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In Reply to: "Unmeasurable technologies/effects like... obtuse polarity." Assuming you mean "absolute polarity"... posted by clarkjohnsen on June 17, 2006 at 08:26:51:

clarkjohnsen,
You are again diverting the discussion at hand. The issue here is that you began a thread that intends to criticize Gore's movie about Global warming, by linking to an article that intends to refute the content, but so completely avoid actually discussing the movie, you use the merest excuse to divert attention and return to the polarity issue.
In this sequence, you're forgetting to apply your proclaimed principle of trying to understand technologies and experiences with an open mind before making a judgment. I agree with this completely, but do you feel you've applied your principle to "An Inconvenient Truth"? Have you seen this movie? The unfortunate appearance in this instance is that apply your principle only when it complies to your prejudice. And your comments come off as prejudice when you don;t explain your comments but instead change tthe subject.
And, I believe you are being more than a bit oversensitive to suggest that I engage in "invective", as I can't find a word in my post that is personally abusive in any way. I find this comment insulting, given my long history on this site of long-winded, poorly typed, and rambling care to attempt to calm hurt feelings and defuse personal squabbling. That you confuse gentle sarcasm with invective demonstrates ego-centrism, intense defensiveness, and lack of confidence.
Further, your statement to me, "Your fallacious assertions about polarity are as wrong as the rest of your argument on global warming" is obtuse and slightly psychotic. I never made any statement concerning "absolute polarity"- or even mentioned the actual term, as I suspected that mentioning it would set you off in a diversion- just the way it did anyway.. [see P.S. below].
As for "fallacious assertions" on global warming, what is "fallacious"? [See P.P.S. below] If you were not so desperate to defend your own position and bring in the completely unrelated topic of polarity, you might notice the body of my post is mainly that those who support the oil industry hire those proven sysmpatheitc to an intended conclusion and convince the weaker-minded among the public to deny global warming while liberals point to studies that support it and raise the alarm. I am not even really commenting directly on global warming, except in the title: "Not only is global warming not true,industry is not responsible". My focus in this forum is to try and focus on considering the content and merit of movies- not political statement or arguing science that you automatically gainsay anyway.
Not to be patronising, but in the past several years, Ive had great respect for your taste in music and recordings and I agree with many of you're comments on reproduced sound, but I suggest that you undermine your overall credibility as a critic to criticise a movie which you've not mentioned actually seeing- nor even really address directly at all. Further, by denying the facts, methods, and conclusions of the analyses of a highly complex global atmospheric system only by casual association, and by returning to absolute polarity, is a signal of a rather strong ego-centrism and associated "selectiveness" as to the facts you will accept. This kind of thread does not have to become a refferendum on your opinions and critical methods, but like the polarity thread elsewhere, you seem to want to force it to become so, when there is anything resembling disagreement.
This suggest to me, and apparently others here, that this particular thread in Film Asylum is not informed or balanced criticism, but a casual political diatribe without responsible critical foundation.
You can do better than that, c'mon! Leave the closed minded, anti-intellectual stuff behind; that's for FOX News.
Cheers,
Bambi B
P.S. By the way, I have never experimented with absolute polarity and, therefore have no criticism of it. In fact, I'm rather inclined to believe it's a perceivable effect and would like to try it, but it is still a subjective effect and not meaningfully "measurable"- except as to the proportion of people that believe they hear it. Making scientific claims for it are, in reality, more like subjective opinion polls and are not strict science. On your basis of evidence and statisitcs, I believe, by similar meothod can make a "scientific" proof that 95% of poeple can't hear "imaging" from reproduced sound- none of my non-audiophile fiends can hear it.
PPS: I've has several conversations on the subject with a director of atmospheric sciences for NASA, and have read quite a bit about it on each side of the argument, but unlike you- who seem to believe you have all the facts you need, am not willing to comment on any deep level. While, there are a pile of facts at hand that cause me deep concern, I don't feel confident in my understanding of the vastly complex modelling used for prediction. But, the measurements and effects of reduced ice cap, glaciers, the opening of sea passages to northern Russia never before navigable, suggest something serious is happening and I'm with our liberal friends on this one and believe we should err on the side of caution. You may find 99% can hear a polarity effct, but I'm 99% sure that when a piece of ice the size of Connecticut and one mile thick breaks off Antarctica, we had better pay more attention to that than automatically taking the side of industry fearful of blame.

Films/DVD Asylum

An Inconvenient Truth