Someone (in this case Pielke, Jr.) writes up their research then others with expertise in the field get to criticize it, hopefully producing something better ultimately. What is irritating is criticism from people who obviously don't know what they're talking about.
The problem is the people who don't know what they're talking about are the intended audience for the article.
The charitable explanation is that he feels he's winning the scientific argument and want to share his findings with the wider world, which is understandable but irresponsible since it's unclear the conclusion is his personal baby or that it's scientifically contentious.
The uncharitable explanation is that he knows he's losing the scientific argument, so he's instead taking his claim to the ignorant masses knowing that whomever gets a convincing argument out first will be hard to displace.
Well, did you read the article? Because AFAICT his analysis seems good. Do you see real problems with it, or are you just guessing based on a headline? Because that would be as bad as what you are accusing him of.
I read his article and the response.
If I recall his claims were mainly that costs had increased at the same rate as GDP (you really confident with his linear fit of that data? way too much noise) and that the IPCC had stated that extreme weather wasn't getting worse (not sure how true that is).
The response was that he was disregarding the fact that modern structures and forecasting should reduce costs, and that some work had indicated storms were getting worse. (to which he had a counter-response taking issue with the modern structure claim)
My point isn't that he's necessarily wrong (I honestly don't know), it's that it's a far more complicated question than the article implies.
He also cited a U.N. climate report, along with his own research, to assert that extreme weather events have not been increasing in frequency or intensity.
Aren't extreme weather events and their relative energy levels easy to gauge and track? Why is this controversial? Either there are more extreme / extremely powerful events, the average energy level increasing, or there aren't.
Im sure that (like economists do for inflation), factors that are constant and not constant (like solar output) can be factored.
Those things are checkable but it's non-trivial and subject to interpretation. I don't know if there is a scientific consensus on this question but I'm pretty sure it's non-trivial.
For me the issue isn't that the story is necessarily wrong, it's that it could have had the opposite conclusion and been just as convincing and justified. Silver hired a proponent of one side in a scientific debate (no idea if it's the bigger side or not), now that person is presenting his view as if it's the only conclusion once you take a five second look at the data. It's a misleading article.
538's original mix, sports and politics, are both essentially spectator sports. The major interest in entertainment and people watch for the narratives. Seeking to drive interest (and appease partisans) media come up with false narratives that ignore data. This creates a lot of low hanging fruit for 538 to take the data and point out the narratives are wrong.
I think that 538 has made the mistake of believing that this low-hanging fruit exists elsewhere. When you have multiple groups of writers all trying to generate the best 2.5 hours of cable news punditry every week you're going to get a lot of easily debunked BS. When you try to apply that same once over data analysis to areas of serious scientific study you're going to be the one spewing BS.
I hope Silver can find some additional areas of news that are in real need of analysis because trying to do original scientific research in a news article won't end well.
The quotes are bizarre and kinda rambling but this one makes a bit more sense
Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free?
So her idea is that the prisoner takes a drug that makes them feel like they've been imprisoned 1000 years in only 8 hours, and then they're set free. Other than being complete science fiction that does seem more humane (though the 1000 years is crazy).
Of course if you ever did create that drug I think the real potential would be in.... recreational uses.
Nope, eating refined sugar by the spoon doesn't have the same effect as eating whole fruit, taking cholesterol pills doesn't have the same effect as eating eggs and apparently eating red yeast doesn't screw your liver. While pills have been tested for less than half a century, natural food has been tested by humans and our primate ancestors for millennia. Most importantly, it's not for FDA to ban and for private companies to patent stuff that people have been eating long before patents or regulations were conceived.
So I don't buy the sugar vs fruit analogy because you're talking about food which means you're comparing something with multiple active ingredients as opposed to just one.
And ancestral knowledge can actually be pretty brutal at evaluating evidence, unless the side effects were extremely common all people had to go on was random anecdotes, it doesn't matter how many millennia they used it, they never had the knowledge to fully evaluate the safetyr.
Red rice yeast is as effective as statins at lowering cholesterol, without liver side effects statin pills. Yet FDA bans sale of supplements calibrated to have enough active components.
