|
Post by Village Idiot on Jul 27, 2015 21:45:29 GMT -5
It is a fact that crossing a lava lamp with a tarantula can't happen.
|
|
|
Post by patrick on Jul 27, 2015 21:45:33 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by patrick on Jul 27, 2015 21:46:32 GMT -5
It is a fact that crossing a lava lamp with a tarantula can't happen. I think with genetic engineering it could.
|
|
|
Post by Village Idiot on Jul 27, 2015 21:47:35 GMT -5
Sharknado. Isn't that where a bunch of sharks come flying out of a tornado? Yes, it is.
|
|
|
Post by fauxmaha on Jul 27, 2015 22:05:52 GMT -5
Only the second best bad movie ever. An earthquake in Los Angeles causes a volcanic eruption, complete with giant, fire breathing spiders. Pure gold.
|
|
|
Post by RickW on Jul 28, 2015 0:36:12 GMT -5
Only the second best bad movie ever. An earthquake in Los Angeles causes a volcanic eruption, complete with giant, fire breathing spiders. Pure gold. Even more so than Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster? Egads.
|
|
|
Post by patrick on Jul 28, 2015 6:12:07 GMT -5
Sharknado. Isn't that where a bunch of sharks come flying out of a tornado? Yes, it is. Not to be confused with Snarknado, where talking heads from MSNBC and Fox get swept up in a tornado.
|
|
|
Post by millring on Jul 28, 2015 6:52:34 GMT -5
I thought that was where wannabe entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of billionaires in hopes of getting financed.
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on Jul 28, 2015 7:48:21 GMT -5
It's a leap to conclude progress from a system that is by definition random. The most that can be concluded is 'change', not progress as you're referring to it. Progress in the sense that there is no returning, but not progress in an evaluative sense that implies "improvement". There is no improvement -- only adaptation. I raised my arm, and started to wag my finger in the general direction of Warsaw. Then realized, shit, that's something I probably would have written. Thought maybe I would have said, it's just change. I'm not sure I would grace all of it with the term, "adaptation". Because that implies that there is a movement towards something more useful. And while we often do, we often don't. That's what evolution is; trial and error. That which works moves on. That which doesn't dies off. For humans, our quality of life has gone up over our existence as a species. The rest of the species on the planet have paid the price of our ascendence. One fb link ( haven't tried to verify the article) said something that struck me. About 1/3 of the weight (mass) of vertibrates on the planet are humans. And about 2/3 the weight is what we eat. Only about 5% of the total mass of vertibrates on the planet are wild natural creatures like lions and tigers and bears (and elephants). . . . , that factoid (if anywhere near true) shook me.
|
|
|
Post by TKennedy on Jul 28, 2015 8:54:31 GMT -5
Unless the overpopulation problem is dealt with we can be as green as we can get and still be in trouble eventually. Unfortunately people like this guy are the most fertile.
|
|
|
Post by epaul on Jul 28, 2015 9:24:58 GMT -5
Unless the overpopulation problem is dealt with we can be as green as we can get and still be in trouble eventually. Unfortunately people like this guy are the most fertile. Hey, that guy will probably go on to have 2.2 kids *. He's not the problem. The U.S. is unlikely to ever become overpopulated and resource depleted. Several nations have populations that are stable and sustainable. If overpopulation is to be a concern, put the focus (and photo) where it is occurring and is a problem. You will never gather any wheat wandering around in a soybean field. *stereotypes can have children in fractional units
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Jul 28, 2015 10:01:14 GMT -5
I think my wife has had some of those fractional kids in her classes. Probably the point-fours. (The point-twos have gone directly into investment banking and television production--many at SyFy.)
|
|
|
Post by fauxmaha on Jul 28, 2015 10:02:49 GMT -5
What's that? A dig at Lavalantula and Sharknado?
I guess there's just no accounting for taste.
|
|
|
Post by Fingerplucked on Jul 28, 2015 10:16:59 GMT -5
I couldn't not comment on this thread. It started out as "it's not your opinion, you're just wrong," but quickly jumped to just being wrong without the opinion disclaimer. So, to set the record straight, in no particular order:
1. Sharknado is the dumbest movie ever. Ever. That's why you have to watch it. This last week I watched Sharknado II and III. I can hardly wait for IV.
2. Lavalantula tries to copy the success of the above but gets mired down in scarce facts and semi-plausible explanations. Granted they were few and far between, but I don't think they had any place at all in a movie like this.
3. CO2 emmissions = Global Warming = Climate Change. It's good to hear that the majority of the right accepts this. I hope the majority of the right knows that.
