It's pretty funny you should ask about risk in the face of the example of underground weapons manufacture in occupied Europe. Those people were summarily executed by the Gestapo or similar agencies. Doesn't get riskier than that, and it still happened.
And as for armed women, the numbers are not ultimately important, the principle of access is. You don't count freedom on your fingers. Whichone of theseexamples would you say to theirface 'I would rather you were disarmed to salve my own sensibilities even if it meant you would have been raped and/or killed'?
Guns are a genie that will never go back into the bottle because they are a pre-industrial technology. Anybody with a lathe and press can learn how to make guns. Back in WW2 a lot of bicycle shops in occupied Europe were making machine guns in the basement for resistance fighters.
And in your domestic quarrel example, a gun is about the only thing that can equalize a fight for the average woman. If it becomes hand-to-hand, male upper body strength and an endocrine system optimized for combat usually means they win and she dies. A gun-wielding woman has a fighting chance, but then, since you've already admitted that the goal is disarmament for its own sake, you'd rather she just die with a knife in her than let her have a gun for her own protection. Your abstract principles are worth more than the lives of such people.
The funny thing is if you rewind time and look at the demographics of living standards when there were half as many people alive as today, you'll find that a greater percentage was living below the curve then as now, let alone discrete counts. In fact if you look at all of human history as a continuum, at no point in the past have more people had a better standard of living than this generation, both as an absolute value and as a percentage, and that improvement in both areas has been basically constant since the beginning of the modern era.
Until the percentage of the world's population with higher standards of living starts to decrease, which it hasn't for any meaningful period in centuries, I don't think we need to gnash our teeth in worry.
Exorcism did work, placebo effect still means it worked for some even if the success rate was low.
I'm sure all the dead epileptics are so happy for the few mild schizophrenics who managed to get talked out of their mental difficulties.
Burning witches and the control issue whatever this attitude comes from too many idiots watching the Da Vinci code [...]
No, it comes from Leviticus where Yahweh's mouthpiece says 'suffer not a witch to live'. It was incorporated from these Judaic roots into Christianity's modus operandi with such early events as the brutal murder of Hypatia by an angry mob. The tradition extended all the way through to the Salem witch trials in the West, and continues to this day in parts of Africa where vigilantes still murder 'witches' in the names of their supposedly benevolent and merciful deities in the ludicrous triune monotheism. Not to pick solely on Christianity, the Islamic courts in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia use the full force and authority of the state to behead 'witches' whenever they are exposed and arrested.
[...] there are plenty that were not [...]
Name some. Religion is an extension of hierarchical power structures that use a fictional separation from mortality as a substitute for moral authority. The argument essentially proceeds from 'gods are more powerful than men therefore they are right' which made sense when it was formulated in the paleolithic.
Raping kids, killing infidels, torturing, etc. These were done by bad people not by religion, bringing religion into it is fucking tragic - rule #1 do unto others. Anything else is the work of ones own wickedness nothing more.
How convenient that when bad things are done in the name of religion that it is just the work of bad people, but when good things are done with the same religious authority, then that demonstrates not that it is people who are good regardless of religion, but rather that religion has some sort of inherent value. Nope. That is ridiculous. People do bad things and good things irrespective of religion, so religions can and should be judged on their intrinsic qualities, which is usually to say their 'sacred texts'. These texts are invariably contradictory, saying 'love thy neighbor' one minute and that gays and disobedient kids are 'worthy of death' the next minute (Romans 1). The Quran has the same schizophrenia, alternately preaching tolerance and hate, uncoincidentally contextualized by Islam's own expansion and relative security.
These are very convenient devices, because it means that religion can display a nice face to the world and then preach murder and hate behind closed doors, fostering jihadists and abortion clinic bombers. Both are sourced in the same place, the fundamental supposedly divine authority of their so-called illuminated texts. Only people do good and evil things, and because religion itself is a construct of people, it too is layered with the good and bad ideas and actions of the people who created it.
