Carl Zimmer is a little bit peeved at the ever flexible standards of the media. If you’re a science writer like he is, your articles get fact-checked until they bleed. If you’re George Will, conservative pedant and pundit, not so much. The Washington Post seems to basically accept whatever he says as gospel truth, even when he gets the scientific facts completely wrong.
Oh, for the day when our media wake up to the fact that they are supposed to be reality-based, not faith-based.
George Will should stick to baseball.
Fortunately for Mr. Will, the only requirement for being a Republican pundit is the ability to talk out of both sides of you mouth and your ass simultaneously–a feat made easier by the interchangeability of said parts.
That’s why I call it “News Entertainment”. Sorta like “Sports Entertainment”- aka professional wrestling.
Getting the facts correct isn’t what’s important. It’s increasing viewership/readership that matters. You can’t do that with boring ‘ol facts.
Cable news especially is a complete joke.
Fucking republicans. Can we fucking hammer in the final nail in their coffin already…oh yeah I forgot Obama wants to ‘reach out’ to them.
/sigh
And, yeah, fuck the media’s editors. Why do they hate America?
The Washington Post is lying. Pretty much SOP for the media. Some mechanism, that actually functions well, for punishing the media when they lie would be nice.
Yeah, F them all, especially the right wing New York Post … wait a minute…
The WP has been fish wrapper for years now. Hell, most of it was fish wrapper during the golden years of Watergate, too. A few good articles didn’t justify the waste of trees the rest of the paper was.
And since when did George Will have anything a) truthful or b) relevant to say about anything? It’s incredible to me that this ass-kisser of the rich is considered worth reading, never mind listening to. You know that the only reason he’s a Republican, really, is because he thinks it makes him look cool to hang out with the alphas.
No, George, you’re still a dork. Nobody likes you.
When I’m in a really vile mood, I say horrible things about his relationship with his mother. But I’m not in a really vile mood right now. Maybe later. >:)
Zimmer is a reporter, and as such is expected to report the news impartially and factually. Will is a columnist which means that he is being paid to offer his opinion.
Newspapers traditionally place editorial content, such as Will’s columns, in the editorial (opinion) sections, where as articles such as Zimmer’s are in the news sections.
Savvy media consumers know this, just as we know the difference between your professional opinions as a biologist versus your political opinions.
Four layers of “fact checking” and yet they printed an easily checkable lie?
The WaPo can’t finish going out of business soon enough.
Did you READ the Zimmer post that PZ linked to? The Post claims it DOES fact-check columns six ways from Sunday. So they already disavowed your attempt to defend them.
Not necessarily faith based so much as politics-based. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Will was good friends with an editor there or possibly a board member/owner. The deplorable state of our media these days has allot to do with basic cronyism.
Bureaucratus Minimis says, “Newspapers traditionally place editorial content, such as Will’s columns, in the editorial (opinion) sections…”
as opposed to where it belongs, in the dungheap. The editorial section has become a place to lie with impunity. It even happens in Physics Today, where they’ve instituted an “OPINION” section for climate denialists to spout their drivel free of the constraints of peer review or fact checking.
I never go wrong in trying to predict a Republican’s opinion on something. I just see them as mouthpieces for the wealthiest corporations. Knowing their lust for endless personal profit *requires* the destruction of the environment and the impoverishment of all people, I can predict their “opinions” and the lies they will repeat.
If George Will wants to express his opinion, he’s welcome to it. But if he wants to support it with facts, they should be real.
It shouldn’t matter where in the paper it is – if they want to print something, they should check it. If they want to leave the article untouched, at least print a disclaimer at the bottom that the facts aren’t right. How else are we as consumers supposed to trust a damn thing in the paper?
I never go wrong in trying to predict a Democrat’s opinion on something. I just see them as self-appointed mouthpieces for the poorest indviduals. Knowing their denial of profits ability to clean up the environment and the improve the lives of all people, I can predict their “opinions” and the lies they will repeat.
Get a grip – they’re profit-based. Reality has never had anything to do with it – that’s just part of their advertising. The idea that the purpose of the news media is to inform their audience about reality has exactly as much basis in fact as the idea that HeadOn actually relieves headaches.
Stop falling for it.
Appropriate random quote is appropriate:
Matt, #16: I just see them as self-appointed mouthpieces for the poorest indviduals. Knowing their denial of profits ability to clean up the environment and the improve the lives of all people, I can predict their “opinions” and the lies they will repeat.
Do you think that George Will is a Democrat? Or are you changing the subject?
You’re entitled to your own opinion, #8. You’re not entitled to your own facts. If Will wanted to launch a screed about being against global warming, fine, it’s his opinion, but he can’t then turn around and try to make himself look like he knows what he’s talking about by, oh, referring to facts, especially when his facts are all fucking wrong. Just leave out the facts if you can’t find any that will support your position. It’s not like a lack of facts or connection to reality ever stopped the likes of George Will in the past.
And, no, the news sections of papers aren’t much better. There’s a reason their readerships are plummeting faster than your average 401k. They suck at keeping us informed, and they’re deaf to having blatant errors pointed out to them. The WP in particular has demonstrated outright contempt for readers who have pointed out errors they’ve made. Me, when I see a paper doing that, I don’t think kindly of them. I think there’s something wrong with an entity that thinks it’s too smart to make mistakes. That tells me they don’t care about truth, so why should I trust them?
Just to rub it in once again:
And indeed Will is entitled to his own opinion.
He is not, however, entitled to his own facts.
Stop pretending to be a postmodernist!
Re 19:
Do you think that George Will is a Democrat? Or are you changing the subject?
compare #16 to #13
“According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.”
You can believe me, George Will, or you lying eyes.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=9115
Freedom of speech. The media have the right to be as faerie-based as they want if they are privately owned. You can deplore it, you can tell them they suck, you can say they are idiots, you can boycott their news… But you can’t tell them they are supposed to be this and that. You can compare that to a girl that has a bad boy for a lover. She may dream she can change the bad boy, but it’s just not gonna happen.
You need to ditch him, and get a decent guy.
…but what decent media is there out there anyway? Guess someone should make a new one.
Matt @ #16
Shows what you know about Democrats. You can’t get all of them on the same page. It’s like herding cats.
Who did your fact checking?
I would appreciate a retraction.
As John Stewart said; the problem is reality has a liberal bias.
George Will writes OPINION pieces for the OPINION pages.
It shouldn’t matter where in the paper it is – if they want to print something, they should check it.
No, that ignores the long-standing tradition of separating reporting from other content. I’m sorry that the educational system failed you in this regard.
So, how do you fact-check a horoscope? Or Doonesbury? Or that “whiter teeth in thirty days” advertisement?
If they want to leave the article untouched, at least print a disclaimer at the bottom that the facts aren’t right. How else are we as consumers supposed to trust a damn thing in the paper?
“Column” (opinion or entertainment piece), not “article” (reporting).
Please also be aware that on April 1 of each year, some non-factual articles appear in the news sections of otherwise reliable media outlets. This is a joke, and does not affect the credibility of those media outlets. Hope this helps.
Some people have the idea that any opinion is valid, because someone has it. This is absurd. I think it was Janine who pointed out that only informed opinions are of any value. “It’s my opinion” is not valid for anything whatsoever without backup.
Seriously, why should anyone give a flying fuck at a rat about anyone’s “opinion”? It’s just hot air, or soy ink, in the case of Mr. Will (ignorant blowhard that he is).
Just the facts, ma’am.
Bureaucratus Minimus,
Printing edtitorials that are blatantly wrong DOES damage what little credibility is left to the Washington Post. We hear about the plight of newspapers all the time–declining readership and ad revenues, shrinking reporting budgets…
This is part of the reason why. It used to be that the best papers at least felt some obligation to the truth. Now you have the news and opinion sections of the Post and the Wall Street Urinal dueling it out.
I haven’t gotten my news from a paper in a decade, and I see nothing here that would make me want to reconsider that.
Will not only has a problem with scientific facts, his conservative bias seems to have generated some sort of denialism regarding historical facts. I’ve seen him on three separate occasions recite the canard that The New Deal made The Great Depression worse, only to be repeatedly corrected. And yet he continues to repeat the lie. What does that tell you about him?
And Bureaucratus Minimis continues to ignore the fact that the Post claims to fact check their columns.
George Will writes OPINION pieces for the OPINION pages.
Do you understand the difference between an OPINION and a FACT? He is allowed to hold whatever opinion he wants, but when he states “facts” they should not be lies. A lie is not a fact even when on the OPINION page.
…at the risk of sounding like a broken record here:
Will can have whatever opinion he wants, no matter how ill-informed or stupid it may be. He cannot, however, make up “facts”. Lies != Opinion.
If he wants to quote facts, he needs to make sure they are correct. That’s the way that reality works, folks. False != True, not matter what your personal opinion may be.
He needs to retract the incorrect portions of his opinion piece, or he will be labelled (and rightly so!) a liar.
Like I said, he should stick to baseball. At least he seems to be knowledgeable on that subject and biases don’t really matter too much there.
Hopefully he isn’t inflating (or deflating) stats when he talks about players and teams.
Just become a creationist, PZ. You know you want to. You’d have a job for life over at the Discovery Institute, and would never have to fact-check a single thing or grade a paper ever again!
Republicans observe the news
And don’t like what they’re seeing;
They dream up facts to fit their views,
Then Will them into being.
SteveM, #32:
Ah. Thanks, Steve. So Matt was responding to a previous post by invoking the tu quoque fallacy. Thanks for pointing it out.
Where is God’s fact-checker in all this?
There are certainly some wacky opinions out there. It would greatly help people like me if He took the time to smite a few misconceptions about His nature and desires.
Confuses the shit out of me, I must be honest. Why won’t he just tell me, to start with? Then I could tell everyone! Including the prof and all his heathen woshippers. And though I go and on about standards of proof and why won’t He just give us a scientific sign? I think my standards of personal proof would, in practice, be much lower – that’s certainly the case with Christians.
Something standard – a dream maybe, an overwhelming sense of wonderment coupled with a blinding light and a deep voice? It wouldn’t have to be anything silly or difficult, no angels wafting me with the breeze from their wings, no wholly unscientific raising the dead shit, no just an eensy weensy personal vision.
Hell, I’ve had acid, so I know what visions are like – god could have come to then (well, I was briefly God myself, but I’m inclined to believe that was just the LSD talking).
And if you’re a christian, you have to say such dumn things. But even that enforced stupidity – all that would no doubt be overcome by a brief personal experience and a vision of the one great truth.
So, God, start fact-checking, and start ignorance-smiting and just let us know what you really think. And if you could give me a little brain stuff I’ll do whatever you want.
Oh and smite the climate-change denialists and the creationists first please as their ignorance particularly displeases me.
No, better, rapists, murderers, and torturers. Oh Heck, You decide.
Ben @ # 26: It was Stephen Colbert who said that, not Jon Stewart. For a thread about the importance of fact checking, that’s a double fail.
Congratulations – the WaPo Writers’ Group will be calling soon to discuss the terms of your new op-ed contract!
No (it’s left signficantly vaue that it lacks anything checkable). No (it contains nothing claiming to be fact). Yes, sort of (if it’s an outright lie, there are laws).
FFS, A column isn’t a news report but neither is it fiction (well newspapers may sometimes run a fictional column, like the original Bridget Jones’ diary, but this isn’t that. If a column contains claims presented as fact they should be facts. You can’t just write “This is my opiion on the fact that Arctic Climate Research Center claim [thing they never claimed]” and expect it to be OK, any more than you can write “This is my opinion about the fact that fact that Tom Cruise is a closet homosexual” and expect it to be ok.
Those damn Republicans!
If one were honest, one would see the dishonest reporting on both sides of the aisle and hold contempt for it.
The trouble is, “liberal bias” is just as rampant and out-of-control-dishonest as Conservative bias.
That a college professor who professes to be rational and reasonable- along with a sycophantic group of minions- cannot freely admit this is far more pernicious for the state of the US as a whole, as now those in the white hats are as devilish as their black-hatted counterparts.
Heck, even the big man in the White House is standing in front of cameras and lying his ass off, and no reporter says boo about it.
Shame and misery… Ohhhhh…
Careful now. His god’s an alien, and worse, most likely a lawyer. Seems a particularly dangerous deity to fuck with. Criticize Thor, if you must. Then the worst you can expect is a little backyard thunder.
Ray,
Printing edtitorials that are blatantly wrong DOES damage what little credibility is left to the Washington Post.
And I completely agree with that, but they’re still editorials and understood to be just that by anyone with any degree of media sophistication.
We hear about the plight of newspapers all the time–declining readership and ad revenues, shrinking reporting budgets…This is part of the reason why.
Perhaps so, but I think the interweb thingy is a more immediate cause of declining revenues for print media outlets.
Cheers.
Haha… Scott you’re such a Ron Paul wanna be and a d-bag.
Scott from Oregon, #42:
Now Scott from Oregon is weighing in….
The mind boggles….
Incidentally, is the god of birds and the god of aviation the same, or do they even work in the same department? That’s probalbly the explanation behind the Hudson landing – no communication. Those guys weren’t even singing from the same hymnsheet.
Office politics strikes againu.
BM just refuses to get it…
@ #40. Brilliant. An exemplary pwn.
Every time I’ve heard about the Washington Post it’s been accompanied with the epithet: All the news that’s print to fit.
I don’t know anyone who considers that paper anywhere near the acme of journalism.
Probably the best dissection of the Will article is to be found at
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/george-f-will-takes-on-science-loses.html
Nate is very good at basic “How to lie with statistics”. And that is all you need to understand Will’s problems.
For a major media outlet to pass on such unsubstantiated claims kindda reminds one that the popular media catch phrase has become entrenched in concrete…
“When we want folks opinions we will give it to them”
Too bad, since Will has been a solid supporter of science on the evolutionary front.
I believe that, where money is concerned, a certain set of conservatives/Republicans become less willing to accept science.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Where there’s a Will there’s astray
Sfo:
Still haven’t splurged and bought a thesaurus, huh?
He is the journalist equivalent of the faded, ineffectual general festooned with unearned medals, obsessively blathering about his failing glory.
Did Will actually manage to predict in any way the economic crash? If not, why pay any attention to his opinions?
That would help – if any news organisations reviewed the predictions their columnists used, and threw out any which were just plain wrong; isn’t that the best fact-checking available?
Pauli,
He is the journalist equivalent of the faded, ineffectual general festooned with unearned medals, obsessively blathering about his failing glory.
Sigh. Will is not a journalist (reporter), he’s a columnist (writer of opinions). Big, huge, important difference.
And people read his opinions, and comment on them, even (particularly) his critics. Lots of people. Which makes him a force to be reckoned with.
Realize this must be frustrating to you since your own blog is lightly-trafficked and nobody has commented on your last seven posts. Nice design aesthetic, though.
The so-called layer of fact checkers at the WaP are ‘statement checkers’ (quote miners) trying to find individual quotes to validate the idea that the opinion stated by George Will is a reasonable one. “The facts, Mr. Will, you can’t handle the facts!”
The word “opinion” is not a synonym for the word “lie.”
Zimmer accuses Will of “quote mining.”
It looks like George has been taking lessons from conservative creationists.
The good news is newspapers are on their way out. In a decade the number published will be few. Then Mr Will can look for other employment. But he still does not get to write fiction and present it as opinion.
Actually, Doonesbury has been fact-checked. On occasion, Garry Trudeau has slacked off on his research and been called on it (even Homer nods, etc.).
Thank you, Wikipedia (footnotes in original).
Hey, BM, “Journalist=!= reporter”. The first five words of the top Google result for “columnist”: “A columnist is a journalist”. And the first sentence of the top hit on “George Will” “George Frederick Will (born May 4, 1941) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author.”
He’s a journalist.
A columnist that states falsehood as fact (as opposed to simply opining the truth of falsehood) is a lying scumbag. Claiming that this is acceptable because “sophisticated” readers know not to trust ostensibly factual claims in opinion pieces is about as justified as claiming that it’s acceptable for politicians to lie on the campaign trail. After all sophisticated voters know not to trust campaign rhetoric. Just because those in the know understand that likes of Will are worthless liars doesn’t make them any less worthless when they lie.
It’s this sort of thing that makes me glad that the newspapers are dying off.
“George Will, conservative pedant and pundit”
Conservative – Yes
Pedant -Yes
Pundit – No
A pedant is simply one who uses formal language with precision and that is George.
A pundit has the connotation of some expertise that I’m not sure I am quite willing to attribute to George.
George is more of a sophist or a clever rhetorician
Holy shit Silver Fox says something mostly worthwhile.
Though I’m willing to give Will some level of expertise in the politics of politics if only from being involved in it for years.
Matt Heath:
Could you use a larger brush to spread a little more tar? Conservative rags like The Post represent all newspapers as much as Behe represents all scientists. Last time I checked, lying pricks like Will (or OReilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.) weren’t barred from TV or the internet. Should those media die off as well?
Well, BM, I hate to break it to you, but truth is NOT a popularity contest. I know that’s tough for someone like you to understand, but just give it a try.
Truth is not subjective. If you claim something is the truth you need to be able to back that up. If you can’t, then you’re a liar. There is no “middle ground” when you’re saying something is a “fact” and regardless of how “popular” someone might be, they should be held accountable for the lies they tell.
As a newspaper reporter, editor and copy editor since 1975, I can vouch that George Will can say anything he wants, but he is *not* entitled to his own facts. I question the credentials of the fact checkers the Post employs. Perhaps they found something that backed up Will’s stats. Maybe at World Net Daily.
I haven’t taken Will seriously since I read his first piece treating baseball players like some sort of deific pantheon whose asses we all must kiss. I kept wondering if he believed in a god of athletic supporters. Is there a big, buff god of steroids? The mind wobbles.
“I wish I were a politician, so I could just make stuff up”
There. Fixed it for you. Some day you’ll take off the *other* blinker, PZ. ;-)
Aquaria: It’s incredible to me that this ass-kisser of the rich is considered worth reading, never mind listening to.
Oh, he’s worth reading if you’re curious about what the current Republican party line is. He’s a mouth-piece — if you don’t want to waste time figuring out what the owners think, just ask Will and his ridiculous little tie.
Monbiot also stuck his claws in.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/feb/18/climate-denial-george-will
Yeah, tell that to Richard Gere’s gerbils.
E.V. I think you misunderstand me a little bit (my fault I admit). I don’t think newspapers are all bad. But everything they do is being taken over by the internet with the advantage the writers aren’t put in such a privileged position. Bad writers will still write bollocks but there will at least be Fiskings just one click away. As for TV I look forward to that gradually becoming just another part of the internet rather than a medium apart. A little widget browser widget linked to the top skewerings of falsity and bias while I was watching the news would be great.
Will is, like all of us, entitled to have his own opinions. He is not entitled to have his own facts.
I was going to try to rebut the first by saying that I would be perfectly fine with labeling Mr. Will, like horoscopes, “For entertainment purposes only.”
But I went to the Washington Post‘s horoscope page and there was no disclaimer.
At least they’re consistent.
Now PZ, that’s not very fair to Republicans. It must be hard work to find scientific quotes that appear to support what they think.
E.V., I think you’re confused. Just because someone else has done something wrong in the past, it doesn’t make it all right for others to do it, too. This is a simple concept that even young children can grasp.
Again: Truth != Opinion. It never has and never will. No matter how many people tell a lie, or how often, it’s still a lie and still just as awful.
Radio talk show host Randi Rhodes was using “reality has a liberal bias” before Colbert had his show.
Hey, BM, “Journalist=!= reporter”. The first five words of the top Google result for “columnist”: “A columnist is a journalist”. And the first sentence of the top hit on “George Will” “George Frederick Will (born May 4, 1941) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author.”
He’s a journalist.
OK, not sure what you mean by “=!=”, and the rest of your first paragraph is a bit muddled.
I consistently used the word “columnist” to describe Will, and the word “reporter” to describe Zimmer. I deliberately avoided the word “journalist” because it encompasses both columnists and actual reporters (ie, in my 11:53 post, my bad).
So your criticism seems based on something other than what I actually wrote.
Kate:
The confusion is yours. It was a joke. A punchline to reinforce your point not counter it.
Conservative rags like The Post represent all newspapers as much as Behe represents all scientists.
I LOL’d at that. Really.
WaPo is regularly criticised by liberals for conservative bias, and by conservatives for liberal bias. In my mind this criticism from both sides of the political spectrum is a ringing endorsement of the Washington Post, and hugely discrediting of those critics.
Kate:
FYI, the Gere/gerbil meme is a prime example of urban legend becoming accepted “popular knowledge” fact. No gerbils were harmed in the making of Richard Gere’s anecdotal anal escapade because it never happened. The same goes for Rod Stewart/Stomach Pump, Momma Cass/ham sandwich, Walt Disney/Cryogenics, etc. but that doesn’t stop people from repeating these stories as fact.
Actually, I was referring to the New York Post. I edited out the reference to the monkey cartoon. My bad.
@ E.V: Ahhhh… I see what you did there. o.O
Your sarcasm, while really f’n funny, was something I missed. I apologize.
I naturally assumed most people with a minimum of ntelligence knew that these were simply “stories” (read: lies). I was unaware that some idiots out there claimed that these fairy-tales were fact. (Though I suppose it’s not too far-fetched, as people still believe in the bible as the literal word of god.)
Posted by: Bureaucratus Minimis | February 20, 2009 10:52 AM
Ahhh Fuck! I about fell out of my chair I was laughing so hard. I mean, really, “anyone with any degree of MEDIA SOPHISTICATION.” You my friend are one seriously pompous dumbass. Not to mention a moron. No wonder you can’t understand the differences between true, false, lying and opinion.
Matt Heath: I really was just yanking your chain. I guess I’m going to have to resort to using boatloads of emoticons since everyone is a wee bit serious and defensive on the threads recently, except moi (insert ironic-faced emoticon here).
BM: you say
Previously you’d said
Note that I had actually quoted that in the post you were responding to. And that the person you were “correcting” when you wrote that never said GW was a reporter (only the he was a journalist). I suppose this is all fair enough since blog comments are “opinion” and you’ve been arguing that is reasonable for opinion writers to out-right lie.
But OK, whatever, I take it your saying the difference between reporting and column writing is relevant.
It isn’t relevant in the slightest when something in a column is presented as fact. If you are stating things as fact you have responsibility to the truth,
Kate:
It’s okay, Some people still think Catherine the Great was a little too close to her horses and imagine her as “Frau Blucher” anytime anyone mentions hippophilia.
The amount of misinformation repeated as gospel is staggering. The average American cannot distinguish dogma from empirically derived fact and the average conservative assumes all knowledge is dogmatic.
The amount of misinformation repeated as gospel is staggering.
Heh. Including the gospels. Somewhat OT and all, but it’s interesting to note that the accretion of “telling detail” of greater and greater specificity we find in the elaboration of originally quite generic stories in the New Testament tradition closely parallels the development of modern “urban legends” and other stories known to be apocryphal.
PZ:
1) Not all Conservatives are bible-thumping morons. There are even some who are atheist. I’ve noticed that the membership of the NTCOF (churchoffreethought.org, a “church” for unbelievers) spans the political spectrum over all four extremes, and everything in between.
2) There are some Liberals who are bible-thumping morons. I know a few personally, in fact. There is even a fairly clear description of Communism in the Holey Babble, and the early xtians practiced a fairly straightforward socialism.
So, if you want to “make stuff up”, a Liberal political ideology is no deterrent, and pretending that it is a deterrent is a logical error.
—
http://www.chl-tx.com
When I was in Arizona people sometimes asked us where we got our news from, as we vehemently denied relying on any US “news” publication. The news that you can get your news _internationally_ these days seemed to come as a surprise to many. The BBC and the Guardian have very accessible websites.
Never underestimate the stupidity of the American public is my motto.
One of my favorite sputter moments came when I overheard a college girl tell everyone sitting at her table that people shouldn’t drink water because it killed electrolytes. I pondered which solvent was appropriate to drink and concluded her brand of Gatorade must have used benzene as a base.
My second favorite moment concerned a woman in her forties who asked in all sincerity if someone with an artificial heart could ever feel love. I guess it’s a close tie with the time I heard about people who believed a cracker actually turned into flesh when a shaman said magic words over it. (big emoticon grin here)
TX-CHLI: how do you go from:
to
?
Check your fly, your bias is showing.
You are right about NCTOF though, it’s a grabbag of ideological oddities.
There’s a place for making stuff up. It’s called fiction.
Isn’t that in the memoir section of the bookstore?
Matt Heath,
You selectively quoted me in your 2:40 PM post. You quoted part of my 1:58 PM post, but left out a critical part (bolded below) in which I regretted using the word “journalist” upthread of that post. You subsequently quoted my 11:53 AM post, which was the one time I used the word “journalist.”
I consistently used the word “columnist” to describe Will, and the word “reporter” to describe Zimmer. I deliberately avoided the word “journalist” because it encompasses both columnists and actual reporters (ie, in my 11:53 post, my bad).