So I don't know a lot about the red rice yeast thing but I have to defend the FDA here. To be an 'active component' it means that the ingredient in question is actually having a biological effect. The moment you're taking something that has the potential to significantly affect your body chemistry you're taking something that has the ability to harm you. How do we figure out what that something is? We study it, we understand what the effect is, good things and bad things, for what people do the good or bad things occur, at what dosages, etc.
A natural product is going to be worse for your health. If you're getting enough of the ingredient to affect your health you're also getting more of the side effects than you would through a pill that was properly designed and tested.
There's a lot more PhDs than academic jobs out there. A dissertation that doesn't add much probably leaves her working somewhere in industry or doing endless postdocs. On the other hand if she gets a couple big publications in Nature she's got a shot at an assistant professorship. Maybe some other groups find some tweaks to make the method work and she's the pioneer of a new field, or maybe everyone forgets about it but she still has a shot at making tenure. Or she was just trying to break through and didn't think it would make as big a splash as it did.
There's two parts, first I'm not sure it's easy to replace the BT corn, I don't know a lot about pesticides but the combination might not be that easy to recreate, and depending how the pesticides work the current resistance might give the worms a head start on the next chemical.
But the other concern is about the industry and particularly the EPA failing to avoid what should have been an obvious problem. If they couldn't dodge this obvious bullet what other concerns are the ignoring?
Okay, I can be pretty dense when it comes to reading between the lines, but even I notice a heavy dose of agenda in this summary. It's a good thing the anti-GMO folks have a crystal ball to see the future clearly.
I guess we need our daily dose of propaganda though.
I'm pro-GMO but I think this is one of the legitimate issues. If you engineer something to resist a pest the pest is going to evolve a response, we've learned that lesson countless times with anti-biotics but the pests evolve faster than human nature.
In WWI you had a couple small local actions (triggered by ethnic minorities) that spawned larger conflicts. People kept escalating, in part due to treaty obligations, and the whole world was eventually fighting.
In WWII Hitler's plan was domination, he didn't care about Germans in Czechoslovakia, they were simply an excuse to get the ball rolling. The failure of appeasement was it gave Hitler additional power when he never had the intention of stopping.
In the current scenario many Russians legitimately believe that Crimea is properly part of Russia, a few years back I was a Russian action film where the main character kills some Ukrainian mafia and as he does so says “You bitches will answer to me for Sevastopol!”. So it isn't a purely cynical manoeuvre on his part.
So the big plan for Putin isn't to take over the world Hitler style, it's to take back the bits of territory that Russians think are supposed to be part of Russia. That's still really bad for the countries involved, but I don't know if it's something where we want to risk a world war involving nuclear powers.
The US has a treaty with Ukraine and Russia that Russia is violating, so we need to step up. It would likely be best to send a small to medium detachment and put them temporarily under the control of the Ukraine government. Also plenty of intelligence officers. We don't need to direct them ourselves and generate more strife than needed.
Sending US troops to Ukraine is a bad idea. It probably deters an invasion, but if it doesn't you risk a US/Russia war which more or less how Europe stumbled into WWI.
And even if you deter an invasion you've pretty much cemented Putin's narrative of the Ukraine being manipulated by the West which damages relations and invites future Russian aggression.
My thought. Don't send US troops to East Ukraine, send Obama.
I think perception still matters which is one of the reasons why Putin waited till after the Olympics. Obama (with many secret service) visiting some cities in East Ukraine isn't an encroachment on Ukraine's sovereignty, it's just a friendly diplomatic visit. But I very much doubt that Putin wants to launch an invasion while Obama is wandering around in the crosshairs, and even if he does Obama can avoid escalating things further by simply leaving without losing much face (try doing that with troops).
The fact that Putin is playing this game with "self-defence forces" and a "fascist" government shows that he's still concerned about optics, other world leaders can play that game against him to protect East Ukraine.
I think the issue is that this is part of the price to be paid for Iraq. When you launch an invasion based on a false pretext one of the consequences is that other countries feel freer to do the same. There's a possibility that if the US hadn't gone into Iraq that Putin wouldn't have felt he had the necessary rationalization to go into Crimea.
I'd never make the claim that Bush was as bad as Putin but both have similar aspects to their base. A strong aggressive persona, conservative social beliefs, a willingness to exert military power, etc. It's a common template for conservative populism. In a country like the US it's a lot more restrained but you still get things like the Iraq war and the culture wars. In Russia instead of invading Iraq they annex Crimea, and instead of banning gay marriage they ban gay speech.