[...] liable to spread to non-voluntary degradation.
As my wife says, always with due sarcasm, 'crime should be illegal.' There are already plenty of laws to deal with harassments, assaults, rapes, etc. for those maladjusted enough to make the choice to abuse others. Blaming environment for bad choices is something I will never accept. At its core is the same sort of mindset that would excuse atrocities committed in simple avoidance of socio-political dangers/backlash.
The underlying question to that is why is voluntary degradation anybody's business? I have an incredibly wide taste in kink, and depending on mood I can easily be into degradation of either gender, both, or neither. Having some fantasy for half an hour doesn't turn one into a sociopathic bigot.
I expect that the gender demographic breakdown would be more enlightening than the age demographics. Sexual positivism has been one of the main fracturing points for feminism for decades.
Christianity, I shouldn't have to remind you, is a not only a world religion, but the most popular in the world. There are 'witch' hunts conducted in Africa by church-going Christians with lethal results. These actions are more vigilantist than the state-overseen executions of 'witches' in places like Saudi Arabia, but the aspect of state authority is irrelevant since both are equally motivated by religious intolerance.
The point is that if you leave a church in Africa, the right spin on it could get you killed. This is real, and where it is should be completely insignificant to the fact that people are being murdered.
If nothing else this reminds me why you're on my foes list. Nice to see the consistency of character.
Wow. 'Did too!' Is the best argument you can make? Oh and an argument from authority (with no citations!) fallacy thrown in for free? Tell me more! (Actually, don't.)
Also, I am very annoyed that you snookered me into looking at a really long article that had nothing to do with the Mayan collapse on the pretense that it was relevant. Hey, I know, how about some real scholarly work that is, y'knowactually relevant?
Here's a relevant bit for people who won't RTFA:
However, analysis of Puuc soils and apparent cropping system indicates that maximal yields would likely have been sustainable for only about 75 y, with significant declines in fertility and yields certainly setting in after about 100 y (74). This duration is coincident with the apogee of most Terminal Classic Puuc centers (ca. 770â"870 CE).
Now scurry off back into whatever hole of ignorance from whence you emerged.
(I will grant, by the way, that diminished soil fertility cannot be blamed on farming practices exclusively, but my original opinion was based on information I stumbled upon more than a dozen years ago. Nonetheless it was at least based on valid research, and I was only offering it in the shortest form as a contradiction, not as an expansive and detailed explanation, which anybody with the most marginal of research skills should be able to do for themselves. Sadly, time and time again people fail to reach even that meager standard.)
The promotion of ignorance under the guise of passionate populism... that's fabulous. Your novel approach of 'HEY GAIZ STOP LEARNING AND JOIN CLASS WARFARE!' has earned you a place on my foes list.
The Mayans were probably not having a significant impact on their own weather (I smell some green cultist with an agenda). Bad weather/seasons can happen to anybody anywhere and have been a common cause of famine and social disruption in antiquity worldwide.
The reality of the Mayan collapse was based on the confluence of population growth and soil depletion. The Mayans never developed crop rotation, so while their society grew their crop yields shrank, and everything collapsed.
While I have been apostate for more than a decade, I can put on my 'Bible Brainwash Hat' (TM) and tell you exactly how they deny it: the light and other EM radiation from those stars was created in mid-'flight' to give the universe the appearance of age. You really can't win arguing science with somebody whose foundation is 'it's magic!' That's why I focus on moral/ethical problems when messing with theists.
The 19th century just telegraphed, and they want their outdated economic models back. Tariffs just create bubbles of reality denial where everything costs more, and domestic exports never increase because there is no impetus to compete outside of the 'protected' market, which is extremely sluggish at best.
Humans are not like other animals. We are not dependent on a tight range of temperature, diet, or other factors such that we're all going to roll over if one metaphorical leg is removed. If another animal loses its primary food source, it goes extinct. If we lose a primary food source, we eat something else. We synthesize, design, control, analyze, adapt, repurpose, refine... everything. We are not dinosaurs with nut-sized brains that can't even control their body temperature. If any species survives the next major shift in Earth's biosphere, it will be man.