The bolded phrase was an attempt to acknowledge that I had indeed used the word “journalist” in my 11:53 PM post on this thread, and subsequently regretted it.
Realize my writing may not be as clear as it could be, but I feel that you were neither fair nor honest in your manipulative use of quatations.
Posted by: Bureaucratus Minimis | February 20, 2009 4:03 PM
Wait a minute. What happened to your Media Sophistication.
Ok I crossed the times over I thought the one you quoted the time stamp for was something else. That’s my mistake, ( It sounds dumb but really; it’s a dyslexia thing; I checked up the dates and thought I’d defintely hit an earlier one but I probably transposed a couple digits mentally). So unfair but not dishonest or manipulative; just kind of clumsy.
OTOH, I quoted that 1153 post; that’s the only post I was responding to in that first post. If I said you were wrong when you were wrong, what where you picking me up on?
Matt,
I’m having trouble interpreting the nuances of your #99 post, but thanks for acknowledging the unfortunate quoting. I’m sorry for attributing bad motives to you. Even though we disagree on this, you’ve been quite civil.
Please consider my hand extended for a conciliatory shake.
The funny thing about Republicans is that every time they talk, I hear the lyrics to the “All in the Family” theme. Does this happen to anyone else?
@94 Your attempt to assign the incorrect antecedent is yet another logic error.
I was reacting to the title of this blog entry, which was “I wish I were a Republican, so I could just make stuff up”. and simply showing it to be a logic error.
You want to see some bias? Look in a mirror. BTW, I am not a Republican.
—
http://www.chl-tx.com
pundit (pŭn’dĭt) n:
A person who makes a business of not knowing what he is talking about.
@ E.V. #93. I liked the student who asked if adaptive radiation was some special type of sunlight. :)
Mothra:
Perhaps that’s why he took a Geiger counter to the Galapagos…
*rimshot*
TX CHL Instructor #102
You meet the major qualification to be a Republican. You’re an asshole.
Ya, OK, I’ll turn to democrats for “the truth” especially when it comes to tax advice. Seriously, WTF are you saying here?
Have any climate models been even close to accurate? Why won’t the modelers release the details of their models so people can duplicate the results? Isn’t this what science is all about? I guess the rules don’t apply to climate science.
There is not climate crisis, now move on to something you can actually prove and replicate.
And a hearty “you can say that again” to ”Tis Himself @#106
Sundevil; we’ve already been through this on another thread, oh trollish one, look through the fcking archives.
Don’t forget to add half a million square kilometers to recent official estimates of Arctic sea ice due to uncorrected sensor drift. Of course, that’s only a fifth of the variation from ‘average’ at the minimum ice coverage. The variation at maximum ice coverage seems to be less, from the graph in the article.
Still, that’s an awful big error bar. Does that make George Will right, and Carl Zimmer wrong? I don’t know, did either one put actual numbers down?
Have any climate models been even close to accurate?
Oddly enough, the IPCC one seems to be doing just fine.
Why won’t the modelers release the details of their models so people can duplicate the results?
[Citation needed]
@Ktesibios (#103)
No no no! A pundit is a person who engages the attention of an audience by sounding intelligent and informed when he may or may not in fact be that, therefore ensuring that his or her opinions are taken seriously. How can you not see that???
OK, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.
F$#@%&*#ing blockquote fail!
CJO [90] You are so right about details accumulating. What really did it for me was finding out that the first EVER mention of Mary and Joseph was about 107 A.D. Or as someone once said, some scripture is fanfic.
Or, Monado, at times, downright slash.
Sundevil, the climate models are pretty damn accurate anyway, despite what non scientists with an ideological grudge will tell you. Further more all the data you claim has not been released HAS been released – to the scientific community. What good would it do you? You don’t have to expertise to understand what the hell you’re seeing.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
From the above graph, the anomaly in late 1979 was -1million km, the same as the anomaly in early 2009
Alan, please explain how the 1979 anomaly on the day Will published was clearly *positive* (closer to +1 than -1), and how at no point does the 1979 data cross the -1 mark.
Answer: You’re parroting DailyTech again. You fail.
By supporting Will’s conclusions when the source he cites disagrees with him (and indeed has “no idea” where he got his numbers from), are you endorsing journalistic fraud?
OT
91, and others who wrote on this topic
I think many libertarians, or what I call conservatarians, are not religious, including many atheists.
Liberals are much more likely than conservatives to describe themselves as spiritual rather than religious. Spirituality does not require belief, which is what nearly everyone assumes. Belief is more often than not an obstacle. If you think all the people in the world who follow some path of spiritual discipline are just gullible believers, you are sadly mistaken. In fact it’s usually when they start believing that they stumble, because belief means a concept of how it all is, that one gets stuck in. In my opinion, reductionism is just such a belief, as well. When it comes to the mechanisms by which the physical world works, I’ll take science every time. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the only source of knowledge, or that it can state categorically whether there is higher power or not. The results of the disciplines I mentioned are reliably repeatable and have been so for thousands of years, not unlike science. One can transform the outer world, the other the inner.
Faith is not belief. Faith is just trusting in the process.
Theodore Rozack once commented that religious fundamentalists and reductionists were alike. Neither are aware of the sacredness of creation, both see the world as just stuff; the fundamentalist because nature is of Pan and Paganism and such, and earth is a kind of purgatory; while the fundamentalist believes there is nothing sacred and that logic is all.
To the degree that reductionism has become in large part our worldview, it can be argued that it has contributed to the disregard for the environment. After all it’s just stuff, including us. So who cares?
My experience tells me different. So did that of Plato, Plotinus, Pythagorus, Lao Tzu, St. Augustine, Emerson, Whitman, Yeats, Shakespeare, Blake, Paracelsus, and on and on through the ages. These are not fools.
There is a reason that Socrates taught by always questioning the concepts and beliefs of his students. He knew another kind of knowing.
The kind that Lao Tsu refers to thus:
“In the pursuit of learning, one knows more and more everyday. But in the pursuit of Tao, one knows less and less everyday. One knows less and less till one knows nothing at all. And when one knows nothing at all, nothing is left unknown.”
“I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.”
Richard Feynman
Don’t ever stop wondering.
After all it’s just stuff, including us. So who cares?
From me, and I surmise anyone else that has a child that they give a shit about… a hearty “fuck you, you nihilist bastard” to you.
There’s a place for making stuff up.
It’s called Washington, D.C. Or this week it was Sacramento, where they just signed California’s economic death warrant.
Also, Richard… your pseudo-intellectual masturbation is neither new, relevant nor interesting.
Ah, Sacramento… where Democratic state legislators try to redefine “incompetent jackass” with every breath they take, and get outdone by Republicans every step of the way.
Talk about dysfunctional state government. Sure, sure, it was all Gray Davis’s fault. No systemic issues here. Move along, peon.
Stu
calm down
You misread what I wrote.
I’m not saying “who cares”. I’m saying that many have that attitude. Not me. And I’m not saying that scientists have that attitude either. I’m saying that many who are warming deniers have that attitude. I hear it all the time. Like “so what if we go extinct, everything does eventually, it’s just nature”. That’s the kind of nihilism I’m criticizing.
I’m am a stalwart supporter of science, especially in regard to global warming. I have a whole website devoted to showing how much consensus there is, and exposing the disinformation campaign of the fossil fuel industry deniers.
And it is not intellectual masturbation. It only seems that way to you. Did I upset any cherished beliefs? You sound upset. Those who aren’t attatched to beliefs don’t get upset by such words.
It was others who brought up the subject of religion and science.
[There was a typo -“while the fundamentalist believes there is nothing sacred and that logic is all. -should have read “reductionist”]
And Stu, who cares if you think it’s interesting? If you don’t get what I’m was saying, maybe that’s your loss.
I think many libertarians, or what I call conservatarians, are not religious, including many atheists.
The majority of libertarians are, indeed, atheist or agnostic.
The confusion really stems from the fact that the “conservative movement” today includes two completely different ideological strands, which are uneasy bedfellows.
On the one hand, there are the traditionalist social conservatives. For these people, the most important thing is to preserve whatever they perceive as “traditional values” (whatever that means in their particular cultural context). They are almost always religious believers, and tend to be anti-immigration, strongly pro-life, anti-gay marriage, and pro-religion in schools. They will often pay lip service to the free market and free trade, but will typically ignore it when it’s convenient, and will be happy to support protectionist trade barriers and subsidies when it’s politically expedient to do so.
On the other hand, there are libertarians and classical liberals, the group to which I adhere. We believe in limited government, lower rates of taxation, privatisation and liberalisation of industries, a free labour market (including free movement of labour across national borders), civil liberties, private property rights, free international trade, and sound money (though we disagree vehemently amongst ourselves as to what constitutes “sound money”). We are also, by and large, secular, and many of us are agnostic or atheist.
The two movements have, for much of the twentieth century, been united in opposition to socialism and “social democracy”, which both groups oppose but for different reasons. The social conservatives see socialist and left-wing movements as a threat to “traditional values” and “Christian civilisation” – whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Conversely, libertarians and classical liberals are opposed to the Left because we oppose big government, high taxation and the bureaucratic State.
Reagan was extremely good at uniting the two strands of conservatism, and avoided firmly committing himself to either (hence why there’s a certain amount of philosophical incoherence in so-called “Reagan conservatism”). George W. Bush, who wasn’t as bright as Reagan, has completely destroyed this coalition. From a libertarian point of view, there is little good to say about the Bush administration; it reduced civil liberties, increased the size of government, pursued a course of philosophical responsibility, and increased the identification of the Republican Party with narrow, sectarian religious views. While using free market rhetoric, Bush put up tariffs and enacted “anti-dumping” protectionist legislation, and spent billions bailing out corporations. There are few libertarians now who have kind words for Bush, or for most of the modern GOP. Hence I think it’s a mistake, now, to talk about “conservatives” and “the Right” as if they were a unified force. There are religious social conservatives, and there are libertarians. We are different political movements who have, today, little to say to one another.
@124: “philosophical responsibility” should have read “fiscal irresponsibility”.
Walton, take your looneytarian fantasies away to your own blog.
BTW, “classical liberalism” disappeared when Gladstone resigned as Prime Minister in 1894. It’s rather funny that looneytarians try to give themselves a facade of respectability by appropriating the name of a defunct political movement.
‘Tis Himself:
I will never understand why, on this site and among most other sceptic/rationalist/godless communities, it is, apparently, not enough to be a sceptic and a rationalist; one must also subscribe to some variety of left-wing political and economic theory in order to be fully accepted as a member of the community.
In theory, what unites the regulars here is that we are opponents of pseudoscience and woo (creationism, faith healing, anti-vaccinationism, astrology, etc.), and support a rational, scientific and empirical approach to life. I, and many of the other libertarians here, share this philosophy. Why, then, are we never treated as an integral part of the rationalist community?
There is no self-evident reason why an atheist, agnostic or sceptic ought automatically to adopt left-of-centre political views. Yes, all rationalists should oppose the stupidity being spewed by the fundie-reactionary wing of the GOP. But being opposed to (religious) conservatism does not mean we all have to be leftists. I oppose religious conservatism and nanny-state socialism with equal vigour; the fact that I oppose the latter does not mean I sympathise with the former. Why, then, must I (and Africangenesis, and Scott from Oregon, and the other libertarians here, many of whom are much more knowledgeable than I am) be treated as an outsider? Why is it OK to have comment threads filled to the brim with hagiographic ravings about how wonderful it is to have a Democrat in the White House, but not OK to have a serious political and economic debate about the merits of the free market?
The mainstream godless community needs to recognise that there are a sizeable, and growing, number of rationalists, sceptics and secular humanists who are not on the political left; and it needs to embrace and welcome us, rather than turning us away because we challenge their political orthodoxy.
How exactly? If they are trying to ban abortions, stop gays from marrying, teaching creationism etc then they are not liberal. If they are not doing that stuff then they are not bible-thumpers.
You might look at the tagline once.
Pharyngula: Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal.
You are on a left-wing political website. You are tolerated here, but you are not welcome. It is either the height of arrogance to expect to be allowed to use this website for your political propaganda.
On the contrary. As a matter of numbers, you are irrelevant and we don’t need you. There is no reason to compromise with you; this would just mean throwing away everything else we hope to accomplish. Why fight at your side for our “right” to be ruled by the rich?
Half of “no gods, no masters” is not a compromise worth settling for.
Walton,
I wrote a long post pointing out some of the difficulties with looneytarianism. However I’ve dumped it because, as Janine put it so well:
Nothing more needs to be said.
I forgot Janine used that title. I’m not her though.
@129: Pharyngula: Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal.
“Liberal” can mean a lot of things. And I’ve never thought of this as a “left-wing” website, or indeed as a genuinely political website. Rather, my understanding is that it’s primarily a pro-science, pro-reason and anti-woo site. (If I’m wrong, Professor Myers, please let me know.)
I am, in one sense, a “godless liberal”; I don’t believe in any traditional theistic notion of God, and I’m a “liberal” in the broader, more traditional sense of the word. Like Professor Myers, I absolutely believe in a secular state and the importance of freedom of (including freedom from) religion, and I absolutely believe in the importance of science, reason, empirical evidence and scepticism. So there’s nothing in the tagline which suggests to me that I and my ideological fellow-travellers will be automatically unwelcome here.
Can’t we all appreciate that there is a difference between disagreeing with someone, and believing them to be our enemies? There are some views which are straightforwardly stupid and cannot be taken seriously by rational people (young earth creationism being a prime example). I’m not one of those who blathers on about “respect for all beliefs”; some beliefs are certainly more worthy of respect than others. But when it comes to politics and economics, there are serious and legitimate disagreements which rational, sceptical, educated people can have amongst themselves. It’s hardly fair to act as if those of us who are in the minority on such questions are somehow irrational or immoral, or that we deserve to be lumped in with fundamentalists, pseudoscientists and woo-mongers as enemies of reason and intellectual honesty.
I myself would not claim to be particularly wise, intelligent or articulate, and I would be the first to acknowledge there are many people here whose knowledge and credentials far outstrip mine. I apologise if I’ve put anyone off libertarianism; I would confess that I’m not the most able debater, and that I talk nonsense at times. But there are other libertarians who are far brighter and more knowledgeable than me; classical liberalism is a rich intellectual tradition with its roots in the Enlightenment, and is one of the founding influences of both British and American political culture.
Remember Walton, you are on a “left-wing” website run by a big government liberal, so your views about how you are governed (or anyone else, for that matter) are anathema to the stated goals of this site.
If you aren’t pro-central planning, pro-surveilance, pro-government sector jobs and pro-military empirism, you need to shut up and let the grown-ups around here call you names and throw tantrums, because, by god, they are cool scientists types who love that sort of thing…
Sorry Walton, that’s just the way rational and reasonable people behave…
For those wishing to see that the “Democrats” are equally capable of lying while directly asked to be forthright and honest, may you learn a little from Karl, who will explain, quite clearly, that Washington has gone off the deep end.
BTW, anybody enjoy Nancypants Pelosi’s recent trip to kiss the ring of the Pope? Did you enjoy paying for it? Makes ya kinda sore, don’t it? This reeming y’all are getting…
Oh wow, you really are a lying liar. You know damned well what liberal means in Minnesota and the rest of the United States. Progressive. Social democratic. The left wing of the Democratic Party, leaving out Blue Dogs, hawks and centrists.
So you’ve never thought of this as a political website, even though you couldn’t have overlooked the literally thousands of political posts that PZ has made over the years, and you hijack every thread to push your own political propaganda.
You absolutely reek of bullshit today, Walton. This is unusually dishonest, even for you.
I see Scott’s commentary on politics is as rational and unbiased as ever.
[/straightface]
There’s an old saying in American football: “You can bullshit the spectators but you can’t bullshit the players.”
Walton, you’re not only a conservative looneytarian, you’ve bragged that you’re a conservative looneytarian. You worship the ground that St. Ronnie Reagan walked on. You’ve whined that Obama’s stimulus package is evil because it wasn’t blessed by St. Ronnie’s followers. You’ve shown
hatreddisregard for those who need the social safety net. And you yearn for the good old days when the rich were rich and the poor knew their place.You’re about as liberal as Attila the Hun (except that Attila was probably too pro-government for you).
I love this stuff. Scott has never actually listened to an American liberal, but he has learned that because he is a libertarian and Believes in True Freedom, everyone who disagrees with him is an authoritarian.
Pro-central planning: generally not. Your American liberal favors regulation of industries to facilitate widespread prosperity and environmental protection, but even a drunken reading of Hayek could have told you this isn’t central planning. Even large subgroups of Marxists have rejected central planning. Get with the times.
Pro-surveillance: American liberals and progressives like the Kos crowd, Glenn Greenwald, the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, Mother Jones, The Nation, and so on, constitute the only large political force that opposes government surveillance.
Pro-government sector jobs: to the extent that a functional civilization requires a level of bureaucracy. Scott neither desires nor understands such a civilization, though, so there’s a fundamental disagreement here.
Pro-military empirism: again, American liberals, progressives and other leftists constitute the only politically viable anti-war movement. Save for your Ron Paul, the only elected anti-war politicians at the federal level come from the Democratic Party.
You are pretty stupid, Scott. I think even Walton can see through your strawmen today, if his own bullshit vapors aren’t burning his eyes.
A homegrown pointless poll:
Who’s crazier, Walton or Scott? (I say Scott, because Walton is usually not so delusional that he cannot recognize his opponents’ actual goals.)
Who’s stupider, Walton or Scott? (I think this one is a tie. They both display ignorance of very basic concepts, and it’s sometimes hard to tell whether it’s willful blindness or sheer inability to learn.)
This is an interesting piece of doublespeak. It’s true in a trivial sense: just because someone is in a political minority does not mean they deserve vilification.
But when we look at the actual beliefs of Walton and his fellow nuthouse squirrels, they are irrational, they are immoral, they are fundamentalist in nature, often pseudoscientific, usually devoid of reason, always intellectually dishonest, and their wrecking-ball approach does make their believers the enemies of a sustainable, equitable, livable civilization. And that’s why they’re in the minority.
Many looneytarians are Christians. It’s not surprising since looneytarianism is compatible with Christianity. Just substitute “the market” for “Jesus”, and ask “What would the market do?” After all, only markets, promoted by those wise liberals of the 18th century, can solve coordination problems. Democratic representative governments, which were foisted upon us by those same deluded liberals of the 18th century, result in chaos and difficulty finding good servants.
Conservatives have no choice but to be equivocating douche bags. If they were to tell only the unvarnished truth, they would disappear.
“””I love this stuff. Scott has never actually listened to an American liberal, but he has learned that because he is a libertarian and Believes in True Freedom, everyone who disagrees with him is an authoritarian.”””
Ummm, and I too love the depth of ignorance displayed by your assumptions… Oregon? california? West Coast? Hello?
There is the adage– “By their deeds ye shall know them” or some such shit.
Let’s see. The American left elected Representatives who–
1)Voted to grant war powers to Bush and paid through the purse for the Iraqi war…
2)Voted in the Patriot Act and Fisa (with your main man right in there voting “yes”…
3)Just had your choice of presidential candidates (who won) declare MORE troups to be sent abroad to fight in a war and also OK’d the drone rocketing of “terrorists” in Pakistan…
4)Declined to produce documents regarding surveilance of a Muslim group in the US citing “state’s secrets”…
5) Initiated and passed the biggest heist in American history, robbing tax payers in the trillions and giving this money to a few enterprises who were highly involved in fraudulent practices…
Etc… etc…
The trouble with “the left” is that they keep shoveling power to Washington and then wonder why they get the salami in return…
Boggle boggle boggle…
Scott
You know darn well that Democrats voted for Bush administration agenda items out of fear of being labeled as soft on security or terrorism. The Bush administration used lies to get us into Iraq, and then cajoled the Dems into voting for it. Could they sometimes use a little more spine on these issues? Sure, but that isn’t what you are implying.
Regarding Iraq and Afghanastan
Like Obama said, it’s kind of hard to get the bus out of the ditch, once someone else has driven it into the ditch.
If Bush has just focused on getting Osama Bin Laden and his group, like liberals and conservatives alike supported, we might not be in either country now. Certainly not in Iraq. But George W had to finish what his daddy started in the Gulf War. He spoke of this desire before he was even elected.
By number 5 I guess you are referring to the stimulus package, which all in all is not that bad. If it works, it will do so, despite the Republican tax cuts, which weakened it. I don’t know what you are referring to, but it sounds like some Sean Hannity/Rush Limbaugh nonsense.
Of course Sean Hannity was still talking about the OMB report that was supposed to project dire losses from Obama’s stimulus package, a full week after other networks had reported that the OMB report NEVER EXISTED. The OMB said so themselves.
I thought Ron Paul had some good ideas, but when he suggests no environmental regulations and that we would solve those problems by using property rights to sue each other, that’s when I looked elsewhere. I guess if you have no property, you have no right to clean water, air, and food etc.
Jefferson was for small government, but people in the 1800s lived in a world about a million times less complex than today. I think Jefferson would have been bright enough to know a broad stroke agenda of making govt small at all costs won’t cut it. Jefferson was also opposed to the concentration of large wealth in few hands.
The imaginary and utopian free market that some believe whole heartedly in always leads to concentration of wealth in few hands. It’s the nature of capitalism. To deny that is ridiculous.
So we have capitalism with adjustments. It’s called a mixed economy. And every successful economy in the world is a mixed economy. What’s wrong with that?
Why does that need labeling as socialist, or as something to be feared? What gets my goat is how conservatives habitually apply the labels of communism or socialism on anything that even suggests mutual interest, cooperation or sharing. What do they think civilization is for, if not mutual benefit?
Many countries with more social programs than the U.S. and with higher taxes, have better economic mobility than we do. And work less and have much longer vacations, better health care, free college, and still have standards of living similar to ours. And they still have enough incentive to excell at whatever they do. It’s not all some evil commie plot, it really isn’t.
And conservatives have taken the idea of individuality and turned it into every man for himself. Again, why do they think people form communities, nations etc, if not for mutual benefit?
Could govt. be trimmed down? sure but there are hundreds of things that the govt does that are not so bad. Medicare has a much lower overhead than the private health insurance system for example.
As far as welfare, I would much rather see job training programs than handouts, we should have more of that.
Walton at #127–
There are plenty of places on the web to get nonliberal-but-atheist views and interactions. The American Freethought podcast is one. I think one of the hosts has actually stated that he is more libertarian than liberal, although since I listen to a lot of podcasts I may be mixing it up with another one.
I personally used to enjoy reading your posts here on Pharyngula, because you seemed literate and rational and persuasive. As far as I have seen, however, your points have always been more than adequately countered and you have never once won a debate here. For that reason, your repetitive posts are getting tiresome. Surely writing the posts is more tiresome than reading them? Why do you continue to do so?
You worship the ground that St. Ronnie Reagan walked on.
No. I think he was a better-than-average president, but he still left a lot to be desired. (I presume we can agree that he was better than George W. Bush…)
You’ve whined that Obama’s stimulus package is evil because it wasn’t blessed by St. Ronnie’s followers.
No. I’ve complained that Obama’s stimulus package is a bad idea because it splashes out hundreds of billions of dollars – which every American will, in the long term, be paying back whether they like it or not – on pork barrel spending. I have also pointed out that Keynesian economic ideas have not worked in the past, and will not work now. For a much better economic analysis of the current problems than I can provide, go to http://www.campaignforliberty.org.
And you yearn for the good old days when the rich were rich and the poor knew their place.
No. I don’t yearn for any “good old days”. Our world, for all its failings, is a better place now for most of its inhabitants than it has ever been at any other time in history. I am merely realistic and intellectually honest enough to understand that consumer capitalism is the engine that has driven this massive increase in material prosperity.
Many looneytarians are Christians.
Some libertarians are Christians, but most aren’t. Likewise, some socialists are Christians, but most aren’t. What’s your point?
It’s not surprising since looneytarianism is compatible with Christianity.
Libertarianism is indeed compatible with Christianity, though it doesn’t rest on inherently Christian principles. So too socialism is compatible with Christianity. Again, what’s your point?
Just substitute “the market” for “Jesus”, and ask “What would the market do?” After all, only markets, promoted by those wise liberals of the 18th century, can solve coordination problems. Democratic representative governments, which were foisted upon us by those same deluded liberals of the 18th century, result in chaos and difficulty finding good servants.
This is a mendacious distortion of libertarian views. “The market” is not some supernatural entity or directed force with infinite wisdom. No one has ever seriously claimed that; such a view is a caricature invoked by statists to attack libertarian ideas.
Rather, “the market” is merely the name we give to the complex web of mutually beneficial transactions between individuals in a free society. Considering that (IIRC) you have a masters in economics, you know this perfectly well, and I can therefore only assume that you are wilfully distorting others’ economic ideas to serve your partisan political ends. (If I’m confusing you with someone else, and you don’t have an economics degree, then I apologise for impugning your honesty, and will instead assume that you’re just economically illiterate.)
I love this stuff. Scott has never actually listened to an American liberal, but he has learned that because he is a libertarian and Believes in True Freedom, everyone who disagrees with him is an authoritarian.