There's similarities to left wing populism and Chavez as well, but in the US I don't think the left wing populism infiltrates the political elite the way right wing populism does.
To be fair support for separation was higher (roughly 50%) but support for joining Russia was only 41% before Putin's thugs turned up armed and en-masse to rig the vote.
You're right though, the referendum was a joke, I don't even know why dictators like Putin do this, you'd think if you're going to rig a vote you at least make it semi-believable at like 60% or something, but really, 97%, are they actually trying to take the piss or what? 82% turnout and 97% vote for joining Russia does indeed imply that Ukrainians and Tatars that are almost universally opposed to joining Russia voted for exactly that. This alone shows what an absolute complete and utter farce it was.
As if the hijacking of all Crimean comms in and out, radio, TV, and surrounding of military bases and refusal to allow international observers in whilst beating up journalists wasn't obvious evidence enough that a fraudulent vote was about to follow. I'm not sure who exactly they're trying to convince short of the few useful idiots that are dotted about here and there, but what do they matter? It's almost like they're just trying to convince themselves they're doing the right thing, as it sure as hell ain't convincing anyone else that matters.
I don't think the 97% number is supposed to be believable, it's supposed to be intimidating. 60% implies there was strong opposition and dissenters aren't alone, or worse, that even rigging it 60% was the best they could do. No one was going to believe the result regardless so they might as well get a big number.
97% says "sure we rigged it, but you don't know how much, do you really want to share your non-conformist political opinions with strangers on the hope that your odds are better than 1 in 20 of finding someone with a like mind?"
when quality of life is what really matters? Maybe once we can create a sustainable society where people are actually happy we can focus on resource drains like people who never die.
Why fight child poverty in North America when kids are starving in Africa? Why fight deforestation when global warming can do far more damage.
We can fight more than one battle at once, maybe these people are content enough with their lives that they really don't want them to end so that's the quest they're pursuing.
Btw, at any age being healthier probably translates into being happier.
The fire "risk" is natures form of healing. By re-distributing the radiation the area can heal.
We humans take issue with the idea of the radiation spreading outside "the zone" but nature doesn't.
But in what patterns does it get redistributed? Does it get diluted down to homeopathic levels thus curing everyone in the Ukraine of cancer, or does it get redistributed in concentrated form, creating pockets of high radiation outside the exclusion zone causing Ukrainians to get superpowers and kick the Russians out of Crimea.
I don't think we're on the brink of hitting a wall but political stability is always a concern. There's American's who support the Tea Party, Torontonians who support Rob Ford, Russians and Crimeans who support Putin. People make bizarre political decisions and it's not hard to imagine a few bad events in sequence leading a developed nation into major instability.
This could happen and derail things at any time but my concern is the negative growth period. Once people realize the pie is no longer growing and they're now fighting over slices I'd expect things to go downhill quickly, I could see a fairly nice society breaking down badly within a couple decades.
How many people and links in the supply chain to you need to repair an iPhone, or to make a replacement part for a car (I assume some of those parts are non-trivial for a single machinist to make).
A few years of negative economic growth might be all you need, suppliers start going out of business and the shocks travel up and down the supply chain. Also consider political stability, you're not going to make a major investment if guys with guns can walk up and simply take it. It hasn't really happened in modern memory, since the industrial revolution tech has been simple enough and growth potential high enough that little shocks don't really last. But go to the modern world where stable growth might be 1-2%, add some major political upheaval and I'm not sure how fast things fall.
Look how much things fell after the collapse of the Roman Empire, I'm not sure why we're fundamentally immune to that.
Sooner or later we're getting one of the above, at some point economic growth will become at best neutral and the top scientists will spend their entire careers simply understanding the work of their predecessors. The question is whether our massive interconnectedness means we'll have more redundancy and be able to withstand inevitable setbacks, or if we'll just have more links in the chain that we don't know how to repair and be at risk of a fairly sudden and drastic collapse.
the overwhelming majority of police are good people with a genuine desire to do good in the world
Any cop who consciously neglects to report a corrupt colleague or subordinate is equally corrupt
I wouldn't go that far. Humans unfortunately tend to be enablers by default, if a colleague does something wrong we tend to defend them, if the culture is bad enough we may even assist them.
