PT
|
we're back to work tomorrow... hopefully not to repeat all this again in a few months.
|
|
SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 18, 2013 - 09:35am PT
|
Yeah Ed! Back to the grindstone, er lasers, er theories, er, whatever specialty you are!
Susan
|
|
matlinb
Trad climber
Albuquerque
|
|
|
Oct 18, 2013 - 09:43am PT
|
WTF,
I cannot speak for Ed, but in many cases the most interesting scientific questions are not seen to have short-term value, so people are not willing to pay for them. Of course, that is until they become game changers.
Also, for all the grumbling about having to take a few days off work, staff at the National Labs have more job security than those in industry. In industry we live under the constant pressure of acquisitions, mergers, poor quarterly performance, or the changing strategy of SVPs, thousands of miles away.
|
|
mtnyoung
Trad climber
Twain Harte, California
|
|
|
Oct 18, 2013 - 09:58am PT
|
I'm not so sure Ed was grumbling as much as he was responding to a question raised by a concerned friend. That's certainly how it seemed to me.
|
|
Gunkie
Trad climber
East Coast US
|
|
|
Oct 18, 2013 - 10:57am PT
|
Who needs research? Tea Party types have the bible for comfort.
+1
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Oct 18, 2013 - 11:57am PT
|
so why do people like you keep working for the government. You should be working for yourselves and selling that intellectual property to those who seek your knowledge.
I work for the government because it allows my skills to be employed for solving important problems of concern to the commonwealth. I have never thought of ideas as something that springs to mind in isolation from the society and the cultural history that that mind exists in.
If no idea is truly original, then it is difficult to assign ownership to the ideas. This apparent philosophical dilemma was certainly a consideration when the original US patent laws were devised.
In the US Constitution, Article 1 Section 8, "Powers of Congress"
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
recognizing the "Authors and Inventors" a part in the origination of ideas, but putting a time limit on their "exclusive Right" after which the idea passes into the public domain, thus recognizing the role that society also plays in the origination of ideas.
If my particular skill has to do with thinking, which may be an individual trait, my education was through the agent of our own society, the public school system, people who greatly influenced me, colleagues, those things I read, those discussions I had; my ideas can hardly be thought of as totally individual, created by me in a vacuum. No such vacuum exists.
A teacher of mine, who initiated my research career, said once he felt it had been a privilege to have been allowed to conduct the research he had, a privilege conveyed him by the federal government's support of High Energy Physics.
I feel the same way as he, and while he continued his career in basic science, I decided at some point to repay the privilege by working to support applications of basic research of importance to the nation, a nation that also provided me the opportunity to conduct basic research of no apparent application.
While I have considered, occasionally, the idea of working in the private sector, I never could overcome the feeling of repaying a debt to all those that helped me have the career that I have had, to me, they had a share of any "intellectual property" I could claim... so why not go to work for them directly?
While ideas have a utilitarian aspect, and the commodification of ideas a natural Americanization, there are ideas which are, and should be, beyond the commercial realm. Ideas are beautiful things, and some ideas are so beautiful that they not be caged and kept for the pleasure of an owner, particularly when those ideas are all of humanity's to share owing their existence to the existence of that humanity.
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
|
Oct 18, 2013 - 12:07pm PT
|
Good statement about the place of people and ideas in the larger society, Ed.
|
|
FRUMY
Trad climber
Bishop,CA
|
|
|
Oct 18, 2013 - 12:43pm PT
|
I don't know Ed, but I sure like him.
Thank you for what you do.
|
|
SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 18, 2013 - 03:16pm PT
|
While ideas have a utilitarian aspect, and the commodification of ideas a natural Americanization, there are ideas which are, and should be, beyond the commercial realm. Ideas are beautiful things, and some ideas are so beautiful that they not be caged and kept for the pleasure of an owner, particularly when those ideas are all of humanity's to share owing their existence to the existence of that humanity.
One of the most beautiful statements I've ever heard that, I believe, undergirds the concept of open source in regards to intellectual property and the need for far greater transparency in research.
Susan
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!