The Supreme Court dealt the Gun Cult a blow this week with the decision on Abramski v. United States. The court ruled 5-4 and affirmed the lower court's decision that regardless of whether the actual buyer could have purchased the gun, a person who buys a gun on someone else’s behalf while falsely claiming that it is for himself makes a material misrepresentation punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(6), which prohibits knowingly making false statements “with respect to any fact material to the lawfulness of a sale of a gun.”
In a nutshell, no more straw purchases.
SCOTUS Blog has a great breakdown of the decision with this great pull quote.
Although Congress in recent years has been unable or unwilling to pass new gun-control laws, the elaborate scheme of background checking that was at issue in Monday’s ruling remains fully in force. The decision in Abramski v. United States almost certainly will make that scheme work more reliably to track the movement of guns across the U.S.
“No piece of information is more important under federal law ,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority, ”than the identity of a gun’s purchaser — the person who acquires a gun as a result of a transaction with a licensed dealer.” Answering a form that asks about the actual purchase, Kagan added, “is fundamental to the lawfulness of a gun sale.” A sale cannot even occur unless the true buyer is correctly identified, and is at the counter seeking to buy a weapon, the opinion noted.
Why this was legal before today is illustrative of the idiocy of the Gun Cult. Worse, it shows the level of dishonesty to which they will sink when they say they are "responsible" gun owners. What kind of responsible person would support this sort of activity? They claim to want increased law enforcement and crackdowns on criminals but straw purchases essentially gives the bad guys a blank check.
Oh well, that shit is over now and the Supreme Court finally got something right.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
This Photo=Bowels Blown
Two scientists and the president hanging out. I can just hear the insecure and most definitely suffering from inferiority complex conservatives' blood pressure rising and the anaphylactic shock taking hold with a dash of Joan Collins thrown in...
Liars!! LIARS!!!!
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Glenn Beck Admits the Right Was Wrong on Iraq
Miracle of miracles, Glenn Beck has admitted that the right was wrong: he says the people who opposed the invasion of Iraq were right.
They want to enforce their religion, their morality and their worldview on everyone in the country. They believe their religious leaders should be able to dictate the most intimate details of everyone's lives, even in the privacy of their bedrooms. They believe that their version of religion is the only correct version, that god is on their side, that he guides their every move and that this justifies and blesses everything they do.
They do not believe in justice for all, they believe in vengeance. They do not believe that everyone is created equal, they believe they are superior to those who are not just like them. They believe that women are less than men, that women should marry who they're told to marry (and certainly not other women), that women should only wear the clothes "that keep them safe," that women should behave a certain way to avoid giving men the wrong idea.
They think there's nothing wrong with preventing others from exercising their basic rights, such as women controlling their own bodies and deciding what hormones to take, letting women decide for themselves whether or how to delay having children. They have no problem using intimidation and other means to prevent their opponents from voting.
They don't believe in negotiating with their opponents to reach an accommodation that will satisfy most of what each side wants: they want everything their way and want to deny their opponents even the smallest victory. They view the tiniest compromise as a total betrayal of their core beliefs that will result in total destruction of their faith.
These bad actors don't believe that the whole country should work together in order for everyone to succeed. They separate everyone into us and them. They believe that themselves to be the only real defenders of their country, and that there are too many of those people -- people who are not just like them -- who are destroying it.
They believe that violence and the force of arms are a legitimate and immediate recourse against anyone whom they view as a threat.
Oh, wait a second. Were we talking about obstacles to democracy in Iraq or the conservative American political machine?
A democracy only works if there's give and take, if people negotiate in good faith to come to an agreement that lets everyone get some of what they want and need. Democracy fails when too many people insist on having everything their way and refusing to work together, demonizing opponents, constantly lobbing bombs (physical and verbal) at their opponents, constantly trying to gain the upper hand and gain control of everything, and then rig the system so that they can maintain that hold on power, by hook or by crook, forever.
By watching how Iraq is falling apart, we might learn a thing or two about how to make Americans work better together.
“[Liberals] said we couldn’t force freedom on people,” Beck said at the start of his Tuesday radio show. “Let me lead with my mistakes. You were right. Liberals, you were right, we shouldn’t have.”
“In spite of the things I felt at the time when we went into war, liberals said, ‘We shouldn’t get involved, we shouldn’t nation-build and there was no indication the people of Iraq had the will to be free,’” Beck said. “I thought that was insulting at the time. Everybody wants to be free.”Though Beck understands now that the right was wrong, he still doesn't seem to get why the right was wrong. The problem isn't that you "can't force freedom on people." The problem is that you can't invade a country and force people to be reasonable, fair and considerate. Too many people -- though not all by far -- are selfish and tribal. These bad actors say they want freedom, but they want it only for themselves. Freedom and power for their own religion and their own leaders to do whatever they want, while denying certain freedoms to their enemies.
On Tuesday, Beck admitted, “You cannot force democracy on the Iraqis or anybody else, it doesn’t work. They don’t understand it or even really want it.”
They want to enforce their religion, their morality and their worldview on everyone in the country. They believe their religious leaders should be able to dictate the most intimate details of everyone's lives, even in the privacy of their bedrooms. They believe that their version of religion is the only correct version, that god is on their side, that he guides their every move and that this justifies and blesses everything they do.
They do not believe in justice for all, they believe in vengeance. They do not believe that everyone is created equal, they believe they are superior to those who are not just like them. They believe that women are less than men, that women should marry who they're told to marry (and certainly not other women), that women should only wear the clothes "that keep them safe," that women should behave a certain way to avoid giving men the wrong idea.
They think there's nothing wrong with preventing others from exercising their basic rights, such as women controlling their own bodies and deciding what hormones to take, letting women decide for themselves whether or how to delay having children. They have no problem using intimidation and other means to prevent their opponents from voting.
They don't believe in negotiating with their opponents to reach an accommodation that will satisfy most of what each side wants: they want everything their way and want to deny their opponents even the smallest victory. They view the tiniest compromise as a total betrayal of their core beliefs that will result in total destruction of their faith.
These bad actors don't believe that the whole country should work together in order for everyone to succeed. They separate everyone into us and them. They believe that themselves to be the only real defenders of their country, and that there are too many of those people -- people who are not just like them -- who are destroying it.
They believe that violence and the force of arms are a legitimate and immediate recourse against anyone whom they view as a threat.
Oh, wait a second. Were we talking about obstacles to democracy in Iraq or the conservative American political machine?
A democracy only works if there's give and take, if people negotiate in good faith to come to an agreement that lets everyone get some of what they want and need. Democracy fails when too many people insist on having everything their way and refusing to work together, demonizing opponents, constantly lobbing bombs (physical and verbal) at their opponents, constantly trying to gain the upper hand and gain control of everything, and then rig the system so that they can maintain that hold on power, by hook or by crook, forever.
By watching how Iraq is falling apart, we might learn a thing or two about how to make Americans work better together.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
The Benghazi Litmus Test
How can you tell if a Republican has gone off the deep end? Try this litmus test...
If you are a Republican who feels Benghazi was a tragic and regrettable incident involving violence against an American diplomatic mission abroad that was essentially the same as the numerous incidents of violence against American diplomatic missions that took place under the George W. Bush administration, then ... cool. We can (probably) have a rational conversation.
If you are a Republican who feels Benghazi was a deliberate betrayal of America by the dastardly Barack Hussein Obama who gleefully cackled and rubbed his hands as brave Americans died because he knowingly refused to save them, then ... you are a f***ing RWNJ and we have nothing further to discuss.
Which one are you?
If you are a Republican who feels Benghazi was a tragic and regrettable incident involving violence against an American diplomatic mission abroad that was essentially the same as the numerous incidents of violence against American diplomatic missions that took place under the George W. Bush administration, then ... cool. We can (probably) have a rational conversation.
If you are a Republican who feels Benghazi was a deliberate betrayal of America by the dastardly Barack Hussein Obama who gleefully cackled and rubbed his hands as brave Americans died because he knowingly refused to save them, then ... you are a f***ing RWNJ and we have nothing further to discuss.
Which one are you?
Most Excellent Words
From an answer to a question on Quora...
The gun rights community isn't the only community in which one might find hostility directed towards those who, by some measure, are a member of that community but do not tow the party line. I'd suspect some gay Republicans feel like they're not tolerated; perhaps an animal rights advocate might get some flack for not being a vegetarian; someone who identifies as a progressive might find themselves unwelcome among others because they like guns.
Having said all of the above, I'll throw it out there that...
At the same time, I...
Well said!
The gun rights community isn't the only community in which one might find hostility directed towards those who, by some measure, are a member of that community but do not tow the party line. I'd suspect some gay Republicans feel like they're not tolerated; perhaps an animal rights advocate might get some flack for not being a vegetarian; someone who identifies as a progressive might find themselves unwelcome among others because they like guns.
Having said all of the above, I'll throw it out there that...
- I do believe responsible citizens can own guns.
- I own guns, and enjoy them for sport (as well as appreciate the technology that often goes in to them).
- I enjoy spending time at the range and genuinely find many firearms quite neat (not to trivialize them for what they are and are capable of doing).
- I do see parallels in overzealous attempts to curb 2nd amendment rights with such attempts to curb 1st amendment rights and other constitutional rights.
At the same time, I...
- Find many among the "We need guns to defend against an oppressive government!!" types to be more of a threat to all of our collective safety and freedom than any government will ever be.
- Quite firmly believe that our own country's history post-Revolution shows us these self-styled militia types are more likely to be the ones marching alongside the "jackbooted thugs" of an oppressive regime to persecute fellow citizens, rather than standing up for overall freedom.
- Think there are some completely absurd weapons out there, and it is likewise absurd they're so often easy to acquire.
- Am thoroughly disgusted by the leadership and tactics of the NRA's lobbying and political arms (though, beyond the usual indoctrination that takes place when among them, can appreciate the organization's efforts on gun-safety and training fronts).
Well said!
Monday, June 16, 2014
If You Have No Exit Strategy Don't Enter
The media is full of Republicans blaming President Obama for the current mess in Iraq. Articles like this one in the New York Times paint Bush as being prescient, saying that leaving Iraq prematurely would have dire consequences.
Yet in 2003 George W. Bush and his cronies said that the invasion of Iraq would be a cakewalk, a brief brilliant burst of glory. We would emerge victorious in six days, or six weeks, or six months at most (remember the Mission Accomplished banner?). But when Bush left office in 2009 our forces had been fighting there for almost six years and more than 5,000 Americans had died there.