I can’t speak for Scott. But from my own point of view, it depends what you mean by “authoritarian”. Many leftists are strong supporters of civil liberties, and I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them in opposing the abuses of basic liberty and due process which occur regularly in many countries around the world. I wouldn’t claim that everyone who disagrees with me is a conscious “authoritarian”, or that libertarians are the only people who care about freedom.
However, statists – including both leftists and the paternalist right – are authoritarian, albeit not consciously, in two respects. Firstly, they believe (whether or not they ever articulate it expressly) that individuals can’t really be trusted, on some level, to make their own decisions about their money, their property and their body. So, for example, they tend to support the current ability of the FDA and its counterparts in other countries to ban the sale of unapproved drugs, thereby denying a person the right to take an unapproved drug if he wishes to take the risk of doing so.
Secondly, they don’t recognise the simple fact, articulated so perfectly by Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom, that it is impossible to sustain political freedom without economic freedom. I won’t expound on the reasons here; read the book, if you haven’t done so already. It quite literally changed my life.
I personally used to enjoy reading your posts here on Pharyngula, because you seemed literate and rational and persuasive.
Thank you. That sincerely means a lot to me. (Being constantly attacked as either a liar, stupid, deluded or evil does hurt; but it’s an occupational hazard of commenting on this forum.)
As far as I have seen, however, your points have always been more than adequately countered and you have never once won a debate here.
As we’ve seen from the creationism v. evolution saga, “debate”, with its emphasis on cheap point-scoring and florid rhetoric, is not a good way of determining the truth or validity of a viewpoint. And I wouldn’t say I’ve either “won” or “lost” any debate I’ve had here. When I change my mind or realise I was wrong, I admit as much.
But my political stance is based on two fundamental theses, neither of which anyone here has ever effectively countered. Firstly, consumer capitalism has been the engine of a spectacular increase in prosperity, and in the standard of living of most people, over the last couple of centuries. The supply-and-demand mechanisms of the market cannot be replicated in a government-controlled economy, and we should recognise that, in general, less government interference is a good thing. This doesn’t mean that the free market is perfect or always produces perfect outcomes; rather, I would simply assert that government is worse, and is a failure in almost every endeavour in which it engages.
Secondly, I believe, deontologically, in the principle of non-aggression. Fundamentally, without a good justification, no person has the moral right to initiate coercive force to impose his will on another. Democratic governance essentially consists of the majority, through the agency of the State, using such coercive force to impose its will on the minority; and so it is no more inherently moral or legitimate than dictatorship. Rather, the best option is to have a democracy with severely limited government power; the role of government, if it must exist at all, should be to enforce property rights, defend national security, arbitrate contracts and maintain basic infrastructure. Anything more than that is immoral, because it overrides the individual’s freedom of choice.
Matt coughed up:
Oh yes, another allusion to the liberal lie called “Love Canal”.
Kseniya, you’re either a fool or a liar, we’ll know after your response. Love canal was polluted yes, but the choice to build a school on top of a polluted site? Read up on the power and wonder of eminent domain and government acting in the public’s best interest.
>>>At the time of the closure, Niagara Falls’s population began to expand drastically. The local school board was desperate for land, and attempted to purchase an area of expensive property from Hooker Chemical that had not yet been used to bury toxic waste. The corporation refused to sell on the grounds of safety, and took members of the school board to the canal and drilled several bore holes through the clay, showing that there were toxic chemicals below the surface. However, the board refused to capitulate.[10] Eventually, faced with the property being condemned and/or expropriated, Hooker Chemical agreed to sell on the condition that the board buy the entire property for one dollar. In the agreement signed on April 28, 1953, Hooker included a seventeen line caveat that explained the dangers of building on the site. Hooker was thus released from all legal obligations should lawsuits arise in the future
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal
Funny. I know conservatives who view the WaPo as a liberal rag. What a country.
Has anyone mentioned the Washington Times yet? Now there’s a conservative rag.
So you’re in favor of tripling the national debt through spending money on the military. How does than differ from the “pork barrel spending” that you’re against? Oh, I forgot, pork barrel spending might help the citizenry. As a looneytarian, you’re against anything that could benefit anyone who isn’t already rich.
As for Reagan being better than Bush, that’s like saying Robert Mugabe is a better dictator than Kim Il Jong because Mugabe hasn’t killed as many people as Kim.
One of the reasons why I know you’re an economic illiterate is because of your total denial of the benefits of Keynesian economics. Was Maynard Keynes totally right? Of course he wasn’t. But he was a lot closer to right than your hero, Milton Friedman. Despite what your looneytarian overlords tell you, Keynesian policies did get Western Civilization out of the Great Depression. Even Hayek agreed with that. Many of Friedman’s ideas were de facto economic policies in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Boom and bust economics are very unpleasant for those on the bottom and very scary for everyone else.
As for campaignforliberty.org, any group which supports racist, anti-American Ron Paul has my disdain.
You’re the guy who told me that Victorian Britain was a prosperous place for all and sundry because it embraced laissez faire free markets. Since you’re in favor of laissez faire free markets, it shouldn’t be surprising that I accuse you of yearning for the days when they held sway. The late 19th Century had Sir Thomas Lipton spend millions of pounds building and racing five yachts in a failed attempt to win the Americas Cup. At the same time, millions of Britons lived in grinding poverty. Laissez faire free markets are great for the people at the top, but not so good for people more towards the bottom.
Adam Smith wrote in An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations : “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” The end result of looneytarianism is an oligarchy such as Smith described. You may like that idea, possibly because you think you’d be one of the people on top, but there are those (the vast majority of Europeans and Americans) who would disagree.
I’m not an expert concerning drugs and medicine. I prefer that experts decide if certain drugs are adequate for treating specific physical ailments. I know about 20 verses of The Ballad of Lydia Pinkham but I certainly would not want to try “Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound” for relief of illness. That’s because the experts have shown that Mrs. Pinkham’s Compound is less than “efficacious in every case.”
Friedman and I agree completely on this. Where Friedman (and you) disagree with me is what economic freedom means. Economic freedom is not the freedom for individuals and corporations to run rampant and unchecked. Even Friedman and you would agree that Kenneth Lay should not have been allowed to use Enron’s shareholders and employees as his personal piggybank. Governmental control of an economy is detrimental to both the economy and to freedom, but so is laissez faire capitalism. The Homestead Steel strike shows what laissez faire does to workers.
Another point where I part company with Friedman is with his notion that all people who are neither children nor insane are responsible. A little experience of social problems would teach him that the dividing line is blurred. Hence the idea of helping the unfortunate only by a negative income tax is too simple, even if it could be done on a weekly basis (a problem he ignores). Even those who agree with him on other topics might feel that prisons, asylums and cash are insufficient to look after the poor and weak. Friedman does not really face this issue yet many looneytarians cite Friedman as authority to slash the social safety net.
Walton, you need to read more economics than just Friedman. I can recommend several books that will widen your understanding of a topic that’s obviously important to you.
Matt, for now, we’ll have to settle for “fool”. I never lie. Well, hardly ever.
And how, exactly, has not being a Republican prevented you from just making shit up in the past? Oh, that’s right: it hasn’t.
PZ’s definition of “scientific fact”:
You mean when they stop printing IPCC press releases and start to fact-check people like admitted liar “Dr.” James Hansen? Yes, that would be nice, wouldn’t it. No more faith-based drivel on non-existent phenomena like “life after death”, “salvation” or “global warming”.
Walton,
Your points have been answered many times – in general, you simply ignore the answers, and trot them out again at the next opportunity. Here we go again.
Firstly, consumer capitalism has been the engine of a spectacular increase in prosperity, and in the standard of living of most people, over the last couple of centuries.
That this has happened under capitalism is indisputable. That capitalism is responsible, rather than the advance of science and technology (which long predate consumer capitalism, and have shown a long-term tendency to accelerate) is much more difficult to show, although I would on the whole agree that it played an important part. The problem with your position is that you claim for capitalism the credit for this, while denying it the responsibility for the widespread oppression, gross inequalities, unprecedentedly violent wars, recurrent economic crises, and enormous environmental destruction that have also happened under capitalism – these are always, somehow, the fault of deviations from capitalist purity – but you can not show us where and when the utopia of pure capitalism existed.
The supply-and-demand mechanisms of the market cannot be replicated in a government-controlled economy, and we should recognise that, in general, less government interference is a good thing.
No, we shouldn’t. Sometimes less government is good, sometimes it isn’t. Moreover, market mechanisms and government control are neither mutually exclusive – no modern state has existed for long without both – nor the only alternatives. Wage rates and working conditions, for example, are frequently set by negotiation; mutual associations such as building societies and consumer and producer cooperatives are further examples.
This doesn’t mean that the free market is perfect or always produces perfect outcomes; rather, I would simply assert that government is worse, and is a failure in almost every endeavour in which it engages.
This is quite obviously false. It was governments that ended slavery in most of the world, curbed (in conjunction with unions) the worst excesses of capitalist exploitation of workers, established educational systems that made literacy near-universal in many countries, funded most basic science over the past century, and in some countries have come near to abolishing poverty. The market has never done any of these things. It’s only your ideological blinkers that prevent you noticing these elementary facts.
Secondly, I believe, deontologically, in the principle of non-aggression. Fundamentally, without a good justification, no person has the moral right to initiate coercive force to impose his will on another.
Few if any here disagree that nonaggression is a good general principle. The question is, what constitutes a good justification.
Democratic governance essentially consists of the majority, through the agency of the State, using such coercive force to impose its will on the minority; and so it is no more inherently moral or legitimate than dictatorship.
No, that is not what it “essentially” consists of. Things do not have “essences”. All democratic theorists I know of agree that unlimited majority rule would not be democratic. Specifically: equality under the law, and freedom of speech, assembly, the press and organisation are necessary; and neither individuals nor groups can be arbitrarily detained without trial, deprived of the right to vote or stand for election, or punished without due process. These limitations on majority rule are necessary if only because, without them, a current majority could entrench its position and bring an end to democracy itself; thus a “democracy” which seriously violates them (probably all existing democracies do so to some extent) suffers fundamental internal inconsistencies.
Rather, the best option is to have a democracy with severely limited government power; the role of government, if it must exist at all, should be to enforce property rights, defend national security, arbitrate contracts and maintain basic infrastructure. Anything more than that is immoral, because it overrides the individual’s freedom of choice.
This is simply you wanting to impose your ideas of what the limits of government should be on everyone else – revealing the fundamentally antidemocratic nature of “libertarianism”. You give no justification for your assertion that property rights should have the degree of priority you want to afford them – because there is none. You proclaim your “deontological commitment” to it, and demand that the rest of us fall into line – the height of arrogance. You fail to recognise that individuals, corporations and other non-governmental bodies also limit “the individual’s freedom of choice”; and that governments – particularly democratic governments – sometimes act to prevent this.
Another point where I part company with Friedman is with his notion that all people who are neither children nor insane are responsible. A little experience of social problems would teach him that the dividing line is blurred. Hence the idea of helping the unfortunate only by a negative income tax is too simple, even if it could be done on a weekly basis (a problem he ignores). Even those who agree with him on other topics might feel that prisons, asylums and cash are insufficient to look after the poor and weak. Friedman does not really face this issue yet many looneytarians cite Friedman as authority to slash the social safety net.
Point taken, but I think it’s a misunderstanding to accuse Friedman, or libertarians in general, of simply assuming that all mentally competent adults are capable of making good choices for themselves (which is plainly empirically untrue). Rather, we would simply assert that, since governments are also composed of human beings, government policies are no more likely to be wise than are the choices which people make for themselves.
In a free society, some people will fuck up their own lives through making stupid decisions; no one is denying that. But in a statist society, the government has the power to fuck up everyone’s lives, through making stupid decisions which it can impose coercively on the whole population. The former is clearly somewhat preferable to the latter.
I prefer that experts decide if certain drugs are adequate for treating specific physical ailments.
I wasn’t asserting that people should not listen to the experts. I was merely asserting that they should not be forced to do so. There’s a crucial difference.
I wouldn’t actually abolish the FDA, nor would I abolish labelling regulations. But I would assert that it should be legal to sell unapproved drugs, provided that they are clearly labelled and identified as being unapproved, and marketed as such. If you are terminally ill, and have no other options, wouldn’t you want to take the risk of trying an unapproved drug that might just save your life? Why should you, provided you’re a mentally competent adult, be denied the right to take that risk?
As David Friedman has highlighted, the FDA has killed many people during its existence. Every time the FDA takes several years to thoroughly test a drug and approve it for sale, people die who could have been saved because the drug is not available. It is in the nature of the regulatory system that it will be over-cautious. If the FDA approves a drug too quickly and it turns out to be unsafe, heads will roll; conversely, if they take too long to approve a drug and people die in the meantime, no one will ever notice. It is unsurprising, therefore, that they take the latter rather than the former course of action in every case.
Economic freedom is not the freedom for individuals and corporations to run rampant and unchecked. Even Friedman and you would agree that Kenneth Lay should not have been allowed to use Enron’s shareholders and employees as his personal piggybank.
I agree. Neither individuals nor corporations should be permitted to “run rampant and unchecked”. They should be prevented from using coercive force or fraud to impose their will on others. All libertarians agree with this; it’s a central tenet of libertarianism. The free market does not mean allowing corporations to do whatever they want. Nor does it mean giving preferential government treatment to the largest corporations. (It’s unfortunate that politicians so often confuse being pro-business with being pro-market. The two things are completely different, and are often diametrically opposed, since it is in the interest of any given business to use the power of government against its rivals if it can do so.)
Contrary to popular belief, libertarians do not worship corporations, nor do we have blind faith in their willingness to do good. We recognise that a corporation will – and, indeed, should – act in the interest of its shareholders and aim to maximise its profits, within the boundaries set by law.
But I would point this out: every time a corporation uses force, intimidation, fraud or dishonesty to the detriment of workers and consumers, there are two possibilities. Either the corporation has been authorised by government to use force or fraud; or it is acting in violation of the law. Its actions are, in short, either legal or illegal.
If said corporation is acting legally, because government has authorised it to use force or fraud, then government is at fault for making such an authorisation.. This is therefore a failure of government, not of the free market. In a libertarian society, government would prevent corporations from using force or fraud, since this is a key part of its duty to protect individual liberty. A government which allows the use of force or fraud by corporations is not acting according to libertarian principles (even if it says it is).
In short, you are confusing the free market with anarchy. Libertarians believe that the State should protect the person and property of the individual from force or fraud, enforce contracts and arbitrate property disputes. A government which does not do these things, and which does not protect people from force or fraud by corporations, is not a libertarian government; it’s simply a failed government. In the case of Enron, the fact that many politicians and lobbyists were in the pocket of the company, allowing it to get away with fraud, has nothing to do with libertarianism. Indeed, libertarians advocate a total separation of politics and business, because what is good for big companies is not actually good for the market (since, if they can get away with it, they will use the coercive power of the state to gain an economic advantage over their rivals, to the detriment of consumers).
>>>governments that ended slavery in most of the world
True, but it was usually by taking a market based approach and compensating for property.
>>>in some countries have come near to abolishing poverty
but where does the money come from for re-distribution, if not from the economic engine?
>>>You fail to recognise that individuals, corporations and other non-governmental bodies also limit “the individual’s freedom of choice”
Ah, yes, the oppression by the Logo. You must’ve read Naomi Klein’s Magnum Dopus too. Hungarians and Czechs must yearn for the Soviets every time they must choose between an imposing, merciless Big Mac and Goulash.
like admitted liar “Dr.” James Hansen Lying scumbag GWIAS
Hansen has a PhD in physics from the University of Iowa, so your use of scare-quotes around “Dr” is completely dishonest. Where and when do you claim he has admitted lying?
The inescapable evils of coercive behavior are not unique to government. Government is where we choose to channel and regulate them, because the alternative (private, unregulated coercion) gives much worse results, as the history of privately owned states (absolute monarchies, dictatorships, despotisms) and private “law” such as slavery, mafias, warlords, etc. show rather clearly. We have constructed a government that is jointly owned by all, because private ownership gives too much incentive for profit through coercion of others.
Walton,
You don’t deserve some of the things said about you here in the comments. To clarify, however, I didn’t meant “debate” in the sense of “cheap point-scoring and florid rhetoric,” which I agree “is not a good way of determining the truth or validity of a viewpoint.” I just didn’t want to use the term “argument” because that word seems too … argumentative. Hah.
As for your “theses”:
This may be true, but doesn’t it also create economic disparity and low social mobility? Shouldn’t these things be addressed by a government?
What about an economy that the government controls indirectly, through taxes and subsidies? What’s your opinion on that?
I disagree. I think this attitude results from a conflation of two ideas, which need to be considered separately. In the interests of length, I won’t go into it here unless you ask me in a later comment.
Which we clearly agree on.
Firstly, citations, evidence, examples? Secondly, do previous failures mean that government itself is always bad, or do they mean that the strategies previously tried by the government were bad? In other words, do previous failures indicate that no possible governmental solutions exist?
Maybe the disconnect between you and me is in what constitutes “good justification.” I’m sure we can both agree that coercive force to prevent, say, a murder, is good justification, but perhaps we disagree on whether providing health care or the preventing pollution are. (This is another potentially interesting avenue of discussion.)
Again, we disagree on what’s “justified” in the role of government. I would add the enforcement of civil rights, provision of adequate education, consumer protection (which I see education as largely a part of, by the way), and the manipulation of the free market to account for so-called “externalities” that simple consumer-producer interactions ignore. And I’ve never been properly persuaded that the “right to property” is an inherent human right.
I think each separate governmental role needs to be considered separately in regards to this statement. For example, the enforcement of civil rights takes away an employer’s choice to hire (to take an obvious example) only whites or to pay some employees less than others based on characteristics unrelated to job performance. Does the employer have the implicit moral right to such a choice? I (think I) can defend all of what I’ve said is the role of the government in a similar vein.
And what about governmental policies that simultaneously take away choices and give them? To take the above example in the USes historical context, let’s say you do give the employer the right to hire only whites (that is, don’t enforce civil rights in hiring). And let’s say the employer takes advantage of that right. Now, as I said, in the USes historical context (let’s, optimistically, go back 100 years), a large proportion of employers might do just that, and thus it follows that they will not hire blacks. If a large proportion of employers will not hire blacks, it becomes difficult for blacks to find jobs, and they’ll be mainly put in low-class, low-paying jobs or unemployed. And since the history of slavery and exploitation has put most of them in situations of low economic power in the first place, and since in the environment they have only a very slim opportunity for social mobility, they don’t have much of a choice of lifestyle, do they? (While I realize you very probably agree with me that job discrimination is not a good thing, I’m merely using this example to show that issues are not as cut-and-dried as it’s-immoral-because-it-takes-away-choice.)
(Of course, all this is besides the fact that, in my ideal government, immigration/emigration barriers don’t exist so people are free to leave if they find that the disadvantages of their government are worse than the advantages. Which creates a government free market of sorts.)
All of my comments should be read as (a) me taking an opportunity to explore your ideas, (b) me taking an opportunity to explore my ideas, and (c) good-natured. I figure since this thread is getting oldish I can do so without too many other distractions.
>>>the history of privately owned states (absolute monarchies, dictatorships, despotisms) and private “law” such as slavery, mafias, warlords, etc. show rather clearly
Really, Tis, comparing these examples to free-market capitalism doesnt even rise to the level of sesame street Marxism. You can do better.
Free-markets imply no barriers of entry for competition. Must someone illustrate all the barriers in your examples for you?
And again with the slavery. From dictionary. com
Liberty
1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
2. freedom from external or foreign rule; independence.
3. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.
4. freedom from captivity, confinement, or physical restraint: The prisoner soon regained his liberty.
What dont you understand about that definition that any system of governance supporting slavery is by definition not free? AS Walton has said many times, just because a ‘state’ is anarchic doesnt mean freedom reigns.
I love it when I know more about looneytarianism than a looneytarian does. The anarcho-capitalist looneytarians would disagree strongly. They claim that strict laissez faire free markets are the solution to any and every problem. They would agree with classical Marxists that the state should wither away completely, leaving capitalists to do whatever they want in the name of economic freedom.
One problem with arguing with looneytarians is that looneytarianism isn’t monolithic. The two major types are anarcho-capitalists (who want to eliminate political governments and give corporations free rein) and minarchists (who want to minimize government). There are many more subtle flavorings, such as Austrian and Chicago economic schools, gold-bug, space cadets, Old-Right, paleo-libertarians, classical liberals, hard money, the Libertarian Party, influences from Ayn Rand, and others.
This diversity of libertarian viewpoints can make it quite difficult to have a coherent discussion with them, because an argument that is valid for or against one type of libertarianism may not apply to other types. Non-libertarians may feel that they have rebutted some libertarian point, but some other flavor libertarian may feel that his “one true libertarianism” doesn’t have that flaw.
Interesting that you ignored the real life example I gave of the Homestead Steel strike. But then I’ve noticed that looneytarians try their best to ignore real life.
You are aware, are you not, Nicky ol’ girl, that sockpuppetry and morphing are not permitted here? How long before Nicky is banished to the dungeon? Oh, wait…she’s a Warmista…it’s okay then.
Nicky’s definition of “lying scumbag”:
My keyboard doesn’t have “scare” quotes, only regular quotes, although Herr Hansen can be quite scary at times, what with all of his doom and gloom prophesies.
Herr Hansen in Scientific American, March 2004:
In other words, “we exaggerated the effects in order to attract attention, in a way that was not ‘demonstrably objective’, but now we’re being honest. Really! Trust us!”
Once a liar, always a liar.
By the way, Nicky, you said you weren’t going to respond to me anymore. Were you lying then?
Countdown to rationalization by Nicky in 4…3…2…1…
So, does anyone think animals should be given the vote? What about an animal parliament?
You pure humans are so speco-centrist.
I love it when I know more about looneytarianism than a looneytarian does. The anarcho-capitalist looneytarians would disagree strongly. They claim that strict laissez faire free markets are the solution to any and every problem. They would agree with classical Marxists that the state should wither away completely, leaving capitalists to do whatever they want in the name of economic freedom.
I know. And this is why I am not an anarchocapitalist: I consider their views to be fundamentally unrealistic. Without a legal system to define property rights and protect the individual from force or fraud, how can we prevent the strong simply preying on the weak, and using coercion to exploit those weaker than themselves to their own advantage? I suspect you would agree with me on this, as would most mainstream political theorists.
You are quite right to point out that libertarianism, like all major schools of thought, comes in many flavours. But I am defending my own personal views, not the views of all those people who characterise themselves as libertarian. Likewise, I don’t expect you to defend the views of everyone on the political left. This is not an issue of “one true libertarianism”; I make no claim that “my” version of libertarianism is the only “true” version. But is it too much to expect to be judged on what I believe and advocate, rather than on what other people, with whom I may disagree, believe?
I propose a permanent, dedicated thread in which ‘Tis Himself, Nick Gotts, and SC (and any others with the wont) can engage in discourse with the various lib*****ians of whatever stripe. Such comments poisoning other threads could be kicked over there in a manner similar to the ol’ Bathroom Wall at Panda’s Thumb.
Wankers could wank, debunkers could debunk, and the rest of us would be spared the perennial hijackings.
“”Firstly, consumer capitalism has been the engine of a spectacular increase in prosperity, and in the standard of living of most people, over the last couple of centuries.
*This may be true, but doesn’t it also create economic disparity and low social mobility? Shouldn’t these things be addressed by a government?””
Ummm, no. Low social mobility? Free markets? Your mobility is inherant in the “freeness” of the markets. It’s like free range chickens… When government interferes, and to the degree it interferes, mobility is lost. The migration of capital to the top 1% in the US was caused by government collusion, not by free markets.
“””rather, I would simply assert that government is worse, and is a failure in almost every endeavour in which it engages.
Firstly, citations, evidence, examples? Secondly, do previous failures mean that government itself is always bad, or do they mean that the strategies previously tried by the government were bad? In other words, do previous failures indicate that no possible governmental solutions exist? “””
Actually, human frailty ensures us that governments will always “over-shoot the mark” when trying to “do good”, and get lost in the corruption of its own powers (see Nancy Pelosi for an example of both). In other words, governments are as infallible as the people that make them up. The impulse to “do” something and “fix” something is far too great, allowing for government to continually chase problems it created in the first place. For an example of bad government trying to do good coupled with corruption of power and special interest pandering, see the tax codes for any year in recent memory.
“””This is simply you wanting to impose your ideas of what the limits of government should be on everyone else – revealing the fundamentally antidemocratic nature of “libertarianism”. You give no justification for your assertion that property rights should have the degree of priority you want to afford them – because there is none. You proclaim your “deontological commitment” to it, and demand that the rest of us fall into line – the height of arrogance. “””
Actually, the arrogance is palpable from the liberal Democratic side as well. Libertarianism is a good goal posts on what should be a field of ideas. I fall off the libertarian band wagon the closer to community one gets, as communities are historically and by their nature NOT individualistic. But the dangers of shoveling power to a large state can be seen in noting that the “state” of the US government killed well over 2 million Vietnamese peasants in a misguided attempt to control others outside of its jurisdiction. The state of the US uses subterfuge to try and control other nations and other peoples, usually to benefit corporate interests and not the interests of citizens who live in communities. When this manipulation comes back as blowback, the state denies its own actions and attempts to deflect the blame, much like a child. The idea that a government as large and full of hubris as the United State’s government is there “for the common good” is a bridge in a swamp full of toads.
