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Domain: beloit.edu
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Comments · 18
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...reminds me of The Mindset List
Ever heard of The Mindset List?
What you just described is a direct and perfect example. Relevant from item 11 onwards (John McEnroe could arguably be the Shatner of tennis while no one gives a flying sugary toroid what fancy names we give for non-fat non-dairy lattes).
FRIENDLY WARNING: The Mindset List will make some of you suddenly realise just how out of phase you are to current popular culture.
That said, I don't feel bad at all that the young'uns totally missed out on getting to enjoy Heather Locklear in her youthful, blonde glory in TJ Hooker. I think we're even getting to the point where Bon Jovi aren't even relevant anymore, so except for showing up occasionally in the tabloids in connection to her ex-husband, she's pretty much completely off the pop culture radar.
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I wished it had older years too.
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I wished it had older years too.
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I wished it had older years too.
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I wished it had older years too.
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I wished it had older years too.
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I wished it had older years too.
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I wished it had older years too.
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I wished it had older years too.
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I wished it had older years too.
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I wished it had older years too.
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I wished it had older years too.
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I wished it had older years too.
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Re:That explains...that not only were people like this allowed to breathe the same air
If only laws prevented that! Surely eugenics is the answer, or perhaps some other form of law to keep the higher-quality people from those lower-quality ones.
They're going to spend the rest of their miserable, worthless lives on welfare, no doubt failing to raise their bastard kids properly.
Who are you to say that their lives will be miserable and worthless? To those living them, perhaps their lives are rich and provide emotional sustenance, or seem worthy and interesting. It is dangerous to try and judge someone from the outside, and if you hold the rest of humanity in such low regard, perhaps you should think about what is happening in your own life that you castigate others as you do.
Robertson Davies sometimes writes about such people who are left behind by time or technology or society, and writes about them with great sympathy. In The Cunning Man a doctor treats patients with more than just science, and in Conversation with Robertson Davies this exchange occurs:
Cameron: Don't those novels show a fairly strong current of sympathy for some aspects of that [cultural] tradition?
Davies: It is sympathy for the people -- not, I think the tradition -- because they are people. They're not caricatures, they're not oddities, they're not cardboard. They bleed when you stick them and they weep when they are miserable, and their sorrows and their distresses are made sometimes more poignant by the fact that they don't know why things are happening to them.
I will lament that my penis has by then received so little use.
Most women, I suspect, would choose a carefree bad boy over an angry, uptight Republican with a chip on his shoulder; Dan Savage makes a similar point in some of his columns. If you think ignorant fools can get laid so easily but someone as perspicacious as you wants to and can't, who is smart?
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Re:Random questions and comments
Of course, global warming is disputed science. That's why the Pentagon prepared a special report on dealing militarily with the changed climate. It's also why the world's second largest insurer Swiss Re commissioned a special task force to prepare for the impending financial catastrophe in the insurance industry.
This is not about people who understand science. It's about people who don't understand science and/or choose to ignore science for profit.
Do you think some scientist somewhere looks at a chart and says, "Oh, looks like the temperature line goes up?" Global warming is about time-based observation and scientific inference based on proven mathematics and statistical analysis. Because observations took place over years and in many different parts of the planet, we can say "with a high degree of confidence" that global warming is real. And, "high degree of confidence" is an understatement here. The regression tests, error bars, fitments of the vast majority of data on global warming is way within challenge by anyone with any scientific integrity. Read the papers by NASA scientists, climatologists, geophysicists. I would even go as far as to say the data on global warming is more solid than early data on almost any other major scientific advancement of the past 100 years -- nuclear, electronic, etc.
Science experiments don't require many different Earth's to verify this because science isn't about volume. It's about, well, science and knowing how to break down problems, and analyze measurements for precision and accuracy.
The experiments that break down the atmosphere verifying that increased heat capacity correlates to increased CO2 are done in high school science labs. It is *very disappointing* to see anyone posting here about science education without basically understanding what they were supposed to pick up from educators in the first place! -
Re:Why Only U.S. & Russia?
If you want more things like that to make you feel old... check out the mindset lists...
Nephilium
"The voice got as cool as a cafeteria dinner." -- Farewell, My Lovely (Chapter 15)
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Re:Doom and Gloom
Here's one chart of the Vostock data, here's another in a weird movie format that you have to scroll around in, but has some additional data. The commentary on the first page may be BS for all I know, but the charts are good. You've probably seen all this, but many slashotters haven't.
You can see the 100,000 year cycles clearly. Temperatures spike from -8 or -9 degrees (C) below present to 2 or 3 degrees above present in about 5000 years, then almost immediately reverse, dropping about 5 degrees over the next 10,000 years, then cool off slowly over the remainder of the 100,000 year (give or take) cycle.
About 15,000 years ago temps spiked as normal, reaching today's temps about 10,000 years ago but *didn't* dive as would be expected. Humans started messing with the climate significantly only in the past 200 years, but something unprecedented in the 400,000 years of good data we have happened 10,000 years ago - we should have been back to the norm for the Current Ice Age by now. What happened? During the previous cycle CO2 levels stayed at the ~275ppm level for 10,00 years but temperatures dropped nearly 10 degrees during that time anyway - why?
Yes, indeed, as I said repeatedly, the volcanic cycle is far slower than the timescale we care about. But CO2 level changes driven by the big geological cycle dominate the geological data. There have been geological periods when CO2 levels were 6-7 times as high as they are now (we think), but temperatures were about the same. Why? We really know very little about the factors that govern the climate.
What we *do* know is that it's a historical anomaly during the past 50,000,000 years for temperatures to be this warm for even 1,000 years at a stretch - the climate simply isn't naturally stable. -
Re:No, he is actually right
In fact, au contraire, the humans which _did_ reproduce are those who survived the ice age by causing thousands of species, mamoths included, to go extinct. If there is a "Mother Nature", it actually favoured the most ruthless and destructive bastards back then.
Your conclusion may be correct, but your facts are pretty far off. The current ice age started about 50 million years ago, and we haven't survived it yet, as it hasn't ended. The current ice age comprises short periods of warmth like the one we're in now, punctuating long periods of glaciation. The current warm spell started about 15 kya, with temperatures rising quickly to reach current levels about 10 kya.
Human population 15-10 kya was pretty small, so it's unlikely we could have achieved this level of environmental impact. Thousands of species adapted to weather that had been cooling for 100 ky no doubt went extinct, but becaue of the rapid climate change, not because of man.
The Vostock ice core data has been a real eye-opener, especially the data from 400-100 kya, that shows the 100 ky or so cycle of glaciation and warming.