Bush's lies were not just about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, or his involvement with 9/11. The real lie was that we could successfully invade and pacify Iraq in a short time, for a minimal investment (they said the invasion would pay for itself), with no help from the rest of the world.
Yes, we invaded and occupied Germany and Japan, turning them into upstanding world citizens and allies. Those countries were united and coherent to begin with, but it still required a huge cost and a permanent military presence for the last 70 years. We've had troops in South Korea for 60 years keeping North Korea at bay.
Iraq is fractured by centuries-old ethnic and religious differences held in check only by ruthless tyrants like Saddam. Yet Bush went into Iraq on the pretext that we'd be done in a matter weeks or months at most.
Bush never developed an exit strategy for Iraq because there is no exit strategy: we would have to maintain troops in Iraq for the next century keeping the Sunni, Shiite and Kurd populations of Iraq from killing each other.
Because they've already been at it for centuries. How many American lives and trillions of dollars would we have had to sacrifice before the Iraqis realized the futility of their age-old hatreds and make peace with each other?
To make it worse, as long as we had troops in Iraq, there would there would be an endless stream of outsider incursions engineered to cause problems for us: Al Qaeda proxies funded by Saudi Wahabis, Hezbollah proxies funded by Iran, Taliban proxies funded by Pakistan, Sadrist proxies funded by Russia.
We could win World War II because Germany and Japan attacked us. We could chase them back home and destroy their war machines. But the we can't win the civil war between Shiites and the Sunnis in Iraq. It's not our fight. You can't invade a country and make them act reasonably.
The best you can do is pick one side and help them destroy the other. So do we help the majority Shiites led by the corrupt Iranian puppet prime minister Nouri al-Maliki who has been tormenting minority Sunnis since Bush installed him in 2007? Or do we help the Sunnis, who tormented the Shiites under Saddam's rule, and most recently stood by and let ISIS commandos overrun Mosul and slaughter thousands of Iraqi soldiers execution-style? Or do we just let the country fall apart and help the Kurds establish their own nation and keep all the oil, letting the Sunnis and Shiites wallow in perpetual poverty and war?
When all of the options are bad, does it make any sense to risk American lives and spend trillions more dollars on wars that will only make us more enemies and put our troops in the crosshairs of every terrorist in the Middle East?
Yet in 2003 George W. Bush and his cronies said that the invasion of Iraq would be a cakewalk, a brief brilliant burst of glory. We would emerge victorious in six days, or six weeks, or six months at most (remember the Mission Accomplished banner?). But when Bush left office in 2009 our forces had been fighting there for almost six years and more than 5,000 Americans had died there.
Bush's lies were not just about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, or his involvement with 9/11. The real lie was that we could successfully invade and pacify Iraq in a short time, for a minimal investment (they said the invasion would pay for itself), with no help from the rest of the world.
Yes, we invaded and occupied Germany and Japan, turning them into upstanding world citizens and allies. Those countries were united and coherent to begin with, but it still required a huge cost and a permanent military presence for the last 70 years. We've had troops in South Korea for 60 years keeping North Korea at bay.
Iraq is fractured by centuries-old ethnic and religious differences held in check only by ruthless tyrants like Saddam. Yet Bush went into Iraq on the pretext that we'd be done in a matter weeks or months at most.
Bush never developed an exit strategy for Iraq because there is no exit strategy: we would have to maintain troops in Iraq for the next century keeping the Sunni, Shiite and Kurd populations of Iraq from killing each other.
Because they've already been at it for centuries. How many American lives and trillions of dollars would we have had to sacrifice before the Iraqis realized the futility of their age-old hatreds and make peace with each other?
To make it worse, as long as we had troops in Iraq, there would there would be an endless stream of outsider incursions engineered to cause problems for us: Al Qaeda proxies funded by Saudi Wahabis, Hezbollah proxies funded by Iran, Taliban proxies funded by Pakistan, Sadrist proxies funded by Russia.
We could win World War II because Germany and Japan attacked us. We could chase them back home and destroy their war machines. But the we can't win the civil war between Shiites and the Sunnis in Iraq. It's not our fight. You can't invade a country and make them act reasonably.
The best you can do is pick one side and help them destroy the other. So do we help the majority Shiites led by the corrupt Iranian puppet prime minister Nouri al-Maliki who has been tormenting minority Sunnis since Bush installed him in 2007? Or do we help the Sunnis, who tormented the Shiites under Saddam's rule, and most recently stood by and let ISIS commandos overrun Mosul and slaughter thousands of Iraqi soldiers execution-style? Or do we just let the country fall apart and help the Kurds establish their own nation and keep all the oil, letting the Sunnis and Shiites wallow in perpetual poverty and war?
When all of the options are bad, does it make any sense to risk American lives and spend trillions more dollars on wars that will only make us more enemies and put our troops in the crosshairs of every terrorist in the Middle East?
The Bodyguard Blanket
Well, I guess it's come to this...
I can hear the Gun Cult shrieking like old ladies now..."If we could only have anyone carry a gun in a school, then kids wouldn't need the Bodyguard Blanket."
Or maybe if our society could be arsed to leave behind a troglodytic perception of mental health, guns, and violence, then we wouldn't need the fucking Bodyguard Blanket
I can hear the Gun Cult shrieking like old ladies now..."If we could only have anyone carry a gun in a school, then kids wouldn't need the Bodyguard Blanket."
Or maybe if our society could be arsed to leave behind a troglodytic perception of mental health, guns, and violence, then we wouldn't need the fucking Bodyguard Blanket
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Can Parenting Be Taught?
The biggest problem in education today is the parents. Period. I've written about this before and now it seems that a trend is emerging in education discussions. We need to start teaching people how to be better parents and this recent cover story from the Christian Science Monitor illustrates just how we can.
The stakes are high. Parental improvement might seem like a national pastime these days, given the unprecedented volume of advice books, blogs, and lectures coming at moms and dads across all demographics. But for lower-income women like those in this classroom, and others like them across the country, improved parenting skills can not only increase a family’s happiness, it can also dramatically improve a child’s long-term educational achievement, lower the chances of juvenile delinquency, improve health measures, and reduce poverty, according to a growing coalition of child-development experts and scientists.
Further, we instructors do not have the time to teach students basic manners and respect for elders. We don't have enough time to hit the standards in a school year as it is. I'm really sick and tired of having students look at me with that quizzical expression when I tell them to do something. It's as if they have never heard an adult tell them what to do. Over the years, a greater percentage of students are showing up to junior high without the foggiest idea of how to behave. Far too many parents have done a very poor job raising them.
Of course, this is a big reason why I am a big supporter of the president.
President Obama’s Affordable Care Act allocated $1.5 billion for the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program to expand parent home visitation initiatives, such as the Nurse-Family Partnership, which pairs registered nurses with pregnant, at-risk women. School systems across the country are collaborating with programs such as Families First to expand their parent education classes.
It seems like a small amount but ECFE is absolutely vital if we are going to turn this tide around. And it can't all be done federally as the CSM article notes.
Local governments are also getting involved, coming up with their own ways to try to improve parenting. (Providence, R.I., for instance, recently launched the Providence Talks program to “close the 30-million-word gap,” a reference to the difference in the number of words spoken to a baby with lower-income parents by the age of 4 compared to a child with higher-income parents – a difference shown to have long-term educational repercussions.)
All of us at the community level need to work together to be better parents. The rest of the CSM piece details how we can do that. So, let's get started!
The stakes are high. Parental improvement might seem like a national pastime these days, given the unprecedented volume of advice books, blogs, and lectures coming at moms and dads across all demographics. But for lower-income women like those in this classroom, and others like them across the country, improved parenting skills can not only increase a family’s happiness, it can also dramatically improve a child’s long-term educational achievement, lower the chances of juvenile delinquency, improve health measures, and reduce poverty, according to a growing coalition of child-development experts and scientists.
Further, we instructors do not have the time to teach students basic manners and respect for elders. We don't have enough time to hit the standards in a school year as it is. I'm really sick and tired of having students look at me with that quizzical expression when I tell them to do something. It's as if they have never heard an adult tell them what to do. Over the years, a greater percentage of students are showing up to junior high without the foggiest idea of how to behave. Far too many parents have done a very poor job raising them.
Of course, this is a big reason why I am a big supporter of the president.
President Obama’s Affordable Care Act allocated $1.5 billion for the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program to expand parent home visitation initiatives, such as the Nurse-Family Partnership, which pairs registered nurses with pregnant, at-risk women. School systems across the country are collaborating with programs such as Families First to expand their parent education classes.
It seems like a small amount but ECFE is absolutely vital if we are going to turn this tide around. And it can't all be done federally as the CSM article notes.
Local governments are also getting involved, coming up with their own ways to try to improve parenting. (Providence, R.I., for instance, recently launched the Providence Talks program to “close the 30-million-word gap,” a reference to the difference in the number of words spoken to a baby with lower-income parents by the age of 4 compared to a child with higher-income parents – a difference shown to have long-term educational repercussions.)
All of us at the community level need to work together to be better parents. The rest of the CSM piece details how we can do that. So, let's get started!
Friday, June 13, 2014
The Eric Cantor Pooping
My oh my has there been one massive shitting of the bed over the loss Eric Cantor experienced on Tuesday night to Tea Party Challenger David Brat. Some of the diarrhea..
"It's about amnesty in immigration!"
"The Tea Party is back"
"He was too much of a Washington insider so the conservative masses voted him out!"
And my personal favorite...
"This signifies a conservative tsunami this fall!"
Well, here are my thoughts in order of the pooping. First, we already have amnesty in terms of illegal immigration. That's the result of doing nothing. We're aren't going to deport 11 million people and be the cause of one of the worst humanitarian crises the world has ever seen. Further, the poster child for "evil amnesty" is Lindsey Graham who handily won his primary so this comment makes no sense.
Second, the Tea Party never left. Their ideology is now the ideology of the "mainstream" candidates. No conservative today can win without being far right because of the nature of their base which basically means they are digging themselves into a deeper hole for national elections. 2014 may end up being bad for Democrats but 2016 is going to be a fucking disaster for Republicans. Imagine, Hillary Clinton and both houses of Congress controlled by the Democrats.
And we haven't seen David Brat yet on the national stage. I doubt the Democratic challenger can beat him in VA-7 but if he goes Akin or Murdock, say goodbye to that seat.