Decentralize the power structure and go back to bottom up governance.
…and please, hurry up with that dedicated thread!!!
“Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue, and energy sources such as “synfuels,” shale oil and tar sands were receiving strong consideration. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is realistic under current conditions.” – Lying scumbag GWIAS, quoting James Hansen
That is of course no such thing as an admission of lying – and your claim that it is, together with your stupid attempt to pretend Hansen is not entitled to the title “Dr”, shows once more that you are yourself a liar. But then the handle you have chosen is itself a brazen, barefaced lie which you have never even tried to justify, you piece of stinking filth.
What Hansen means by “extreme scenarios” is possible futures in which emissions of greenhouse gases are greatly increased – as would be the case if use of synfuels, and exploitation of shale oil and tar sands, were undertaken. What he’s talking about as “realistic under current conditions” is what is likely if the current trend of emissions continues. Discussion of different plausible emissions trends is entirely reasonable. If Hansen perceived in 2004 that it had become unlikely that the extreme scenarios would happen – because proposals for synfuels and the exploitation of tar sands and oil shales had become politically impossible, thanks in large part to his work, it might then have been dishonest to stress them; and he didn’t.
Since I announced my change of handle, there is of course no question of sock-puppetry, you blithering moron. I don’t recall saying I would no longer respond to you, but so what if I did? I owe a lying moron like you nothing, I’ll respond or not as I please, dung-brain.
Knockgoats, while changing his monicker, did so in a very overt way which is allowed. No regular has any questions as to Knockgoats monicker six months ago. Making a case out of it shows a lack of truthfulness on the part of GWIAS. But then GWIAS’s lack of truthfulness and adaptation of truthiness has been previously shown, and was confirmed by Knockgoats above.
You are aware, are you not, Nicky ol’ girl, that sockpuppetry and morphing are not permitted here? How long before Nicky is banished to the dungeon? Oh, wait…she’s a Warmista…it’s okay then.
Nicky’s definition of “lying scumbag”:
There, fixed that for ya. Don’t mention it.
And you know this because you telepathically read his mind? Or was it because Internet Inventor Albore said so? Inquiring minds wanna know!
I don’t remember any such announcement. Therefore, by your logic (see below) it never happened. That makes you a liar, Nicky! I know. Logic sucks, doesn’t it?
Nicky’s definition of “blithering moron”:
Shorter Nicky:
Nicky’s definition of “dung-brain”:
I’ve said this numerous times in the past, but it bears repeating: You know you’ve won the argument when all the other side has is kindergarten-level insults and “logic” that any four-year-old can see through in five seconds.
Oh, yeah, you won this “argument” all right. That “Herr Führer” thing, plus the hilarious altering of Gore’s name, clinched it. Guess you’ll be (shucks!) going away now, victory attained.
Projecting again, are we, Red? How sad for you! But entirely expected from a Warmista religious fundamentalist such as yourself.
By the way, Red, what’s the ideal temperature of the planet? Or are you going to weasel out of the question yet again?
GWIAS, the simple fact that you mix together words that people say with words that you cram in their mouth shows that one cannot have an honest argument with you.
Stupid, dishonest and tiresome git.
Shorter Sven:
Nurse! Nurse – he’s out of bed again!
Where did I “mix together words that people say with words I crammed in their mouth”? Oh, that’s right, I didn’t. Yet another warm-monger lie.
Projecting again, are we, Janine? How pathetic, if unsurprising.
A scam only makes sense if there is a profit to make from it. Unlike religion, “laissez-faire” politics, and the Republican War on the Poor, there is no profit to be made from the fact of global warming. Profitable businesses will arise from green concerns, but there isn’t a single person who knows it wouldn’t be cheaper initially if we burn all the shit we wanted with no consequences.
Global warming denialism, however, is an extremely profitable scam.
GWIAS, quit putting words in people’s mouths, including the quotes from the literature. It merely confirms your dishonesty. Misquoting people and misrepresenting their work is dishonest. Until you actually show consistent truthfulness, including quoting people, representing their work, and showing you understand the full context of that work, you will remain a scam artist.
Damn Nick, you need to change your bait friend. You keep hooking the most hideous bottom feeders. Whew. ;)
Mr Scam, you are a tribute to tnose who deny anthropogenic global warmind. As a direct result of your posts I now agree with you. I am sure many here are the same. My congratulations on a good argument, well argued!
I’m takin’ it one thread at a time. Did you see me responding on this one? It works if you work it, man, and all that crap. But a dedicated thread would help.
GWIAS, you mean that Knockgoats actually said:
Anyone who does not goose-step down the strasse to the rhythm of my far left Warm-monger drummer a minimum of thrice daily
and
Anyone who does not sieg-heil a cardboard cutout of Albore on at least an hourly basis
By the way, shit for brains, I have not entered into the fray about global warming. But I understand enough to know that you are a waste of time.
Stupid, dishonest and tiresome git.
My problem is that I know something about economics, particularly economic history. When I see people making silly or even down-right wrong economic arguments I feel the need to respond. If a Marxist were to post constant assertions that the history of society is one of economic class conflict, I’d refute those as well.
Hi, my name is ‘Tis and I have to correct SIWOTI.
And of course, the billions spent on “research” into “climate change” is all imaginary. Likewise, the profit made by Al “Do As I Say, Not As I Do” Gore trading carbon credits is all a figment of my imagination.
Under which title “global warming” certainly qualifies.
Strawman.
Bootsy’s definition of “fact”:
Duh! Including so-called “research” grants.
Please visit your local high school and enroll in a remedial economics course post haste!
Yes, the few million spent by energy companies on research absolutely dwarfs the billions spent by the Global Warming Scare-mongering Industry, because everyone knows that a million is more than a billion. Oh, wait. You know what that means. Bootsy fails arithmetic.
Janine – If you want to waste your time on something only slightly better than this smelly thread, the new Hitchens/D’Souza debate is linked over on Dawkins news site.
Unclear on the concept? My comment was actually shorter than your strangely twisted take.
“My own medicine”? Sorry, I don’t know what this refers to. Have I ever tried to make an argument solely by mangling somebody’s name or honorific for sarcastic comic effect? I don’t recall it.
Patricia, I watched last years Hitchens/D’Souza debate. It did nothing for me and so, I was ignore the internet buzz about their latest “showdown”. I guess I will take a quick look. But thinking about it, it does sound like a step up from GWIAS.
Or I can tear myself away from this evil machine and start reading the mountain of unread books I have around me.
Why doesn’t the Global Warming Denialist take his bullshit over to a global warming blog? Is it because he knows that people who’re actually familiar with the issues would rip him to shreds? Or is it because he likes being an asshole?
GWIAS: Someone who has taken too many boots to the head.
Have some ice cream.
Janine – That is the one advantage knitting has over reading, you can knit and watch a debate at the same time.
I too have a pile of excellent books that I should plow through… should. *sigh*
Whoosh, as the point goes about ten miles over Janine’s pointed head! She might not have said these things, but they can be inferred rather easily from her attitude and other comments. Of course, such nuanced thinking is probably a light-year or two beyond your intellect, but still…
You know you’ve won the argument when all the other side has to offer is insults straight off the schoolyard.
Which is why you keep responding to me, and will likely respond to this comment.
Janine’s definition of “stupid, dishonest and tiresome git”:
Thanks, Janine. That was good.
Wow, PH, that’s a whole lotta projection goin’ on there. You ought to seek professional help for your “issues”.
Ooh! Ice cream? But what flavor is it?
GWIAS, I call you shit for brains not because it is a tactic to try to win an argument. For one can never make a point against a person who is as transparently dishonest as you. It is merely a statement of fact.
Anyone with the slightest bit of intelligence knows that I do not subscribe to the words you have tired to shove into my mouth.
One last thing, you toxic pile of sludge, I hate Al Gore. It goes back almost twenty five years. Not that it means shit to you. You already “know” who I am and what I think. Just like you show off your knowledge of what the “true persona” of every other poster you “debate with”.
Funny, most of the creationist try to rationalize their lies. You do not even try.
GWAIS, I’ve seen two year olds who can throw a better temper tantrum than you. Nothing but invective for several posts. That says you know you lost the intellectual argument. What is your purpose in continued posts?
Boot to the head!
I was right, GWIAS is posting because he’s an asshole.
Trolis! Pozemyje!
Like admire how GWIAS is implying that being a female is an insult.
Shit for gonads.
Shit for gonads….choke, sputter…. ;) I should know better than to drink tomato juice while I read here.
There I was, reading through the postings, trying to figure out why GWIAS’ comments seemed more geared toward the familiar “Look, I can add insults to my irrationality, and when you complain, it means I’ve won” routine than to any attempt at a serious discussion. And then I read “shit for gonads.” And I didn’t have to wonder any more. Certainly, fecal genitalia would cause anyone to turn into a ranting lunatic.
On the plus side, one need not worry about changing one’s underwear on a regular basis. I mean, what would be the point?
I see things are progressing as usual here.
Carry on.
Wow, Red, nothing but invective in that post. Oh, I forgot…you’re projecting again. By the way, Red, why do you keep avoiding the question of the planet’s optimal temperature? Is is because you don’t like the answer? And why haven’t you provided any evidence to back up your claim that you are a scientist? Is it because this claim is a lie? Inquiring minds wanna know, Red!
Hint, Walton. You can’t use the term “statist” as a term of disparagement unless you are an actual anarchist, or you’re a hypocrite.
And I know for a fact that you don’t favor the absolute dissolution of all nations and governments. So you’re not an anarchist.
It comes down to this. You have decided that of course the existence of a state you favor is necessary, and so of course you can’t be an authoritarian or a statist or any other bad words. Therefore it’s only those other people who have decided another sort of state is necessary or favorable, it’s those people who are the real statists and thus authoritarians. It’s called special pleading, Walton, and oblivious hypocrites like you do it all the time.
GWIAS, you are making the assertion, not me. So the burden of proof is upon you, not me. I just listen to real scientists, who tend to be very honest in their professional work, compared to liars and bullshitters like yourself.
Now, what is your purpose with continued abuse to us at this site? If you want to be banned, abusing the regulars is one way for that to happen.
He’s a racist and a misogynist who believes the rich should rule us. He sure does deserve it.
Excuse me. Add “hypocritical antistatist statist” to the list.
In Red’s fantasy world, “Global warming will mean the end of the world as we know it,” is not an assertion, and therefore does not require evidence. Red fails propositional logic.
So tell me, Red: why should we listen to the conclusions of those whose livelihood is entirely dependent upon exactly which conclusions they reach? And where is your evidence that “scientists” are gifted with some special brand of “honesty” not granted to the rest of us great unwashed? Oh, that’s right, it’s a religious conviction.
Red’s definition of “liars and bullshitters”:
Red’s definition of “abuse”:
Oh, Red: what’s the optimal temperature of the planet?
Walton? Will you be responding to my post?
Matt opined:
Well? Which is it?
I note that you, Matt, focused only on the sale of the land to the school board, which hardly tells the whole story. Surely a man as educated as yourself knows how much of the story you left out, as well as why. Need I elaborate?
Given that the problems created by the dump site extended far beyond the boundaries of the school, and given that many hundreds of families had to be relocated at the taxpayers’ expense, and given that the site had to be cleaned up at the taxpayers’ expense, and given that the industrial entities involved had to be found negligent were found negligent in court (at taxpayers’ expense) before admitting culpability or forking over any cash to help manage the aftermath, how exactly does Love Canal demonstrate “profits ability to clean up the environment and the improve the lives of all people”?
An uptick in Kseniya activity! (Hi, K!) Yay!
I give up, Hoax…what is the optimal temperature of the planet? (Wait, one guess: it’s a stupid trick question with no meaningful answer? And that’s a point for your side of the “debate”…how? exactly?)
Projecting again, are we PH? How pathetic, but par for the course with a Warm-monger.
It’s interesting how oil and coal companies (who genuinely do make enormous amounts of money off fossil fuels) have tended to deny the risks of global warming, whereas scientists (who generally don’t make very much money, and whose salaries don’t depend on coming up with a specific result) have tended to raise it as a concern, and then GWIAS manages to conclude that the _scientists_ are motivated by profit. Silly little fool.
I’m a little short on time, here, to tell me: Has GWIAS done anything here other than reduce AGW to a cult of personality, then proceed to attack the character and/or credibility one or more the personalities invoked?
Speaking for myself, Al Gore’s opinion is not a make-or-break thing here. Although I have some admiration for the man, he certainly has his flaws, but more to the point: When it comes to forming my own opinion about AGW, I don’t much care about what he, personally, says or thinks. It’s not about him, and never was.
(Hi, Sven!) :-)
And you know this because you telepathically read his [Hansen’s] mind? – Lying scumbag GWIAS
No. Because I know how “scenario” is used in this context, shit-for-brains – as you quite obviously do not.
I don’t remember doing it, so it didn’t happen – Lying scumbag GWIAS
You’re lying as usual, pusbucket. I said I don’t recall it, not that it didn’t happen.
GWIAS, as usual, you continue prove yourself to be a liar and bullshitter. I have never mentioned Al Gore in any discussion I have had on AGW on this or any other thread except to deny the link. I just mention the scientists who indicate that it is occurring, the evidence I’ve seen since the early ’70’s to indicate they are right, and that eventually they will get their models optimized much better than now. Your continued arrogance and vitriol just indicates you know you are wrong.
Ksenyia@216,
You’re right of course – Al Gore’s opinion has absolutely no scientific significance. It’s because they know the overwhelming majority of relevant scientific experts agree that AGW is real, and an urgent problem, that so many denialists blather about Gore – it’s a diversionary tactic. SAWells is of course right about the scientists – their funding does not depend on getting a particular answer. Indeed, if convincing evidence were discovered that the consensus might be wrong, not only would the discoverer have made their reputation, but there could well be an increase in funding. We know warming is taking place, we urgently need to know how much more to expect and when – so the more uncertain this is, the stronger the case for funding. If morons like GWIAS were right in their ludicrous and wicked lies about conspiracies, we would expect most solar physicists to be claiming the sun is the most important factor in the current warming. They are not – although of course improving our understanding of the sun remains very important, as it may either mitigate or enhance the effects of greenhouse gas emissions if it changes its level of activity to any marked degree – and at present, such changes are largely unpredictable.
You are aware, are you not, Nicky ol’ girl, that sockpuppetry and morphing are not permitted here? How long before Nicky is banished to the dungeon? Oh, wait…she’s a Warmista…it’s okay then.
Nicky’s definition of “lying scumbag”:
There, fixed that for ya. Don’t mention it.
Nicky’s definition of “shit-for-brains”:
Nicky’s definition of “pusbucket”:
And your “response” indicated that you didn’t care whether it happened or not, revealing much about your regard for “truth”.
GWIAS, PZ has been aware of Knockgoats ever since the change, and has not, nor probably will not take any action. Why? It was done overtly, and slowly. Ever since the change was fully made, Knockgoats has been stable. Unlike your rationality, which is in the shithouse at the moment.
Scamster: Really, you think scientists have spent the equivalent of the trillions of dollars that oil companies rake in, all for the purpose of suggesting a new costly economic model?
Show me the climate scientist that gets paid as much as an oil company executive. Then you might have a point.
So, all you Warmistas out there, here are some questions.
(1) How do you explain the Medieval warming period?
(2) How do you explain the recent warming on Mars?
(3) Why should we automatically believe the conclusions of those whose livelihood is entirely dependent upon exactly which conclusions they reach?
(4) What is the optimal temperature of the planet?
(5) How do you know with absolute certainty that the negative effects of “global warming”, if it is even occurring, will outweigh the positives?
(6) How does giving over 1400 media interviews constitute
“being muzzled”?
You are aware, are you not, Nicky ol’ girl, that sockpuppetry and morphing are not permitted here? How long before Nicky is banished to the dungeon? Oh, wait…she’s a Warmista…it’s okay then.
That is surely the most cleverest insult ever, calling some one a girl. Never mind that it has been pointed out that Knockgoats is not a sock puppet. He never made the effort to deceive anyone here.
But you are guilty of these “crimes”.
Insipidity: A great crime. Being tedious, repetitive, and completely boring; putting the blogger to sleep by going on and on about the same thing all the time.
Slagging: Making only disparaging comments about a group; while some of this is understandable, if your only contribution is consistently “X is bad”, even in threads that aren’t about X, then you’re simply slagging, not discussing.
Stupidity: Some people will just stun you with the outrageous foolishness of their comments; those who seem to say nothing but stupid things get the axe.
Trolling: Making comments intended only to disrupt a thread and incite flames and confusion.
Wanking: Making self-congratulary comments intended only to give an impression of your importance or intelligence.
I cannot and will not say that you are bound for the dungeon. But you have violated all five in spectacular fashion.
GWIAS, we don’t need to answer your questions. Instead, you need to prove yourself, which you have failed to do in a spectacular fashion. So, show us your evidence or shut up. Welcome to science.
I think Mr Scam has been sucking on Mr Ethanol’s dick.
Is it time for his friends to take him home?
Oh.
I’d bother to write something which could contribute to this debate, but I’m far too busy spending all the money I get for denying AGW. Mmm-mmm I love that paid-to-keep-silent money. Whee-hee, what a scam (or possibly scamola).
I mean, it’s so obvious it’s all the rich environmental groups who have thousands of spare dollars lying around to fund our conspiracy and keep us from revealing the truth, despite the keen insight of level-headed thinkers like our friend GWIAS.
Enough of this – I’ve got hush-money dollars to spend! I’m going to go and take a crap in my solid-gold toilet. Maybe I’ll name the turd GWIAS…
Wow, Janine. What’s that tattooed on your ass? “Bell & Howell”? You certainly are a world-class projector! You might wish to seek help for that particular issue.
Wowbagger, I’m in the same boat. This sucking-up to the real global hyperpowers is lucrative and fun.
Just one word to you – swansnecks.
Believe me, nothing cleans better.
Hey anyone want to talk about global warming? I reckon it’s not really happening, and if it is it’s not us to blame.
Anyone? No?
Fine. I’ll just talk to myself then.
Oh, and I have a genuine proof that evolution isn’t true.
Hmmm.
I’ll be really really rude.
Pleeeeeeease…..
Matt,
True, but it [governments ending slavery] was usually by taking a market based approach and compensating for property.
First, this was only possible because the British Navy had ended the slave trade, and most slave populations were not self-reproducing. The big exception was the USA, where slave numbers were rising and slavery was very profitable. The market, you may recall, did not end it.
Second, are you saying the slaveowners rightfully held their slaves as property? If not, what possible right could they have to any compensation – which of course, had to come out of taxation, which you “libertarians” are generally so eager to denounce as theft?
>>>in some countries have come near to abolishing poverty
but where does the money come from for re-distribution, if not from the economic engine?
So what? My point was made in response to Walton’s absurd claim that governments never achieve anything.
>>>You fail to recognise that individuals, corporations and other non-governmental bodies also limit “the individual’s freedom of choice”
Ah, yes, the oppression by the Logo. You must’ve read Naomi Klein’s Magnum Dopus too. Hungarians and Czechs must yearn for the Soviets every time they must choose between an imposing, merciless Big Mac and Goulash.
This sort of crap doesn’t really deserve a response (I haven’t in fact read more than a few newspaper articles by Klein), but no, I am talking about profit-driven oppressions such as land theft, slavery, debt bondage, torture and murder of political activists and trades unionists, dangerous working conditions, poisons released into the local environment, starvation wages, hoarders letting the destitute starve during famines in order to increase their profits (which Walton supports in the name of the sacred rights of property). We know what largely unfettered capitalism is like – we had it in most of the world until the second half of the 19th century, and we still see it in many places today. Then of course there are personal oppressions such as domestic and parental abuse. I understand that most libertarians would say these are violence and so are legitimate targets for state intervention – but in practice, combating them requires much more than just police action: those suffering them need places to go, economic and emotional support – which inevitably involves the state in far more than the list Walton gave of what he regards as legitimate.
And to think earlier this week I was being taken to task for being impolite by an AGW denialist, who thought civility was most important thing. I wonder what he would say about GWIAS?
PZ must be asleep at the switch.
GWIAS has given me an idea – I’m putting in an order for a new platinum and diamond grill, paid for with my cover-up hush-money dollars; do you think I should have the diamonds spell out ‘Warmista’ on it? That’d be great!
There, fixed that for ya. Don’t mention it.
Yes, it’s odd because PZ loves his ‘ol chats about AGW and libertarianism. You’d think he’d be here to listen to a witty new poster, anyway.
Time to take my AGW money and buy a new car. The one I drive to work is 13 years old.
Translation:
Premise 1: My worldview, which says that the truth lies precisely in the middle, requires there to be precisely equal amounts of dishonesty at both extremes of the political spectrum;
Premise 2: My worldview is true;
Conclusion: There are exactly equal amounts of dishonesty at both extremes of the political spectrum, and if PZ (or I) can’t see that, he’s stupid.
That’s a logical fallacy, Scott.
Put up or shut up. Show us.
ROTFL!
Day saved. :-D
Lots, in fact… not only of the present and the future, but also of the past.
Assuming your question isn’t wrong in the first place — what would you do with the model and without a fucking hall full of fucking supercomputers? Duplicate the results my ass.
Reductionism?
The world is more than the sum of its parts. It is the sum of its parts plus the sum of the interactions between these parts plus the sum of the interactions beween these interactions plus and so on.
Right?
So, if we want to figure the world out, it’s easiest to start by figuring out the parts, then figuring out the interactions between the parts, and so on.
Right?
Because… that’s called reductionism.
Depends on what exactly you mean by “categorically”. What isn’t falsifiable isn’t falsifiable, and science can’t make it falsifiable, that’s for sure.
But if an idea of yours isn’t falsifiable, and you refuse to apply the principle of parsimony as well, then, if it is wrong, how can you ever find out that it is wrong?
Of course science is the only way of knowing, as opposed to believing!
See above. Reductionism is a method, not a religion.
However, the argument from authority is still a logical fallacy.
BTW, Lǎozi and Dào. Not to mention Pythagoras.
Duh. If we ever stopped wondering, we’d stop doing science! Duh!
ROTFL!
Day saved. :-D
(Even at the danger of repeating myself.)
Fair enough.
So you’re too stupid to know that there’s anything between yourself and Lenin?
If anyone here is for central planning of the economy, please delurk!!!
[citation needed]
Moron, most of this site (respectively its predecessor) was against the Iraq war before it was cool.
That doesn’t create jobs either.
Looks like she was away for so long that you don’t know her. She was quite obviously being sarcastic. Read what she responds to…
Oh, I don’t think Walton believes that. I think he has simply never thought that far.
The whooshing sound 10 m above your head — that was the point…
Says the one who has spent several posts doing nothing but insulting everyone who knows anything about climatology and isn’t a conspiracy theorist! And using such funny terms as Far Left Warmista and warm-monger! ROTFL!
Really, GWIAS, go back to Deltoid and denialism blog, where you came from — or realclimate.org even. Or, better yet, go back to your cave, because I can’t see any willingness to learn in any of your comments. You’re hard to distinguish from a cretinist drive-by troll (except maybe by your 1337 HTML sgillz).
Oh, so the Lithuanian so-called locative really is a locative. Good to know. I had suspected the grammarians were just bullshitting like for Russian, but no, they’re right…
Highly appropriate video, too. Great find!
Remind me again Nerd, in the global conspiracy do they want us to use oil or not? My personal paymasters change so often that I keep forgetting what they’re paying me to say.
It’s just about time for Walton to chime in with more public self flagellation.
AnthonyK, I’m also losing track of who’s paying me for what these days. Especially since the check always appears to be in the mail. Personally, I’m thinking hybrid since I live only a couple of miles from work, and rarely get out of the suburban milieu or over 45 mph. But only if the check arrives this week.
GWIAS@224:
1 and 2 – if you wanted to know the answer to these, you already would. They have not being kept secret. No-one denies that changes in the sun can affect the temperature of the planets – indeed, many of the climate scientists behind the AGW consensus are solar physicists. The Medieval Warm Period, as it happens, was not global, but the sun probably was a significant cause. So what? Change is the temperature of Mars are largely determined by dust storms. The key point is this – and do try to get it through that thick skull: The sun has shown no secular increase in output since 1950, hence cannot be responsible for the rapid warming since then.
3: You have provided absolutely zero evidence that the livelihood of the climate scientists who support the consensus that AGW is a real and urgent problem, does depend on their conclusions. Hence, your question requires no answer.
4: This has been answered numerous times, but evidently you are far too stupid to understand. Still, I’ll try once more: there is no optimal planetary temperature; there is a range of temperatures human society can cope with; and rapid change is the great danger. Got it this time?