I'm not sure cops are particularly worse in this regard. There's certainly a few extra sociopaths and people with other issues who get in there specifically to abuse their power, and there seems to be a slightly more blue collar vibe that doesn't help, but for the most part I think cops are ordinary people who cut corners just like everyone else.
The problem is they're doing a job where you can't really afford to cut corners.
I'm curious about this myself, obviously dedicated opposition will oppose Putin and evade blocks regardless, so I assume the target is slightly apathetic or undecided Russians. I suspect they're mostly trying to stop people from posting articles on the equivalent of the Russian Facebook.
China is probably the best example of blocking on a large scale (by a country that dominates the language), there's clearly a lot of Chinese who go to great lengths to evade the censorship, but what about the ordinary people? When the dissident is blocked do they just not bother?
It looks pretty certain now that Russia is going to get Crimea and not have to fire a shot doing so. But I'm betting the price is going to be the rest of Ukraine. I don't care if they speak Russian, even in Russia-friendly Eastern Ukraine the idea of Russia stealing part of their country is not going to sit well with them.
I don't think nukes are necessary, Putin isn't really prepared for a shooting war with Ukraine's substantial army. In 10-20 years I'd be surprised if Ukraine hadn't mostly left Russia's sphere of influence and was reasonably integrated with Europe. And at that point I don't think nukes are relevant as any war would be WWIII nukes or not.
You're getting a very distorted picture of the facts.
Something else to keep in mind, is the area under dispute. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea. See, it's not exactly "Ukrainian" at all. It is an autonomous republic. The demographics? 50% Russian, 25% Ukrainian, and the balance are mostly Tatars. How and when did Crimea become "Ukrainian" anyway? Oh - that was an administrative move, made by the old Soviet, which stuck Crimea in with the Ukraine. Administrative. Crimea never has been "Ukrainian". So, if an AUTONOMOUS Republic wishes to remove itself from association with a nation that only has administrative ties to it - why not?
There are lots of ethnically diverse countries, and you're making a lot of unwarranted assumptions about the population. A good portion of the Russians (who are actually 58%) may wish to join Russia, but the Ukrainians and Tatars certainly do not.
I stand with Crimea and Russia on this issue. The current regime in the Ukraine are a bunch of racist assholes. Among their first actions upon assuming power, was to outlaw the Russian language in any formal or official documents. Crimeans speak Russian, not Ukrainian. Screw the president, and screw the capital - Crimeans decided that they don't want to be "Ukrainian" any longer.
Ukraine is in the same boat as Quebec in this regard, their native language is being swapped by the major language around them so they take measures to protect it.
Ukrainian was the official language but population re-distribution made Russian speakers dominant in the east and south. In August 2012 Yakukovych signed a law making Russian an officially acceptable language in regions with a large Russian speaking population. This was understandable but also controversial because it means that Russian speaking Ukrainians in those regions lose a reason to learn Ukrainian, thus the Ukrainian language becomes more marginalized and the two halves of the country become less unified.
Either way it was this less than 2 year old law that the parliament voted to repeal, a proposal that the new president vetoed.
There are certainly some parties in the new coalition that are extremist but that's pretty common across Europe. There's no reason to think they'll have strong influence over the government.
Not very many nations are willing to assist another nation in the suppression of an AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC.
So Russian troops take over the territory, install a president from a party with 4% of the vote, and announce a referendum on joining Russian to happen on March 30th... or rather March 16th. Russian suppression of an autonomous republic is exactly what's happening right now. And don't think for a minute Russia is going to occupy the Crimea, install a puppet government, announce a snap referendum on joining Russia, and then allow a result that keeps Crimea in Ukraine.
I'd actually be surprised if a free an open vote in Crimea resulted in them joining Russia, but I'll be absolutely shocked if that's not how the referendum goes.
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Someone (in this case Pielke, Jr.) writes up their research then others with expertise in the field get to criticize it, hopefully producing something better ultimately. What is irritating is criticism from people who obviously don't know what they're talking about.
The problem is the people who don't know what they're talking about are the intended audience for the article.
