I paid child support all through my college years. did it suck? yes it did. But I did it cause the alternative was randomly being picked up and sitting in jail before going before a judge. I can't understand why that didn't happen in your case.

That's a fair criticism. Looks like an editing mistake. It looks like it probably originated as a quote that he decided to re-write and got sloppy.

If you pay taxes, you're involved. Even if only tangentially. That's my take on it.

It's a NASA project, I pay taxes, NASA receives some of those taxes. Hence, WE discovered something on Titan.

No different than people saying "we won" when their favorite professional sports team wins.

Reminds me of this...

unless the "victim" comes forward. There is no crime.

So what if you get busted. You get out of the pool and you walk away. If they threaten to call the police, walk away. By the time tho police arrive you'll be gone. It's not like they're going to put out an APB for pool hopping.

private property is "sacred"? lol!!!

Freedom of Speech only applies when the government tries to stop it. Being an asshole on a blog means anyone is allowed to criticize.

for some reason Police work is more attractive to conservatives. Some would argue that police work turns you into a conservative.

Your position reminded me of climate change skeptics who claim that a growing number of scientist disagree with the currently accepted climate models. Nothing more than that. I don't feel like digging up articles, but they aren't hard to find.

I'm sure you aren't one of them but that's what happens when you use some of the same rhetorical tools as the climate change deniers.

Well, maybe if female athletes weren't such goofs... ;-)

How does one "choose their divergent views intelligently"?

Going to college isn't what weeds them out. It's the peer review process that does that.

most scientist (astronomers) knew the Earth went around the sun long before it was generally accepted. They just tended to avoid making public statements about it, especially is a world where the Catholic Church convicted Galileo for heresy over his statements in support of Copernicanism.

It's not that scientist are perfect. It's that the process of becoming a scientist in the first place tends to weed out those who are prone to confirmation bias. Not always, but most of the time. If I were a betting man I would generally go with the scientist speaking about his field over some layperson or even a…

Actually my understanding is that he doesn't have a whole lot of money. So he needs to keep working. He found a niche and people are willing to pay him. Why hate on it. I'm not a fan of whatever he's doing now days, but I don't spend any time actively disliking him to the point where I need to comment online about it.

Neither am I. But at what point can you accept that someone has paid their debt to society? He's entitled to make a living for himself.