4. The opinion that we must be absolutely certain of the long term effects of any possible solution to AGW and climate change: There's no such thing. If certainty is the number one priority, then doing nothing and continuing as we have been is the absolute worst option because the highest degree of certainty is that we are on an unsustainable path to destruction. That doesn't mean that we should do anything, as I'm sure some will read this point. But we've got to start turning things around, and there are low-risk solutions that will at the very least delay irreversible damage, such as promoting renewable energy.
5. What will a proposed solution cost? That's an excellent question. Possible solutions should be compared to each other using projected costs as a factor. And never let it be forgotten that doing nothing has a cost as well. In short, you can't spend or buy your way out of a dead planet. The Oil Brothers will be just as dead as the rest of us if we don't take action.
6. "The government can't fix this." Sure they can. That's not to say that they will. The government may do nothing, they may make things better, or they may make things worse. Getting back to certainty, the certainty is that the government is the only force that can improve things. The government should be relying on the expertise of the scientific community and any innovations from the private sector. Costs, risks and benefits should be compared. A long term plan with an eye on improvements should be put in place with room for flexibility as technology and conditions will undoubtedly change over the next twenty, fifty or one hundred years.
7. AGW is a gradual change and people can adapt as shorelines gradually become part of the ocean: As pointed out, this totally ignores the poorer populations around the world. I think an even bigger point is that it ignores climate change and the violent storms that go with it. You can't move far enough inland to avoid the destructive weather forces that come with AGW and climate change.
8. Most of the arguments against taking action on AGW in this thread are little more than rationalizations. The reason I say that pretty much from the beginning I was thinking about right-based arguments against government spending at the onset of the Great Recession. The right said that we were on an unsustainable path. Remember that word? Unsustainable? It was like the right owned it. They used it a LOT. They were also certain that austerity, cutting our spending below expenses, would stimulate the economy. They had certainty. What they did not have was any historical evidence to support the theory that an economy can save its way out of a recession, that a reduction of spending by others causes manufacturers to buy more capital goods and hire more people or that, a tighter money supply causes consumers to spend more.
9. A valid argument from the right: A distrust of government. It's an opinion, of course, but it's consistent. It applies to AGW just as it applies to government stimulus spending. There's no rationalization or hypocrisy here. It just is. You might get rationalization if you ask someone from the right why they distrust government so much, but the basic feeling is real, and no more valid or invalid than someone from the left feeling that the government may be the only solution to a given problem.
10. Steve Guttenberg has put on a lot of weight, along with some muscle, but mostly just weight. He looked like a cross between Bruce Willis and Marlon Brando, but without the action or acting chops. Obviously Bruce Willis knew better than to audition for Lavalantula.
|
|
|
Post by Fingerplucked on Jul 28, 2015 11:15:36 GMT -5
Well, crap. It looks like I broke the Soundhole.
I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I take it back. Steve Guttenberg looked like a stud.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Jul 28, 2015 11:48:24 GMT -5
It's pedantry time.
An opinion is a kind of proposition--that is, a statement that can be true or false. In ordinary usage, it's also an arguable proposition--one whose truth or falsity is not immediately apprehendable or directly experienced ("the sky is blue"), but that can be supported by evidence and argument--which are in turn open to a range of interpretations. Thus we have "expert opinion," held by those who have a special interest and competence in a field, and "informed opinion," held by those who have taken the trouble to look at arguments and evidence and come to some conclusion, however tentative. And we have "popular opinion" (which might fall anywhere on the "informed" spectrum") and "opnion polls" that attempt to map who affirms which propositions.
An opinion is not a fact--though a "fact" is itself not necessarily a simple entity and may be the result of a complex chain of investigation and analysis and dependent on previously-established "facts." One of the primary jobs of a freshman composition course is to get students to distinguish opinions from other kinds of propositions--to unpick the tangle of assumptions, beliefs, analyses, "facts," and various kinds of evidence and families of argumentation. (The rest of the course addresses how to turn the results of that unpicking into readable prose. No wonder comp teachers suffer from chronic fatigue and are prone to despair.)
I have a problem with some of Raumer's illustrations, particularly his conflation of taste with opinion. The "opinion" that X is a better TV show than Y can be a kind of opinion, but it does not belong to the same universe of discourse as "vaccines cause autism" or "gay marriage ought to be a civil right." A description of a subjective state ("I like X more than Y") is a different manner of proposition from an assertion about causality or public policy. (And the latter two are different from each other as well--any sentence containing an "ought" immediately implies a "because" and signals preceding sets of supporting propositions.)
A little undergrad philosophy can go a long way.
|
|
|
Post by millring on Jul 28, 2015 13:02:21 GMT -5
says who?
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on Jul 28, 2015 13:27:33 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by dradtke on Jul 28, 2015 13:28:15 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by millring on Jul 28, 2015 13:39:36 GMT -5
I hope you're feeling better soon.
|
|