Listen folks, climate change sucks. It sucks to talk about, it sucks to experience it, and it sucks to research it. I would say that it sucks to cause it, but we apparently haven’t learned that lesson yet.
I imagine the world’s climate scientists feel like they are in the back row of a bus, yelling at the drunk bus driver to turn before he drives off of a cliff. Except that the bus driver only speaks Klingon, and all the other passengers on the bus are beating you with baseball bats.
Here’s an example of why:
January 27, 2012: The Wall Street Journal publishes an op-ed letter from sixteen “scientists” saying that global warming and man-made climate change is not a threat that should be addressed, nor should it be brought up by today’s politicians. They essentially call climate science a money-making hustle.
- They say things like “CO2 is not a pollutant”, which makes me want to put them in a dry-cleaning bag and see if they change their mind.
- The sixteen are primarily engineers and retired weathermen. So that.
May 2010: A letter signed by 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences defending the assault on climate research is offered to the Wall Street Journal and is rejected. It is later printed in Science, which coincidentally is one of the world’s best journals about science.
- None of the 255 are weathermen, retired or otherwise.
Climate science and communicating how that relates to how we live is “running backwards and naked through a cornfield” uncomfortable. But when major media outlets exercise this kind of bias, it stacks the deck.
Previously: How to talk to a climate skeptic
mumble mumble
internet browser. tags: politics, science, and pretty things.
US and Canadian Politics. technology.
environment. energy. education. health.
civil rights. social equality. novelty items.
and just maybe 1 lolcat. Glorious and free. in Toronto
-
To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.
—Huff Po (via rachelfershleiser)
Well played, my dear woman.
(via afternoonsnoozebutton)
(via afternoonsnoozebutton)
-
If we’re willing to spend $750 billion (so far) to make democracy in Iraq possible, we should be willing to spend one-twenty-fifth of that to make democracy in America work.
—Lawrence Lessig in Republic, Lost (via think-progress)
Previously: Iraq war facts & stats
(via kateoplis)
(via kateoplis)
-
This Is What You’d Call “Editorial Bias”
-
Santana - Everybody’s everything
-
cognitive dissonance responds to "nobody cares about your fucking uterus."
Anonymous asked: nobody cares about your fucking uterus. get over it. Ron Paul is not taking away anyone’s right to reproductive freedom. This country is fucked in so many ways and you can’t look past a wedge issue like this that will NEVER effect anyone directly.
http://cognitivedissonance.tumblr.com/post/16571594044/nobody-cares-about-your-fucking-uterus-get-over-it#notes
I care about my uterus and the uteruses (uteri?) of others. I also care about our rights to have a family (or not) when we so choose. This country is fucked in a lot of different ways. Why add to it by making safe, legal abortion no longer safe and no longer legal?
And yes, he would take away reproductive freedom. He’s written and co-sponsored bills to do just that - from defunding Planned Parenthood, to outright banning abortion. Of course, there’s other reasons why Ron Paul is ridiculous. Here’s a laundry list, complete with links. But reproductive rights? That’s something he should be entirely familiar with, considering his job as an OB/GYN. He should be familiar with the complications that can arise when reproductive rights are denied.
And it will never affect anyone directly? How about me? I want to avoid pregnancy, and yet still enjoy sex within my heterosexual, monogamous marriage. (You know, the kind the GOP supposedly likes, and encourges.) So Catholic roulette? That method (rhythm method) has a high rate of failure when a person’s menstrual cycle can’t be tracked well.
So let’s pretend I’ve become pregnant. Oopsies! Well, there goes the likelihood of law school. But whatever, it’s not like I should be educated anyhow, right? And then, in about the fifth month of pregnancy, I begin bleeding uncontrollably. And that doctor looks at me and says, “Sorry, I’m going to let you bleed because I don’t do abortions.” Typically, he’s supposed to call someone - but that doesn’t always happen. And under President Ron Paul, the conscience clause states he doesn’t have to save my life. Because his own reasons.
Don’t believe me? This already happened. Not to me, but to another woman who barely survived. A historical overview of abortion is here.