The charitable explanation is that he feels he's winning the scientific argument and want to share his findings with the wider world, which is understandable but irresponsible since it's unclear the conclusion is his personal baby or that it's scientifically contentious.
The uncharitable explanation is that he knows he's losing the scientific argument, so he's instead taking his claim to the ignorant masses knowing that whomever gets a convincing argument out first will be hard to displace.
Well, did you read the article? Because AFAICT his analysis seems good. Do you see real problems with it, or are you just guessing based on a headline? Because that would be as bad as what you are accusing him of.
I read his article and the response.
If I recall his claims were mainly that costs had increased at the same rate as GDP (you really confident with his linear fit of that data? way too much noise) and that the IPCC had stated that extreme weather wasn't getting worse (not sure how true that is).
The response was that he was disregarding the fact that modern structures and forecasting should reduce costs, and that some work had indicated storms were getting worse. (to which he had a counter-response taking issue with the modern structure claim)
My point isn't that he's necessarily wrong (I honestly don't know), it's that it's a far more complicated question than the article implies.
"Hey, isn't it crazy that all those people you worked with for years all died? Does that profound sense of loss let you make better TV shows?"
I'm gonna hazard a guess that you're not regarded as a master of small talk.
He also cited a U.N. climate report, along with his own research, to assert that extreme weather events have not been increasing in frequency or intensity.
Aren't extreme weather events and their relative energy levels easy to gauge and track? Why is this controversial? Either there are more extreme / extremely powerful events, the average energy level increasing, or there aren't.
Im sure that (like economists do for inflation), factors that are constant and not constant (like solar output) can be factored.
Those things are checkable but it's non-trivial and subject to interpretation. I don't know if there is a scientific consensus on this question but I'm pretty sure it's non-trivial.
For me the issue isn't that the story is necessarily wrong, it's that it could have had the opposite conclusion and been just as convincing and justified. Silver hired a proponent of one side in a scientific debate (no idea if it's the bigger side or not), now that person is presenting his view as if it's the only conclusion once you take a five second look at the data. It's a misleading article.
538's original mix, sports and politics, are both essentially spectator sports. The major interest in entertainment and people watch for the narratives. Seeking to drive interest (and appease partisans) media come up with false narratives that ignore data. This creates a lot of low hanging fruit for 538 to take the data and point out the narratives are wrong.
I think that 538 has made the mistake of believing that this low-hanging fruit exists elsewhere. When you have multiple groups of writers all trying to generate the best 2.5 hours of cable news punditry every week you're going to get a lot of easily debunked BS. When you try to apply that same once over data analysis to areas of serious scientific study you're going to be the one spewing BS.
I hope Silver can find some additional areas of news that are in real need of analysis because trying to do original scientific research in a news article won't end well.
The quotes are bizarre and kinda rambling but this one makes a bit more sense
Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free?
So her idea is that the prisoner takes a drug that makes them feel like they've been imprisoned 1000 years in only 8 hours, and then they're set free. Other than being complete science fiction that does seem more humane (though the 1000 years is crazy).
Of course if you ever did create that drug I think the real potential would be in.... recreational uses.
Nope, eating refined sugar by the spoon doesn't have the same effect as eating whole fruit, taking cholesterol pills doesn't have the same effect as eating eggs and apparently eating red yeast doesn't screw your liver. While pills have been tested for less than half a century, natural food has been tested by humans and our primate ancestors for millennia. Most importantly, it's not for FDA to ban and for private companies to patent stuff that people have been eating long before patents or regulations were conceived.
So I don't buy the sugar vs fruit analogy because you're talking about food which means you're comparing something with multiple active ingredients as opposed to just one.
And ancestral knowledge can actually be pretty brutal at evaluating evidence, unless the side effects were extremely common all people had to go on was random anecdotes, it doesn't matter how many millennia they used it, they never had the knowledge to fully evaluate the safetyr.
Even your chosen example turns out to be wrong, wikipedia alone lists seven peer-reviewed articles linking red rice yeast to muscle myopathy and liver damage. If you are relying on natural supplements for your health I think you should be concerned that even with 1000+ years Chinese medicine was unable to detect this risk.