Third, conservative masses...yes, all 36,000 to 28,000 people at 10 percent voter turnout...8,000 votes...some mass indeed! All this says to me is that a lot of people couldn't be arsed to show up. There's also the fact that this was an open primary which means there could have been some Democrats in their voting as well:)
Finally, it warms my heart when the right gets over eager and shit. We've seen this before only to have it followed by stubborn disbelief (Karl Rove, Ohio, 2012 Election). I realize this is the last chance for the 12 year old boys to "beat" Barack Obama but they are going to put themselves right out of business jumping the gun with this kind of talk. Don't they realize how hard organizations like the OFA and other Democratic groups are going to be working to get the vote out? They vastly underestimated the president and his election operation before and look what happened.
Honestly, I am very happy to see Eric Cantor being shown the door. He's an asshole and a giant metaphor for all of the bullshit the president and the Democrats have to put up with every day. And I want far right candidates running in all elections this year. It just helps out the moderate Democrats. Perhaps all of this is over analysis, though. Don't both men look the same?
"It's about amnesty in immigration!"
"The Tea Party is back"
"He was too much of a Washington insider so the conservative masses voted him out!"
And my personal favorite...
"This signifies a conservative tsunami this fall!"
Well, here are my thoughts in order of the pooping. First, we already have amnesty in terms of illegal immigration. That's the result of doing nothing. We're aren't going to deport 11 million people and be the cause of one of the worst humanitarian crises the world has ever seen. Further, the poster child for "evil amnesty" is Lindsey Graham who handily won his primary so this comment makes no sense.
Second, the Tea Party never left. Their ideology is now the ideology of the "mainstream" candidates. No conservative today can win without being far right because of the nature of their base which basically means they are digging themselves into a deeper hole for national elections. 2014 may end up being bad for Democrats but 2016 is going to be a fucking disaster for Republicans. Imagine, Hillary Clinton and both houses of Congress controlled by the Democrats.
And we haven't seen David Brat yet on the national stage. I doubt the Democratic challenger can beat him in VA-7 but if he goes Akin or Murdock, say goodbye to that seat.
Third, conservative masses...yes, all 36,000 to 28,000 people at 10 percent voter turnout...8,000 votes...some mass indeed! All this says to me is that a lot of people couldn't be arsed to show up. There's also the fact that this was an open primary which means there could have been some Democrats in their voting as well:)
Finally, it warms my heart when the right gets over eager and shit. We've seen this before only to have it followed by stubborn disbelief (Karl Rove, Ohio, 2012 Election). I realize this is the last chance for the 12 year old boys to "beat" Barack Obama but they are going to put themselves right out of business jumping the gun with this kind of talk. Don't they realize how hard organizations like the OFA and other Democratic groups are going to be working to get the vote out? They vastly underestimated the president and his election operation before and look what happened.
Honestly, I am very happy to see Eric Cantor being shown the door. He's an asshole and a giant metaphor for all of the bullshit the president and the Democrats have to put up with every day. And I want far right candidates running in all elections this year. It just helps out the moderate Democrats. Perhaps all of this is over analysis, though. Don't both men look the same?
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Move Over, Walmart. The Internet Is Here
Amazon.com has been making news for the last month with its open war against Hachette, a New York publisher, over e-book prices. In the process Amazon has earned the wrath of many writers, including Steven Colbert, whose books are published by Hachette:
"I am not just mad at Amazon. I am mad Prime," he said, punning Amazon's premium service.When Amazon.com started out 20 years ago, it was great little revolutionary startup. It used the power of the Internet to deliver products customers wanted without having to leave their homes, or fill their mailboxes with tons of catalogs that just wind up in recycling bins, or have to deal with corporate behemoths like Barnes & Noble and Walmart.
But along the way Amazon.com became one of the big bad companies that it rebelled against. In the process it put a lot of small and large bookstores (including Borders, a major chain), out of business. Amazon now sells pretty much anything you can think of, including books, music, videos (streaming and on disc), computer equipment, hardware, even major applicances.
Money that was once spent at local bookstores, record stores, video stores, hardware stores and computer stores is now going off to Seattle.
Amazon doesn't just sell physical products. It provides server farms for other companies with Amazon Web Services. Netflix uses AWS to deliver streaming video, even though Amazon is a direct competitor with Amazon Instant Video. Amazon also snatched up a major news outlet with the Washington Post.
Amazon doesn't just sell its own products. Like eBay, it acts as a front-end to thousands of small bookstores and merchants. When you look for certain products you're offered several sources, with Amazon's items listed first, and other suppliers listed with their prices. To compete with Amazon, those small suppliers have to offer substantially lower prices. Of course, Amazon gets a cut if you buy from those other sellers, reducing their profit margin even further. Amazon's "referral fee" runs from 6% to 25% (it's 15% for most things), depending on the product category, plus a one-dollar fee per item (sellers can buy a subscription to waive the item fee).
Amazon will tell you that they're helping independent bookstores and merchants by giving them an easy way to sell used books and specialty products. But are those businesses thriving, or simply dying a long, slow death?
Other Internet companies have been following Amazon's lead in diverse realms. Uber's car service has a lot of taxi drivers worried. Driving a cab is not very profitable, and cabbies often make less than minimum wage considering all the idle time, fuel costs, fees and cab leases:
“Poverty among the drivers in Chicago is just palpable, worse than elsewhere,” Ms. Desai said. “Most drivers work 60 to 70 hours a week and earn below the minimum wage, and that’s sad because Chicago is the second-largest taxi market in the United States. Drivers have been suffering in such deep poverty, and that’s been compounded by the threat of the ride-sharing companies.”
Uber often runs afoul of local taxi regulations. The company defends its ride-share service by saying it's more convenient, faster, and provides an opportunity for more people to profit. It may seem like a great deal to Uber drivers now. But they're completely dependent on Uber. Like Amazon, Uber gets a cut of every ride. That money used to stay in the local community is now going off to San Francisco.
In the long run, how good a deal will Uber drivers get? Uber sets the rates and takes a 20% cut. Over time Uber can afford to reduce rates because they get a slice of millions of small transactions. How long will it take for Uber drivers to wind up in the same position as cabbies are today? Also, most Uber drivers are not dedicated to driving. How reliable will the service be in the long run if their drivers are a bunch of amateurs only doing it because they have a spare hour?
As more people rely on the Internet, advertising gravitates there. Every time you do a Google search for a restaurant Google gets paid for popping up ads for local eateries. That's money that used to be spent on advertising in local phone books, newspapers and television stations. And it's not just ads in Google. When you visit the website of a local news outlet, the advertising is being provided by an Internet company that pays the operator of the site a pittance for each click or view.
The Internet is a two-edged sword: it has allowed startups like Amazon, Google, eBay and PayPal to become hugely successful competitors against monoliths like Walmart and Visa/Mastercard. At the same time, after only a few years these Internet giants are savaging local businesses in the same way it took decades for Walmart to do.
But Internet companies are even worse for local economies than Walmart because they hire no local employees. They contribute almost nothing to the local economy, other than the delivery service that drops off your package (which is another corporate behemoth like FedEx or UPS, or the Post Office).
People once thought the Internet would empower the little guy, but it may not be shaping up that way. Instead of increasing local control, is the Internet centralizing resources, money and power in the hands of fewer and fewer companies?
In the near future it's likely that the very infrastructure of the Internet itself will be an unregulated monopoly owned by a just a couple of humongous conglomerates, such as Comcast, who are intent on dictating what content you can get. But that's a topic for another day.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Palling Around with Putin
While Republicans have been blasting Obama's "failure" and "weakness" in Ukraine, executives at the giant oil companies have been palling around with Putin and his cronies. On the right are pictures of BP's David Campbell shaking hands with Igor Sechin, one of the Russian officials hit by US economic sanctions, and Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Shell.
And it's not just the foreign oil companies. Neil W. Duffin, an executive for Exxon Mobil, signed a deal with Sechin last month. Exxon has been working hard to sabotage America's efforts to economically isolate Russia for its slow-motion invasion of Ukraine:
Mr. Tillerson, Exxon’s chief executive, told reporters last week in Dallas that the company was making its skepticism about sanctions clear to the United States government. “Our views are being heard at the highest levels,” he said.How can we trust giant energy conglomerates like Exxon Mobil when they cut deals with tyrants like Putin, undermining American foreign policy? How can we believe for an instant that these companies have the best interests at heart for the United States, its land and its people when they tell us that fracking doesn't poison our water, that drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is completely safe, and that carbon dioxide doesn't cause global warming?
“There has been no impact on any of our business activities in Russia to this point, nor has there been any discernible impact on the relationship” with Rosneft, he added.
Hey Gun Cult, Wake Up!
I'm still thinking about this quote from yesterday...
While I don't believe a majority, or even significant chunk, of anti-government, pro-Second Amendment types are violence-prone and comparable to this delusional husband and wife, I can't help but think much of their rhetoric encourages certain [already] unstable people to act out violently.
Nancy Lanza proved this to be absolutely true.
Consider this quote as well from a recent Quora discussion.
They seem to think we all look at them as "good guys with guns". I don't feel safer when I see a random dude carrying an assault rifle in public. I feel like they are essentially the same as the people they pretend they are protecting us from. Like they are a mass shooting waiting to happen.
Indeed.
So here's the mess that makes zero sense when you look at all of it. The Gun Cult asserts they need all their guns to protect themselves from a possible (in their minds...super likely and any day now!!) tyrannical government that will oppress them. Yet they take no responsibility for the myriad of people that subscribe to this ideology (see: brainwashing) who are mentally unstable and are causing exactly the violent society they claim to not want to have.
Further, the open carry idiots that parade around with guns honestly leave one to wonder...is this person going to start shooting? How can you tell if they are or aren't? Consider that the guy with concealed carry who got shot in the Jerad and Amanda Miller rampage didn't even know that there was more than one shooter which shows just how much a a lie the "good guy with a gun" meme truly is.
Listening to anything gun activists say these days is completely nuts. Their analysis of this issue is so fucking bad that I have to wonder why there are still some people who believe them.
While I don't believe a majority, or even significant chunk, of anti-government, pro-Second Amendment types are violence-prone and comparable to this delusional husband and wife, I can't help but think much of their rhetoric encourages certain [already] unstable people to act out violently.
Nancy Lanza proved this to be absolutely true.