Interesting assertion.
Scientific fact.
I'd like to see some evidence that, say, there was less diversity in the late Cretaceous
and more importantly that there'd be less diversity today if the KT event had not occurred.
Yeah, I totally have the ability to demonstrate how things that didn't happen would have changed millions of years of evolution. Anybody who did that would have a common source: their ass. All we know is what did actually happen, and that is that all mass extinctions have had net positive effects in the long term. Even mass extinctions were not causal or catalytic, it is undeniable that they were not preclusive of those positive outcomes, because both the extinctions and the positive outcomes are facts.
Unless your kids are planning on living in a 3rd world hell hole, I'd rate their chance of survival as 'extremely high'. Even if environmental changes have a short term negative impact on resources that are important to people, we're the most adaptable things on earth. We can live anywhere and eat almost anything. Moreover, through technology we can adapt virtually any other lifeform to do the same (with enough effort), which is why people are able to farm deserts and drink seawater. Really the only reason we're not deploying hydroponics on a large scale is that there is no need, no cost benefit to doing so. We already have all the food we need from existing infrastructure, even if corruption and logistical challenges prevent humanity from completely feeding itself.
We can create closed systems that give us everything we need, we just don't need to adapt in that way, yet, if ever.
I suppose you think the ocean has been the same pH forever too. Life adapts, and ocean life itself has shown an ability to spring back from as much as 90% species extinction. I'm not worried, especially as humans have the technology to build closed systems for environmental control and resource production/management. (Humanity too has sprung back from an immensely small population, as low as thousands at one point. We could lose 99.99999+% of our population and still have precedent for survival.)
The truly ironic thing is that people will now jump up my butt about how cold I am and what about all those people who might die. The same critics who, in a different context would be whining about overpopulation. Let me break it to you, the only way it is physically possible to have less people is for them to die. There is no magical fairy dust that makes population lower without people pushing up daisies. The cognitive dissonance is staggering.
(The double irony is that overpopulation is itself a myth, and anybody who knew anything about the real demographic data that shows that fertility rate has been on a downward rollercoaster for something like fifty years in almost every nation on earth. Population growth is leveling off, but that doesn't sell newspapers.)
I know you are being facetious, but the funny thing here is that if those events had not occurred, there would (very likely) be no large animal or plant life on earth. Radical change of the environment, atmospheric composition, and even the mass extinction of the majority of a whole taxonomic domain were necessary so that all the life we worry so much about today could exist at all. The problem with people today is that they are taught that we are living in The One True Sacred and Immutable Biosphere, and that if that biosphere changes, well, that's just the end of everything. The fossil record shows that time and time again biosphere changes are not only recovered from, but that the net effect is dramatically positive in terms of long term diversity.
Indeed, and it makes me want to slap the shit out of everybody who starts talking about 'carbon footprint'. Carbon is life itself.
Everybody worried about global temperature should really take a look at temperature over geologic timescales. Two centuries ago it was colder than any other time in the last two millennia. That last two millennia have been colder than most of the last ten or so since the last glacial period. Glacial periods notwithstanding, the last few million years have been the coldest in the last hundred million years. Modern, industrialized mankind was essentially born during the coldest period outside of an actual glacial cycle. Modern meteorology/climatoloy started at the bottom of a very cold well, and now that we're starting to get to temperatures that used to be normal, we're freaking out just because we haven't had to deal with it before in a conscious way. E.g. last time it was this warm we were still performing human sacrifices to appease imaginary agents of dubious intent. This whole society needs a clue-by-four to snap them out of the delusion that warming is the end of the world and any more a threat to life than all the other environmental changes that have already killed 99% of all species that have ever existed.