Red rice yeast is as effective as statins at lowering cholesterol, without liver side effects statin pills. Yet FDA bans sale of supplements calibrated to have enough active components.
So I don't know a lot about the red rice yeast thing but I have to defend the FDA here. To be an 'active component' it means that the ingredient in question is actually having a biological effect. The moment you're taking something that has the potential to significantly affect your body chemistry you're taking something that has the ability to harm you. How do we figure out what that something is? We study it, we understand what the effect is, good things and bad things, for what people do the good or bad things occur, at what dosages, etc.
A natural product is going to be worse for your health. If you're getting enough of the ingredient to affect your health you're also getting more of the side effects than you would through a pill that was properly designed and tested.
She probably wanted a job.
There's a lot more PhDs than academic jobs out there. A dissertation that doesn't add much probably leaves her working somewhere in industry or doing endless postdocs. On the other hand if she gets a couple big publications in Nature she's got a shot at an assistant professorship. Maybe some other groups find some tweaks to make the method work and she's the pioneer of a new field, or maybe everyone forgets about it but she still has a shot at making tenure. Or she was just trying to break through and didn't think it would make as big a splash as it did.
There's two parts, first I'm not sure it's easy to replace the BT corn, I don't know a lot about pesticides but the combination might not be that easy to recreate, and depending how the pesticides work the current resistance might give the worms a head start on the next chemical.
But the other concern is about the industry and particularly the EPA failing to avoid what should have been an obvious problem. If they couldn't dodge this obvious bullet what other concerns are the ignoring?
Okay, I can be pretty dense when it comes to reading between the lines, but even I notice a heavy dose of agenda in this summary. It's a good thing the anti-GMO folks have a crystal ball to see the future clearly.
I guess we need our daily dose of propaganda though.
I'm pro-GMO but I think this is one of the legitimate issues. If you engineer something to resist a pest the pest is going to evolve a response, we've learned that lesson countless times with anti-biotics but the pests evolve faster than human nature.
This is more like WWI than WWII.
In WWI you had a couple small local actions (triggered by ethnic minorities) that spawned larger conflicts. People kept escalating, in part due to treaty obligations, and the whole world was eventually fighting.
In WWII Hitler's plan was domination, he didn't care about Germans in Czechoslovakia, they were simply an excuse to get the ball rolling. The failure of appeasement was it gave Hitler additional power when he never had the intention of stopping.
In the current scenario many Russians legitimately believe that Crimea is properly part of Russia, a few years back I was a Russian action film where the main character kills some Ukrainian mafia and as he does so says “You bitches will answer to me for Sevastopol!”. So it isn't a purely cynical manoeuvre on his part.
So the big plan for Putin isn't to take over the world Hitler style, it's to take back the bits of territory that Russians think are supposed to be part of Russia. That's still really bad for the countries involved, but I don't know if it's something where we want to risk a world war involving nuclear powers.
The US has a treaty with Ukraine and Russia that Russia is violating, so we need to step up. It would likely be best to send a small to medium detachment and put them temporarily under the control of the Ukraine government. Also plenty of intelligence officers. We don't need to direct them ourselves and generate more strife than needed.
Sending US troops to Ukraine is a bad idea. It probably deters an invasion, but if it doesn't you risk a US/Russia war which more or less how Europe stumbled into WWI.
And even if you deter an invasion you've pretty much cemented Putin's narrative of the Ukraine being manipulated by the West which damages relations and invites future Russian aggression.
My thought. Don't send US troops to East Ukraine, send Obama.
I think perception still matters which is one of the reasons why Putin waited till after the Olympics. Obama (with many secret service) visiting some cities in East Ukraine isn't an encroachment on Ukraine's sovereignty, it's just a friendly diplomatic visit. But I very much doubt that Putin wants to launch an invasion while Obama is wandering around in the crosshairs, and even if he does Obama can avoid escalating things further by simply leaving without losing much face (try doing that with troops).
The fact that Putin is playing this game with "self-defence forces" and a "fascist" government shows that he's still concerned about optics, other world leaders can play that game against him to protect East Ukraine.
I think the issue is that this is part of the price to be paid for Iraq. When you launch an invasion based on a false pretext one of the consequences is that other countries feel freer to do the same. There's a possibility that if the US hadn't gone into Iraq that Putin wouldn't have felt he had the necessary rationalization to go into Crimea.