Your attitude of “nobody cares” leads to headlines like this:
- 13-year-old Self-Aborts Using Pencil
- Abortion Beating: Aaron Harrison Sentenced for Trying to Cause Miscarriage with Fists
- DA: Young mother botched abortion with ulcer medication
- The Back Alley Revisited: Sepsis after Attempted Self-Induced Abortion
- Self Abortion: Woman took Tylenol, Motrin
- After Fetus Is Found in Trash, a Rare Charge of Self-Abortion
- Mexican Immigrant May Face Two Years in Prison for Self-Induced Abortion Under South Carolina Law
- Trying To Make Becky Bell’s Death Count — Parents Fight Parental Consent Law
Read Mrs. Jones’ story here. Or Susannah Lattin’s story. Or look at the picture of Geraldine Santoro face-down and bloody after dying on the floor of a hotel after an illegal abortion. (Warning: The photo is graphic).
Or let’s go global. Did you know abortion is more common in countries where it is banned?
From Time magazine:
About 47,000 women died from unsafe abortions in 2008, and another 8.5 million women had serious medical complications. Almost all unsafe abortions were in developing countries, where family planning and contraceptive programs have mostly levelled off.
But who cares? They’re just women. We’re all just a bunch of whiny bitches who don’t understand the genius of Ron Paul, right? These are not wedge issues. You want to talk about personal liberty? How about liberty to choose when to raise a family? How about the rights of people to keep government out from between our legs? Come out from behind your gray box and defend your heartlessness.
In summary, fuck your “nobody cares” sentiment and fuck Ron Paul.
It’s worth noting that in 2011, states passed a record number of laws that restrict people’s ability to obtain an abortion, and a number of other bills—like HR3, which seeks to restrict people’s ability not only to obtain a safe, legal abortion, but also to receive a wide variety of health services that impact primarily those with a uterus—went before Congress. Having a pro-life president in office means that they are able to nominate Supreme Court justices who are similarly pro-life and more likely to approve legislation (state or federal) that restricts abortion rights or could even potentially overturn Roe v. Wade. Having a pro-life president in office means that if a pro-life piece of legislation that seriously hinders people’s ability to obtain an abortion passes through both the House and Senate, there will be no one there to veto that legislation and ensure our reproductive rights remain in tact.
This is not merely a wedge issue. Ron Paul’s stance on abortion could have a very real, very negative impact on the reproductive rights of millions of people, both while he’s in office and for years to come afterward if he appointed pro-life Supreme Court justices.
Beyond that, I’m completely fucking baffled by all the pro-Ron Paul arguments by his supporters that the more radical of Ron Paul’s ideas will never happen because they are too radical. If you are this convinced that Ron Paul will be so completely ineffectual in office, then why do you care whether he gets elected or not? What makes you think the things that he advocates for that you do like will happen, even though all of the things he advocates for that you don’t like won’t? This doesn’t make sense, but it’s something I’ve heard over and over and over again from people who support Ron Paul.
If you elect Ron Paul for president, that means you put all of his ideas—even the extremely radical ones, both the ones you like and the ones you are appalled by—on one of the world’s most prominent soapboxes and give them all, not just the ones you like, significant power. Not that this power is unchecked, but it’s still enough to make lasting change. And you have no way of controlling or predicting which of his radical ideas will be successful and which will not.
Banning abortion has far more popular support—and certainly more Congressional support—than legalizing marijuana. He certainly would have a much easier time successfully carrying a platform that restricts people’s ability to obtain an abortion than he would striking any serious blow to America’s military-industrial complex or to the corrupt financial sector. Maybe you don’t care about my uterus, or anyone else’s, but frankly, I’m not willing to put my reproductive rights at risk—or to support someone who has made it clear that he wants to weaken public education, public assistance, or federal support for communities and individuals in the wake of natural disaster, or to support someone who has made it clear he has no value at all for the rights of LGBT Americans, or to support someone who supports draconian border control policies—all to back some very fuzzy ideas about sticking it to Wall Street and end the war on terror. Further, Ron Paul’s strongest policy ideas right now are primarily in areas where he scares the shit out of me.