I'll do you one better, part of the reason that the local Weather Bureau recommended against evacuation was that they believed that improvements in building methods would be significant enough to ride out the storm. (In fact, in his official capacity as a federal meteorologist and head of the Galveston office, Isaac Cline told a local newspaper some years earlier that the possibility of a hurricane hitting the town was "crazy" and his advice contributed to not building a seawall that would have mitigated the harmful effects of the later storm.) And if evacuation wasn't even in their purview, why would they recommend against something they couldn't even do? Seriously, just making shit up is not going to cut it here. At best you're making a distinction without a difference, since the practice was for the federal Weather Bureau to make a recommendation to local authorities who would then decide whether or not to act and how to coordinate such action. That was a system that worked, but the federal agency recommended against evacuation, and who were local authorities to argue? They didn't have the equipment or the training to know better than the federal "experts". The historical fact remains that the federal government's interference in Galveston almost certainly increased the number of casualties by fostering a false sense of security that both prevented the construction of protective structures and persuaded people to remain in harm's way.
And if you seriously think that 'most' of cutting edge building methods have remained unchanged for more than a century, you're delusional. Things like earthquake resistant architecture or fire isolating design weren't even a glimmer in someone's eye. And you're ignoring the other half, materials. Things like fire retardant/resistant furnishings etc.
To what ignorance will you not stoop to defend this against all evidence? What does it take, a notarized statement from the curator of the Galveston Historical Foundation before you accept facts? Your intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
You fool, you have no idea what a terrible example Galveston is for your argument. In the first place, the 19th century lacked the technology for higher safety standards, both procedurally and materially.
In the second place, a federal agency to mandate and organize evacuations did exist at that time. The National Weather Service (then called the Weather Bureau) not only existed, but had an office and staff IN Galveston, TX, prior to the hurricane. It was the failure of this federally funded and federally operated agency to act properly on its own information about the coming storm that prevented any evacuation from being organized. Indeed, the leadership at that local federal Weather Bureau office assured the Galveston population that evacuation was not necessary, which may have convinced some who would have left otherwise to stay and get killed.
You really should study the history of these things before you set them up as gilded examples and look like an ignoramus. You never know when you'll run into a historian. (I actually have studied the causes and effects of this disaster long before this discussion.)
So your saying that if FEMA had existed in 1900, those people would magically not have died in a motherfucking hurricane? Or that magically there would have been no logistical problems with dealing with the corpses? Just what is your nonsense, libertarian--bashing point here?
That was based on the assumption that they were exaggerated by you. I can see they were not, though looking at it in context I think it was meant to be read as a rhetorical device, not a statistical fact. Even so I agree it smacks of racism.
I like how 'access to the system' is more important to you than standards. Why have grades at all then? Why don't we just hand out diplomas and degrees to everybody? Because that would make them useless and irrelevant of course, and by creating artificial tiers based on 'positive' racism, the utility and relevance of these certificates is that much decreased. Employers are made that much more wary about whether a minority candidate has made it through on scores that would have failed somebody of a different race.
And my white-with-a-conscience cred was aired because I have very close experience of the matter even it isn't first person. My wife has expressed to me that part of the reason that she works ridiculously hard (and she does) is to demonstrate to her management that she isn't there because of some quota or "special" treatment, but because she's as valuable or more valuable (and she is) than anybody else regardless of race. For people with that level of self-consciousness and self-respect, it is insulting.
For the sake of my wife and my children, I work for real racial equality, where a person is rewarded for what they do, not their skin color. I don't want a society that accepts lowered standards, I don't want my children to think that they shouldn't have to work as hard because their grandparents used to be discriminated against, and I don't give two shits if that offends people who dedicate their lives to being condescending or perennial victims.
It is really telling that you want to blame the fact that I'm white for my opinion. That's quite racist in itself. Funny how 'progressives' pay so much lip service to diversity, but they love stereotyping as much or moreso than their opposition. My wife tells me that people online always think she is a white male too, just because her opinions don't match the stereotype of black woman. This just in progressives: race (and gender) is not monolithic, and every race has diverse political opinions, which are neithervalidatednorinvalidated by virtue of that fact.