5: See 4: the problem is that agriculture, buildings, the pattern of human settlement, precautions against diseases, etc. are adapted to the current climate. Rapid change is going to be at best extremely expensive, more probably catastrophic, as vast numbers of people see their sources of water and food decline. See the report of WGII of the IPCC’s AR4 for details.
Right, I’ve answered your questions, now, how about just one piece of real, solid evidence for the lie you repeat every time you comment – the barefaced, brazen, stupid, wicked lie that an entire scientific community is telling deliberate lies for profit – lies which would be bound to be found out. Come on, just one.
“””Premise 1: My worldview, which says that the truth lies precisely in the middle, requires there to be precisely equal amounts of dishonesty at both extremes of the political spectrum;
Premise 2: My worldview is true;
Conclusion: There are exactly equal amounts of dishonesty at both extremes of the political spectrum, and if PZ (or I) can’t see that, he’s stupid.
That’s a logical fallacy, Scott.”””
Sure, THOSE ARE logical fallacies.
I maintain that American Politics IS NOT polar, that there are several directions not “in effect” in American politics due to the media-zation of its politics alongside two party manipulation of the political system.
For example Barack Obama stood in front of a National Audience promoting his “stimulous package”. What he said was that the only other choice was to “do nothing”. This was a lie. There are hundreds of other choices to his stimulous plan. The lies are dead obvious to those not unwilling to acknowledge them, and the tug-of-war between the two parties- to those who see both parties as destructive- is painful to watch.
I often state “politics is not a two-legged stool” to demonstrate this. Our system has become two-legged which is why it is quickly falling down.
I don’t see the two party “lie-dynamic” to be historically equal, as the republicans have demonstrated they are better liars in recent times. The omission of Democratic culpability by PZ and those who hold dear to their own biases are a concern though, not only because lying by omission is also lying, but because the system is now broken on both ends and it is infecting all.
Oh good. Just who we needed.
What happened to that nice Mr Scam? I thought he was making a few good points.
Pathetic morphing? Sudden outbreak of Dutch? Or too stupid to turn out auto-fill-in?
Maybe tomorrow. Where he lives it’s half past 11 at night.
Was less warm than today, and was caused by high solar activity that is lacking today.
Has there been such a thing? Or how do you explain that Napoleon crossed the Mississippi?
You mean Lindzen et al., who accepted fairly large amounts of money from oil companies?
I see no reason to believe there is such a thing (or rather, there’s a different optimal temperature for everyone). However, the change from one temperature to another is bound to be painful. Who will evacuate Bangladesh? The water keeps rising.
Evacuate Bangladesh, and then we can talk.
Hey, if enough rainforest is left in West Africa (and that’s a big if), the Sahara should become green any century now. Then you can evacuate 150 million Bangladeshis into the Sahara and tell me where the net benefits lie.
What? Who gave that many interviews?
And it’s not actually a problem, and the advantages are greater than the disadvantages, and doing anything about it would utterly, utterly trounce the economy, and it’s too late to do anything about it anyway. Right, GWIAS? Right?
Finally, I wrote:
Turns out I had confused this particular Matt with several of his namesakes, and he had understood Kseniya, OM, full well.
Ah, thanks David Marjanović. I was on the verge of giving up. Silly American, thinking only my time zones count!
Tired of the “experts” with their annoying “logic” and “reality” telling you what to think simply because they know more about the subjects then you do and their opinions actually match the evidence better? Of course you are. Think the Kennedy assassination was a massive government cover-up by the Rand Corporation? Think the moon landing was filmed on the back lot of Paramount? Think an advanced alien race conquered the massive scientific problems inherent in interstellar travel only to crash in New Mexico and anally probe rednecks? Think the Holocaust never happened and those 6 million Jews are living with relatives in Madagascar? Think on 9/11 the US Government conspired to slaughter thousands of Americans just so Bush/Halliburton/Zionists/CIA/New World Order/Illuminati could invade Iraq in order to learn the secrets of the lost continent of Atlantis? Do you think the big auto makers are hiding the top secret hybrid engine the Mayans discovered over 2000 years ago that gets 9000 parsecs to a thimble of spotted owl sweat?
Well fret no more! My handy-dandy course will teach you, yes you, how to think like a conspiracy theorist in only nine easy steps!
1: Remember, you’re right! No matter what the so-called experts say. No matter what the evidence suggests. No matter what reality, logic, basic cause and effect, or the very nature of the known universe demands, you are right because you think you are. This is the first and most important part of my program.
2: Anyone who disagrees with you is part of the conspiracy. People in conspiracies never admit they are part of the conspiracy, so if someone tells you there is no conspiracy, guess what? That’s right, they’re part of it, and out to get you.
3: Remember how important you are. You, yes you, are the one who sees through the fog of bullshit that all the fools have fallen for. If ten thousand experts say one thing and you say another, it just means you are that much more intuitive. Remember, the harder they oppose you, the more special you are!
4: Experts are always wrong. I mean really, when in the history of the universe has someone been more right simply because they know more about something? As if. So in keeping with that, make sure you always make the word official sound like it’s covered in a thin layer of slime. Make sure the word theory conveys the idea of something “they” made up after being drunk all night.
5: Never actually make a claim. You don’t want to get drawn into a debate here; you’re now a conspiracy theorist. Simply say things like “The evidence looks funny” and “Hmmm I wonder” and “Yes that’s very convenient.” Whatever you do, don’t make a solid, verifiable claim that can actually be investigated or proved.
6: Remember they are out to get you! Never pass up an opportunity to remind people how oppressed you are. Remember that opposed equals right. They wouldn’t be out to get you if you weren’t right. And if people tell you that “They aren’t out to get you and you’re just being paranoid and in fact no one ever cares about you and for that matter, who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?”, ignore them!
7: Refer to “they” a lot. Don’t bother actually explaining who “they” are, but passively aggressively blame everything on “them” regardless.
8: Always, always, always demand “more study.” They will always try to trick you by claiming that something has already been proven, sometimes proven over and over, but you know what I say, if the facts don’t agree with you they haven’t been proven enough! Make it sound so reasonable. “Well sure the ‘experts’ say that it hurts to poke yourself in the eye, but what’s the harm in a little more study? I mean if you’re right it will only prove you are right. What are you so afraid of?”
9: Every once in awhile, attack another conspiracy theory. Say things like “Listen, I’m not one of those idiots who say we didn’t land on the moon; I’m just saying we never proved it wasn’t made of green cheese.”
[Lifted from a defunct thread somewhere on the internet.]
Why, Herr Führer Hansen, of course!
What Fuhrer? We in science have no Fuhrer. Deluded fools pretend there are Fuhrers.
Shorter “Global Warming is a Scam”:
I don’t have any evidence, so I’m going to insinuate that those who do have evidence are Nazis. LOL! Isn’t that funny? Aren’t you convinced that I’m telling the truth now?
We used to have lots, but lately there have been fuhrer and fuhrer.
Hey, I’ll call anyone Führer who comes through with a Benjamins. Damn! What’s that coming through my letterbox? Another fat cover-up cheque from Al Gore? Super-sweet! I’m going to the Maserati dealership to pick me up a shiny new Quattroporte – though I’ll lie to anyone who asks and say I bought a Prius…
Hush money! Yeah!
There, fixed that for ya. Don’t mention it.
GWIAS, Yawn, you are boring and repetitive. PZ?
GWIAS,
Would it eat you up inside to know that I’m not a scientist? Heck, I don’t even pretend to be one. But I still get Conspiracy™ hush money! Seriously, man – join us. It’s totally worth it. Hot and cold running chicks, the ability to control the media, and more cash than you know what to do with.
Dude, you need to stop projecting like that. Otherwise, how are you ever actually going to get a job and move out of your mom’s basement?
No way, man – never gonna happen! I’m still in mom’s basement; neither of us have jobs and she and I are both rolling in Global Warming Conspiracy hush money dollars! Clams, baby!
Seriously, GWIAS. Think about the dollars. Denying global warming is so fucking lucrative!
Now, should I get heated seats with the hybrid since I live in the snow belt.? Something about snuggling into a warm seat on those cold days sounds inviting.
Laila – Walton rarely answers questions he doesn’t like. (Unlike me, who simply forgets what thread they were on, or simply forgets altogether.) When he does get pressed to the wall by one of us icky girls, he’ll roll a turd in glitter and expect you to be dazzled. If that doesn’t work, he grovels.
Patricia wrote (about Walton):
From time to time he goes into a frenzy of self-flagellation and we have to talk him back up again. He’s not a that bad a guy (in my opinion), but he’s got some issues*
*Other than Libertarianism, I mean. Ah, I dream of the day when we develop an antidote for that particular condition.
Bah! The money you make promoting Global Warming is peanuts compared to the money I make denying promoting the denial of Global Warming! I get money from all sides, including the fourth dimension!
Well I argue that:
1) There is anthropogenic global warming
2) Mass vaccinations are a good idea
3) Muslim terrorists caused 9/11 and
4) Organised religion is a toxic mind virus.
So eat your heart out Nerd and Wowbagger, I get the cash.
I drive to bed, man. And my water bed’s got a real dolphin in it, under panda fur sheets.
Call yourselves corporate shills?
Sheesh.
Wowbagger – Yes, Walton does have a problem with his monkey. And that death grip on the poker, whew, that must be extremely tiring to maintain.
Everybody’s got something to hide.
Laila @159 (apologies for delay in responding):
This may be true, but doesn’t it [capitalism] also create economic disparity and low social mobility? Shouldn’t these things be addressed by a government?
The answer to the first question is yes, on its own. However, it is first necessary to separate the two issues. I do not believe that economic disparity is, in itself, a bad thing. If A and B both start out poor, and then A succeeds in business and becomes much richer than B, A has not harmed B. He has not “robbed” B of something that is rightfully his. He has simply done well for himself. Greater equality of outcome is not in itself a good or a desirable thing; as Hayek said, free people are not equal, and equal people are not free. If you wish to achieve equality of outcome, the State must discriminate against those who are successful in favour of those who are unsuccessful, which I do not believe that it should do.
But you also mention social mobility, which is, indeed, a problem. A truly free-market society does have a great amount of natural social mobility, for those whose natural abilities allow them to make a lot of money, regardless of their background. But it is also admittedly true that, in a free-market society, the children of the wealthy are greatly advantaged. This is virtually unavoidable; and I do advocate government action in the field of education to ameliorate it. Such government action should consist, however, exclusively of funding and subsidising education for the poor; government should not be deciding how schools are run, what school a child should go to, or what should be taught, since only parents have the moral authority to make these decisions.
Firstly, citations, evidence, examples? Secondly, do previous failures mean that government itself is always bad, or do they mean that the strategies previously tried by the government were bad? In other words, do previous failures indicate that no possible governmental solutions exist?
I can offer many examples – from the centrally-planned economy of the Soviet Union, to India’s corrupt welfare system, to the insanity today that is the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy. They are all bloated monopolistic bureaucracies which are good for themselves and their own employees, but not for the people they are supposed to serve. And no, of course previous failures do not prove that government action is always bad, because one must rely on inductive reasoning to reach this conclusion. But it’s a good indicator that government action is generally bad.
You raise a number of other interesting points, which I will look at later today.
Patricia: Wowbagger – Yes, Walton does have a problem with his monkey. And that death grip on the poker, whew, that must be extremely tiring to maintain.
This joke is really no longer amusing, and is starting to become tiresome.
I’ve been accused of being conservative and even catholic after making some posts here, but I strongly disagree with the conservative/libertarian stances on public education. Education must be a partnership between the parent and the school. Also, while school choice sounds great on paper, the very poor you advocate receiving assistance are generally ill equipped to make those choices if you also strip from the government power over curriculum and testing. Being able to compare schools and their curricula and evaluate them based on the needs of their own children is beyond the abilities of most poor parents. The problem is that understanding how education works requires a successful education in itself.
A free market only works to the advantage of individuals when they have good information about what is in their best interest. There is hardly any guarantee that a mechanism would emerge under a fully privatized school system that would provide parents an easy to evaluate rating for each school.
Walton, I think your inductive reasoning is wonky; if you compile a list of exclusively bad government actions then of course you’ll conclude that government action is generally bad, but this is just an artefact of your data selection. Personally I think things like the NHS, civil rights laws, and the abolition of slavery are pretty impressive governmental achievements.
Here’s a thought for you. Why is it a good thing if the government takes taxpayer-funded measures for national defense against external enemies, but a bad thing if the government takes taxpayer-funded measures for national defense against ill health?
I wish I were a high profile Democrat so I could vote for taxes on others and get away with not paying my own taxes –and still run the Treasury Dep’t and the IRS.
also, so I wouldn’t have to me moral with interns or tell the truth under oath and yet remain as president of the US
so I could champion rights re: all sorts of immoral conduct like sodomy and abortion –while climbing all over the Bush Administration for alleged offenses related to national defense –which must have worked, at least since 9/11.
So I could stash lobbyists’? money in my freezer and still remain in Congress.
Barb, I’m sure you’ve never engaged in any immoral behavior. So start amassing your stone collection, Lady. In the meantime, go fuck yourself, you hypocritical NeoCon windbag.
On your linked website, a blogger “factcheck” posted the following:
“George Will was not being deceptive (although his conclusions are inappropriate), the research center is being disingenuous.
Here’s the graph Will based his claims on.
http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/9972_large_daily.gsia.jpg
Here’s the research center’s updated version of the same graph.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
It appears 2008 ended right where 1979 began, just under 18 million sq. km., but its falling more precipitously, so by the time the column came out, the current levels were below February 1979 levels.
To say, “We don’t know where he got his information,” without admitting that just one month ago, according to their own graphs, the levels were the same, is borderline deceptive.”
…so I could champion rights re: all sorts of immoral conduct like sodomy…
I cannot even pretend to be surprised that Barb is homophobic.
I wonder why liberals are so often foul-mouthed and hateful.
It is not homophobic, per se, to be against anal sex and same sex behavior. It is normal and sensible. This is not the high risk and sad lifestyle most of us want for our children–and when we look at it that way, we want to learn how to prevent it –and i don’t think gay advocacy in movies and TV and law is helpful.
Barb, we’re in the 21st century, it would be nice if you joined us.
Barb you deluded godbot…
How much did your Jesus say about homosexuals?
You can’t prevent homosexuality anymore than you can prevent blue eyes. Gay people deserve fair treatment. Not the scorn and ridicule of hypocrites likes you.
You’re disgusting.
Ahhh, poor Walton.
Barb, who appointed you judge? Show us your recent signed letter from god. Otherwise you just have an opinion which is refuted by our opinion.
Judge not, lest ye be judged. Looking at your lack of intelligence and charcter, I judge you to be an ignorant godbot who couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag with a hole in it. You should stop posting your ignorance here.
Barb is a smug holier-than-thou, self-righteous, moralistic Evangelical Christian ( pardon the redundancy) and suffers from Dunning-Kruger effect. She’s bright enough to be snarky so she thinks she’s intellectually superior to everyone but her husband The Scientist Doctor who is also a Creationist. Her paradigm is ideologically blinkered and she is clueless and unempathetic to any other POV. She cannot embrace “live and let live” which is why I no longer can either. People like Barb deserve all the shit they stir up plus++++.
EV #273 — I’m just turning the tables on bloggers who attack conservatives –you all live in a glass house. You are more hateful, in blog language and vitriol, than any so-called religious objector to homosexual marriage/conduct.
Hatred and stoning are not my motivations –prevention and conversion are. Don’t promote ANY childless lifestyles that are high risk for promiscuity with STD’s. We need children. We do not need disease and further family disintegration.
Barb sez:
Except, you know, when they didn’t work, like on 9/11.
In my time dealing with LGBT youth, many of the homeless kids came from homes where the parents thought like Barb.
I wonder why liberals are so often foul-mouthed and hateful.
I will give one reason, many people like you will toss their children out of their home rather than face up to the sexuality of their children. So, yeah, I despise people like you. I have a damned good reason to do so!
Fuck you Barb. Hows that for hate, bitch?
So all of this talk from some fundamentalist spokespeople about homosexuals being worst than terrorist is not hateful. Barb, you are a disgusting person. You have worked hard and earned all the hate you get from reasonable people.
I’m not into anal sex either Barb, but what 2 or more consenting adults choose to do in the private is not my call. Now here comes Barb’s slippery slope, false equivalence and every other logical fallacy you can think of. Let’s count them…
P.S. When I think of the gay bishop in Episcopal church, the old phrase, “lovers of self” comes to mind from Romans.
He divorced a wife who bore him children in order to screw and live with a man. and the church elevated him. He devastated her. But that’s OK when a man wants to have sex with a man and has probably been adulterating and putting her health, life and emotions at risk for years.
That old argument doesn’t hold water: “but what if YOU were told you had to marry a member of the same sex when you really wanted the opposite sex??? –isnt it the same for the homosexual?” Next thing, to be fair, you’ll have to say, “isn’t it fair for the pedophile to get what he wants, the adulterer to get what he wants? the john to get what he wants? Shouldn’t we all have whatever we want? –even if it’s deviant and risky and harms the emotions of family or gives us no well-parented children for the future?”
Barb, you get what you give. You give lip, you get lip. I do believe that is the Golden Rule. Maybe you need to change you attitude, and lessen your hate if you want our responses to change. Give it a try.
Truth: Nerd –If you recall, one does not have to give lip to get it at this site. All one has to do is offer a contrary opinion to liberal, atheistic, darwinian advocacy.
I wonder why conservatives spend soooo much time worrying about what other people do. I suppose they’re just born thinkers, just too curious. Presumably, that is why they need quiet time hanging around in public toilets, or just lying about in sensory-deprivation masks with giant dildos in their ass?
That is very true; some bigots would also like to stop heterosexuals from inserting other people into their anus…
Worrying about what other people do with their own bottom. Why do you care?
Yes. Angry words to someone who can’t help but interfere with other people’s private lives are definitely worse than gay-bashing and bigotry.
Infertile people should be banned from forming relationships?
Sexually transmitted infections aren’t spread by any other means than by homosexual anal sex?
Therefore, ban homosexual marriage? Yeah, that’ll work…
Barb should look into STD, divorce, sexual abuse and domestic abuse among the fundamentalist community. That’s a violent and sexually irresponsible lot.
Barb, a critical thinking class would do wonders for you. You’re a small minded moralist that radiates intolerance but doesn’t dare use 4 letter words. Just because you’re wearing a pleasant smiling facade doesn’t mean you’re not a writhing mass of pestilence underneath.
This thread sets new depths for stupid in so many categories…
Barb, show us a recent signed letter from god giving you the right to dictate policy to us. Otherwise, all you have to offer is stupid opinion that doesn’t get anywhere and has been proven wrong time and time again. So you will get invective until you show us the letter or go away.
And why did he get married in the first place? Because people like you kept insisting that he had to be straight. That if entered into a marriage, he would get past this “phase”.So he went through turmoil most of his life trying to live a life that did not fit. And she would be the person that he really does not have a connection with.
And guess what, this would be true for the wife if they remained married or not. Think of it, ould it be at all pleasant being married to a gay man, knowing that he would rather be in a different situation? Even if he cares for her and has no desire to do her harm, is this a life that a wife wants?
Barb, you are the selfish one, insisting that other people life according to your arbitrary standard.
If you want to spout your reactionary crap why don’t you stick to Little Green Footballs or WorldNutNews? They’ll eat it up.
On the contrary, Bigdumbchimprev, you want me to enter a 21st C. characterized by debauchery.
Gay lifestyle is as old as the Bible –and they knew then what I’m saying today –it is unhealthy, dangerous, high risk, –to enter the promiscuous world of gay life. And it’s a trend toward childless living –even though some want to adopt and the lesbian parents already have children by men. Children want and deserve a parent of each sex, living under the same roof. We should be promoting THAT, not homosexuality.
I’m not saying we should “gay-bash” and be cruel. But neither should we hold them up as model citizens because of their sexuality for our children to emulate.
You’re touching yourself whilst you write this?
Ooh look: Barb the stupid, ignorant, arrogant and dishonest wife of an MD is back and spreading falsehoods on another thread instead of addressing the challenges made to her falsehoods on a previous thread. You’re well and truly caught in deliberate evasion now, Barb. You can’t claim to be to busy with real life when you’re merely trolling over here.
So, have you asked your husband, the MD, about your heart claim (viz. “hearts that beat for a lifetime without any external energy source”) yet, Barb? Or are you afraid to find out how much of an embarrassment to him you are; or reveal to us just how medically incompetent he is? Either way, he’s certainly not functioning as the magical acquisition of personal expertise and authority by mere marriage which you believed him to be.
Barb believes homosexuality is so pleasurable that if we condone it everyone will give up heterosexual relationships and stop breeding. Barb will have to resort to using dildos to satisfy her phallic wants (that is, if she doesn’t succumb to Sapphic pleasures) since no man will want hetero sex once we give teh gheys equal rights. Oh, the fellating/buttseksual humanity of it all!!!
My scorn for the likes of you comes from people like you kicking their GLBT children out of the homes. Please, give a justification for this action?
Barb can you point me to what the gay lifestyle is?
Barb, show us your god actually exists. Physical evidence only.
This joke is really no longer amusing, and is starting to become tiresome. – Walton
Now, who does that remind me of?
Barb knows “every sperm is sacred,
every sperm is great.
When a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.”
I wonder why Christians are so smug and judgemental?
Look, you’re the one who comes here to witness. You should hardly expect a potty-mouthed realist like me to mutely listen to your stupid opinions about (I presume) other people’s sexuality. On one level, if you’re not keen on anal sex, just don’t have any. Your life will no doubt be happy without. On another, trying to preach to “the fallen and sinful” is just pointless. Not only do we go to Hell, but we have to listen to tedious christians like you while we’re alive!
Well, since by the grace of god, you are amongst us, please answer this simple question (which I’ve asked before): Why does Jesus make you appear so stupiddo. There’s no obvious wit in your posts, you complain constantly about the abuse you suffer here, and there’s no apparent personal insight anyone can get a grip on. Then too, you’re on a notoriously scabrous atheist blog, full of experts on subjects you personally deny the reality of; and then you’re full of moral outrage at what other people do in their bedrooms!
In short, you can see why I think you’re stupid, and I rather think I’m not alone in that.
So how about you answer that then: why has your faith made your pronouncements seem so utterly moronic and pointless? Tell me it’s more than just Heaven Dollars for you!
Children want and deserve a parent of each sex, living under the same roof. We should be promoting THAT, not homosexuality.
Children deserve loving parents. And guess what, gender does not dictate that one is or is not loving. And just from my own experience, better to have one loving parent than to have two conflicting parents.
Also, please justify fundamentalist parents kicking GLBT children out into the streets.
I’m so sick of that childless bullshit.
I think it may be that Barb just can’t cope with the lusty feelings she gets every time she imagines two men going at it.
Oh, those gay bishops! It all makes me feel so… dirty.
Obviously Barb’s Hubby the Scientist M.D.™ is gettin’ some from elsewhere, cause Barb’s a definite bore in the sack, if you know what I mean.
292 steve C
Depends on what you call “fundamentalist.” IT’s not Bible belief or Christianity that makes families dysfunctional –though dysfunctional families may be trying to be Christian and may mis-apply Biblical teaching with oppressive negativity and a dour outlook on life.
applied Christianity, applied Biblical morality, Christian church life — have helped produce many functional people able to hold jobs and stay married and raise kids who do the same.
As for the poor bishop marrying because we wouldn’t let him come out of the closet so he tried to be normal: Nothing explains the necessity of anal sex or same sex –as much as early experience leading to addiction and the thrill of sin/forbidden fruit. The activities are repugnant to persons of normal sensibilities. It’s a perverse inclination to want to lie with your own sex –and especially for men to do the “backdoor boogie” as one gay called it in conversation with me. Who would do that or willingly receive it, for the first time, except someone willing to put it anywhere? getting a thrill from the perverse and abnormal?
Would anyone be surprised if Barb supported the Quiverful movement?
Barb is reduced to “teh gay iz icky” bullshit.
Ommmmmmm, AnthonyK is potty-mouthed!
Perhaps Barb should go back to Westboro Baptist Church where she belongs.
Putting aside what you mean by “gay lifestyle,” you do realize homosexuality existed in human populations long before “the bible,” right?
What is your evidence for this assertion? I’m talking about data, not anecdotes or your personal prejudices.
I’ll give you an example. Here is a summary of several studies supporting the conclusion that “The vast consensus of all the studies shows that children of same-sex parents do as well as children whose parents are heterosexual in every way,” and that “in some ways children of same-sex parents actually may have advantages over other family structures.”
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20051012/study-same-sex-parents-raise-well-adjusted-kids
Do you have any evidence to the contrary? Are you willing to change your mind on this subject if you are shown to be wrong?
Barb’s the arbiter of all things perverse and abnormal!!!
So fellatio and cunnilingus is out with you as well, Babs?
There you go again; obsessing about the details, rather than reflecting on the morality of a consensual deed done between two adults in the privacy of their own relationship.