I'd never make the claim that Bush was as bad as Putin but both have similar aspects to their base. A strong aggressive persona, conservative social beliefs, a willingness to exert military power, etc. It's a common template for conservative populism. In a country like the US it's a lot more restrained but you still get things like the Iraq war and the culture wars. In Russia instead of invading Iraq they annex Crimea, and instead of banning gay marriage they ban gay speech.
There's similarities to left wing populism and Chavez as well, but in the US I don't think the left wing populism infiltrates the political elite the way right wing populism does.
To be fair support for separation was higher (roughly 50%) but support for joining Russia was only 41% before Putin's thugs turned up armed and en-masse to rig the vote.
You're right though, the referendum was a joke, I don't even know why dictators like Putin do this, you'd think if you're going to rig a vote you at least make it semi-believable at like 60% or something, but really, 97%, are they actually trying to take the piss or what? 82% turnout and 97% vote for joining Russia does indeed imply that Ukrainians and Tatars that are almost universally opposed to joining Russia voted for exactly that. This alone shows what an absolute complete and utter farce it was.
As if the hijacking of all Crimean comms in and out, radio, TV, and surrounding of military bases and refusal to allow international observers in whilst beating up journalists wasn't obvious evidence enough that a fraudulent vote was about to follow. I'm not sure who exactly they're trying to convince short of the few useful idiots that are dotted about here and there, but what do they matter? It's almost like they're just trying to convince themselves they're doing the right thing, as it sure as hell ain't convincing anyone else that matters.
I don't think the 97% number is supposed to be believable, it's supposed to be intimidating. 60% implies there was strong opposition and dissenters aren't alone, or worse, that even rigging it 60% was the best they could do. No one was going to believe the result regardless so they might as well get a big number.
97% says "sure we rigged it, but you don't know how much, do you really want to share your non-conformist political opinions with strangers on the hope that your odds are better than 1 in 20 of finding someone with a like mind?"
when quality of life is what really matters? Maybe once we can create a sustainable society where people are actually happy we can focus on resource drains like people who never die.
Why fight child poverty in North America when kids are starving in Africa? Why fight deforestation when global warming can do far more damage.
We can fight more than one battle at once, maybe these people are content enough with their lives that they really don't want them to end so that's the quest they're pursuing.
Btw, at any age being healthier probably translates into being happier.
The fire "risk" is natures form of healing. By re-distributing the radiation the area can heal.
We humans take issue with the idea of the radiation spreading outside "the zone" but nature doesn't.
But in what patterns does it get redistributed? Does it get diluted down to homeopathic levels thus curing everyone in the Ukraine of cancer, or does it get redistributed in concentrated form, creating pockets of high radiation outside the exclusion zone causing Ukrainians to get superpowers and kick the Russians out of Crimea.
I don't think we're on the brink of hitting a wall but political stability is always a concern. There's American's who support the Tea Party, Torontonians who support Rob Ford, Russians and Crimeans who support Putin. People make bizarre political decisions and it's not hard to imagine a few bad events in sequence leading a developed nation into major instability.
This could happen and derail things at any time but my concern is the negative growth period. Once people realize the pie is no longer growing and they're now fighting over slices I'd expect things to go downhill quickly, I could see a fairly nice society breaking down badly within a couple decades.
How many people and links in the supply chain to you need to repair an iPhone, or to make a replacement part for a car (I assume some of those parts are non-trivial for a single machinist to make).
A few years of negative economic growth might be all you need, suppliers start going out of business and the shocks travel up and down the supply chain. Also consider political stability, you're not going to make a major investment if guys with guns can walk up and simply take it. It hasn't really happened in modern memory, since the industrial revolution tech has been simple enough and growth potential high enough that little shocks don't really last. But go to the modern world where stable growth might be 1-2%, add some major political upheaval and I'm not sure how fast things fall.
Look how much things fell after the collapse of the Roman Empire, I'm not sure why we're fundamentally immune to that.
