Maggie's Farm

Scientists tend to be conservative. It's hard to change established scientific findings. It's historically typical. As you point out, it took a while before the idea of natural climate change took hold, and despite the evidence, people still resist the idea that humans are having a large effect on the climate.

The biggest problem Wegener's theory faced was the lack of a credible mechanism. He proposed several that were easily shown to be insufficient. However, his ideas were discussed and argued about. When stronger evidence became available along with evidence of the mechanisms involved, then his theory was dusted off.

Bookworm: Entropy is setting in and Obama will lose this election

Bookworm makes several valid points. It's the nature of complex systems that change can occur suddenly and unexpectedly. When you put increasing pressure on a beam, it may absorb the force then suddenly suffer a catastrophic failure. Such a collapse may very well apply to Obama's reelection, though prediction is bound to be imprecise.

Bookworm: It had been sold to us as a nation and political system every bit as hardy as the United States.

Kennan's Long Telegram of 1946 outlined the process by which the Soviet Union could be defeated, a process of containment, confrontation when necessary, but mostly by providing an attractive, democratic alternative. Eventually, Kennan wrote, the internal contradictions would bring about either the evolution or collapse of the Soviet system. Every American President followed this course. It's a beam put under increasing pressure, then suddenly failing.

Bookworm: This means that, for all the corruption at the top — both within the State House and the Union shops — the ordinary workers didn’t feel they were getting a benefit. If they had, they would have checked off that little contribution box without the necessity of political coercion.

Of course not. Most everyone agrees there have to be taxes for responsible government, but if taxes were voluntary, everyone would try to benefit from those that pay without paying themselves. Government would collapse on itself. If workers can't organize democratically, meaning being able to make unified decisions over dues and other issues, then unions will disintegrate. That's the point, of course.

Bookworm: More than Obama’s flame-out, we’re also seeing Mitt Romney run a nimble, aggressive, and likeable campaign.

Romney does seem like a likeable person. He should just be himself. FDR wore monocles and a top hat, yet was considered a man of the people.