Consider this quote as well from a recent Quora discussion.
They seem to think we all look at them as "good guys with guns". I don't feel safer when I see a random dude carrying an assault rifle in public. I feel like they are essentially the same as the people they pretend they are protecting us from. Like they are a mass shooting waiting to happen.
Indeed.
So here's the mess that makes zero sense when you look at all of it. The Gun Cult asserts they need all their guns to protect themselves from a possible (in their minds...super likely and any day now!!) tyrannical government that will oppress them. Yet they take no responsibility for the myriad of people that subscribe to this ideology (see: brainwashing) who are mentally unstable and are causing exactly the violent society they claim to not want to have.
Further, the open carry idiots that parade around with guns honestly leave one to wonder...is this person going to start shooting? How can you tell if they are or aren't? Consider that the guy with concealed carry who got shot in the Jerad and Amanda Miller rampage didn't even know that there was more than one shooter which shows just how much a a lie the "good guy with a gun" meme truly is.
Listening to anything gun activists say these days is completely nuts. Their analysis of this issue is so fucking bad that I have to wonder why there are still some people who believe them.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Cooking the Books to Get Their Bonuses
There's been a lot of noise about the problem with vets getting appointments at VA hospitals. So here are some numbers for the VA hospitals in Minnesota, where I live:
There were similar findings in the audit for California: wait times were mostly in line with what I see in private practice. Note that some of the problem San Diego VA clinics are are operated by private contractors.
The map on this page shows the distribution of wait times across the country. There are basically 12 or 13 clinics in the country out of maybe a hundred that have long wait times; most of the country is experiencing wait times comparable to private medical practice.
So it seems like the problem at the VA isn't endemic. There are certain facilities where administrators are are committing fraud because they don't have the resources to meet the demand, but they still want to make their numbers so they can get their bonuses. These bonuses may well be the source of the problem:
The average wait time for a patient seeking primary care for the first time is 28 days at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center and its outpatient clinics and 25 days for the St. Cloud system, the data show. But the waits are much shorter for established patients who are already in the VA system -- three days for Minneapolis and two days for St. Cloud. Nationwide, the longest average wait for new patients seeking primary care is 145 days in Honolulu.The Minnesota times are typical for what I experience when I make appointments to see a doctor with my private insurance. If I want to see a specialist for the first time I have to wait two or three months. But if I'm already an established patient, it only takes a few days, just like it does for vets. There's no catastrophe occurring in Minnesota.
Waits for new patients seeking specialty care are longer -- 50 days for new patients for the Minneapolis system and 47 days for St. Cloud's, compared with four days for established patients to see specialists for Minneapolis and five for St. Cloud. The longest average wait for new patients nationwide is 145 days in Harlingen, Texas.
There were similar findings in the audit for California: wait times were mostly in line with what I see in private practice. Note that some of the problem San Diego VA clinics are are operated by private contractors.
The map on this page shows the distribution of wait times across the country. There are basically 12 or 13 clinics in the country out of maybe a hundred that have long wait times; most of the country is experiencing wait times comparable to private medical practice.
So it seems like the problem at the VA isn't endemic. There are certain facilities where administrators are are committing fraud because they don't have the resources to meet the demand, but they still want to make their numbers so they can get their bonuses. These bonuses may well be the source of the problem:
According to congressional reports and VA employees, medical-center staffs nationwide were pressured to reduce waits even as backlogs grew. A carrot-and-stick approach provided cash bonuses and advancement to successful managers, but performance downgrades for failures.
In the words of whistle-blowers, that emphasis created incentives to "cook the books."So, it's not really a question of a generally incompetent government medical system, but the corrupting influence of money: instead of rocking the boat by complaining to upper management about resource shortages, managers lied to make sure they got their bonuses.
Yet Another Shooting
Well, we have had yet another school shooting. The president's words say it best...
"Our levels of gun violence are off the charts. There's no advanced, developed country on Earth that would put up with this," President Barack Obama said in Washington in response to a question about gun violence.
He said the nation should be ashamed of its inability to get tougher gun restrictions through Congress in the aftermath of mass shootings that he said have become commonplace in America. Most members of Congress are "terrified" of the National Rifle Association, the President said, adding that nothing will change until public opinion demands it.
"The country has to do some soul searching about this. This is becoming the norm, and we take it for granted, in ways that as a parent are terrifying to me," Obama said.
Yet we are putting up with it. Why?
Because the hysterical old ladies also known as the Gun Cult won't grow the fuck up.
"Our levels of gun violence are off the charts. There's no advanced, developed country on Earth that would put up with this," President Barack Obama said in Washington in response to a question about gun violence.
He said the nation should be ashamed of its inability to get tougher gun restrictions through Congress in the aftermath of mass shootings that he said have become commonplace in America. Most members of Congress are "terrified" of the National Rifle Association, the President said, adding that nothing will change until public opinion demands it.
"The country has to do some soul searching about this. This is becoming the norm, and we take it for granted, in ways that as a parent are terrifying to me," Obama said.
Yet we are putting up with it. Why?
Because the hysterical old ladies also known as the Gun Cult won't grow the fuck up.
Good Words
As somewhat of a counter to Nikto's post yesterday, I have these words from a Quora commenter.
I have no sympathy for the types of people who gathered at Bundy's ranch, advocated violence against law enforcement officers, and actively threatened law enforcement officers all for the sake of a racist freeloader who mooches off the public. Having said that, I don't think one could fairly say the delusional murderers of two Las Vegas Metro officers and a citizen were part of any organization beyond their own insane pairing.
What occurred here in Las Vegas struck a chord with me for a number of reasons. I've spoken out, in many instances here on Quora, about my belief many of these radical Second Amendment advocates seem a greater threat to the general public than anyone they profess to be using the Second Amendment to protect us from. I've made it clear my belief that, unfortunately, it seems these right wing groups and militant Second Amendment groups are dangerous, violent, racist, and attract extreme elements.
I've spoken out in favor of gun control and discussed my own experiences with Nevada's concealed carry laws, and can't ignore the fact that it would seem a private, CCW-ed citizen very well may have lost their life (along with the officers) protecting countless others at that WalMart. I believe many of these extremists who flocked to Bundy's ranch were dangerous and delusional, racist and violence-prone. There has been a very noticeable increase in threats from these types of people, acts of violence carried out by them, and so on.
Having said all of the above, though, it would seem this crazy couple were fringe extremists even at the Bundy ranch. They were unstable and reactionary above and beyond what many of their peers would be, even. But I don't doubt they likely fed off of information and statements they regularly heard from those who shared some of their anti-government views, websites they visited, literature they read, and so on. They reacted to the right-wing stimulus around them with actions that even many of those right wing folks would find reprehensible and unacceptable.
It is likely not too unreasonable to think that the Miller's were delusional and unstable people in search of a cause, and had circumstances been different they could have ended up killing and causing harm to others for whatever cause they felt they could latch on to and would give their lives meaning. It just so happens, though, that right wing extremists with an affection for firearms and virulent hatred of authority find plenty of positive feedback from others that helps legitimize, in their minds, their views.
While I don't believe a majority, or even significant chunk, of anti-government, pro-Second Amendment types are violence-prone and comparable to this delusional husband and wife, I can't help but think much of their rhetoric encourages certain [already] unstable people to act out violently.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I view Kevin and the TSM commenters in exactly this light. Their ideology is more dangerous than what they claim to be protecting the rest of us from and they encourage mentally unstable people to commit acts of violence. Oh, and that notable increase he speaks of? It's all being documented here at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Keep it up, fuckos. Your idiocy may end up making your apocalyptic predictions come true.
I have no sympathy for the types of people who gathered at Bundy's ranch, advocated violence against law enforcement officers, and actively threatened law enforcement officers all for the sake of a racist freeloader who mooches off the public. Having said that, I don't think one could fairly say the delusional murderers of two Las Vegas Metro officers and a citizen were part of any organization beyond their own insane pairing.
What occurred here in Las Vegas struck a chord with me for a number of reasons. I've spoken out, in many instances here on Quora, about my belief many of these radical Second Amendment advocates seem a greater threat to the general public than anyone they profess to be using the Second Amendment to protect us from. I've made it clear my belief that, unfortunately, it seems these right wing groups and militant Second Amendment groups are dangerous, violent, racist, and attract extreme elements.
I've spoken out in favor of gun control and discussed my own experiences with Nevada's concealed carry laws, and can't ignore the fact that it would seem a private, CCW-ed citizen very well may have lost their life (along with the officers) protecting countless others at that WalMart. I believe many of these extremists who flocked to Bundy's ranch were dangerous and delusional, racist and violence-prone. There has been a very noticeable increase in threats from these types of people, acts of violence carried out by them, and so on.
Having said all of the above, though, it would seem this crazy couple were fringe extremists even at the Bundy ranch. They were unstable and reactionary above and beyond what many of their peers would be, even. But I don't doubt they likely fed off of information and statements they regularly heard from those who shared some of their anti-government views, websites they visited, literature they read, and so on. They reacted to the right-wing stimulus around them with actions that even many of those right wing folks would find reprehensible and unacceptable.
It is likely not too unreasonable to think that the Miller's were delusional and unstable people in search of a cause, and had circumstances been different they could have ended up killing and causing harm to others for whatever cause they felt they could latch on to and would give their lives meaning. It just so happens, though, that right wing extremists with an affection for firearms and virulent hatred of authority find plenty of positive feedback from others that helps legitimize, in their minds, their views.
While I don't believe a majority, or even significant chunk, of anti-government, pro-Second Amendment types are violence-prone and comparable to this delusional husband and wife, I can't help but think much of their rhetoric encourages certain [already] unstable people to act out violently.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I view Kevin and the TSM commenters in exactly this light. Their ideology is more dangerous than what they claim to be protecting the rest of us from and they encourage mentally unstable people to commit acts of violence. Oh, and that notable increase he speaks of? It's all being documented here at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Keep it up, fuckos. Your idiocy may end up making your apocalyptic predictions come true.
Not a Real Boy
The news is full of stories like this about Eugene Goostman, a computer program that "passed" the Turing test. It passed by making 30% of the judges in the contest think it was a human being and not a computer.
After reading the conversation captured by Time and my own discussion with Eugene Goostman, I wonder whether the judges who were fooled by Eugene would pass the Turing test themselves. You can try it yourself here: http://www.princetonai.com/.