It is irresponsible and completely absurd to argue that Ron Paul will only make change in the areas where you agree with him, but will not in the areas where you have significant disagreement. That is not how reality works, and frankly, I’m sick of seeing this sort of fantasy land bullshit coming out of the mouths of people so far up Ron Paul’s ass they can’t see daylight. I tried to think of a nicer way to phrase that, but I can’t. If you honestly think Ron Paul will only succeed in the areas where you want him to, and will fail significantly in all the areas where you and he diverge, you are fucking kidding yourself.
The only way “this will never affect anyone” is if you literally don’t count uterus-bearers as human. I am someone. All people are someone. Implying otherwise makes you pretty despicable.
-
“Until recently, this area of southern Mongolia was one of the world’s last great wildernesses – a cold desert that is home to gazelle, wild ass and herders living a traditional nomadic existence.
Today, however, it is the centre of the planet’s greatest resource boom. Some are calling it “the last frontier”, others “Minegolia”. Whatever the name, this impoverished but remarkable nation in east Asia is on the brink of one of the most dramatic transformations in human history.
Other mega-mines will follow. The extraction is expected to triple the national economy by 2020 and propel the living standards of the small, impoverished 2.6 million population into the global middle class, but locals fear it will also devastate an arid environment as the mines suck up scarce water resources, damage the grasslands and necessitate roads and electricity grids that disrupt the migration patterns of local species.
The damage is already evident in the cross-Gobi traffic, where drivers churn up so much dust that some use their headlights in the middle of the day to pierce the gloom.”
Via The Guardian
Ooof.
-
Bus-Size Asteroid to Give Earth Close Shave
A small asteroid will make an extremely close pass by Earth (right about NOW!!!), coming much nearer than the moon, but the space rock poses no danger of impacting our planet, NASA scientists say.
-
A change in policy: Twitter announced Thursday that it would begin restricting Tweets in certain countries, marking a policy shift for the social media platform that helped propel the popular uprisings recently sweeping across the Middle East.
“Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while keeping it available in the rest of the world,” the Twitter blog said.
Read more: Twitter to restrict user content in some countries
Not cool.
Why would they even do that??
-
-
There as a study in which it comes out that thirty of the largest companies in the United States are now spending more on lobbying than they pay in federal taxes. …Who really pays for that? And the answer is America’s middle class — they’re the ones who are left to pick up all the pieces, to pay the taxes to keep the country running. And, more to the point, they’re the ones who are paying for the fact that there’s not enough money left to invest in our kids’ future.
— Massachusetts Senate candidate ELIZABETH WARREN, on The Daily Show (via inothernews)(via randomactsofchaos)
-
Tax group names 'Dirty Thirty' companies - Dayton Business Journal
“Representation without Taxation: Fortune 500 Companies that Spend Big on Lobbying and Avoid Taxes … looks at what it calls the “Dirty Thirty” particularly aggressive tax avoiders that spent more on federal lobbying than income taxes between 2008 and 2010.”
“The ‘Dirty Thirty’ companies all told made $163.7 billion in profits while paying zero dollars in federal income taxes and collecting a total of $10.6 billion in various tax rebates. Meanwhile, they collectively spent $475.7 million in lobbying expenses for the three year period.”
Effective tax rate in parenthesis, if negative, means they received money. All thirty spent more on lobbying than on taxes from 2008 to 2010:
FedEx (0.9%)
Corning (-0.2%)
DTE Energy (-0.7%)
Honeywell International (-0.7%)
Mattel (-0.9%)
El Paso (-1.0%)
Wells Fargo (-1.4%)
Boeing (-1.8%)
Navistar International (-2.0%)
NextEra Energy (-2.2%)
CMS Energy (-2.2%)
Interpublic Group (-2.6%)
Verizon Communications (-2.9%)
Consolidated Edison (-3.0%)
DuPont (-3.4%)
Duke Energy (-3.9%)
Wisconsin Energy (-4.9%)
Baxter International (-7.1%)
Ryder System (-7.3%)
Con-way (-9.1%)
American Electric Power (-9.2%)
Integrys Energy Group (-11.3%)
Tenet Healthcare (-11.6%)
CenterPoint Energy (-14.7%)
NiSource (-16.4%)
Computer Sciences (-18.3%)
PG&E Corp. (-21.2%)
Paccar (-30.5)
General Electric (-45.3%)
Pepco Holdings (-57.6%)
(Source: miraclesawake, via randomactsofchaos)
-
-
Whistleblower's Open Letter to Canadians
As I have detailed in a sworn affidavit, no less than three senior managers with TidesCanada and ForestEthics (a charitable project of Tides Canada), have informed me, as theSenior Communications Manager for ForestEthics, that Tides Canada CEO, Ross McMillan,was informed by the Prime Minister’s Office, that ForestEthics is considered an “Enemy of the Government of Canada,” and an “Enemy of the people of Canada.”
