Who is stomping on our free speech rights? Who is working to silence public speech?
Kathy Griffin 2017
This is where you find out if YOU are into democracy or fascism. Are you allowing free speech? What about hate speech? What about the speech of climate skeptics? Liberals, anti-Trump’ers, pro-Trump’ers, and Conservatives? Continue reading
Internet debate often gets abusive. People site facts and present well reasoned arguments only to be shot at with abuse. Scott Adams has an answer for why that is.
See: How to Know You Won a Political Debate on the Internet.
Every so often I get on the subject of free speech. Second Life™ is said to be inhabited by more Liberals and Progressives than Conservatives and Traditionalists. But, no one knows, at least I have yet to see an objective study or assessment. I can see that we have more demonstrations of liberalism in SL. But, Conservatives have historically been the silent majority. Thus, the problem figuring out the actual demographics.
Google can’t tell about information requests from China
Second Life is not a free speech area. It is a private area owned by Linden Lab(R). Speech is governed by the ToS. We are free to say whatever within those limits. It is up to the Lindens to decide what speech exceeds those limits. Their decision is final, there is no appeal.
In RL free speech is suffering from fake news that is confusing some people and adding extraneous information some mistake for facts. Part of which is that awful thing ‘Hate Speech’, which is an interesting spin on “Hate” and the prime tool for anti-speech proponents.
I think the recent Berkley riot and threat of riot are examples of people not understanding the US Constitution and the principle of Free Speech nor its importance nor how to protect it nor why. Continue reading
For NASA warming is a $2± billion a year business, from a $200 billion a year budget. There has been no government money for any climate study that does not include warming for the last 20 (?) years. The NASA budget is currently being decided by the US House of Representatives. The Senate has had their say passing a NASA bill: S.442.
What should you tell your representative? Spend more? Less? Close NASA Earth Sciences (ES)? Save ES?
You’ll find the information about what the House is doing in the House’s appropriations bill, a continuing measure as Pres. Obama stopped preparing a Federal budget for submission to and approval by Congress as required by US Law years ago. We now stagger from financial crisis to crisis.
A point in deciding what to tell your representative would be to look at the facts of what NASA ES has been doing. Francis Menton has been publishing a series of articles detailing just that. Francis’ latest (14th) article is about how NASA has been adjusting the temperatures from a weather observatory near his home located at Falls Village (Town of Canaan), Connecticut. It is worth reading before deciding.
I think we all know we have to check any news stories we read in the media. What you may not know is we now have to check the ‘supposed’ media fact checkers. Here is an interesting compilation of the fact checkers incompetency: 4 Recent Examples Show Why No One Trusts Media ‘Fact Checks’
I think this is an amazing thing for Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert, to do. Scott is not what I would consider a climate skeptic. But, his challenge is amazingly simple and direct. This is the type of thinking I love. His humor about corporate life and management is often too true.
Dilbert Author’s Web Site
See his: The Climate Science Challenge. My challenge for warmers is to find something wrong with his challenge and explain why it is wrong.
I used to be surprised at how little people know, especially about current events and important political subjects. I’ve gotten over it. I’ve moved on to the psychology of changing minds.
Ignorance Project
I’m not the only one concerned about ignorant people messing up the world in their effort to make things better. In a 2014 presentation by TED (About) we learn about global ignorance and what can be done about it. Continue reading
This year has seen many attacks on free speech. A new restriction is going into effect in the UK. UK to censor online videos of ‘non-conventional’ sex acts.
Beautiful in white
I’ve already been contacted by people in Second Life™ worried that it may mean SL will be banded in the UK. It gets complicated as banning requires ‘unconventional sex acts’ be defined and that age verification meet certain standards, which seem to be poorly defined and left to some bureaucrat to decide. Continue reading