Why are you so preoccupied by the details of it?
If you don’t like the idea of anal sex, then fine. Don’t have it. Why would you presume to tell two people who do like anal sex that they shouldn’t have any? Especially since you’re also supposing that the act is wrong even in a committed long-term relationship (which might actually be a marriage, but for the bigotry of people like you)?
It is just because you’ve thought too much about all of the details, and decided that you don’t like the act itself. Very odd.
Why do I get the feeling that Barb” just lies there and thinks of England?”
Well I know, but really…
Actually, I’m getting a teensy weensy bit turned by Barb’s consideration of anal sex. I’ve never tried it myself but she makes it seem…ooh I don’t know…nicely pervy.
OT, but apparently Jesus liked it up the Arse. Or is that just an urban legend?
Barb (#312):
Sit back and marvel at a little child’s “yuck” factor masquerading as grown-up ethics.
Barb, please answer the question @#317. Inquiring minds want to know!
Barb, methinks thou doth protest too much. Go get a banana and shove it up your ass if you want it that bad. Quit obsessing and get on with your life.
Why does anybody pay any attention to Barb? How could she have anything of value to say? She’s a woman, so she’s obviously got cooties.
Barb, the point is that going to a fundie church and “following” the bible seems to make families MORE dysfunctional. Being christian make people more moral only in the eyes of other christians…
Being on the outside I can say… the more christian conservative someone is, the less rational and more fucked up they are. It’s an unhealthy way to think and live. It’s warped.
I know a lot of gay people, and they are way less screwed up in most ways than kooky people have “given their lives to Christ”.
Barb, you’re a shining example. If you think being gay is all about having anal sex, you’re not only ignorant, you’re naive.
Oi, don’t go pushing responsibility for her off onto England. Judging by posting times etc, she’s one of your American god-bots – possibly from breeding stock which regarded itself as rejected by England for being too god-botty (or even criminal).
I mean, 12 close male friends, no girlfriend, domineering mother, distant father…surely just a little bit gay?
Ken Cope, are you ready to join the He-Man Women Haters Club.
(I am sorry, Ken. I could not resist.)
Well anal sex is out because it’s pervy, but the oral sex question is still unanswered by our beloved sexual arbiter. (Does the term “sexual repression” mean anything to our sweet Babs?) I’m sure she’s never read The Joy of Sex. (Ugh, too liberal and therefore disgusting!!!)
Actually, I’m getting a teensy weensy bit turned by Barb’s consideration of anal sex. I’ve never tried it myself but she makes it seem…ooh I don’t know…nicely pervy. – AnthonyK
I know what you mean. I’ve never even smooched another guy, or tried either active or passive anal, but if, like Barb says, gay anal sex is so good that once you try it you’ll never want anything else…
are you ready to join the He-Man Women Haters Club
No.
According to Wiki Lie back and think of England:
… was an expression supposedly used in the United Kingdom during the Victorian Era. Traditionally, it was advice given to a woman – usually from a mother to her daughter about to be married – about dealing with sexual intercourse with her husband.
The origins of the phrase are unclear, but it is generally attributed to Lady Alice Hillingdon (1857-1940), supposedly writing in her journal in 1912:
“I am happy now that George calls on my bedchamber less frequently than of old. As it is, I now endure but two calls a week, and when I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, open my legs and think of England.”
Ken. BBW? Cool!
Barb,
What is the gay lifestyle?
Ken C:
I knew I liked you for some reason…
Oh, those gay bishops! It all makes me feel so… dirty. Bernard Bumner
D’you reckon they keep their mitres on? And what do they get up to with those crooks? The mind boggles…
BBW?
It’s just that at one point, my life consisted of putting flounce in her hair and lead curtain weights in her skirt so it wouldn’t fly over her head in every scene, and she’d been looking a wee bit anorexic…
As for He-Man and the Woman-Haters Club, Shera’s brother was a pansy in pink and purple tights until he held aloft his mighty sword and became a leather queen. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
AnthonyK – You’re probably thinking of the scripture where jezus spends the night with a young man thats only wearing a towel.
I can’t think of the book and verse just now, but it’s pretty suggestive.
I mean, 12 close male friends, no girlfriend, domineering mother, distant father…surely just a little bit gay? – AnthonyK
Well yes, and obviously into S&M in a big way.
BBW?
Big Beautiful Woman.
Bump chicka wow wooow
Knockgoats @336 – Same thing Walton does with his poker….
Oh gosh, forgot I’m not supposed to mention that.
I thought she was beautiful big too; quoting BBW was just referencing your post, but some of those playing along on the home game probably needed to hear that.
The origins of the phrase are unclear, but it is generally attributed to Lady Alice Hillingdon (1857-1940), supposedly writing in her journal in 1912:
“I am happy now that George calls on my bedchamber less frequently than of old. As it is, I now endure but two calls a week, and when I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, open my legs and think of England.” – E.V.
Poor Alice. And unless he was inclined to necrophilia, poor George!
Oh dear. We seem to have lost Babs, and we never learned if she emulates the bird of happiness – the swallow, or the dog of happiness – you guessed it, the spitz
Look, this has gotten ridiculous. One minute we blameless atheists are sitting here contemplating the emptiness of our lives, and then some Christian grandmother comes on here and evokes an image of Jesus, his mouth round a Romans’s cock, happily getting bum-fucked by a line of legionnaires, while Mary watches, gently masturbating with a banana.
It’s insane! Barb, just leave. Leave now. I think you’ve said quite enough.
I’m well aware of the expression but reject the full implications of its applicability to Barb. I think much of her education is far more out-of-date than merely the Victorian era and has little to do with England as such. It’s nearly prehistoric and essentially middle-eastern.
Patricia, O.M.@343,
Oh, he likes it really! Otherwise he wouldn’t keep coming back for more!
My favorite English off-colour quote is reportedly from Lord and Lady Nelson:
Lord Nelson: “I’ve spent enough on you to purchase a battle ship.” To which Lady Nelson replied: “You’ve spent enough in me to float one.”
Well, all I can say is maybe we’ve provided Barb with the realization that her prudery has probably driven hubby to more pleasurable pastures. She’s probably off buying a tube of Astroglide as we speak. Yes ma’am, You’re Welcome!
She may want to start with anal-ease and work her way up… or down..
the scripture where jezus spends the night with a young man thats only wearing a towel.
I can’t think of the book and verse just now, but it’s pretty suggestive.
That’s in Mark. After the arrest at Gethsemane.
Luke and Matthew omit the passage.
And Babs will never know if we’re being serious or facetious.
I still want to know if she’s ever given a BJ or two, or allowed hubby to take a muff dive, or given him a hand job and how that squares with her abnormal/unnatural sexual taxonomy.
CJO – That’s right!
The Secret Gospel of Mark. Jezus spent six days teaching the young man about heaven. Of course we never studied that one in church!
E.V.@350,
Are you sure that was Lady Nelson? Sounds to me more like Emma, Lady Hamilton, Nelson’s mistress (with whom, in those pre-Victorian-prudery days, he went about quite openly).
Knoakgoats:
You are right, of course. I should have prefaced my post with an IIRC.
Knockgoats…
Barb, The Ignorant Bitch:
Please Barb, I implore you, stay out of my arm’s reach because if I ever hear those words come from your mouth in the presence of my wife in public, so help me, I will rip your throat out. Thanks in advance.
“We need children”? We got enough children. We got too many children.
WRMartin, being both the Ignorant Slut and Vile Bitch of this board, I am insulted that you would use my titles for Barb.
So Babs is sure everyone will run out and get an abortion because it’s the cool thing to do. Evil non-christian fads: Anal sex? √ The Drugs?√ Naughty satanic tattoo? √ Abortion?√ Satanic sacrifice? √ – In the current recession I’m thinking of opening a one stop shopping debauchery -De Sade’s Tattoo Emporium and Abortion Clinic! Private Booths! Parking in Rear! First Serve, First Come! C’mon Dooooowwwwwnnnnnn!
Watch it WRMartin, thats mighty close to Ignorant Slut.
That one came up recently somewhere else – it might even have been on QI. Stephen Fry has been getting quite “militant” lately – including banning people from viewing the programme if they are too stupid/ignorant in some way (the details of which I can no longer recall but it could have been YECs or similar).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Gospel_of_Mark
http://www.gnosis.org/library/secm.htm
etc
It’s in canonical Mark (the bit from Ch. 14 I quoted above).
Secret Mark, if authentic, would seem to explain who the young man is, making some sense of an otherwise puzzling passage, and certainly one that, as I said, Matthew and Luke were uncomfortable with or otherwie found unusable.
But, I don’t know. The same word for “young man” in the Greek is used at 16:5, for the (presumed) angel who tells the women of the resurrection. But the word for the linen garment the young man leaves behind at Gethsemane is also used for the linen burial cloth jesus’s body is wrapped in, bringing us back around to secret Mark, where the story is an obvious early layer of the same tradition that ends up as the raising of Lazarus in John.
The gospels are so damn confusing. And coming up with theories about these kinds of things is a regular cottage industry, so scholars are incentivized to make up yet another new interpretation with each book so as not to say the same thing as the last one. Making my comment now magically on topic: I wish I were a New Testament scholar, so I could just make stuff up!
Praise the Lord.
The “naked youth” verse is as bizarre as the “God lays in wait to kill Moses until Moses’ wife uses a scallop shell to circumcise their child and then flings the foreskin at Moses,” and let’s not forget Lot’s offer of his daughters as substitute rape victims when the neighbors wanting to “know” the angels visiting him. (If they were supernatural beings, how were they ever in any danger?) Cognitive… dissonance… hurting…brain….
This is great! It’s a round-robin of conservative myopia and conspiracy theorists!
Barb’s problem is that she only has one eye open.
Barb, if you were Bill Clinton, then yes, you could lie under oath and get impeached. On the other hand, if you were George W. Bush, you could refuse to testify under oath and lie as much as you want, without any fear of similar legal repercussions. I guess that makes Democrats really stoopid! Or something.
Barb, if you’re such a proponent of two-parent households, why don’t you get on the anti-divorce wedge-issue bandwagon? Oh wait – THERE ISN’T ONE. Why not, I wonder?
Barb, has any heterosexual man ever dump his wife, the mother of this children, for someone younger? Did any heterosexual man-of-the-cloth ever do such a thing? You probably won’t understand why I’m asking questions like these, so a simple yes-or-no answer will suffice, and you can ponder the meaning of it all on your own time.
Oh, and when you have a moment, read this. For starters. Many more details are readily available online and at your local library, should you have the desire to learn more – which of course you will not.
Oh … my god. This thread is so dead it’s a freaking zombie.
Laila: I did respond to you, at #269 supra (though my reply seems to have been buried in a mountain of posts, due to a slight thread derailment issue).
This seems like a good time to commend Walton for his general tendency to argue in good faith and for his unfailing civility in the face of many harsh and sometimes vitriolic criticisms.
In case she ever comes back (she isn’t banned)…
LOL! Homo- and bisexuality have both been found in every single vertebrate species that has been observed for long enough. That makes both of them, like, Silurian in age at least!
Also, your sexual orientation is something you’re born with. You can’t change it, no matter how hard you try. In other words, children can’t become gay, no matter what “lifestyles” they’re exposed to; either they already are gay, or they never will be!
(It follows, BTW, that Alan Keyes is not straight. He said that gay sex is more fun than straight one, and must therefore be forbidden, lest everyone do it and the species die out. If you’re not gay or bi, gay sex is not fun, period.)
Male homosexuality is at least to some degree heritable, and correlated to above-average fertility in the women of the same family.
And finally, the reason why modern (as opposed to ancient Roman) gay sex is so often anal is that the prostate lies right in front of the gut, so it can be stimulated that way, and stimulating the prostate usually leads to an orgasm.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/i_wish_i_were_a_republican_so.php#comment-1418690
Harsh and vitriolic criticism that is entirely warranted, I might add. To his great credit, he does not always remain civil. But he sadly knows nothing of decency. A real shame, since there’s a time and place for civility, but decency is always necessary.
David Marjanović, OM:
Oh David, every Good Christian knows teh ghey comes from Satan and temptation.
What for? To roast and feed to the millions of starving and orphaned kids we already have?
Weird… I just left a QI related comment on another thread.
Stephen’s always wonderful. And I’m not sure about “lately” For the last few seasons he’s had no qualms about aiming some brilliant barbs at faiths and their adherents. Was it 2 weeks ago when Stephen said something about “Our Lord and Saviour.” and Phil Jupitus retorted: “Please! Stephen, you make Richard Dawkins look like a Buddhist.” IIRC, he even let loose on a Christmas Special.
Oh, and the “banning” you’re referring to was the “Future” episode and applied to people that believe in astrology. I watched the first half of it last night.
David Marjanović, OM,
“Also, your sexual orientation is something you’re born with. You can’t change it, no matter how hard you try.”
Evidence please. I thought the current genetic evidence only explained a small part of the prevalence of this phenotype. Since you say “born with”, I assume you are making some allowance for the possibility that some is not genetic but due to the environment of the womb, e.g., fetal androgenization, etc. Do you really think that any genes resulting in the homosexual phenotype in our culture, will also result in that behavioral phenotype in all other cultures? Human behavioral genetic influences are seldom that deterministic.
It’s probably more accurate to say that by the time you’re aware of it, it’s too late to change it.
Walton @ #369: Oh, I saw your response. I thought you were going to follow up (from “You raise a number of other interesting points, which I will look at later today.”) which is why I haven’t responded back. But I will now (just a side note, though, I have a final and a paper due this week so I can’t be as thorough as I’d like). A definitional note, before I continue: can we agree that “government policy” and such phrases refer to modification of/intereference in the free market? I think that’s what we’ve been doing but I just want to be clear.
(And my zombification comment was about the derailing, just to be clear.)
In my head this claim goes under the “Not Enough Information To Determine Truth” column. I’m willing to be proven wrong, though, since I’m not an economist.
JasonTD’s response (#270) is good here. In addition, do you really think parents have the right to lie to their children? (Aside from social lies and considerations for child psychology and so on, which is a whole ‘nuther discussion.) Does one person’s right to choice dominate another’s right to truth?
Stephen Wells’ has a good point in #271. And yeah, history is full of failed policies, but there are also (very important) victories. Stephen Wells pointed out civil rights laws, as one. I’d add to the list things like laws against worker exploitation (i.e., don’t-poison-your-employees-with-asbestos laws).
But of course you have said that government is good for some things.
So, given that previous failed attempts to solve an issue does not mean that no solution (read: improvements or best cost-benefit ratios) exists, if there is an issue, shouldn’t an attempt be made to solve it? The strategies that have failed before can be discarded, but what with human ingenuity being ingenious and all, there are always new ideas and strategies to be tested.
I look forward to your response!
It’s probably more accurate to say that by the time you’re aware of it, it’s too late to change it.
A well-phrased observation, and likely accurate. If you’re not yet close to 25 and you’ve already decided upon expressing and playing exclusively in one slender slice of the gender spectrum, you probably should make sure you don’t miss a chance to choose any of the evils you haven’t tried yet.
Leila: And yeah, history is full of failed policies, but there are also (very important) victories. Stephen Wells pointed out civil rights laws, as one. I’d add to the list things like laws against worker exploitation (i.e., don’t-poison-your-employees-with-asbestos laws). But of course you have said that government is good for some things.
I see your point, and I think this is an important area to explore in some depth.
I would not claim, of course, that every government action, in the sense of “every activity performed by a government”, is detrimental. As we both seem to agree, government does have a purpose, and, indeed, I would contend that a truly free market cannot exist without government. Government needs to enforce and delineate private property rights, arbitrate contracts, and protect law and order. Without these things, you don’t have a free market; you simply have chaos, with the strong robbing the weak at the point of a gun. Thus far, I think we’re agreed.
The core purpose, then, of government is to prevent the use of illegitimate force or fraud by one person against another. In doing this, it should treat all persons equally. Thus, when you refer to “civil rights laws” as a success of government, my reaction depends on what you mean by civil rights laws. I firmly believe that government should be colour-blind; it should not treat people differently on the basis of race (or gender or sexual orientation), and all people should have the same rights to self-ownership, private property, and entry into voluntary contracts. Segregation laws and the like were, of course, totally indefensible. Likewise, today, bans on gay marriage, and other government actions which deny full legal equality to homosexuals, are also indefensible. And as I am wholeheartedly opposed to the tyranny of the majority, I consider Brown v Board of Ed to be one of the best decisions in history; however strongly the majority may wish to deny the minority their right to equal treatment before the law, the Constitution and the courts should prevent them from doing so. I imagine we’re in agreement so far.
Where I differ, however, from some “civil rights laws” is where they go beyond this, and mandate positive discrimination on the basis of race or gender in order to achieve some kind of quota. This is fundamentally immoral, and to label this a “civil rights” issue is a fundamental misunderstanding, since no one (of whatever race or gender) has a “civil right” to employment, education, social advancement, or anything of that nature. Government jobs and educational places should be awarded to the best candidate, regardless of race or gender; private sector jobs and educational places should be awarded on whatever basis the employer or institution sees fit, as they are voluntary contractual relations between free individuals and should therefore be no concern of the State. Likewise, although I personally am opposed to discrimination against gay people – and, as I said, I am fully in support of marriage equality – I also support the right of private employers, churches and religious institutions to refuse to recognise same-sex marriages if they see fit to do so. The State should treat everyone equally; but private individuals should not have to do so, because I believe in freedom of conscience, and the freedom to enter into contracts on whatever terms one wishes.
As to “don’t-poison-your-employees-with-asbestos laws”, this is taken care of adequately through the tort system; since an employee who is harmed through his employer’s negligence has the right to sue, this acts as a sufficient deterrent. However, I would also contend that, if an employer and employee sign a voluntary contract by which the employee expressly agrees to take the risk of working with asbestos and to waive any right to sue, this should be legal and enforceable. (At present in England, such a contract would be unenforceable under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977, an Act with which I fundamentally disagree.) There is no such thing as an objectively “unfair” contract term, as long as said term is the product of voluntary agreement and not of force or fraud.
…do you really think parents have the right to lie to their children? (Aside from social lies and considerations for child psychology and so on, which is a whole ‘nuther discussion.) Does one person’s right to choice dominate another’s right to truth?
This one is a bit tricky. The problem, of course, with children is that they are (by definition) not competent adults who are capable of making all their own choices, and so the libertarian belief in individual autonomy cannot fully apply to them. Paternalism is, therefore, inescapable as regards children; the question, however, is whether such paternalism should be exercised by parents or by the State. Neither parents nor the State “own” children, of course, and both should act in the children’s best interests. Unfortunately, in the real world, both parents and the State are likely at times to make stupid decisions which will be detrimental to the children’s interests, because both parents and State officials are fallible human beings. We must therefore decide on a pragmatic basis whether it should be primarily up to parents, or primarily up to the State, to make decisions for their children.
Giving parents such authority, of course, generates inequality – because some people are lucky enough to have more competent parents than others, and so will get a better start in life. This is unfortunate, but it can’t be helped, since I presume no one would advocate taking all children out of their parents’ hands and educating them in State centres, which would be disastrous. Fundamentally, I would assert that our culture, our biology and our psychology all militate in favour of parents being given primary responsibility for their children’s welfare, since both biological and cultural factors place a strong imperative on parents to care for the interests of their children. However, this is not, of course, an absolute principle, and as we have seen in some shocking abuse cases, not all parents are able or willing to care adequately for their children; in such cases, I would agree that the State should step in and safeguard the children’s interests.
Thus, the prima facie position should be to give parents responsibility for making decisions for their children; however, the State should step in to prevent cases of abuse and extreme neglect. This is a fairly widely-accepted principle, and I don’t think I’m saying anything hugely controversial. Regarding education, we already allow parents who can afford it to send their children to private school, or to educate them at home, if they think it best (subject, of course, to State intervention in cases of abuse, as above). I would merely advocate extending this right from wealthy parents to all parents, via a school voucher system. Why should only the wealthy have the ability to educate their children how they see fit, and to access the best education available in the market?
Walton: you claim `As to “don’t-poison-your-employees-with-asbestos laws”, this is taken care of adequately through the tort system; since an employee who is harmed through his employer’s negligence has the right to sue, this acts as a sufficient deterrent.’
This is not the case. Firstly, it’s hard for a DEAD PERSON to sue and there may be no family to take up the claim. Secondly, the company can generally afford more and better laws than the plaintiff, so you may not win your claim- or you may die while sueing for it. Thirdly, a company may well find it more economical to pay the odd claim than to actually improve safety. Fourthly, it’s often hard to enforce a payout on an individual claim- you can’t prove that THIS INDIVIDUAL tumour was due to this particular risk factor- even when epidemiology makes it clear that there’s an issue. I could go on, but I hope you see the point. This is why we have health-and-safety laws in the first place; your proposed remedy isn’t a sufficient deterrent. The world doesn’t work as cleanly and simply as it seems to in your head; I beg of you to learn MORE HISTORY before theorising, and resist the temptation to assume that people object to libertarianism because we just haven’t thought of the brilliantly simple solutions it offers.
Incidentally, if you have a moment, you might like to read through this, from Mark Rosenfelder:
http://www.zompist.com/libertos.html
He does a pretty good job of explaining why a lot of us find libertarianism quite objectionable, and gives what I find quite a nice analogy for the role of government; it should be like the operating system of a computer, providing the conditions required for the functions of society to proceed. You might find it interesting.
s/laws/lawyers/ in the above, though the typo also works…
Firstly, it’s hard for a DEAD PERSON to sue and there may be no family to take up the claim. Secondly, the company can generally afford more and better laws than the plaintiff, so you may not win your claim- or you may die while sueing for it. Thirdly, a company may well find it more economical to pay the odd claim than to actually improve safety. Fourthly, it’s often hard to enforce a payout on an individual claim- you can’t prove that THIS INDIVIDUAL tumour was due to this particular risk factor- even when epidemiology makes it clear that there’s an issue.
As a law student, I can answer some of these criticisms viz-a-viz English law, though I don’t know the current state of the law in your own jurisdiction.
Firstly, in English law, a dead person’s estate can sue, even if there are no family; the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934 provides that a cause of action subsisting in a deceased person endures for the benefit of his estate. This is separate from the cause of action (for bereavement/loss of dependency) which the family may have. So whether or not there are any family, the deceased’s executor/administrator/personal representative can sue on his behalf.
Secondly, although companies are indeed able to afford better lawyers, I haven’t seen much evidence (in English law at any rate) that this makes any substantial difference. Indeed, on an assessment of the case law, the courts tend to be quite sympathetic to “underdog” plaintiffs, and it is not difficult to establish a claim in negligence, especially against one’s employer (who has, in certain circumstances, strict liability for failure to provide a safe working environment – Wilson and Clyde Coal v English [1938] AC 57).
Thirdly, the causation issue – hard to prove that any given illness is caused by a particular exposure to asbestos – is indeed a problem (particularly with mesothelioma), but in such cases the English courts have come down on the side of the plaintiffs and relaxed the ordinary rules of causation (Fairchild v Glenhaven Funeral Services, [2002] UKHL 22).
As I said, I can’t comment on other jurisdictions, but to the best of my knowledge the US courts tend to be much more generous to plaintiffs in tort actions than do the English courts (largely as a consequence of the fact that we no longer have juries in civil cases in England, except in cases of defamation and certain actions against the police; juries tend to be irrational and to make absurdly large awards). So I don’t think your argument is consistent with the actual approach of the courts.
And re the Rosenfelder article at #380: it’s a lengthy tract and I won’t give a point-by-point rebuttal now, but a few general observations.
Firstly, he starts by acknowledging that there are many different strands of libertarianism and anti-statism, and by expressly stating that he’s only really attacking the thought of Rothbard, Rand, Rockwell and von Mises – who, incidentally, are not all in the same philosophical tradition, nor are they at all representative of my own views.
Rothbard was an anarcho-capitalist and a private property dogmatist. I have a lot of sympathy with his philosophy, but I don’t subscribe to it; indeed, I actually agree with some of Rosenfelder’s criticisms. I think it’s rather ahistorical, and empirically unsupportable, to suggest that private property rights have some sort of natural, inherent existence independent of the State, and that any infringement of them by the State is ipso facto immoral. Rather, I would acknowledge that private property rights are substantially a creation of governments and legal systems; and I am therefore sceptical of the anarcho-capitalist claim that property rights can be established and delineated, and property disputes peacefully arbitrated, without any institutions of government. But I am not an anarcho-capitalist, nor do I truly believe that private property rights are absolute; and, indeed, Rosenfelder repeatedly and clearly acknowledges in the article that these criticisms do not apply to all, or even most, libertarians.