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It's pretty funny you should ask about risk in the face of the example of underground weapons manufacture in occupied Europe. Those people were summarily executed by the Gestapo or similar agencies. Doesn't get riskier than that, and it still happened.
And as for armed women, the numbers are not ultimately important, the principle of access is. You don't count freedom on your fingers. Which one of these examples would you say to their face 'I would rather you were disarmed to salve my own sensibilities even if it meant you would have been raped and/or killed'?
Guns are a genie that will never go back into the bottle because they are a pre-industrial technology. Anybody with a lathe and press can learn how to make guns. Back in WW2 a lot of bicycle shops in occupied Europe were making machine guns in the basement for resistance fighters.
And in your domestic quarrel example, a gun is about the only thing that can equalize a fight for the average woman. If it becomes hand-to-hand, male upper body strength and an endocrine system optimized for combat usually means they win and she dies. A gun-wielding woman has a fighting chance, but then, since you've already admitted that the goal is disarmament for its own sake, you'd rather she just die with a knife in her than let her have a gun for her own protection. Your abstract principles are worth more than the lives of such people.
When I read though that first, I thought you said 'immoral'... it was funnier that way. Now I kind of agree with the AC flamer...
The funny thing is if you rewind time and look at the demographics of living standards when there were half as many people alive as today, you'll find that a greater percentage was living below the curve then as now, let alone discrete counts. In fact if you look at all of human history as a continuum, at no point in the past have more people had a better standard of living than this generation, both as an absolute value and as a percentage, and that improvement in both areas has been basically constant since the beginning of the modern era.
Until the percentage of the world's population with higher standards of living starts to decrease, which it hasn't for any meaningful period in centuries, I don't think we need to gnash our teeth in worry.
Exorcism did work, placebo effect still means it worked for some even if the success rate was low.
I'm sure all the dead epileptics are so happy for the few mild schizophrenics who managed to get talked out of their mental difficulties.
Burning witches and the control issue whatever this attitude comes from too many idiots watching the Da Vinci code [...]
No, it comes from Leviticus where Yahweh's mouthpiece says 'suffer not a witch to live'. It was incorporated from these Judaic roots into Christianity's modus operandi with such early events as the brutal murder of Hypatia by an angry mob. The tradition extended all the way through to the Salem witch trials in the West, and continues to this day in parts of Africa where vigilantes still murder 'witches' in the names of their supposedly benevolent and merciful deities in the ludicrous triune monotheism. Not to pick solely on Christianity, the Islamic courts in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia use the full force and authority of the state to behead 'witches' whenever they are exposed and arrested.
[...] there are plenty that were not [...]
Name some. Religion is an extension of hierarchical power structures that use a fictional separation from mortality as a substitute for moral authority. The argument essentially proceeds from 'gods are more powerful than men therefore they are right' which made sense when it was formulated in the paleolithic.
Raping kids, killing infidels, torturing, etc. These were done by bad people not by religion, bringing religion into it is fucking tragic - rule #1 do unto others. Anything else is the work of ones own wickedness nothing more.
How convenient that when bad things are done in the name of religion that it is just the work of bad people, but when good things are done with the same religious authority, then that demonstrates not that it is people who are good regardless of religion, but rather that religion has some sort of inherent value. Nope. That is ridiculous. People do bad things and good things irrespective of religion, so religions can and should be judged on their intrinsic qualities, which is usually to say their 'sacred texts'. These texts are invariably contradictory, saying 'love thy neighbor' one minute and that gays and disobedient kids are 'worthy of death' the next minute (Romans 1). The Quran has the same schizophrenia, alternately preaching tolerance and hate, uncoincidentally contextualized by Islam's own expansion and relative security.