People have been writing programs that pretend to be people for decades. One of the most famous ones was Eliza, written by Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s. The conceit of Eliza is that it's a Rogerian psychotherapist. It works by looking for keywords that produce specific response patterns, and by repeating things back to you that you said to it. For example, if you said, "My mommy took my teddy away from me," Eliza would respond with, "Tell me more about your parents."
In Computer Power and Human Reason (1976, p. 189) Weizenbaum describes how Eliza fooled people who knew it was a computer program into thinking that it actually understood something. He compares it to people who are taken in by fortune tellers, believing that these frauds have real insights and "know things." Eliza utilized a primitive form of "cold reading" that mediums and psychics use to deceive their victims.
The conceit of the Eugene Goostman "chatbot" is that he's a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy. This is probably the key to the success of the deception, because it sets the bar for language comprehension and attention span to a very low level.
Eugene appears to work much like Eliza, but it's got a bigger database of canned information that it can discuss, and has a better natural language processor. When you ask it a question, it answers as best it can, which is usually fairly easy if you ask it about things it's programmed to know. Then it throws out another conversation starter about its pet guinea pig, or some other non-sequitur to make conversation.
In the dialog I had with it I ignored the conversation starters and just asked more questions. I asked, "Can you answer yes or no questions?" it responded with, "Sure, anyone can. Anything else?" It gives similar non-responses to other questions about it's capabilities. Ask it, "What's the Ukrainian word for house?" and you get "I have no idea, sorry. And I forgot to ask you where you are from.." Ask it in Ukrainian if it speaks Ukrainian (which it claims to, as well as English, Russian, and a little Yiddish), you get "Err... And what it was? Maybe it was something hexadecimal?" This is because it's a computer program scripted in English that doesn't know what to do with the Unicode characters Ukrainian is written in.
About the third sentence it threw out a red herring about evil robots, as one might imagine a snarky 13-year-old could. When I asked, "Could you repeat what you said about evil robots?," it responded with, "I call all these chatter-bots "chatter-nuts" due to their extremely high intelligence. I hope you recognize irony."
And if you ask the most obvious question: "Are you a real boy?" You get, "I would rather not talk about it if you don't mind. By the way, I still don't know your specialty - or, possibly, I've missed it?" And if you repeat your question you get, "Could you repeat it once more again? Wonna ask me something more?"
Clearly, Eugene Goostman is not a real boy. Or maybe the judges don't consider 13-year-old boys to be real human beings?
And I forgot to ask you where you are from.. I hope you recognize irony. And I still don't know your specialty.
After reading the conversation captured by Time and my own discussion with Eugene Goostman, I wonder whether the judges who were fooled by Eugene would pass the Turing test themselves. You can try it yourself here: http://www.princetonai.com/.
People have been writing programs that pretend to be people for decades. One of the most famous ones was Eliza, written by Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s. The conceit of Eliza is that it's a Rogerian psychotherapist. It works by looking for keywords that produce specific response patterns, and by repeating things back to you that you said to it. For example, if you said, "My mommy took my teddy away from me," Eliza would respond with, "Tell me more about your parents."
In Computer Power and Human Reason (1976, p. 189) Weizenbaum describes how Eliza fooled people who knew it was a computer program into thinking that it actually understood something. He compares it to people who are taken in by fortune tellers, believing that these frauds have real insights and "know things." Eliza utilized a primitive form of "cold reading" that mediums and psychics use to deceive their victims.
The conceit of the Eugene Goostman "chatbot" is that he's a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy. This is probably the key to the success of the deception, because it sets the bar for language comprehension and attention span to a very low level.
Eugene appears to work much like Eliza, but it's got a bigger database of canned information that it can discuss, and has a better natural language processor. When you ask it a question, it answers as best it can, which is usually fairly easy if you ask it about things it's programmed to know. Then it throws out another conversation starter about its pet guinea pig, or some other non-sequitur to make conversation.
In the dialog I had with it I ignored the conversation starters and just asked more questions. I asked, "Can you answer yes or no questions?" it responded with, "Sure, anyone can. Anything else?" It gives similar non-responses to other questions about it's capabilities. Ask it, "What's the Ukrainian word for house?" and you get "I have no idea, sorry. And I forgot to ask you where you are from.." Ask it in Ukrainian if it speaks Ukrainian (which it claims to, as well as English, Russian, and a little Yiddish), you get "Err... And what it was? Maybe it was something hexadecimal?" This is because it's a computer program scripted in English that doesn't know what to do with the Unicode characters Ukrainian is written in.
About the third sentence it threw out a red herring about evil robots, as one might imagine a snarky 13-year-old could. When I asked, "Could you repeat what you said about evil robots?," it responded with, "I call all these chatter-bots "chatter-nuts" due to their extremely high intelligence. I hope you recognize irony."
And if you ask the most obvious question: "Are you a real boy?" You get, "I would rather not talk about it if you don't mind. By the way, I still don't know your specialty - or, possibly, I've missed it?" And if you repeat your question you get, "Could you repeat it once more again? Wonna ask me something more?"
Clearly, Eugene Goostman is not a real boy. Or maybe the judges don't consider 13-year-old boys to be real human beings?
And I forgot to ask you where you are from.. I hope you recognize irony. And I still don't know your specialty.
If Asians Said The Stuff White People Say
Note how idiots on both side of the political spectrum get ripped in this one...
Monday, June 09, 2014
Vegas Cop Killers Were Right-Wing Terrorists
Breaking news: the Vegas cop killers were racist right-wing terrorists who want to overthrow the federal government.
That isn't what the headlines will read, but that's the gist of the story in the New York Times:
LAS VEGAS — A married couple who fatally shot three people here Sunday — including two police officers — before killing themselves spoke incessantly about overthrowing the government and had ties to the anti-government Patriot movement, neighbors said Monday.And then there's this:
The police on Monday identified the couple as Jerad and Amanda Miller, who moved to Las Vegas in January and participated in anti-government protests at the ranch of Cliven Bundy, who became a symbol of opposition to the federal government this spring for his refusal to pay grazing fees for his cattle. Mr. Miller, 31, and Ms. Miller, 22, killed two Las Vegas police officers on Sunday at a pizza restaurant and fatally shot a third person at a nearby Walmart before dying in a suicide pact.
Jerad Miller, 31, then covered the officers with a Gadsden flag -- a yellow banner with a coiled snake above the words, “Don’t Tread on Me” -- and placed a manifesto with a swastika symbol on one officer’s body, according to police officials speaking at a morning news conference. The flag, which dates from the American Revolution, has been adopted by a string of ultra-conservative and libertarian groups.Clearly, this was a politically motivated assassination, an outright act of terrorism, no different from the killings committed by IRA and Al Qaeda terrorists.
The Millers' Facebook page was filled with anti-law enforcement postings and violent threats. The neighbor with whom the Millers left their pet cat said that Mr. Miller talked nonstop about his opposition to the United States government. "All Jerad wanted to do is talk about overthrowing the government,” said Ms. Fielder. “I thought he was talking smack.”
And there's this:
A post on Ms. Miller’s Facebook page from 2011 warns that people are “lucky I can’t kill you now but remember one day I will get you because one day all hell will break loose and I’ll be standing in the middle of it with a shotgun in one hand and a pistol in the other.”
Ms. Miller worked at Hobby Lobby, the "Christian" store who went to the Supreme Court to avoid providing birth control coverage for employees. A coincidence, or birds of a feather flocking together?
These rants are typical of the rhetoric of people demanding they be able to walk around in public with guns. Undoubtedly their compatriots will dismiss them as lunatics who went too far. But how close behind them are the people who spend their every waking moment glorifying guns and violence and imagining government-wide conspiracies to disarm them? What perceived slight will tip them over the edge and send them on a murderous rampage?
And finally, there's this:
LAS VEGAS — Police say a shopper armed with a concealed weapon inside a Las Vegas Wal-Mart confronted an armed man who entered the store with his wife moments after the couple killed two officers in a nearby restaurant.So, the final tally? Bad guys with guns: 5, good guys with guns: 0.
Assistant Sheriff Kevin McMahill said Monday that 31-year-old Joseph Wilcox of Las Vegas was in the checkout line when he saw Jerad Miller fire a shot and went to confront him.
Miller's wife, Amanda, pulled out a gun and shot Wilcox in the rib area. He collapsed and died.
At a news conference on Monday Las Vegas police said, “We believe this was an isolated act.”
Sadly, I'm not so sure. There's a lot more of these nuts hanging out at Cliven Bundy's ranch with a whole lot of guns. And by their own admission, they're more than willing to use them.
Two Dead Cops and Typhoid Rambo
Two good guys with guns eating lunch just got executed in a Las Vegas pizza parlor:
Sheree Burns, 48, told the Las Vegas Sun she was eating at the restaurant, seated just behind the two officers.
A man came up to one of the officers and shot him in the head, Burns said. She said she ducked under her table but peeked up and saw the other officer being shot.
She said the man took an officer's handgun and the two attackers fled.
Having guns did nothing to protect the officers. The cops' guns only served to give the killers additional firepower.
At the same time in Texas we've got all these open-carry nut jobs walking into restaurants brandishing assault rifles.
How are the cops supposed to know that the clowns in Texas carrying AK 47s into restaurants aren't going to shoot them in the back?
Having even more guys with guns doesn't help the situation: the shooters in Vegas were suicidal nut jobs. As with the recent misogynistic suicidal nut job in California, and most other suicidal nut jobs who've gone on killing sprees over the last several years, the threat of death does not deter them. They are the bad guys, and they shoot first. Plus, they want to commit suicide! Dying is the whole point!
The open-carry nut jobs in Texas are rather dense. If some mass murderer wants to open fire in a restaurant, or a dope fiend wants to rob the joint, who's he going to shoot first? The cashier or the egocentric nitwits who thought it was a good idea to scare everyone half to death by bringing guns into a restaurant?
So, at this point, if a cop just up and shot one of these open-carry idiots, who could possibly question his judgment? Two of his fellow officers were just gunned down in Vegas. Anyone with a gun is a clear and present danger, not just because they might be wacko, but because any wacko can grab that gun from them.
And it's not just about mass murder or suicide by cop. Amateurs who carelessly brandish semiautomatic rifles in public places as if they were Super Soakers endanger themselves and everyone around them. Every day you read another story about how some moron cleaning his gun killed his son, or how some woman's gun fell out of her purse and killed her husband, or how some idiot with a gun in his waistband shot himself in the groin.
