1

That's what happens when we assume people have common sense.

2 PreCISEly. It's so destructive to political dogma to actually consider that you could be wrong, LOL! Well, maybe "LOL" is inappropriate, considering the all-too-serious consequences that are being imposed on us as a result of that wrong-line dogma...

3 Sweetie,

If the glueball warmening folks used actual data, then NONE of their models work.  That's why they don't acknowledge things like ocean temperatures, or that big-assed orange ball and solar flare activity having an impact on climate.

Second, since when has the USMC been known for being deep thinkers?  First, we'll teach them languages.  Next, bathing; and finally, how to use spoons without hurting your eyes....

4 During the Stalin era in the USSR, the official version of genetics was Lysenkoism, which taught that acquired characteristics are inherited (wrong! giraffes do not have long necks because of stretching)--genetics of course has very practical applications in agriculture, and geneticists who challenged Lysenkoism were actually shot. Some of our climate-change "experts" seem to want to go down a similar path.

People who do mathematical modeling in a responsible way and who respect the customers they are doing it for carry out & make available a "sensitivity analysis" which shows how the conclusions change when any of the assumptions are varied. I haven't seen much in the way of sensitivity analyses in the voluminous public discussions of global warming; I *have* seen a lot of ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares challenge the official view.

5 Sarah,

What little I have seen of the language policy of the military over the last few years has been disappointing. I think German, Italian, and Japanese were taken a lot more seriously in WWII.

There is no way that a one-year course can make Marines - or anyone - "fluent" in languages that are not as close to English as, say, Spanish. Most certainly not if they're only learning "two new phrases" a day!

david,

Some of our climate-change "experts" seem to want to go down a similar path.

That's a pretty harsh charge. I don't think "a lot of ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares challenge the official view" will necessarily lead to executions. Americans can get very loud and angry, but they generally haven't resorted to violence ... yet.

6 Amiritas...a harsh charge indeed, and deliberately so. I have seen statements from climate-change "experts," some of them prominent, who have asserted that disagreement with climate change is on a par with Holocaust denial, and some of them have asserted that such disagreement should be prohibited. There are also scientists who feel their careers would suffer or have suffered should they challenge the orthodoxy.

When you say "Americans can get very loud & angry but generally haven't resorted to violence..yet," I think you're thinking about good old rough-and-tumble American debate. But there are a lot of people in our society today who don't really agree with our free-speech traditions.

A guy in my high school was fond of misquoting Voltaire--"Death to what you say and I disagree with your right to say it." He was kidding (I think). Many of those of the "progressive" side are not.

7 As a data point, the language schools and their student allocations at the Defense Language Institute are decided YEARS in advance.  The Marines are probably only 3 or 4 years behind the power curve, not 8.  That's par for the course.

Like I should talk--I took Russian there in 2004-5.  They never got tired of telling us that the Cold War was over when justifying cutting our teaching staff or moving us to an even older building.

Sig