These are very convenient devices, because it means that religion can display a nice face to the world and then preach murder and hate behind closed doors, fostering jihadists and abortion clinic bombers. Both are sourced in the same place, the fundamental supposedly divine authority of their so-called illuminated texts. Only people do good and evil things, and because religion itself is a construct of people, it too is layered with the good and bad ideas and actions of the people who created it.
[...] liable to spread to non-voluntary degradation.
As my wife says, always with due sarcasm, 'crime should be illegal.' There are already plenty of laws to deal with harassments, assaults, rapes, etc. for those maladjusted enough to make the choice to abuse others. Blaming environment for bad choices is something I will never accept. At its core is the same sort of mindset that would excuse atrocities committed in simple avoidance of socio-political dangers/backlash.
The underlying question to that is why is voluntary degradation anybody's business? I have an incredibly wide taste in kink, and depending on mood I can easily be into degradation of either gender, both, or neither. Having some fantasy for half an hour doesn't turn one into a sociopathic bigot.
I expect that the gender demographic breakdown would be more enlightening than the age demographics. Sexual positivism has been one of the main fracturing points for feminism for decades.
Christianity, I shouldn't have to remind you, is a not only a world religion, but the most popular in the world. There are 'witch' hunts conducted in Africa by church-going Christians with lethal results. These actions are more vigilantist than the state-overseen executions of 'witches' in places like Saudi Arabia, but the aspect of state authority is irrelevant since both are equally motivated by religious intolerance.
The point is that if you leave a church in Africa, the right spin on it could get you killed. This is real, and where it is should be completely insignificant to the fact that people are being murdered.
If nothing else this reminds me why you're on my foes list. Nice to see the consistency of character.
In Africa and the Middle East, there are places where "witches" are still murdered... I mean executed... on a regular basis.
Also, I am very annoyed that you snookered me into looking at a really long article that had nothing to do with the Mayan collapse on the pretense that it was relevant. Hey, I know, how about some real scholarly work that is, y'know actually relevant?
Here's a relevant bit for people who won't RTFA:
However, analysis of Puuc soils and apparent cropping system indicates that maximal yields would likely have been sustainable for only about 75 y, with significant declines in fertility and yields certainly setting in after about 100 y (74). This duration is coincident with the apogee of most Terminal Classic Puuc centers (ca. 770â"870 CE).
Now scurry off back into whatever hole of ignorance from whence you emerged.
(I will grant, by the way, that diminished soil fertility cannot be blamed on farming practices exclusively, but my original opinion was based on information I stumbled upon more than a dozen years ago. Nonetheless it was at least based on valid research, and I was only offering it in the shortest form as a contradiction, not as an expansive and detailed explanation, which anybody with the most marginal of research skills should be able to do for themselves. Sadly, time and time again people fail to reach even that meager standard.)
The promotion of ignorance under the guise of passionate populism... that's fabulous. Your novel approach of 'HEY GAIZ STOP LEARNING AND JOIN CLASS WARFARE!' has earned you a place on my foes list.
The Mayans were probably not having a significant impact on their own weather (I smell some green cultist with an agenda). Bad weather/seasons can happen to anybody anywhere and have been a common cause of famine and social disruption in antiquity worldwide.
The reality of the Mayan collapse was based on the confluence of population growth and soil depletion. The Mayans never developed crop rotation, so while their society grew their crop yields shrank, and everything collapsed.
While I have been apostate for more than a decade, I can put on my 'Bible Brainwash Hat' (TM) and tell you exactly how they deny it: the light and other EM radiation from those stars was created in mid-'flight' to give the universe the appearance of age. You really can't win arguing science with somebody whose foundation is 'it's magic!' That's why I focus on moral/ethical problems when messing with theists.
The 19th century just telegraphed, and they want their outdated economic models back. Tariffs just create bubbles of reality denial where everything costs more, and domestic exports never increase because there is no impetus to compete outside of the 'protected' market, which is extremely sluggish at best.
Interesting assertion.
Scientific fact.