He also refers repeatedly to the work of Ayn Rand. But Ayn Rand was not, in fact, a libertarian, strictly speaking; she herself rejected the term explicitly, and disdained the libertarian movement in general. Randian Objectivism is not merely an extreme flavour of libertarianism; it is, rather, a complete philosophy of life. Its epistemology is centred on reason and objective reality, and rejection of the supernatural; and its moral philosophy is based on rational egoism and self-interest. It follows from this that, in the political sphere, her support for laissez-faire capitalism was entirely deontological in character; she believed in capitalism not because it “works best” but because, in her view, it is the only moral politico-economic model, and all other systems are, therefore, inherently immoral. It is something of a waste of time, therefore, attacking her philosophy as Rosenfelder does, by deploying empirical evidence and pointing out instances where laissez-faire capitalism has (arguably) led to human suffering. Rand would have replied that this is irrelevant; for her, the goal of a moral politico-economic system was to allow individuals to pursue their own goals and interests free from encumbrance by others. She rejected entirely the idea that a person owes anything to his neighbour by virtue of their common humanity, and characterised those who depend on the labour and talents of others as “parasites”, “looters” and “moochers”. So even if you proved explicitly to a Randian Objectivist that laissez-faire capitalism caused millions of unnecessary deaths (which it doesn’t, but that’s a different issue), he or she simply wouldn’t care, because Randians totally reject traditional Western morality in favour of an entirely heterodox moral standpoint. In a sense, Rand’s teachings were the antithesis of those of Jesus Christ; she replaced “love thy neighbour” with “love thyself”.
I am not, and have never been, an Objectivist, however; nor am I an anarcho-capitalist (which is not the same thing in any case). I am what one might term a classical liberal.
I am aware, however, that I need a good deontological justification for private property. I would say that this is easy to provide where a person produces something for himself, through his own investment of labour and capital. What he thereby creates is his own; and it is therefore his right to transfer it to another via voluntary transactions, whereby that other acquires property rights in it. I don’t think it’s really that controversial (except to Marxists and anarchists) to contend that what a person creates is, morally, his own, and that he is morally entitled to exclude others from it, by force if need be.
The more difficult question is, of course, whether individual property rights over land and natural resources – which, of course, are not “produced” by anyone – are justified. I would assert that, in the abstract, such rights can be justified because where land and natural resources were not previously being used by anyone, the first person to take possession of them and use them productively ought to be entitled to them. I realise, however, that it’s ahistorical to see this as the origin of all modern property rights; most rights were, centuries back, acquired by dispossessing the previous owners (whether the Saxons in England, the Native Americans, the Australian Aborigines, etc.). I would, however, point out two things about this. Firstly, the modern descendants of those who acquired property rights by force are not morally responsible for what was done by their antecedents. The idea of collective or inherited guilt is abhorrent, and should be totally rejected. I would further point out that the modern holders of property rights have, in general, invested their own labour and capital in obtaining and exploiting those rights, and they should not be deprived of those rights, by coercive force, in favour of “the community”.
So, so long as there are well-enforced laws requiring employers to provide a safe working environment, which they can be sued for breaking, then people can sometimes get compensation. I don’t think this establishes your claim that this is a sufficient deterrent to prevent companies acting unsafely in the first place.
As it happens I’m in the UK also, but recently spent some time working in the US and was absolutely horrified by some of the things I saw there, starting with the lack of a national health care system. There’ve been a few dramatic mining disasters there in recent years, during which it emerged that companies would routinely be fined trivial sums for dangerous practices and blithely continued to pay those small fines rather than actually invest in improvements, right up until people die. There are also some awkward issues around industrial waste and, say, mining by-products; if a company fills a lake with mine tailings and then goes out of business, there’s no company to sue any more when the pollution leaks out. Post-hoc lawsuits simply aren’t a sufficient deterrent to dangerous practices if the entity involved isn’t there to be sued.
Walton is lying again. He believes that state governments should be able to ban gay marriage; it’s just the federal government that he has a problem with.
Walton is lying again. He believes that state governments should be able to ban gay marriage; it’s just the federal government that he has a problem with.
I believe you’ve misunderstood what I said on another thread (which I will concede is my fault; I don’t always express these fine distinctions very clearly).
Before I say anything further on the topic, bear in mind that I am not an American, and the state-federal distinction has no relevance to my country whatsoever.
For me, the ideal would be for the constitutions of all countries to guarantee full marriage equality as a civil right, or (even better) for the government to get out of the business of marriage altogether. I believe that marriage equality is a fundamental right and that it should be protected against the will of the majority.
I would, however, be uncomfortable – and this is what I said on the other thread that may have given rise to some confusion – if the US Supreme Court were to suddenly declare that bans on gay marriage (at the state level) are unconstitutional. The problem is that, however you read it, the US Constitution (and amendments thereto) simply does not guarantee any kind of right to marriage equality. It doesn’t say anything on the subject; and it’s entirely ahistorical to believe that its framers intended it to confer a right to same-sex marriage. It just isn’t in there.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not going to start ranting and railing against “judicial activism” as American conservatives tend to do. The judiciary can and should stand up to the popular will and guarantee individual rights, where it has a constitutional mandate to protect such rights. Hence why Brown v Board of Ed was a good decision. As I’ve said, I am not a majoritarian, and I don’t think the will of the majority should prevail over the rights of individuals.
But if we accept – as some people seem to think – that the judiciary should enforce not just the rights which are actually in the Constitution, but those rights which the judges themselves see as “fundamental” in a modern society, then we confer virtually unlimited power on the judges. And although that power can be used for good ends – as it would be if the Supreme Court were to declare a right to marriage equality – it could also be used for bad ends. We need to remember that judges are not superhuman; and that the ends do not justify the means. If the judges have unlimited power to confer rights today, they can also take away rights tomorrow. And this is why I believe that judges should adhere to the law as it stands, rather than interpreting the Constitution as a “living document” whose reach can be extended.
I remind you again that this is merely an opinion on US constitutional propriety. I am not an American, I have never lived in the United States, and I do not intend or expect to become a judge on a US federal court, so my opinion on this matter is somewhat irrelevant. I can say unequivocally that if I were drafting a written constitution for the UK (which I think is desperately needed, incidentally), I would include a clause guaranteeing full equality before the law for same-sex couples, including the right to marry.
There’s no misunderstanding. You believe that the ability of homophobes to legislate against gay rights should trump the ability of gay people to seek justice through the courts. Gay people should wait until they have the approval of enough homophobes to vote to grant them their rights. We heard you the first time.
It follows as well that you believe Loving v. Virginia was wrongly decided, but you ran away from this in the other thread because it would so obviously mark you as a racist.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/mcwane/
Good point.
I am aware, however, that I need a good deontological justification for private property. I would say that this is easy to provide where a person produces something for himself, through his own investment of labour and capital. What he thereby creates is his own; and it is therefore his right to transfer it to another via voluntary transactions, whereby that other acquires property rights in it. I don’t think it’s really that controversial (except to Marxists and anarchists) to contend that what a person creates is, morally, his own, and that he is morally entitled to exclude others from it, by force if need be. – Walton
Well, you might have a point there, if this mythical individual has created this mythical object without making any use of any infrastructure, technology or knowledge that others have contributed to producing. Note that I’m not saying that there should be no private property: simply that there is no such deontological justification for it.
Firstly, the modern descendants of those who acquired property rights by force are not morally responsible for what was done by their antecedents. The idea of collective or inherited guilt is abhorrent, and should be totally rejected.
It is dishonest to elide the distinction between collective guilt, and the moral responsibility to recognise that one belongs to a collectivity that has benefited enormously from past wrongs – since this has been repeatedly pointed out on this blog.
I would further point out that the modern holders of property rights have, in general, invested their own labour and capital in obtaining and exploiting those rights, and they should not be deprived of those rights, by coercive force, in favour of “the community”.
So, if I buy a CD player in a pub, knowing full well it has been stolen, it would be wrong for it to be taken from me, because after all, I’ve invested my own labour and capital in obtaining it.
Just shut the fuck up, Walton. You know nothing about anything you blather on about here. Fucking nothing, and it never stops you. I’m fucking sick of hearing about your stupid little fantasy world. Go read a history book. Go get some experience. But shut the fuck up about things and people and power relationships (including transnational ones) you can’t begin to understand.
Hey Walton.
I fucking dare you to find a family who had a member die of Mesothelioma and trot out that line of bullshit.
hint: killfile
I would also contend that, if an employer and employee sign a voluntary contract by which the employee expressly agrees to take the risk of working with asbestos and to waive any right to sue, this should be legal and enforceable.
Good grief Walton, it’s hard to decide whether it’s your ignorance or your callousness that’s more egregious. You evidently know sod-all about the history of the asbestos industry, and its decades-long campaign to keep using the stuff despite abundant evidence of its deadly nature – and not just to workers, but to their families (fibres taken home on clothing – presumably it would be OK they die too, if the worker has signed an agreement), and to local communities (oh yes, they all signed up to die coughing their lungs up as well). Try finding out a bit about asbestos mining, about Turner and Newell, Federal Mogul, and the workers whose pension fund is on the point of collapse because of tort claims by former workers. The first health warnings date from the 1880s, and no-one should have been using the filthy stuff at least since the 1950s, when there was abundant evidence of its lethality – yet most asbestos mining has taken place since then – because it’s profitable.
One more swipe at the rotting horse.
Walton, if you really don’t believe that this is a political website, and yet you proceed to talk about nothing else, then that is an admission of trolling.
Why do you think I killfiled this joker long ago. I am not patient enough to deal with one person’s search for self. That is what his fellow students are for.
I must confess to being a little puzzled by Walton’s posts. I’ve got no interest in this Libertarainism thing, but even if I did why would I talk about it here?
I mean, the boss doesn’t like it, many of the regulars get very grumpy when the subject is brought up, and it seems to make you the target of so much ridicule that I wonder why you do it. And quite apart from the personal thing – aren’t science, reason and religion big enough subjects for you?
Also, personally, if people kept telling me to shut the fuck up, I think I would.
(Though that’s not an absolute promise!)
That’s exactly my point: if (like Alan Keyes) you can be tempted, you aren’t straight in the first place.
Yes, but hormone levels depend mostly on the embryo/fetus itself.
Male homosexuality correlates to proportions of finger lengths. AFAIK testosterone levels are the common cause. Wasn’t there a paper on that in Science years ago?
Male homosexuality also runs in families, together with above-average female fertility.
(I don’t think anyone has ever looked at female homosexuality or anyone’s bisexuality so far.)
That it’s impossible to change one’s sexual orientation is an inductive inference, granted, but look at all those Americans who tried, sometimes for decades, to pray away teh ghey and still failed. Ted Haggard is just the most prominent example; there are lots more on teh intart00bz.
But when is that? Eight-year-old children are capable of falling in love. Platonic love, but still.
Then you’re bi. If you’re not, deciding never enters into the question.
That’s what it looks like, and of course it can go out of hand*, but the point of such laws is not to institute a quota for the previously oppressed groups. Their point is to abolish the unwritten quota for the previously oppressing groups.
* Disclaimer: I know too little to tell if this has ever happened. It just seems like a pretty obvious logical possibility.
Can you afford to sue?
It’s very easy to pressure someone into signing such a contract, and very difficult to prove afterwards that blackmailing was involved.
Why not make sure that the public school system is good enough in the first place?
Over here, private schools aren’t simply better. They set different emphases (often, but not always, religious ones).
I agree with the first sentence, but to the second I have to say that the US constitution has by far not been amended often enough. Yes, judges shouldn’t (in effect) do that, but the legislature should and almost never does.
I’m not sure. I imagine it wavers a few years depending on the person. Many gay people attest that they knew they were different at a young age.
Walton needs to buy more glitter, his turd is beginning to show again.
I want to read from Walton’s history book. The political and economic struggles of the working class during the latter half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries simply didn’t happen, apparently.
It is almost out of the realm of possibility for a worker to be able to negotiate a contract with an employer on anything like an equal footing. It may be possible at a business start-up, but that is more of a partnership than an owner-worker relationship. In my experiences in the working world, one of the foremost burdens of the laborer is the fact that the laborer NEEDS THAT JOB – not only the income, but the stability of routine, of relied-upon benefits, not only for his or herself, but also for that laborer’s family. But the reverse does not necessarily apply: the owner does not, in many cases, NEED THAT WORKER – most times, the pool of available labor is large enough so that if that worker becomes expendable, that worker can be let go for any number of reasons, or for NO reason (does the term “at-will employee” mean anything to anyone?).
The reality of labor in the U.S. is that many workers are just a few paychecks away from bankruptcy, whereas such is NOT the case for many owners. How, then, can any contract between worker and owner be entered into without there being coercion, direct or indirect, on the part of the owner?
I once researched the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. There is a reason for state interference in the way corporations operate – because, quite simply, they cannot be trusted to have any priority other than that of short-term profit-seeking, which, in the case of Triangle Shirtwaist (and so many other cases), ignored the potential for human tragedy in pursuit of a few extra pennies.
He’s not even fucking interested in science! He said so just a few weeks ago. Doesn’t care about it, finds no beauty or joy in the natural world,…
OK, now I feel guilty and he hasn’t even pouted. Sigh. I’ll stop now.
(PS to negentropyeater: I didn’t mean to speak so harshly to you. I was angry and it came out. I hope that’s not why you haven’t been around. Come back!)
Now there’s a question for Walton.
Should employers be allowed to lock employees inside the building during working hours if the employer and employee sign a voluntary contract by which the employee expressly agrees to take the risk of working in a locked building?
See, in a world where people are empowered by an equal political and economic playing field, it is possible (however crazy) for the employee to sign that contract from a position of total, absolute choice. But I suggest that the vast majority of employees are not empowered in such a way that they have such freedom of choice, and if the only options are (a) a job where you may die, or (b) no job at all, and none in the forseeable future… well, as I said… not much in the way of choices, there. Which is why a third party – government, in this case – needs to intervene. The government doesn’t create an imbalance in the worker-laborer relationship; the government RESTORES balance to it.
(As a former union man, I prefer that the laborer, of course, be represented by a collective bargaining unit – but such a circumstance is too rare these days. More’s the pity.)
Right. Government entities (a category which include laws) exist for a reason. The SEC, FDA, and EPA all exist for a reason. The reason is not: They were completely unnecessary and were created at the whim of the government for the sole purpose of creating jobs within the government.
Just popping to say, “still here!” and “still interested!” but also, unfortunately “absolutely, incredibly, ridiculously, annoyingly busy.” I’ll try to respond by tonight.
I see. Evidently I’m stupid, deluded and ignorant.
In addition to being an unattractive, socially inept, boring geek in real life, with no romantic prospects and no career future, it seems I’m also lacking in an intellect worthy of any respect from random people on the internet. Depressingly, politics is the one thing about which I thought I was knowledgeable and informed. If you are right, then I’m a total fucking waste of space; because, if I’m no good at political debate, there is literally nothing else that makes my life worthwhile.
I am, in case you couldn’t tell, rather depressed at the moment. I was happier when I was religious; at least I could believe that Jesus loved me, no matter what. But that’s a lie; there is no God (or if there is, He doesn’t seem to give a damn about us). Marx was right about religion: it’s a drug. It makes the world seem less shit while it lasts, but it’s all a delusion.
SC, you have always been right about one thing: I am a product of undeserved privilege. I was lucky enough to be born into a caring middle-class family in a wealthy country, and to get a good education. But what have I achieved with all these advantages? Fuck-all. I’m really what Rand called a “moocher”, a person who relies on others’ talent and skill to support him, and achieves nothing for himself. I’ve relied on my parents and on the State. I’ve never had a proper job. I am a fucking failure at life, and in a just world I’d probably be dead.
(This, in fact, maybe proves my point. Why should all of you – many of whom are successful, intellectually brilliant, productive, fulfilled people – be forced by the State to expend your skill and labour for my benefit? Why do you owe me anything when I have given nothing to you? But I digress. And I won’t talk any more about politics.)
I’m sorry to waste all of your time: but I’m feeling lonely, depressed, bitter and rather misanthropic this evening (mainly for various RL reasons which I won’t go into), and ranting at randomers on the internet is about all I’ve achieved with my life so far, so I might as well carry on doing it. I doubt any of you care anyway. (Nor should you.)
In case you can’t tell, I’ve had some alcohol this evening. I really shouldn’t drink – it always makes me more depressed – and I imagine I will regret being so candid in the morning. Goodnight (well, it’s night here).
I’m sorry about the above post (#408). It was inappropriate, and I’d appreciate if Professor Myers could delete it.
In the morning? Hell, it took you all of 2 minutes to regret it!
if I’m no good at political debate, there is literally nothing else that makes my life worthwhile.
A couple of your problems, if you want my $.02, are illustrated right here. First, anonymous blog-commenting is lousy therapy. I’m not necessarily advocating therapy per se, but (and I told you this a year ago when you first identified yourself as a young person with problems and little social life) I am advocating real world engagement as preferable to these contentious online interactions with strangers. Nobody here has any reason to feel sorry for you or treat you with kid gloves. But people with whom you form, or already have, engaged, reciprocal relationships will be kinder and more productive of experiences by which you can consider your life worthwhile. Reflect for a moment on why you would look for a measure of self-worth on one of the most intellectually ruthless, rough-and-tumble spots on all the web, moreover one frequented largely by folks with a political orientation antithetical to yours. It seems a mite self-defeating.
Gawds ballocks Walton! What are they teaching you Brits these days? Read some Wodehouse and discover how to be a proper young wastrel.
There’s this wonderful thing called society – and it revolves around cooperation. The wealth and success of those at the top in society is only made possible by the social structures. i.e. since society gives you the privledge that you wouldn’t otherwise have, you have in turn a reason to maintain said society.
So why should we help you when you have fallen on hard times, or vice versa? Well it’s a recognition that sometimes life throws a googly and by nothing more than circumstance, there are those who need assistance. That give two people with the same work ethic and qualifications that a myriad of differences in their life could happen purely by the opportunities afforded to them. It’s a recognition that in order to function in a society, society needs to be preserved. And above all else, it’s a recognition that we are human and to look after others is part of the human condition.
Walton:
What CJO said, and then some. I’m a big advocate of a little counseling to get over the difficulties we can’t seem to otherwise resolve by ourselves. It seems to me that you have some self-esteem issues that could best be worked on with the assistance of someone who knows how to listen, and how to offer good counsel.
And if I’m reading you right, you’re young and educated, which means you have some pretty decent prospects. Not everyone has a direction right out of school. Some of us still don’t know what we want to be when we grow up (and I’m 41 years old – my C.V. reads like William Hurt’s in Children of a Lesser God, so I know whereof I speak).
Oh, and I also support what Patricia said, too. ; )
Above all else – don’t ever take the stuff here to heart. I mean, no one here really *knows* you, right? So tell us to piss off. (Nicely. I bruise easy.)
Walton, I know it’s a glib answer, but you need to get laid. Pay for it if need be (we all pay for it, literally or metaphorically) and just feel physical contact with someone. Isolation leads to cycle of depression. Gay/straight or both – just be authentic. Asexual? That’s usually a testosterone deficiency and easily treatable. Think you’re Quasimodo? We all do from time to time. If you practice good hygiene you can find a playmate, there is someone for everyone unless your standards are set too high. ; p
FWIW-I think you are probably into humiliation. If so, a Dominatrix would do wonders for you. Play safe and live a little, Bookworm.
(And ix-nay on the olitics-pay, unless you’re into publichumiliation)
Aren’t you like 20 Walton? Shit, give yourself a chance dude. I didn’t get a real job until I was 22, spent 4 years at university gaining an education in order to be qualified for the work I’m in. Point is, fuck that Ayn Rand objectivist bullshit! You’re still growing up and you have plenty of years left in order to reciprocate the generosity that society has afforded you.
From personal experience (not the way to argue) I was really depressed throughout my university life, things weren’t going well for me at all. I had the onset of RSI at the beginning of my 2nd year at university (can you imagine what that’s like for an aspiring computer programmer?) and socially I wasn’t fitting in. Depression is fucking tough, but one thing I found is that you perpetuate and even further the symptoms by trying to bottle your own life into some preconceived ideology. Point is Walton, if you want to snap out of your depression you aren’t going to do so by setting impossible standards for yourself.
Also I agree on the ‘get laid’ comment. Getting into a relationship was possibly one of the best things I’ve done to get out of depression as it taught me that a lot of the shit I was going through in the end was quite trivial. Give yourself the opportunity to see yourself through someone else’s eyes. It may not go so well, but you should come out of it a more mature person.
And does your asshole hurt too? Or only when you get sand in it?
Walton, you are an intelligent young man. However, you are extremely naive (or naïve, if you prefer) and woefully ignorant about the real world. There’s the further point that you espouse a politico-economic philosophy disliked by the majority of the people who post here.
You claim that a person or their estate can successfully sue a corporation for injury or wrongful death. For decades the American tobacco industry was able to hold off lawsuits by people injured or killed by smoking-induced lung cancers. The first lawsuits were filed in the 1940s. The first successful lawsuit (Burton v R.J. Reynolds Tobacco 181 F.Supp.2d 1256) was won in 2002.
As for employee contracts, when I was hired by my present company I was given a contract and told “sign this and you’ve got the job.” No negotiations, no input on my part, literally a take-it-or-leave-it situation. Part of the contract says that I’ll abide by the employee handbook. That gets revised periodically but I have no input to the revisions. There are parts of the handbook that didn’t exist when I was hired but they’re now applicable to me. I have no control over the contract or the handbook and my only two options are accept them or quit. Incidentally there are things in the handbook that I don’t like and I’ve complained about. None of my complaints have changed anything.
These are real world objections to your politico-economic fantasies. And yes, the word fantasies is not hyperbolic or unwarranted.
I think I’m going to have to disagree with this one as a cure-all for unhappiness. I know from experience there are times when having sex for the wrong reasons – and I’m sure I’m not the only one who believes there are ‘bad’ reasons to have sex – can make one’s mood worse rather than better. Well, once the afterglow’s faded anyway.
While this might only happen to the minority of people (I certainly don’t consider my own behaviour regarding relationships to be sensible or practical), I wouldn’t guarantee that sex is going to help Walton.
Unfortunately, I can’t recommend an alternative. My life changed when I got into community theatre and found I was good at it. I think Walton’s just got to find what works for him.
Fuck’s sake Walton, seems a big thing to lay onto a site like this. What, you’re not good at anything, and pharygula is your sole link with reality? Oh dear. Well, I haven’t been rude to you but then you don’t hit my hobby horses and I’m not in the least interested in Libertarianism, whatever that is.
But can’t you get the polical debate you want over here in Britland? I could sense you’re in trouble here anyway because there are so many Americans on here and, frankly, you know shit about US politics. I don’t know much, but then I’m not arguing about it. This is not a happy place for the ignorant – and quite right too – that’s what churches are for.
But try not to take things too hard. If things are getting too much though, two tried and tested remedies
1) Go to a counsellor – there are many such people and just to talk to someone who doesn’t know you is brilliant. (I’ve been through almost unbelievable shit personally the last year and it’s really helped me)
2) Get off your miserable drunken arse and volunteer to help in the community. There are shit loads of people who really need help out there – it’s a good thing to do in every possible way.
But sweet crucified Myers, get yourself together, and stop fucking whining!
There is one place you can go, gain complete and instant acceptance Walton. Your local yarn shop.
Yeah, I know, you’re too manly. But really. People of all ages go there to knit, and hash out most of life’s problems. As a man, you would be a premium.
Other places young women hang out in droves, horse and dog shows.
Brothels? Don’t they hang out in brothels?
Isn’t Philadelphia the state of brothely love?
@ Walton
I recommend a daily jogging program to help with the other pieces of advice being given. It will hurt like hell at the start, and your lungs will feel like they’re about to burst if you do it properly. Keep at it – don’t rush it, just do it slowly and either increase your pace or your range in small increments per day.
Don’t think of anything else – just focus on each step as you go along. It’s a great way to build up your stamina and self-esteem.
For Walton, or anybody else with an interest they would like to share with people.
http://www.meetup.com/about/
The Redhead used it to find some other ladies in the area interested in the woven arts. Last I knew, they had several hundred categories, and a world wide listing.
Meetup is pretty good, I got involved in an atheist and a philosophy group through it.
Actually, nearly any sort of exercise helps with mood. I can’t stand jogging, though, so I ride a bike instead. Resistance exercise is also good – find the nearest gym and spend a couple of hours a week pumping iron.
What about religion? There are loads to chose from and one of them must be right, right?
AnthonyK – That sort of talk is not tolerated here. I dock you one turn at the spanking couch, and cut your bar tab by twenty ducats.
Religion indeed. *snort*
Walton, as one who’s been there, find a cognitive-behavioural therapist (and, if not a psychiatrist, preferable one affiliated with one who can manage any meds you might need.) Sex, volunteerism, and theatre (while definitely wonderful things in my experience) may not be what you need right now, especially if they fuel feelings of low self worth in the midst of a severely depressive episode.
If money’s an issue (and I have little knowledge of mental health services in the UK), consider the psychiatry department at a nearby hospital. If they haven’t got any outpatient programs, they’ll be able to give you some recommendations.
I just completed four years of group therapy for depression last September, and I’m still discovering subtle ways in which I’ve become a healthier and generally better person (until I come here and blow up at some creo moron. We call that ‘regression’.)
