Why is S.E. Cupp always on TV?

Actually, I could turn on the TV right now and find a dozen pseudo-authorities who don’t deserve to be in the spotlight. S.E. Cupp is just particularly annoying to me because she presents herself as an atheist (a self-loathing one, though) and intellectual, yet as Amanda Marcotte says, she may be the dumbest pundit working.

I think we have a winner in the Dumbest Pundit Alive Olympics. At least until Ross Douthat starts thinking about vaginas again.

David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, Glenn Beck, anyone associated with Politico, Richard Cohen, Peggy Noonan, Erick Erickson…jeez, we can’t possibly crown just one. It’s like a whole dumb hack circus out there. I can’t even turn on the TV on Sunday morning ’cause I can’t afford to replace it after I throw my tea mug through it.

And not just Sunday morning. One of the things I can’t stand about Bill Maher is that he uses his show to give these clowns a forum.

Oh, well then, no problem

elkriver

A chemical plant in West Virginia, for a company called Freedom Industries (there’s a name that screams last refuge of scoundrels for you), spilled about 5,000 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol into the local water table. It turned the water in the rivers blue-green and reeking of licorice. The safety sheet for this chemical has a few cautions.

36: Irritating to the eyes
37: Irritating to the respiratory system
38: Irritating to the skin

26: In case of contact with eyes, rinse immediately with plenty of water and seek medical advice
27: Take off immediately all contaminated clothing
28: After contact with skin, wash immediately with plenty of … (to be specified by the manufacturer)
29: Do not empty into drains
30: Never add water to this product
33: Take precautionary measures against static discharges
35: This material and its container must be disposed of in a safe way
36: Wear suitable protective clothing
37: Wear suitable gloves
39: Wear eye/face protection

I like how the treatment suggestions include rinsing immediately with water. What do you do when the water is tainted with this stuff?

But don’t panic! The director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute is telling everyone not to worry.

Even at its current concentrations, however, the chemical is unlikely to cause any serious harm, Ziemkiewicz said.

“You’d have to drink something like 1,700 gallons of water to even approach a lethal dose,” he said. If a person drank a glass or two of tainted water, “I would be astonished if that caused any serious problems.”

Seriously? They’re simultaneously telling everyone to not drink the green water, don’t bathe in it, don’t wash your babies with it, and hey, the green stinky chemical contaminants coming out of your tap are just fine? Perhaps Ziemkiewicz would like to define “serious”. It seems to be something along the lines of “you’re not dropping dead, your glass of water is just making you vomit.”

Our expectations of what it means to live on a habitable planet seem to be dropping. I don’t think the head of an institute dedicated to researching clean water ought to be downplaying the toxic effects of the coal industry on water quality in the region. But that’s just me.

At least we aren’t getting the Ayn Rand approach to environmentalism yet, which would argue that the chemical tint to the water increases its scenic value, and that that odor is the scent of prosperity.

And we’re only getting a little bit of an effort to tie environmental disasters to biblical prophecy.

So sure, it could be worse. The whole planet could be exploding, but all we’re doing is soaking it with toxins. You could be melting and dying in agony right now, but really all that’s happening is that you’re drinking a slow poison.

Relax.

All misery is relative.

Don’t let the little things bother you, like dilute chemical irritants in your drinking water.

Shut up.

Go fight the big problems, like exploding planets and melty death. Let the little ones slide.

Really. Hush. It’s a little problem.

You can trust a company called Freedom Industries, can’t you?

I have something in common with Ally Fogg

I knew I wasn’t alone in this. The most common dismissive argument I get from the men’s rights crowd gets repeated to me on a daily basis. It’s tired and old and stupid, and is a prime example of projection. Ally Fogg gets the same thing.

So what is this rancid little snotbubble of idiocy? It’s the tedious cliche that says any man who says or writes something which could be perceived to be sympathetic to women or feminism must only be doing so in the hope of getting a shag.

My critics usually follow up with something about how I’m also fat and old and have a beard and am boring and look hideous. Apparently, I’m so desperate because of my appalling unattractiveness that I’ve had to stoop to feminism to try and get laid.

It’s all wrong. Well, not the old homely part, but the rest is stupidly false. I’m not interested in having sex with anyone but my wife — I have, surprisingly, had a few outside invitations which I have politely, respectfully, and with much appreciation turned down. I have a good strong relationship with my wife so such suggestions only make me uncomfortable. It’s like I have been dining every day on gourmet meals prepared by an attentive chef, and someone offers me a delicious pastry on the side…I’m not at all hungry, it’s pretty easy to demur.