Sooner or later we're getting one of the above, at some point economic growth will become at best neutral and the top scientists will spend their entire careers simply understanding the work of their predecessors. The question is whether our massive interconnectedness means we'll have more redundancy and be able to withstand inevitable setbacks, or if we'll just have more links in the chain that we don't know how to repair and be at risk of a fairly sudden and drastic collapse.
the overwhelming majority of police are good people with a genuine desire to do good in the world
Any cop who consciously neglects to report a corrupt colleague or subordinate is equally corrupt
I wouldn't go that far. Humans unfortunately tend to be enablers by default, if a colleague does something wrong we tend to defend them, if the culture is bad enough we may even assist them.
I'm not sure cops are particularly worse in this regard. There's certainly a few extra sociopaths and people with other issues who get in there specifically to abuse their power, and there seems to be a slightly more blue collar vibe that doesn't help, but for the most part I think cops are ordinary people who cut corners just like everyone else.
The problem is they're doing a job where you can't really afford to cut corners.
I'm curious about this myself, obviously dedicated opposition will oppose Putin and evade blocks regardless, so I assume the target is slightly apathetic or undecided Russians. I suspect they're mostly trying to stop people from posting articles on the equivalent of the Russian Facebook.
China is probably the best example of blocking on a large scale (by a country that dominates the language), there's clearly a lot of Chinese who go to great lengths to evade the censorship, but what about the ordinary people? When the dissident is blocked do they just not bother?
It looks pretty certain now that Russia is going to get Crimea and not have to fire a shot doing so. But I'm betting the price is going to be the rest of Ukraine. I don't care if they speak Russian, even in Russia-friendly Eastern Ukraine the idea of Russia stealing part of their country is not going to sit well with them.
I don't think nukes are necessary, Putin isn't really prepared for a shooting war with Ukraine's substantial army. In 10-20 years I'd be surprised if Ukraine hadn't mostly left Russia's sphere of influence and was reasonably integrated with Europe. And at that point I don't think nukes are relevant as any war would be WWIII nukes or not.
You're getting a very distorted picture of the facts.
Something else to keep in mind, is the area under dispute. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea. See, it's not exactly "Ukrainian" at all. It is an autonomous republic. The demographics? 50% Russian, 25% Ukrainian, and the balance are mostly Tatars. How and when did Crimea become "Ukrainian" anyway? Oh - that was an administrative move, made by the old Soviet, which stuck Crimea in with the Ukraine. Administrative. Crimea never has been "Ukrainian". So, if an AUTONOMOUS Republic wishes to remove itself from association with a nation that only has administrative ties to it - why not?
There are lots of ethnically diverse countries, and you're making a lot of unwarranted assumptions about the population. A good portion of the Russians (who are actually 58%) may wish to join Russia, but the Ukrainians and Tatars certainly do not.
I stand with Crimea and Russia on this issue. The current regime in the Ukraine are a bunch of racist assholes. Among their first actions upon assuming power, was to outlaw the Russian language in any formal or official documents. Crimeans speak Russian, not Ukrainian. Screw the president, and screw the capital - Crimeans decided that they don't want to be "Ukrainian" any longer.
Ukraine is in the same boat as Quebec in this regard, their native language is being swapped by the major language around them so they take measures to protect it.
Ukrainian was the official language but population re-distribution made Russian speakers dominant in the east and south. In August 2012 Yakukovych signed a law making Russian an officially acceptable language in regions with a large Russian speaking population. This was understandable but also controversial because it means that Russian speaking Ukrainians in those regions lose a reason to learn Ukrainian, thus the Ukrainian language becomes more marginalized and the two halves of the country become less unified.
Either way it was this less than 2 year old law that the parliament voted to repeal, a proposal that the new president vetoed.
There are certainly some parties in the new coalition that are extremist but that's pretty common across Europe. There's no reason to think they'll have strong influence over the government.
Not very many nations are willing to assist another nation in the suppression of an AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC.
So Russian troops take over the territory, install a president from a party with 4% of the vote, and announce a referendum on joining Russian to happen on March 30th... or rather March 16th. Russian suppression of an autonomous republic is exactly what's happening right now. And don't think for a minute Russia is going to occupy the Crimea, install a puppet government, announce a snap referendum on joining Russia, and then allow a result that keeps Crimea in Ukraine.
I'd actually be surprised if a free an open vote in Crimea resulted in them joining Russia, but I'll be absolutely shocked if that's not how the referendum goes.