Please, take my advice (or at least consider it seriously). It’s far easier to deal with and change these behaviours now than it will be a decade from now, and you won’t have as many sorta-wasted years of depression to look back on and regret.
All those men in dresses, all those prayers, all those billions in heaven and hell, all that suffering and torture througout the centuries – all that was in vain?
You’re kidding right? That would be insane!
My, my: another thread about Walton.
I’ve had the dude killfiled forever, but I gather that young Walton has just spilled some guts. Fascinating.
Walton, I’m going to offer you my advice: Read Vonnegut. Start with Slaughterhouse 5 and then read Cat’s Cradle,. Next Sirens of Titan, then Galapagos. Keep going. Read Vonnegut until you grok.
Seriously….if you go to your doctor they’ll prescribe antidepressants (and exercise/talking/healthy eating etc) but they’re unlikely to recommend or refer you to a psychiatrist unless you’re really really fucked – ie suicidal or sectionable. (Incidentally, depression is apparently the no.1 cause of GP self-referrals) Because of the way the (free) health system works over here you have to be referred to a specialist by a “gatekeeper” generalist.
So you won’t easily get to a psychiatrist. But counselling, whatever model you chose, is a very valid option.
I believe he says he’s a student – well, as I’m sure is true in the US – they take student welfare very seriously, and “mental health” problems will be their first concern ( after money!)
But if things really are that bad he really should seek help. I’m still haunted by an ex-neighbour of mine who was a psychiatrist, working mostly with depressed and psychotic people (or those having episodes of these, which I think is more realistic). Anyway, she suddenly became extremely paranoid and delusional herself, refused all help – of the sort she and her colleagues routinely gave – and had to run away for months to shelter with her parents.
The most interesting thing (she’s OK now!) was that she had no insight whatsoever into her own mental health problems, and was very resistant to taking any kind of treatment – especially from the medical establishment she worked in.
But, as long as she did nothing, and denied what was happening to her, she got worse and worse.
Sorry, rambling, but I guess “mental health” is something I’m interested in.
But enough about me. Now what’s Libertarianism, and is it a good thing?
Walton,
I’ll quote meself, “Nobody here has any reason to feel sorry for you or treat you with kid gloves.” and note only that, hey look! they did anyway. Damn cold, uncaring atheists.
Listen to Brownian’s most recent though, especially about the wasted years that can come of depression. I, too, look back on my depressive 20’s as lost time, somewhat. There is a way forward, to self-esteem, and happy (or at least content) productive years and decades. It’s hard to see it from where you stand, is all.
If this starts another discussion, fuck you!
Fuck, Brownian.
I’ll out too: depression cost me years of productivity and a big dent in the career trajectory, a job, a wife and family, etc. I’m medicated now and (whether causally or coincidentally) doing much better.
Help is available.
Yeah, I know. Worse than religion, eh?
Kel told me to fuck off. Heh
No I didn’t. I said “fuck you” which is very different to “fuck off” :P
Religions, and wars, have started over just such distinctions.
But be careful, or I’ll tell the internet.
I’m sure you mean teh intratubes.
Agreed, look what just happened Walton. Young issued distress sound…adults and elders respond in a useful and helpful manner.
Your countryman Stephen Fry suffers from manic-depression and has done a lot of work on the subject, you might look into that.
Now get a grip, or do I have to come over there?
It’s not wtity to mispel “the”.
Look, we gave America the religious kooks and Australia the criminals. As a result, we no longer have these problems over here, so I’ll thank you for no further advice. Walton just needs to stiffen his lip, gird his loins, lie back and think of England. It’ll all work out for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds, as Shakespeare said.
You are a saucy one AnthonyK.
But it’s still to the back of the line for you. Corrupting the young with suggestions of religion is a blasphemous sin.
Ugh, you guys are killing me. All kidding aside, getting a grip and stiffening one’s lip is usually the exact wrong thing to do as someone with depressive tendencies–it’s the habitual suppression of one or more emotions that fucks you.
You need to find somewhere safe where you can get those icky, irrational emotions out, and for FSM’s sake, don’t try to overthink ’em. You can rationalise and analyse till the cows come home, but if you’ve got to grieve over the childhood you lost trying to parent your abusive, alcoholic father and distant victim-of-abuse mother (hm, now why does that sound familiar?) then you’ve got to fucking grieve. Leave the thinking for later. It’s probably all you’ve been doing anyway, so why not give the feeling side of being human a chance? And trust me–real, honest emotion, even sadness, is much less traumatic than the grey veil of ‘meh’ that is depression.
Walton, please take every book written by that dehumanising wretch Rand and chuck ’em. Fuck her and her complete lack of human insight (other than how to manipulate ’em, as evinced by the closed-minded cult of personality she demanded complete fealty to from all her ‘friends’.) You’ll be a better, happier person for it.
Who said anything about being wtity?
Criminals who kick your arse in cricket. Get it right ;)
It’ll all work out for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds, as Shakespeare said.
Professor Pangloss != Shakespeare
Brilliant!
Walton:
I tend to stay off the political threads, but I’ve always found you one of the most consistently articulate and interesting people on Pharyngula. Don’t sell yourself short. You stay amazingly calm and focused under fire, regularly hold your own against an entire blog, and yes, you have considerable skills in both argumentation and writing.
I think we need provocative commenters, to provoke the comments.
Yawn. Boring, Sastra.
J/K.
I like Walton too.
Brownian – He’s already rejected offers of cyber deep bosomed hugs and gentle ribald teasing. You know that leads to ass kicking here.
I hesitate to disagree with a senior OM poster, but Walton does need to get a grip and act on some of the good advise offered.
And by the same token, I will defer to anyone that has raised children, as I am only the mom of Bulldogs and chickens.
Did Vonnegut and Robert Heinlein agree on anything?
Walton is a good poster, I just wish he’d drop the whole libertarian thing.
Of course you’re right, dear Patricia. But depressives (if that’s truly what’s ailing the boy) are notoriously thick-skulled and need to be, er, nudged more than a few times to seek the help they need, mostly because they don’t think they can benefit from it or deserve to (“Yeah, maybe therapy helps other people, but I’m truly a lousy and defective human being.”)
I stand by my advice: I paid for it in personal experience, but give it away for free. All that remains (as if it were the easy part) is for him to act on it.
Don’t look at me: mine only include a handful of neon tetras, the same amount of white cloud minnows, a trio of pygmy loaches, and one albino catfish. None of them are mine by biology, but I treat them as if they were.
I might have been a little overly poetic with that last paragraph. For the record, if I ever have a human child, I’ll try to do a much better job keeping its crib algae-free. I make no promises regarding regular meals of brine shrimp though–or are babies best fed a flake-only diet?
@ Walton #408,
Yikes. Well, I think you learned a lesson. Never write something drunk! Don’t feel too bad. I learned that the hard way too, and it wasn’t directed at random people on the internet.
Dude, put down the razor blade. I think everyone here thinks you’re bright. Yes, we are too harsh to you (I include myself), but you shouldn’t take it too personal.
I don’t know what exactly got you into this bad mood, but in vino veritas. If you really are feeling bad maybe you should ask your physician about anti-depressants, if you haven’t already. I say this as someone who is on them and for whom it has worked.
As for your achievements, you are attending Oxford, IIRC, no small feat. Just wait a while. Almost no one your age has really accomplished anything.
I hope this has helped. If not, well at least I’ve said I’m on anti-depressants and admitted to have written an personal email while drunk. So, you’re not the only one being embarrassed on this thread!
P.S. Probably not the best time to mention this, but I can’t help to point out that yet another thread has turned into a discussion about Walton!
Brownian – I fault my generation for this lack of self esteem in the younger generation. All most of us have done is point and laugh. That’s not right.
Delight in a child’s accomplishments should never go unexpressed. Hell I used to get kisses for pulling on cows tits.
Sigh. Walton, Walton, Walton.
It may be worthwhile to consider the entire passage in context:
If drinking alcohol makes you more unhappy, then don’t drink alcohol.
If people bug you about it, say that you’re allergic. Having a bad emotional reaction is as good a reason for not drinking as having a bad physical reaction — and really, a bad emotional reaction is a bad physical reaction. And, now I think of it, that might be another way to phrase it: Say that you have a bad reaction to alcohol. Or don’t explain, if you don’t want to: Say that you don’t drink, and leave it at that.
You might want to give up Pharyngula for less abrasive online fora. Consider, for example, Making Light, which has comment threads like this:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010990.html
Although I am afraid they they will not be kind to Libertarianism there, either. Sorry.
But if you say something like “I’m trying to work out how I feel about religion; I like the forms and ceremonies but I have lost my faith that any of it means anything” (or whatever), you might find the responses more generally helpful and sympathetic than what you usually get here. And even the opposition to Libertarianism might at least be a little more polite, maybe. Try posting to the most recent Open Thread, and see what happens.
The Internet is a big place. You might just want to find a conversational place in it that you fit into better than here.
As for posting drunk on the internet – it can be anywhere from fucking entertaining to downright embarrassing. I still do the “posting drunk” thing, though now I have a good list of certain topics to avoid. i.e. any situation is what you make of it, just don’t write off the “posting drunk” thing otherwise Hitchens will come to your house to deface your wall with permanent marker.
Just stopped by to say hello and lend some advice to Walten that my Grandfather once said( Life is a rocky road, Sometimes the rocks are bigger than other times)Now get back on the road- it does lead somewhere and where it may lead you? Who can tell?
Now I have to get back to saving the world, well part of it anyway. Every piece counts……..right?
w’yis#387,
“There’s no misunderstanding. You believe that the ability of homophobes to legislate against gay rights should trump the ability of gay people to seek justice through the courts. Gay people should wait until they have the approval of enough homophobes to vote to grant them their rights. We heard you the first time.”
It is actually more about respecting other collective sovereignties. Under the current legal system the federal government has no more right to impose gay marriage upon the states than it does upon Iraq. It may be as stupid to respect the sovereignty of the states as it was for some to call upon the US to respect the sovereignty of Saddam. What is important is not sovereign rights but individual rights. I’m sure that the left anarchists will agree with me, that there should be no government involvement in the licensing of marriage, hetero-, homo-, polyandrous-, polygamous-, group- or otherwise.
To all,
I apologise sincerely for blathering drunkenly about my personal problems last night. Despite this, thank you to those (Sastra, Brownian etc.) who’ve provided constructive advice.
In reply to Twin Skies and others who’ve suggested exercise, I’ve been going to the gym regularly, and running regularly, for two-and-a-half years. It has helped a bit. But it isn’t, of course, a cure-all (and I doubt you were suggesting it as such).
I will bow out of this thread now, since I don’t think a long discussion about me is really what Professor Myers wants on his blog. And I will refrain from discussing libertarianism here for a while at least, though I can’t promise that I will never come back.
Walton, when I felt the way you did, I went to the counselling service and got some cognitive behavioural therapy, it was very effective. I once had the experience of telling a friend that I was very unhappy, and getting back a blank stare and the comment “But you don’t have any problems”. That can suck. My own experience suggests that drinking heavily really doesn’t help and can damage the upholstery; getting laid can either (a) be an utter trainwreck that leaves you feeling worse or (b) improve your life immeasurably when you meet the right person, get married and become much happier, which happened to me just about when I’d given up hope. Hang in there, and consider adopting a politics that doesn’t deify selfishness, it’s not good for you.
Oh, no. I posted that as I was leaving my office, fell asleep shortly after returning home, and missed this whole thing. Ay.
Yes.
Are you serious? Who the hell would expect you to have achieved anything more than what you have at your age?
That is not true. Please, please, please get help. I realize you were drunk when you wrote that, and you’re a drama king even under the best of circumstances :), but you’re fortunate to have counseling available to you and you need to seek it out. Take Brownian’s advice. Please. Please. Please. I mean it. Please.
You’re not, but no one expects you to be at your age – only to be dedicated to learning more.
That doesn’t follow. You’re a fine writer and debater. You’re simply writing from a political position that lacks both evidence and decency. Perhaps if you also experimented with a different kind of writing – more journalistic or historico-journaistic, say…
Yes it is, but life without it is not all Nausea (please don’t read that right now). Have you ever watched Cosmos? Do! (I will say that it all leaves me overwhelmed, as the image that PZ put up a few posts back reminded me. I think I’m only able to live because I’m not thinking about it all the time. I don’t know how astronomers do it.)
SC,OM,
“You’re simply writing from a political position that lacks both evidence and decency.”
Surely these things are relative. A political position that is highly tolerant of diversity and chemical freedom, opposes conscription and other extreme coercive government policies, and doesn’t stoop to daemonizing class warfare and race baiting rhetoric ranks pretty high on any decency scale.
Hyperbole such as yours reminds me of the attempts to daemonize Bush with fascism scale based on several characteristics one writer thought characteristic of fascism. Of course Bush was right over there next to Stalin and Hitler. This seems quite bad until one realizes that somehow FDR, Wilson, Nixon, Johnson, Truman, and Lincoln would have to somehow be squeezed in there between Bush and Hitler. Perspective please!
A political position which holds that, if I have food in plenty and my neighbour is starving, I am perfectly within my rights to keep all the food and my neighbour would be morally wrong to try to take any, ranks zero on any decency scale. Property rights do not a morality make.
A political position that is highly tolerant of diversity and chemical freedom, opposes conscription even if necessary to prevent an Axis victory in WW2 and other extreme coercive government policies, and
doesn’t stoop to daemonizing class warfare and race baiting rhetoricsupports privilege by pretending class- and race-based oppression no longer occur – AfricangenesisPerspective provided. No thanks necessary.
Stephen Wells#464,
Either you have nearly everybody at zero on the scale and don’t know any fat left anarchists, or you have a very local view of neighbor, because there are starving people in the world even today, and believe it or not, there are people feeding high quality protein to cats and dogs.
Your “zero” is mere hyperbole.
Says the kookball who labels everyone who calls him out on his ignorance a “left anarchist” and thinks anarchism involves vanguardist leaders and central planning.
Decency requires a genuine engagement with human-social reality. Walton shows the potential for such an engagement (if not always the willingness). You, in contrast, don’t appear to be able to read, write, or think coherently. You’re a total waste of time.
Africangenesis wrote:
Now the anarchists are fat as well?
SC,OM,
“and thinks anarchism involves vanguardist leaders and central planning.”
The failure of left anarchists to participate in explaining how their ideology would work in the real world invites speculation. Related eschatologies on the left help fill the vacuum. I can see your eyes glowing with religious zeal, even through the internet. We all should await the second coming of Kropotkin.
Wowbanger,
Not that the anarchists are fat, but rather that the ones that are fat would have to also be at zero on Stephen Well’s “decency” scale.
And Walton, while I encourage you with every fiber of my being to get help there, in RL, you shouldn’t feel like you don’t have a sympathetic ear here. I’ll continue to tell you to STFU when you say things that infuriate me, but I do care about your welfare. We’re all struggling through this life together, and the people here – even if we firmly oppose certain political positions – are fundamentally compassionate, don’t want to see anyone suffer, and try our best to help. You’re not alone.
The latter part of this thread can’t possibly exist, since atheists can know nothing of compassion.
Or so I’ve been told. Repeatedly. :D
/end snark
I realised after writing #465 that it’s Walton’s version of “libertarianism”, not africangenesis’s, that SC was referring to. Whether Walton would agree with africangenesis on the points he (africangenesis) singled out, I don’t know.
Walton, you might consider that it may be that your “libertarian” philosophy is contributing to your misery – given its extreme stress on (I’ll try and put this neutrally) competition and self-reliance – at a time when you are already in a highly competitive environment, and at an age where you haven’t the resources, either economic or emotional, to be self-reliant. That wouldn’t mean the philosophy is wrong (although it is), but you might try being a little less certain about it, and reading things which are not directly political, but will give you a better background to assess political philosophies – history particularly, and not just that of Europe and the USA. In my late 20s/early 30s, when I was struggling to finish my doctorate, and feeling pretty low, I relaxed by finding and reading at least one substantial treatment of the history of each major region of the world. I’d also endorse what several others have said about getting professional help – like several on here, I’ve had treatment for depression (both pills and CBT in my case) and found it helpful. Pills are likely to be immediately available, CBT will have a waiting list unless you pay.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/
There’s also a growing historical literature.
Actually, I’m going to say something about this. “Fatness” is no longer an indication of privilege or well-being. Many of the people, in all areas around the world, who are obese are also poor. They are consuming high-calorie, industrially-processed foods that are affordable to them. (This is the result of the practices and political power of capitalist agribusiness, which are based on land-theft and continuing oppression.) Claims of “overnourishment” ignore micronutrient malnutrition and the other effects (including environmental) of this diet. Anarchism, especially since Kropotkin (read his books at the link above – especially Fields, Factories, and Workshops and The Conquest of Bread), has had practical ideas about scientific and just food provision.
Africangenesis, a man who thinks that “neighbour” has nothing to do with proximity… amazing. Consider use of a dictionary when you meet words you’re not sure of. Also, the inability to distinguish between an entire political system based on selfishness vs. the undoubted existence of selfish individuals is a basic cognitive error.
Stephen Wells#475,
You did go for the proximity excuse! I thought that was beneath you. Christians have used that “neighbor” excuse for generations also. Well, go ahead, enjoy your food.
SC’OM#474,
Thanx for the link, I’m curious enough to look it over.
On the subject of nutrition beans and corn are cheap, or at least were before the ethanol mandates and subsidy. But fresh fruits and vegetables are relatively expensive, even for the relatively rich west. Presumably those prices reflect some realities in terms of labor, refrigeration, seasonality and lower intensity of land use. Are you aware of ideas that can lower the costs of production and increase the yield the production?
Walton: (final thoughts)
Brownian’s advice (although not as tongue in cheek as my brilliant solution) is dead on. Without the elaborate mystical oasis of religion, you have to find purpose and not wallow in navel gazing until the Grand Cosmic Poobah reveals your role as a shining cog in the universal mystery. Over-intellectualizing isn’t helping either. Try some mindless simple diversions for a change. Someone mentioned volunteering, it’s an excellent suggestion. Isolation, whether it’s physical or emotional, just draws you into a deeper depression. Find a pleasurable activity that isn’t intellectually centered and knock off the booze. Wowbagger is also right, amateur theater is usually a great choice for those in search of purpose, no matter how banal (baby steps, oh newly unblinded one), and companionship.
I reiterate, stop intellectualizing about everything, (we get it -you’re precociously bright) and start finding simple pleasures to enjoy. And don’t be so frickin’ hard on yourself (we’ll do that for you).
Related eschatologies on the left help fill the vacuum. – Adfricangenesis
Translation: I’m going to attribute to you ideas diametrically opposite to those you hold, to distract attention from the callousness of my own ideology.
there are starving people in the world even today, and believe it or not, there are people feeding high quality protein to cats and dogs. – Africangenesis
People who are starving are not doing so because there is not enough food being grown, but because they can’t afford what is available for sale. I would have thought even someone as crassly ignorant as you would know that.
See Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma (and, if you can take the preachiness) for some of the background. I’ve heard the film King Corn is good, but haven’t yet seen it. Histories of agriculture (global – you could focus on those about agriculturally-based social movements) are also useful.
They reflect, as I said, land theft and continuing oppression. There are some signs that this is changing. A nonreductionist scientific (that includes healthful) and just system of food provision will be based on changes and struggles at the local, national, and global levels. There’s a huge amount of exciting work going on in this area.
Yes, and not just ideas but practical work. But it’s pointless to try to explain them to you unless you have some background in this. You can start by reading the works by Kropotkin that I cited above.
Wrong, the Civil War pretty much established that the individual states are not sovereign entities. And it isn’t about “imposing gay marriage”, it is about removing discrimination. Whether government should or should not be licensing marriage, the fact is that it does, and as such it needs to do so fairly and without discrimination. That means if they are to grant a priviliged status to the marriage of two people, they cannot specify the sex of those two people just as they cannot specify their race or religion.
…(and , if you can take the preachiness)…
HTML FAIL. Should’ve been “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, if…” (and especially the brief sections on WWII Victory Gardens). It’s annoying, but there’s some useful stuff. Vandana Shiva is far better. :)
Knockgoats,
Hansen quotes himself here:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2006/WorldWatch_20061006.pdf
You might also be interested that Gore is now retracting one of his disaster hyperbole slides:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/gore-pulls-slide-of-disaster-trends/?pagemode=print
You might also be interested that Gore is now retracting one of his disaster hyperbole slides
One more time, moron: nobody cares. The only one with the Gore fixation here is you.
Once again, I apologise to everyone for my rant, and I feel very guilty about wasting all of your time. I’m also concerned that people I know in RL could trace me to this site (I don’t exactly go to great lengths to keep my identity secret online; I use my real name on my blog, for a start), and I would really rather that my original post was deleted, as it may cause some embarrassment to me in the future. I know that it is possible for the blog administrator to delete posts – as it gets done frequently with banned users – so I beg Professor Myers to remove it.
Africangenesis,
Thanks for the Hansen ref – as you see, the original was not from the source GWIAS gave; and as I said, the implication that Hansen had admitted lying, is utterly false.
Why on earth would I be particularly interested that Gore has dropped a recently added slide from his presentation in response to (what looks like justifiable) criticism? Those who accept the scientific consensus on AGW are not the ones with the ludicrous Gore-fixation, remember?
Stu,
“The only one with the Gore fixation here is you.”
Evidence please. I’m pretty sure that Chis has been to one of Gore’s classes for evangelizing AGW. There are probably others also.
Whoops, that should have been “Chris” of course. Also, Stu, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think I have posted on Gore before, certainly not recently. So where does your “fixation” comment come from?
It’s okay Walton. It’s not as earth shatteringly humiliating as you now perceive it to be. Your Libertarian posts are much more mortifying.
Walton – I think your post should stay. I personally think it was interesting, expecially to see how the frequently critical posters here rallied round sympathetically. I think it was perhaps rather embarrassingly maudlin, but hey – that was the worst mistake you made – think how the evening could have turned out :(
I wouldn’t worry about anyone finding out about it. You have to be a pretty hard-core pharyngulite to find it, or comment, or care.
So, let it stay. I hope you’ve learned a lesson melad!
“The only one with the Gore fixation here is you.”- stu
Evidence please. – Africangenesis
Well, evidence that you have one is #484 – since your reference to Gore has no relevance to the current topics on this thread. GWIAS, who has a much worse case of Gore fixation syndrome, isn’t currently around, so it’s quite reasonable to say what Stu did.
“Why on earth would I be particularly interested that Gore has dropped a recently added slide from his presentation in response to (what looks like justifiable) criticism?”
Well the subject appeared to be disaster hyperbole surrounding AGW, and Gore dropping some, just happened to be in the news yesterday. Timely tidbit, and an example of honesty, that is all.
>>>Civil War pretty much established that the individual states are not sovereign entities
replace that word established with imposed and we are on to something.
Walton – Even if it’s deleted, I suspect a record will exist. I understand your concern; I really do. But it’s doubtful that members of your conservative club know that this blog exists. And who gives a shit?! Don’t give a shit!
And if your participation here were eventually “discovered,” it would – if you continue to engage and grow – be to your credit for any reasonable person. That’s what I keep trying to explain: Learning and growing (and even thinking “I can’t believe I ever thought that!”) are nothing shameful. Intellectual humility is a virtue. No one with any character would hold it against you, and anyone who does isn’t worth worrying about.
Fuck ’em. :)
@ Bureaucratus Minimis:
There is indeed a difference between columnist and reporter and it is no doubt underappreciated. But there is also a difference between columnists and fiction writers. I’m not familiar with the protocol for newspapers (though the Post, at least, claims to fact check opinion pieces) but I know magazines fact-check every fact in an opinion piece because they can be held liable for the contents. A columnist has free-reign, so to speak, to interpret facts however they like and for political columnists that’s easy because there aren’t as many solid facts. But when writing a science column, the writer can’t just make up another set of facts to fit his opinion, that would kind of defeat the purpose of a column in the first place.
Africangenesis, you lying liar. You’re trying to put a pretty gloss on it, but all you’re talking about is the collective sovereignty of homophobes to deny the individual rights of gay people. You want gay people to have to wait to get approval from homophobes. And blacks to wait to get approval from racists, I may safely assume, as your ideology also holds that Loving v. Virginia was wrong.
BTW way, Walton. Your blog is fucking bollocks – no wonder people here get cross with you! Are you really defending Fred fucking Phelps’s “right” to “free speech”? What’s the matter, a young man and a rabid right-winger? At least get some optimism about the world before old-age makes you bitter and opinionated!
I’m sorry everyone. I never did read his posts. Now I know why!
SC, you are the most interesting mix of sensitivity and exquisite verbal brutality. I am in awe.
W,yis,
What am I “lying” about? Evidence please? By analogy you think that those opposing the invasion of Iraq, were not REALLY concerned about Saddam’s sovereignty, but were just fascists protecting one of their own.
I honestly don’t believe the government should be in the marriage licensing business, prove otherwise. You throw around “lying”, but evidently have no compunction about doing it yourself.