It's only a matter of time before one of these swaggering, overconfident open-carry idiots forgets there's a round in the chamber and shoots a waitress. Or leaves his weapon in the can and some little boy who thinks it's a toy finds it and shoots his dad. Or thinks he's witnessing a robbery in progress and shoots innocent bystanders in the cross fire. Or gets knifed in the back by a madman who takes his weapon and kills him and 12 innocent children.
All of these are low-probability incidents. But when you have millions of guns, all those low probabilities turn into thousands of dead and wounded victims.
Guns are a communicable disease: anyone exposed to them is at risk of injury and death. As with any disease, carriers are more likely to die themselves; six out of ten firearms deaths are due to suicide. If you openly carry a gun in public you can expect people to treat you like you have a deadly infection. You're a Typhoid Rambo.
You have a right to free speech, but you don't have the right to go into restaurants and harangue the other patrons about the atrocities that J.J. Abrams has wrought upon Star Trek. Why do gun nuts think that their supposed Second Amendment right to tote their deadly toys in public trumps the rights of everyone else to not get shot?
Reduction Emissions Already Achieved
With bowels being blown and predictions of the US economy swirling down a boiling pit of sewage due to the president's new carbon emissions regulations, the right has completely failed to note the following: the 30 percent reduction the president is calling for has already been achieved in some parts of the country. And guess what?
No boiling pit of sewage.
Take a look at this recent piece from the New York Times and the Georgetown Climate Center.
At least 10 states cut their emissions by that amount or more between 2005 and 2012, and several other states were well on their way, almost two decades before Mr. Obama’s clock for the nation runs out.
That does not mean these states are off the hook under the Obama plan unveiled this week — they will probably be expected to cut more to help achieve the overall national goal — but their strides so far have not brought economic ruin. In New England, a region that has made some of the biggest cuts in emissions, residential electricity bills fell 7 percent from 2005 to 2012, adjusted for inflation. And economic growth in the region ran slightly ahead of the national average.
Once again, Republicans are essentially lying about the detrimental effects of these new regulations. They are also continuing to lie about cap and trade.
Through a program called cap and trade, the Northeastern states also impose a small price on emissions of carbon dioxide from power generation, and plow the proceeds back into energy-efficiency programs, such as retrofitting homes and businesses, lowering electricity bills. And the states have encouraged the growth of emissions-free renewable power and more judicious use of energy. David W. Cash, the Massachusetts commissioner of environmental protection, said he saw a direct link between the state’s above-average economic performance in recent years and lower energy bills for businesses and consumers.
“Every dollar they’re not spending on coal that comes from Colombia or natural gas that comes from Pennsylvania is a dollar that stays here in Massachusetts,” Mr. Cash said.
So, there goes another bullshit myth.
When will the rest of the United States stop listening to these bozos?
No boiling pit of sewage.
Take a look at this recent piece from the New York Times and the Georgetown Climate Center.
At least 10 states cut their emissions by that amount or more between 2005 and 2012, and several other states were well on their way, almost two decades before Mr. Obama’s clock for the nation runs out.
That does not mean these states are off the hook under the Obama plan unveiled this week — they will probably be expected to cut more to help achieve the overall national goal — but their strides so far have not brought economic ruin. In New England, a region that has made some of the biggest cuts in emissions, residential electricity bills fell 7 percent from 2005 to 2012, adjusted for inflation. And economic growth in the region ran slightly ahead of the national average.
Once again, Republicans are essentially lying about the detrimental effects of these new regulations. They are also continuing to lie about cap and trade.
Through a program called cap and trade, the Northeastern states also impose a small price on emissions of carbon dioxide from power generation, and plow the proceeds back into energy-efficiency programs, such as retrofitting homes and businesses, lowering electricity bills. And the states have encouraged the growth of emissions-free renewable power and more judicious use of energy. David W. Cash, the Massachusetts commissioner of environmental protection, said he saw a direct link between the state’s above-average economic performance in recent years and lower energy bills for businesses and consumers.
“Every dollar they’re not spending on coal that comes from Colombia or natural gas that comes from Pennsylvania is a dollar that stays here in Massachusetts,” Mr. Cash said.
So, there goes another bullshit myth.
When will the rest of the United States stop listening to these bozos?
Sunday, June 08, 2014
A Sunday Reflection
Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites. He knew that his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world, where they would confront the recalcitrance of political officials and the intransigence of the protectors of the old order. He knew that they would meet cold and arrogant men whose hearts had been hardened by the long winter of traditionalism. ... And he gave them a formula for action, "Be ye therefore as wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." ... We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Strength to Love (1963) (Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart)
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Strength to Love (1963) (Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart)
Saturday, June 07, 2014
Couldn't He Just Admit It?
I realize that conservatives like Kevin Baker have inferiority complexes but couldn't he just admit that he is pissed that the president has done a far better job than any conservative?
He got bin Laden. Your guy didn't. Deal with it.
Oh, and while you are admitting things...
He got bin Laden. Your guy didn't. Deal with it.
Oh, and while you are admitting things...
Bill Maher Demolishes The Gun Cult
Last night, Bill Maher's final new rule put an end to the Gun Cult. At first glance, I thought this image
might be Kevin Baker but then I realized that it wasn't. (Oh, real quick, I'm nearly certain this post will elicit some "You are obsessed with Kevin" remarks. Bear in mind, I have no link on the side of my blog that says "The Kevin Baker Essays." :))
Even thought it was Kevin, Maher took aim at people just like him and other gun bloggers and commenters and showed the world just how fucking moronic, childish, and, well, mentally challenged they all are. I know we shouldn't make fun of people with disabilities but these folks are so angry and filled with hate towards the dark magicians (federal government, liberals, anyone that doesn't agree with exactly everything they say) that are their "enemies" that no one should really care. I see them exactly was the world saw the Nazi party in Germany when they got their start...militant, extreme, virulent, authoritarian, incredibly distrustful of any different than they are, prejudiced, see violence and force as the best solution for most situations, and, most of all, use propaganda in a way that would make Goebbels proud.
In short, they are assholes and stupid ones at that, now that their little gun parades around retail outlets have led to the exact thing they didn't want...gun bans at places like Starbuck's and Chipotle. It won't be long now before one of these idiots has an accident or two with their guns and then it will get even worse for them.
I'm curious, though. What does the T-shirt say on the dude with the Oreos below? I can't read it.
might be Kevin Baker but then I realized that it wasn't. (Oh, real quick, I'm nearly certain this post will elicit some "You are obsessed with Kevin" remarks. Bear in mind, I have no link on the side of my blog that says "The Kevin Baker Essays." :))
Even thought it was Kevin, Maher took aim at people just like him and other gun bloggers and commenters and showed the world just how fucking moronic, childish, and, well, mentally challenged they all are. I know we shouldn't make fun of people with disabilities but these folks are so angry and filled with hate towards the dark magicians (federal government, liberals, anyone that doesn't agree with exactly everything they say) that are their "enemies" that no one should really care. I see them exactly was the world saw the Nazi party in Germany when they got their start...militant, extreme, virulent, authoritarian, incredibly distrustful of any different than they are, prejudiced, see violence and force as the best solution for most situations, and, most of all, use propaganda in a way that would make Goebbels proud.
In short, they are assholes and stupid ones at that, now that their little gun parades around retail outlets have led to the exact thing they didn't want...gun bans at places like Starbuck's and Chipotle. It won't be long now before one of these idiots has an accident or two with their guns and then it will get even worse for them.
I'm curious, though. What does the T-shirt say on the dude with the Oreos below? I can't read it.
Friday, June 06, 2014
Stopped By A Good Guy With No Gun
Uh oh. It looks like the whole good guy with a gun lie continues to unravel.
Jon Meis, a student working as a building monitor, pepper-sprayed the shooter as he stopped to reload, then put him in a chokehold and took him to the ground, according to police and a friend who spoke with Meis after the shooting. Then other students and faculty members rushed to hold the shooter down until police arrived.
Pepper spray and a choke hold? What a fucking pussy! The bad guy had a shotgun so the least that Jon should have had was a .223-caliber Bushmaster Model XM15, right?
Jon Meis, a student working as a building monitor, pepper-sprayed the shooter as he stopped to reload, then put him in a chokehold and took him to the ground, according to police and a friend who spoke with Meis after the shooting. Then other students and faculty members rushed to hold the shooter down until police arrived.
Pepper spray and a choke hold? What a fucking pussy! The bad guy had a shotgun so the least that Jon should have had was a .223-caliber Bushmaster Model XM15, right?
What is Bad, What is Good
Let me see if I understand this correctly.
The New Black Panther Party (bubble translation: a couple of black guys in Philly) with batons at a polling station...
BAD!!
Yet bringing a gun to a polling place in Chambers County, Alabama, in Shelby County, Alabama, or in Alabaster, Alabama (if you are white)...
GOOD!!
Makes perfect sense to me:)
The New Black Panther Party (bubble translation: a couple of black guys in Philly) with batons at a polling station...
BAD!!
Yet bringing a gun to a polling place in Chambers County, Alabama, in Shelby County, Alabama, or in Alabaster, Alabama (if you are white)...
GOOD!!
Makes perfect sense to me:)
Thursday, June 05, 2014
Where Do They Stand?
AmericaBlog has a piece up that illustrates quite nicely the wide ranging spectrum that Republicans have been dancing along regarding Bowe Bergdahl. Interestingly, they were big fans of him until Barack Obama came along. Par for the course...
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
Tuesday, June 03, 2014
Killers or Victims of Religious Brainwashing?
A few days ago two girls in Wisconsin tried to murder a friend because of an Internet meme:
Police also say [the victim's] attackers, both 12-year-old, claimed they tried to kill their friend in order to please "Slender Man," a demon-like character that has been floating through the Internet since around 2009. They thought her death would appease Slender Man, who would appear and let his "proxies" live with him at his mansion in the woods. They thought the sacrifice of their friend would protect their families from him and allow him to come out of hiding. Instead, they are now facing dozens of years behind bars.The girls are being held on half-a-million dollars bail, and will be tried as adults.
This is totally insane, but sadly predictable. We constantly fill our children's heads with lies and pretend they're real: Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, Scientology, and all the other hokum posing as religion.
We program children to be gullible and accept things on faith, rather than ask the hard questions and demand real evidence. Is it any wonder that they pull crap like this?