But feminism is good for one thing. It may not get you a quicky shag, but it turns out that respecting another human being as a person and treating them as an equal might sometimes get you into a long term mutually happy relationship.

I also like to point out that with 7 billion people on the planet, half of them women, you’re going to have sex with an infinitesimal fraction of them, no matter how much of a Don Juan you are. If you only see people through the lens of your penis, you have lost sight of the overwhelming majority of human possibilities.

Brace yourself for August

I know most of my readers are Americans, and the United States media will not have much to say (other than to sound an occasional note of triumphalism), but if you’re at all informed about the world, you should be thinking about WWI this summer — it will be the centenary of the beginning of World War I on 3 August. That’s a really good long read, by the way, that summarizes the early events of the war and explains why Germany, France, Russia, and Great Britain still care about the bloody price they paid in that deadly wasteful war.

More than 60 million soldiers from five continents participated in that orgy of violence. Almost one in six men died, and millions returned home with injuries or missing body parts — noses, jaws, arms. Countries like France, Belgium and the United Kingdom are planning international memorial events, wreath-laying ceremonies, concerts and exhibits, as are faraway nations like New Zealand and Australia, which formed their identities during the war.

Sit down with your cup of tea or coffee and read the whole thing.

Good story and a good line

Amy Parker grew up with an all natural lifestyle: avoiding processed food and sugars, an active outdoor lifestyle, eating local organic foods, the whole crunchy natural lifestyle. She was also never vaccinated…and remembers her childhood as a succession of flattening diseases. Now she’s all grown up and is very sensibly vaccinating her own kids and eschewing the woo nonsense, and is happier and healthier than ever. It’s a positive story all around.

Oh, and the good line I’m going to have to steal:

If you think your child’s immune system is strong enough to fight off vaccine-preventable diseases, then it’s strong enough to fight off the tiny amounts of dead or weakened pathogens present in any of the vaccines.

How ya doin’, Nebraska?

The double bill at the Morris theater had me concerned about you guys.

frozennebraska

As for Minnesota, it’s wonderful! It was -2°C outside, so I went for a nice long walk. Hatless. Gloveless. I unzipped my coat, even. If I’d done another mile, I might have stripped down to my underwear and danced all the way home.

It’s still a downer that Nebraska is suffering so.

They really are just putting up obnoxious roadblocks

The right has been obsessed with putting up pointless obstacles to getting an abortion: waiting periods, ultrasounds, vaginal ultrasounds, etc. Their entire purpose is to punish and increase the suffering and anxiety of women trying to get a legal and necessary procedure done, because they sure as heck have nothing to do with actually dissuading women from getting abortions.

Researchers analyzed over 15,575 visits to a large, urban abortion provider in 2011. All of the patients received an ultrasound before continuing with the abortion procedure, and all of them were given the opportunity to look at the image. Most patients chose not to look at it. Women did opt to view the ultrasound about 42 percent of the time — and among those women, about 98 percent of them went on to have an abortion anyway. Looking an the ultrasound only had an impact among the seven percent of women who reported they didn’t feel very certain about ending the pregnancy. “Such viewing does not alter decisions of the large majority of women who are certain that abortion is the right decision,” the researchers concluded.

That aligns with previous, smaller studies into this area. In 2012, after reviewing the data from two separate studies on the impact of ultrasounds, University of California researchers concluded that women’s emotional responses to seeing an ultrasound can vary, but those emotions ultimately don’t lead them to cancel their abortion appointment. Other studies have reported that 87 percent of women are “highly confident” about their decision to have an abortion, and state requirements that are intended to give them time to change their minds — like forced waiting periods, mandatory counseling sessions, and ultrasounds — don’t change their mind. Furthermore, a full 90 percent of women say their primary reaction to ending a pregnancy is “relief” and report they don’t regret their decision, suggesting that further invention wouldn’t have changed that reality.

The whole idea that ultrasounds might have a persuasive effect is built on the infantilization of women: if I show you a picture of your big-eyed placid fetus, you’ll break down in tears, fall in love with that grainy image (because you’re a woman, and that’s what you do, coo over baby pictures), and abort the abortion.

What the data actually show, though, is that women think seriously about the consequences of their decisions and make choices confidently — and that maybe significant life-changing decisions will not be lightly swayed by a jebus-lovin’ state senator telling doctors to make pregnant women stare at flickering gray images.