This language was apparently part of a threat by the Prime Minister’s Office to challenge the charitable status of Tides Canada if it did not agree to stop funding ForestEthics, specifically its work opposing oilsands expansion and construction of oilsandstanker/pipeline routes in Canada.
This is especially concerning because ForestEthics is a legally registered intervenor in theNational Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel process, currently examining the Enbridge oiltanker/pipeline proposal. By attempting to silence a registered participant in the review, I fear the Harper government may have permanently damaged the integrity of this process.
[…]
The language of anti‐terrorism, when applied to Canadian citizens who legitimately question the wisdom of an unsustainable oil tanker/pipeline plan, is an affront to the rightsof all Canadians. It is the language of bullying. It is language that is violent and above thelaw, and harkens to previous examples of RCMP surveillance of Canadians for political rather than legal purposes, including Tommy Douglas. The casual use of such loaded language at the top of our government is immoral, unethical and probably illegal.
(Source: occupyheadspace)
-
When the web started, I used to get really grumpy with people because they put my poems up. They put my stories up. They put my stuff up on the web. I had this belief, which was completely erroneous, that if people put your stuff up on the web and you didn’t tell them to take it down, you would lose your copyright, which actually, is simply not true.
And I also got very grumpy because I felt like they were pirating my stuff, that it was bad. And then I started to notice that two things seemed much more significant. One of which was… places where I was being pirated, particularly Russia where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading around into the world, I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. Then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia, it would sell more and more copies. I thought this was fascinating, and I tried a few experiments. Some of them are quite hard, you know, persuading my publisher for example to take one of my books and put it out for free. We took “American Gods,” a book that was still selling and selling very well, and for a month they put it up completely free on their website. You could read it and you could download it. What happened was sales of my books, through independent bookstores, because that’s all we were measuring it through, went up the following month three hundred percent
I started to realize that actually, you’re not losing books. You’re not losing sales by having stuff out there. When I give a big talk now on these kinds of subjects and people say, “Well, what about the sales that I’m losing through having stuff copied, through having stuff floating out there?” I started asking audiences to just raise their hands for one question. Which is, I’d say, “Okay, do you have a favorite author?” They’d say, “Yes.” and I’d say, “Good. What I want is for everybody who discovered their favorite author by being lent a book, put up your hands.” And then, “Anybody who discovered your favorite author by walking into a bookstore and buying a book raise your hands.” And it’s probably about five, ten percent of the people who actually discovered an author who’s their favorite author, who is the person who they buy everything of. They buy the hardbacks and they treasure the fact that they got this author. Very few of them bought the book. They were lent it. They were given it. They did not pay for it, and that’s how they found their favorite author. And I thought, “You know, that’s really all this is. It’s people lending books. And you can’t look on that as a loss of sale. It’s not a lost sale, nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free.”
What you’re actually doing is advertising. You’re reaching more people, you’re raising awareness. Understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and of what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web is doing is allowing people to hear things. Allowing people to read things. Allowing people to see things that they would never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that’s an incredibly good thing.
— Neil Gaiman on Copyright, Piracy, and the Commercial Value of the Web (X)(Source: roominthecastle, via chos)
-
Australian Ph.D. student Florian Beutler has created the most accurate measurement yet of how fast the universe is expanding. Working at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), he used the Hubble constant and data from the 6dF Galaxy Survey, the most ambitious survey to date of over 120,000 galaxies across the southern sky, collected between 2001 and 2005. The result is a remarkable map of the expansion of universe, animated here to unfold before your very eyes.
(via jtotheizzoe)