The people who post stories and Photoshop pictures on the website these girls read aren't responsible for this attack. They're just having fun, writing fiction.
These girls are clearly mentally ill, but you have to ask: what responsibility do purveyors of religion have for pushing the idea that demons and devils and Satan are real? If these girls had been raised with a healthy cynicism for all things supernatural, would they be facing life in prison?
Are these kids killers or victims of religious brainwashing?
Bowe Bergdahl Breakdown
Here's a great analysis of the Bowe Bergdahl story from one of my questions on Quora.
I've been debating this with a friend in the military. From what we know now he does not deserve it. But it was the right thing to do. Lets break it down.
1. Leave no man behind. It is not leave no man behind except for people who have yet to be tried for desertion. While it looks like he does not deserve to benefit from this policy, the problem is that once the Commander in Chief starts making exemptions, it becomes a slippery slope.
2. Prisoner exchange. Warring parties have been doing this for a long time. Israel releases hundreds, even over a thousand prisoners, for one Israeli soldier.
3. No negotiation with terrorists. He was classified as a prisoner of war, not a civilian hostage. No negotiation with terrorists? So we never negotiate with the Taliban? What about a peace treaty? What about Iran, who sponsors terrorism? No negotiation with them? We negotiate with our enemies not our friends.
4. The released prisoners will be fighting us. Of course they will. And in most other exchanges, we might put the soldier back into the armed forces. That is the nature of prisoner exchanges. Its part of the deal.
5. He was a deserter. Yes, it looks like it. He deserves to be held to account for this upon his return. But, he first needs to be returned and then tried.
6. He was a traitor. I have yet to see any evidence that he took up arms against the US or collaborated with the enemy.
7. He caused the death of six others. If found to be the case after his trial, I expect the punishment to take that into account.
8. Failure to notify Congress. At issue, but the executive branch should be held accountable. If this were a war hero, nobody would be complaining under these circumstances.
9. Glorification. Neither Obama nor Hagel heaped any praise upon him. Rice did exercise poor judgment in her words. All the attention he got is a double edged sword. I think he is going to become the subject of scorn and seen as the undeserving beneficiary of a longstanding policy.
Pretty much hits on all the points quite well!
I've been debating this with a friend in the military. From what we know now he does not deserve it. But it was the right thing to do. Lets break it down.
1. Leave no man behind. It is not leave no man behind except for people who have yet to be tried for desertion. While it looks like he does not deserve to benefit from this policy, the problem is that once the Commander in Chief starts making exemptions, it becomes a slippery slope.
2. Prisoner exchange. Warring parties have been doing this for a long time. Israel releases hundreds, even over a thousand prisoners, for one Israeli soldier.
3. No negotiation with terrorists. He was classified as a prisoner of war, not a civilian hostage. No negotiation with terrorists? So we never negotiate with the Taliban? What about a peace treaty? What about Iran, who sponsors terrorism? No negotiation with them? We negotiate with our enemies not our friends.
4. The released prisoners will be fighting us. Of course they will. And in most other exchanges, we might put the soldier back into the armed forces. That is the nature of prisoner exchanges. Its part of the deal.
5. He was a deserter. Yes, it looks like it. He deserves to be held to account for this upon his return. But, he first needs to be returned and then tried.
6. He was a traitor. I have yet to see any evidence that he took up arms against the US or collaborated with the enemy.
7. He caused the death of six others. If found to be the case after his trial, I expect the punishment to take that into account.
8. Failure to notify Congress. At issue, but the executive branch should be held accountable. If this were a war hero, nobody would be complaining under these circumstances.
9. Glorification. Neither Obama nor Hagel heaped any praise upon him. Rice did exercise poor judgment in her words. All the attention he got is a double edged sword. I think he is going to become the subject of scorn and seen as the undeserving beneficiary of a longstanding policy.
Pretty much hits on all the points quite well!
Pro Life My Ass
Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers.
More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins.
“The bones are still there,” local historian Catherine Corless, who uncovered the origins of the mass grave in a batch of never-before-released documents, told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “The children who died in the Home, this was them.”
More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins.
“The bones are still there,” local historian Catherine Corless, who uncovered the origins of the mass grave in a batch of never-before-released documents, told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “The children who died in the Home, this was them.”
Monday, June 02, 2014
The Amnesia of the Right
Apparently Ted Cruz is suffering from an acute case of amnesia. He blew a bowel on television last weekend over the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange saying, "U.S. policy has changed, now we make deals with terrorists."
Doesn't he remember that conservative hero Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages?
Thankfully, Politifact is there to sort it all out. I'll add in that Israel does this sort of thing all the time and we don't see Republicans ripping into them, now do we?
Doesn't he remember that conservative hero Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages?
Thankfully, Politifact is there to sort it all out. I'll add in that Israel does this sort of thing all the time and we don't see Republicans ripping into them, now do we?
Sunday, June 01, 2014
A "Scientific" Climate Skeptic
I recently visited my sister- and brother-in-law in Washington, DC. They both worked for government agencies for decades, and have both retired, though they're contracting back to the departments they retired from.
He's a climate-change skeptic. He has a background in physics, math and languages, and worked as a technical analyst for 40 years. He believes that increases in carbon dioxide concentrations will not cause global warming. His "proof" is that there was a large increase in global temperatures between 1970 and 1998 (which was the hottest year on record), and since then the increases in atmospheric temperatures have been "almost" flat even though CO2 levels have increased almost 10% (from about 367 ppm in 1998 to around 400 ppm today).
When he "proves" this to me he uses Google to summon up charts of CO2 levels that show that CO2 has continued to rise at "dramatic" rates, and then he summons charts of atmospheric temperature that show only a slight increase. When he eyeballs the charts he is convinced the very wobbly curve of mean global temperature is completely flat. When I eyeball it, I see a slight rise (which is upheld in the actual data).
According to him, CO2 doesn't cause global warming because the rate of change has gone down since 1998 while CO2 levels have gone up! This is the commonest trick of skeptics -- they repeat over and over that the rate of change going down! Whenever someone talks about the rate of change instead of the actual change be very wary. They're probably trying to slip something past you.
The fact is, mean global temperatures are still going up, albeit more slowly since before 1998. Hotter is still hotter, even if it's getting hotter more slowly. Thirteen of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000. It's 2014. You do the math.
If you mention the "97% of climate scientists" who agree that global warming is anthropogenic, he lays into you with a canned story about how that number was arrived at by some cartoonist who reviewed climate papers and tossed out those that didn't state a conclusion about anthropogenic climate change. The thing is, that's not how scientists work. The point of most papers is not to prove or disprove global warming, but to provide data about some aspect of the physical world. In papers about tree rings, or CO2 levels in ice cores, or arctic sea ice coverage the personal opinion of the author about global warming is not germane: only the data matters. So you would expect the vast majority of papers reporting climate measurements to not venture an opinion about anthropogenic climate change.
Just like you wouldn't expect the nurse who takes your temperature and blood pressure at the doctor's office to offer an opinion about whether you'll die of a heart attack. It's more complicated than just one measurement.
The 97% consensus conclusion has been arrived at by at least three different papers, which are cited on a NASA page on climate change consensus. They were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union and Science, not the comics page of the New York Daily News. One of the papers actually surveyed climate scientists [Doran], and found that 97.2% of actively publishing climatologists said yes, "human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures."
Then my brother-in-law delivers his "gotcha" question. "Do you believe that the increased concentration of CO2 will make the concentration of other gases go down?" Well, yes, but so what? I ask. The sheer quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere is going up. With more CO2, more infrared photons reflected from the earth's surface will be absorbed by CO2 and heat the atmosphere instead of radiating into space, because there are more CO2 molecules to absorb it. The relatively lower concentration of other gases won't lessen that effect. When I say this he has no real response, apparently ignoring the physical reality of the greenhouse effect.
Even though he thinks he has given this a great deal of thought, when I ask him directly what physical mechanism will prevent that larger number of CO2 molecules from absorbing a larger number of reflected infrared photons, he has no answer.
Though the relative concentration of gases in the atmosphere is apparently the capstone of his argument against anthropogenic CO2 greenhouse warming, he seems to have simply stopped there. He apparently has not tried to determine what that effect might be. Here's some analysis:
The most basic result of fossil fuel combustion is that each molecule of CO2 produced removes one free molecule of O2 (oxygen) from the atmosphere. The reactions for burning natural gas and isooctane (one of the components of gasoline; other components are similar) are:
CH4 + 2 O2 → CO2 + 2 H2O + heat
2 C8H18 + 25 O2 → 16 CO2 + 18 H2O + heat
That is, burning fossil fuels creates two greenhouse gases (CO2 and H2O), warms the atmosphere directly by releasing heat from the chemical reaction, and directly reduces the amount of free molecular oxygen in the atmosphere. Burning fossil fuels does not simply change the relative concentrations of gases because we're adding more CO2. It destroys free oxygen and creates carbon dioxide, locking the oxygen up in CO2 molecules until something else uses energy to separate the carbon and oxygen molecules -- say, a leaf struck by sunlight using photosynthesis to convert CO2 and water into glucose and oxygen. This is why CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a long time -- it takes energy to take it out of the atmosphere and store it in the form of plant material.
Water vapor in climate models is the wild card -- it's very difficult to ascertain whether the greenhouse warming effects of the water vapor will be greater than the cooling effects of clouds and potential snowfalls. Climatologists are always careful to note this.
My brother-in-law doesn't mention the actual chemical reactions of fossil fuel combustion at all. The only thing he will say is that there's no proof that more CO2 will cause the temperature of the earth to rise. He says this even though he admits that CO2 and water vapor are greenhouse gases, and that the greenhouse effect is real and is in fact what makes earth habitable at all (mostly due to water vapor). Without the greenhouse effect, we know from second quarter physics that the temperature of the earth would be less than zero degrees (255 Kelvins). Venus and Mars, which have mostly carbon dioxide atmospheres, are also warmed by CO2's greenhouse effect (the temperature on Venus -- 850 F -- is hot enough to melt lead and zinc: pennies dropped on a Venusian sidewalk would melt).
So, he insists that I accept the existence of some unstated process that will neutralize the greenhouse effect of CO2 when the relative concentrations of atmospheric gases are changed because of the introduction of more CO2 and the elimination of an equivalent amount of molecular oxygen. And he thinks that I'm being unscientific because I won't accept the existence of that mysterious, unknown and unstated effect.