I'd like to see some evidence that, say, there was less diversity in the late Cretaceous
Evidence.
and more importantly that there'd be less diversity today if the KT event had not occurred.
Yeah, I totally have the ability to demonstrate how things that didn't happen would have changed millions of years of evolution. Anybody who did that would have a common source: their ass. All we know is what did actually happen, and that is that all mass extinctions have had net positive effects in the long term. Even mass extinctions were not causal or catalytic, it is undeniable that they were not preclusive of those positive outcomes, because both the extinctions and the positive outcomes are facts.
Unless your kids are planning on living in a 3rd world hell hole, I'd rate their chance of survival as 'extremely high'. Even if environmental changes have a short term negative impact on resources that are important to people, we're the most adaptable things on earth. We can live anywhere and eat almost anything. Moreover, through technology we can adapt virtually any other lifeform to do the same (with enough effort), which is why people are able to farm deserts and drink seawater. Really the only reason we're not deploying hydroponics on a large scale is that there is no need, no cost benefit to doing so. We already have all the food we need from existing infrastructure, even if corruption and logistical challenges prevent humanity from completely feeding itself.
We can create closed systems that give us everything we need, we just don't need to adapt in that way, yet, if ever.
I suppose you think the ocean has been the same pH forever too. Life adapts, and ocean life itself has shown an ability to spring back from as much as 90% species extinction. I'm not worried, especially as humans have the technology to build closed systems for environmental control and resource production/management. (Humanity too has sprung back from an immensely small population, as low as thousands at one point. We could lose 99.99999+% of our population and still have precedent for survival.)
The truly ironic thing is that people will now jump up my butt about how cold I am and what about all those people who might die. The same critics who, in a different context would be whining about overpopulation. Let me break it to you, the only way it is physically possible to have less people is for them to die. There is no magical fairy dust that makes population lower without people pushing up daisies. The cognitive dissonance is staggering.
(The double irony is that overpopulation is itself a myth, and anybody who knew anything about the real demographic data that shows that fertility rate has been on a downward rollercoaster for something like fifty years in almost every nation on earth. Population growth is leveling off, but that doesn't sell newspapers.)
I know you are being facetious, but the funny thing here is that if those events had not occurred, there would (very likely) be no large animal or plant life on earth. Radical change of the environment, atmospheric composition, and even the mass extinction of the majority of a whole taxonomic domain were necessary so that all the life we worry so much about today could exist at all. The problem with people today is that they are taught that we are living in The One True Sacred and Immutable Biosphere, and that if that biosphere changes, well, that's just the end of everything. The fossil record shows that time and time again biosphere changes are not only recovered from, but that the net effect is dramatically positive in terms of long term diversity.
Indeed, and it makes me want to slap the shit out of everybody who starts talking about 'carbon footprint'. Carbon is life itself.
Everybody worried about global temperature should really take a look at temperature over geologic timescales. Two centuries ago it was colder than any other time in the last two millennia. That last two millennia have been colder than most of the last ten or so since the last glacial period. Glacial periods notwithstanding, the last few million years have been the coldest in the last hundred million years. Modern, industrialized mankind was essentially born during the coldest period outside of an actual glacial cycle. Modern meteorology/climatoloy started at the bottom of a very cold well, and now that we're starting to get to temperatures that used to be normal, we're freaking out just because we haven't had to deal with it before in a conscious way. E.g. last time it was this warm we were still performing human sacrifices to appease imaginary agents of dubious intent. This whole society needs a clue-by-four to snap them out of the delusion that warming is the end of the world and any more a threat to life than all the other environmental changes that have already killed 99% of all species that have ever existed.
I'll do you one better, part of the reason that the local Weather Bureau recommended against evacuation was that they believed that improvements in building methods would be significant enough to ride out the storm. (In fact, in his official capacity as a federal meteorologist and head of the Galveston office, Isaac Cline told a local newspaper some years earlier that the possibility of a hurricane hitting the town was "crazy" and his advice contributed to not building a seawall that would have mitigated the harmful effects of the later storm.) And if evacuation wasn't even in their purview, why would they recommend against something they couldn't even do? Seriously, just making shit up is not going to cut it here. At best you're making a distinction without a difference, since the practice was for the federal Weather Bureau to make a recommendation to local authorities who would then decide whether or not to act and how to coordinate such action. That was a system that worked, but the federal agency recommended against evacuation, and who were local authorities to argue? They didn't have the equipment or the training to know better than the federal "experts". The historical fact remains that the federal government's interference in Galveston almost certainly increased the number of casualties by fostering a false sense of security that both prevented the construction of protective structures and persuaded people to remain in harm's way.
And if you seriously think that 'most' of cutting edge building methods have remained unchanged for more than a century, you're delusional. Things like earthquake resistant architecture or fire isolating design weren't even a glimmer in someone's eye. And you're ignoring the other half, materials. Things like fire retardant/resistant furnishings etc.
To what ignorance will you not stoop to defend this against all evidence? What does it take, a notarized statement from the curator of the Galveston Historical Foundation before you accept facts? Your intellectual dishonesty is astounding.
You fool, you have no idea what a terrible example Galveston is for your argument. In the first place, the 19th century lacked the technology for higher safety standards, both procedurally and materially.
In the second place, a federal agency to mandate and organize evacuations did exist at that time. The National Weather Service (then called the Weather Bureau) not only existed, but had an office and staff IN Galveston, TX, prior to the hurricane. It was the failure of this federally funded and federally operated agency to act properly on its own information about the coming storm that prevented any evacuation from being organized. Indeed, the leadership at that local federal Weather Bureau office assured the Galveston population that evacuation was not necessary, which may have convinced some who would have left otherwise to stay and get killed.
You really should study the history of these things before you set them up as gilded examples and look like an ignoramus. You never know when you'll run into a historian. (I actually have studied the causes and effects of this disaster long before this discussion.)
"you're"
That was the result of typing too fast.
So your saying that if FEMA had existed in 1900, those people would magically not have died in a motherfucking hurricane? Or that magically there would have been no logistical problems with dealing with the corpses? Just what is your nonsense, libertarian--bashing point here?
So, "at worst...disingenuous, but still true"?
That was based on the assumption that they were exaggerated by you. I can see they were not, though looking at it in context I think it was meant to be read as a rhetorical device, not a statistical fact. Even so I agree it smacks of racism.
I like how 'access to the system' is more important to you than standards. Why have grades at all then? Why don't we just hand out diplomas and degrees to everybody? Because that would make them useless and irrelevant of course, and by creating artificial tiers based on 'positive' racism, the utility and relevance of these certificates is that much decreased. Employers are made that much more wary about whether a minority candidate has made it through on scores that would have failed somebody of a different race.
And my white-with-a-conscience cred was aired because I have very close experience of the matter even it isn't first person. My wife has expressed to me that part of the reason that she works ridiculously hard (and she does) is to demonstrate to her management that she isn't there because of some quota or "special" treatment, but because she's as valuable or more valuable (and she is) than anybody else regardless of race. For people with that level of self-consciousness and self-respect, it is insulting.
For the sake of my wife and my children, I work for real racial equality, where a person is rewarded for what they do, not their skin color. I don't want a society that accepts lowered standards, I don't want my children to think that they shouldn't have to work as hard because their grandparents used to be discriminated against, and I don't give two shits if that offends people who dedicate their lives to being condescending or perennial victims.
It is really telling that you want to blame the fact that I'm white for my opinion. That's quite racist in itself. Funny how 'progressives' pay so much lip service to diversity, but they love stereotyping as much or moreso than their opposition. My wife tells me that people online always think she is a white male too, just because her opinions don't match the stereotype of black woman. This just in progressives: race (and gender) is not monolithic, and every race has diverse political opinions, which are neither validated nor invalidated by virtue of that fact.