In any case, CO2 and water vapor are not the only things we put into the atmosphere. For decades the chlorofluorocarbons we used for refrigeration escaped unnoticed into the atmosphere. When we discovered that it was creating a hole in the ozone layer (causing increased UV exposure and ultimately more skin cancer) the governments of the world agreed to cut down on CFC production, and switch to other gases.
The thing is, CFCs are powerful greenhouse gases that do not occur naturally and last a very long time. The CFC protocol has been successful, and CFC concentrations have declined by more than 10% since 1992. Raw concentrations of CFCs are much lower than CO2, but their global warming potential is 10,000 times greater than CO2's. Is it mere coincidence that the fastest increase in mean global temperatures occurred while CFC concentrations increased? Has some of the slower temperature increase since 1998 been due to falling concentrations of CFCs?
Since 1998 China has overtaken the United States as the largest emitter of CO2. Most of China's emissions are from coal-fired power plants. At the same time the United States has been using much less coal, and more natural gas. Burning coal puts aerosols in the atmosphere that block sunlight and make the earth cooler. This has caused "global dimming." Injecting aerosols such as sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide or carbonyl sulfide into the stratosphere has even been suggested as a "geoengineering" solution to global warming.
In other words, we may not be seeing temperatures rise as fast since 1998 because China is putting so much crap in the air that it's blocking sunlight and slowing the temperature increase that higher CO2 levels would cause. It's also killing millions in China.
We also fly a lot of airplanes, and those planes emit CO2 and water vapor, forming contrails in the stratosphere. Like clouds, contrails reflect sunlight and infrared, which has the effect of lowering the temperature at the earth's surface during the day and increasing it at night:
The near-total shutdown of civil air traffic during the three days following the September 11, 2001 attacks afforded a unique opportunity in which to observe the climate of the United States absent from the effect of contrails. During this period, an increase in diurnal temperature variation of over 1 °C (1.8 °F) was observed in some parts of the U.S., i.e. aircraft contrails may have been raising nighttime temperatures and/or lowering daytime temperatures by much more than previously thought.In recent years the arctic ice cap has receded drastically during the summer, leaving more deep blue sea exposed to sunlight, causing more evaporation and more water vapor in the atmosphere. More water vapor may mean more clouds, which may increase the earth's albedo (reflectivity), which may cool it.
Indeed, the old argument against global warming was that there was some "natural" mechanism that would keep temperatures stable and that water vapor, clouds and snowfalls would prevent a runaway greenhouse effect. Which is true to an extent; no one thinks that earth will turn into another Venus any time soon. But it's completely within the realm of possibility that earth will return to the state it was in during the Cretaceous period, with much higher mean global temperatures and sea levels 20 meters or more higher than now.
Which is exactly what climate scientists are concerned about: they're not saying we're entering some strange new world that has never been; they're saying that we're causing in 100 or so years something that would have taken millions of years to happen naturally. We're creating conditions that once existed on the planet that will not be conducive to raising crops adapted to our current climate. They're saying that that billions of people will be at risk of death or being displaced when rising sea levels make hurricanes more destructive to coastal areas and flood major cities like Miami and New York. All of which will cost trillions of dollars.
Furthermore, the temperature of the atmosphere is not the only thing that matters. Ocean temperatures have continued to rise, as well as sea levels (due to both expansion and glacier melt), since 1998. Deep ocean temperatures have risen; it may well be that atmospheric temperatures are rising more slowly and ocean temperatures are rising more quickly. Since water has greater thermal inertia, and there's so much more ocean than atmosphere, even tiny increases in ocean temperatures could hide planetary warming if all you do is stare myopically at mean global air temperatures.
The thing is, the sea doesn't have to boil to cause problems. Coral reefs are very sensitive to temperature changes, and higher CO2 levels have increased the acidity of the ocean, which is literally eating away the shells of certain sea creatures and causing coral bleaching. Which means significant changes in ocean ecologies, potentially leading to a collapse of our fishing industries.
In his arguments my brother-in-law doesn't concern himself with these practical, real-world effects of climate change. The only thing he zeroes in on is atmospheric temperature increases due to anthropogenic CO2. He cares not one whit for any of the other aspects of climate change, instead demanding proof that higher CO2 levels will increase atmospheric temperatures.
He complains about how CO2 levels obtained from ice cores 10,000 years old are "smeared" because of migrations of bubbles in the ice. There might be, he says, huge spikes of CO2 like the ones we're encountering now, but we just can't see them because they're averaged out. This might be true, but it's mostly irrelevant. The average is in fact what matters, and there was nothing during those periods creating the massive infusions of CO2 that we know we are creating now. As long as we burn fossil fuels at our current rates, the CO2 levels will continue to rise and stay at those high levels for decades and centuries, even after we stop spewing CO2. There is no dispute that we are responsible for almost doubling CO2 levels since 1750; the only thing climate skeptics can dispute is whether that increase will have serious consequences.
He also completely ignores forms of climate change that have nothing to do with burning fossil fuels. We have deforested vast areas of the planet: in the Amazon hundreds of thousands of square kilometers have been burned and turned to crop production, mostly soy beans and sugar cane. Burning trees not only puts CO2 and particulates like soot into the atmosphere, it also changes the local climate. Trees keep soil temperatures cooler and reduce water loss due to evaporation. There's also evidence that trees actually induce rainfall; replacing them with crops actually reduces the amount of rain the land receives. In the American Midwest millions of acres of oak savannas and prairies have been converted into cropland since the 1800s. That changed the climate, exacerbated the drought and caused the Dustbowl of the 1930s.
But my brother-in-law brushes off all these other things. He simply insists that there's no proof that CO2 is increasing global temperatures, and ignores everything else.
So, I have to ask myself why my brother-in-law would become a climate skeptic. He is a very smart guy. He knows it, and he revels in making sure everyone else knows it. He says that he hates fossil fuels. He says he used to accept anthropogenic global warming but when he "looked into it," he found the arguments against it convincing.
But I'm not convinced of the genesis of this belief. He appears to be viscerally disgusted by people who accept anthropogenic global warming "almost like a religion," without understanding any of the science behind it. I can certainly understand why someone would dislike people accepting unsubstantiated dogmas as truths.
But there's more to it than that. He has an underlying personality tic that leads him to want to intellectually trump everyone he meets. He is a contrarian not just about global warming, but about everything. This, rather than the science, seems to be the true root of his skepticism of climate change.
He has a devilish little smile when he relates stories of how he confounds the annoying drones who are responsible for quizzing him for the routine security clearance for his government job. The smile also appears when he describes how he has consistently failed his polygraphs, and his interrogators insist must be hiding something (I'm sure he's not; he's just yanking their chains). It appears when he describes the inadequacies of the man who used to direct the musical group he's a member of. And he has that same devilish smile when he talks about climate change. Some would call that smile arrogant or supercilious. Some would call it a sneer, rather than a smile. I simply find his anecdotes entertaining. Most of the time.
When I realized that, I finally understood why he has no explanation to back his thesis of increaseing CO2 concentrations and the greenhouse effect; a large part of his skepticism is due to his quirky contrarian personality, which has only been amplified as he has entered cranky old codgerdom (a process with which I am personally familiar: my codgerdom manifests itself as a dogged refusal to let people get away with bogus arguments).
Non-scientific motivations are common among climate skeptics. For some it's economic: they think it would damage the economy (or their personal wealth) if we reduced CO2 emissions. For some it's resignation: they think it's politically impossible to do anything to stop it, so we shouldn't even try. For some it's spite: they reflexively oppose anything their enemies hold to be true, regardless of its scientific or moral validity, or even if they themselves believed it at some point in the not-so-distant past. For some it's apathy: they'll be dead, so why should they inconvenience themselves to save other people's grandkids? For some it's incomprehension: they have no idea what those guys are talking about, so they're just going to ignore it.
From the science it's obvious that the issue of climate change is extremely complex. There are many variables, and we're doing all sorts of things that will affect climate, some increasing and others decreasing mean global temperatures. Neither I nor my brother-in-law are trained climate scientists, though we have comparable levels of education in the sciences. But neither of us knows enough real climate science to make any kind of definitive judgment about the scientific evidence. Both of us must rely on others to provide and interpret the data. He chooses to rely on climate skeptics who have pecuniary interests in the status quo, spend millions of dollars trying to discredit climate scientists with campaigns that include hacking the email accounts of scientists, inundating West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio with billboards touting "clean" coal and denigrating wind and solar power, and spreading innuendo and rumor across the Internet. I choose to rely on real climate scientists who make the actual measurements, create physical and mathematical climate models, write complex computer simulations that are verified against historical data, and publish in refereed scientific journals.
It's always a good idea to reexamine your data, revisit your analysis and make sure that you haven't fallen prey to group think. I do not think that's what my brother-in-law has done. He posits that the basic physical properties of carbon dioxide will change based on the relative concentrations of other gases. I think that's incorrect; CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and we're putting a hell of a lot of it into the atmosphere. Unless we're also putting stuff into the atmosphere that's lowering temperatures or doing something else that creates a cooling effect, increasing CO2 levels will increase temperatures. It's simple physics.
Ultimately, global warming is not the only reason to stop burning fossil fuels. Getting them out of the ground is dangerous and dirty (extracting them kills miners, poisons our lakes, rivers, and aquifers, and causes earthquakes). Burning them fills our air, land, lakes and rivers with disease-causing gases, particulates and toxic waste. And there's only a limited quantity of fossil fuels; once they're gone, they're all gone. No matter how many arctic wilderness areas we drill-baby-drill, the supply of fossil fuel is finite. Ultimately we will have to turn to other energy sources.
With all the other problems that burning fossil fuels cause, the conservative thing to do is wean ourselves off them while we still have the energy and financial resources to make the transition safe and easy. If we put off the switch until all the oil and gas are gone, we're guaranteeing ourselves a very dismal future as all the countries of the world fight over the few remaining patches of oil under the north pole and the deep ocean floors.
If moving away from fossil fuels is too difficult for us now, imagine how much more difficult it will be when we have to deal with drought, floods, food shortages, disease, sea level rise, and mass migrations of people from coastal areas.
Amen
And any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that cripple the souls—the economic conditions that stagnate the soul and the city governments that may damn the soul—is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood.
(Dr. Martin Luther King, 27 August 1967)
(Dr. Martin Luther King, 27 August 1967)
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