I've pretty much stopped talking to George at this point, who readers may notice only took issue with my pointing out that a Roland Emmerich movie was, in fact, a movie, and The Day After Tomorrow is no more a real prediction than Godzilla was. He apparently had no rebuttal to both my explanation of drought plus increased rainfall _or_ my pointing out that no one is predicting sealevel change to go backwards, accepting both those to instead dispute the idea that crappy science fiction is a real prediction.
So I will address the prediction of shutting down thermohaline circulation. While there _is_ a theory that that could shut down, nothing that happens in that movie is even vaguely predicted by it. (As was pointed out by the very article that was linked to by George!)
While the shutdown itself could be near instant (Or not, we don't know), it wouldn't cause instant temperature changes, nor would those temperature changes be anywhere near as fast as shown, or as large, or even happen in the same place!
Shutting that down simply means that the temperature of a few places become more in line with their latitude...Scotland eventually turns into Sweden, for example. And Iceland into Greenland. And France into Canada. And, at the other end, Georgia into Tunesia, or, if you prefer, Texas.
All that, of course, is an exaggeration (It's not _just_ latitude and thermohaline circulation that effect the temperature), but the point is that the thermohaline circulation moves warmth up the New England coast, takes it across the ocean, and slams it smack into Europe, making _both_ those places more livable than their latitude would otherwise imply. (And stirring up the ocean while it does it, which makes it more liveable too.)
If you've been paying attention, you will also notice that the thermohaline circulation does not actually effect the temperate of New York very much, (New York is at the same approximate latitude as Spain and Italy and Japan, the temperature is fine there anyway.) which means trying to assert that The Day After Tomorrow has anything to do with that exceptionally stupid.
In fact, The Day After Tomorrow is not quite as stupid as that, and the freezing of New York is due to some 'super storm', not the collapse of the thermohaline circulation. George Turner: Making less sense than Roland Emmerich.
The general purpose of having kids move quietly down a hallway is to avoid disrupting other classes and/or offices.
See, I agree entirely with that, but the simple fact is, that at schools, almost _all_ rules are justified with 'It would disturb other students'. This is because the courts have said that students actually have some rights, but schools can restrict them if such rights would 'disturb' education.
So you end up with nonsense like dress codes in high school being justified to keep from 'disturbing' classes. (Which had some interesting slut-shaming going on, considering that the most enforced dress code was skirt length.)
So while 'Care for self, care for others, care for the environment.' actually does make sense, the problem is that often the fascista who get placed in charge of schools just nonsensically justify things using essentially that.
I wish I could find my old high school handbook, to quote some of these rules. And note these were _pre-Columbine_ rules...the year after I left high school, Columbine happened, the fascista really ramped things up, and my brothers had to go to school with transparent bookbags. (Because no one can hide a weapon on themselves, or just pull one out in the parking lot.)
You know what annoys me? When I was a teenager, I was assured that all this would make sense when I was older, that teenagers think they know everything but don't. I am now 34, and looking back, I have learned...I was entirely right about everything, and a lot of adults really are just fascist assholes towards teenagers. That's not to say a lot of teenagers aren't stupid, but their stupidity doesn't justify the idiotic system that teenagers have to live in. (In fact, I have to suggest that a lot of teenager's stupidity is _due to_ rebelling against such a system.)
Sometimes they use it to predict global cooling, citing changes in the oceans’ thermo-haline circulation patterns, most famously in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” where temperatures seemed to be hundreds of degrees below absolute zero.
I want to print this out and frame it as 'Most nonsensical climate change denialism'. You just cited a Roland Emmerich movie as if it was an actual prediction of the future.
That actually happened. In the actual world. You just did that.
We also don’t know that higher temperatures will produce more drought. Many models show that there would be increased rainfall along with fewer extremes (those don’t get much coverage because they’re useless for scaring people). In general we know it should get wetter as it gets warmer.
'Increased rainfall' and 'drought' are not mutually exclusive thing. In fact, you can't _have_ drought under climate change without having increased rainfall. This is because the increased rainfall is due to increased evaporation. Which, duh, results in less water on the ground.
Granted, some of that water is making it back down. And, indeed, near oceans, there will probably be less drought, as more ocean water ends up on land. (Assuming that's the way the wind moves, of course.)
In areas _it already doesn't rain_, aka, deserts, having higher evaporation makes the desert larger and drier, while not actually putting enough water in the air for it to rain. (Changing the humidity from 2% to 4% is not going to make it rain.)
Heat removes water from the ground, and puts it in the air. That is what causes rain, so we will have more rain.
Heat removes water from the ground, and puts it in the air. The lack of water on the ground is the _definition_ of drought, so we will have more of that also.
The fact we're cycling water _faster_ doesn't change the fact that less of it will stick around to make it into plants and animals, and more of it will be floating uselessly in the air. (Unless the plan is to operate giant dehumidifiers to water our food.)
Warmer temperatures have also been modeled to produce sea-level decreases (considered unlikely by the IPCC, but not out of the ballpark) due to an increase in snow piling up on Antarctica, and thus a net gain in polar ice mass.
Incidentally, another part of this that everyone seems to be missing...501(c)4s are not required to get permission from the IRS to exist in the first place.
From what I understand, you don't actually make 'a 501(c)4'. You _file_ as a 501(c)4. The organization exists regardless.
These groups, probably because they were all working off the same legal template and their lawyers all knew they were in a somewhat illegal area of the law, were trying to get _pre-cleared_ as a 501(c)4, which they did not actually need to do. This pre-clearance or lack thereof in no way interfered with their work or money-flow, it was just a _tax_ delay.
And even if they _hadn't_ gotten it they could have simply filed as a non-profit as a 527 and paid exactly the same amount of taxes. (That is, none.) The 501(c)4 thing was simply to keep from having from having disclose donors.
However, I shall assume that you were talking issue with 'I actually think the IRS scandal has less teeth than even reasonable people think. (I don’t think it even qualifies as a ‘scandal’ in any sense, much less one that has anything to do with Obama.)', and explain what I mean by that.
The simple fact is, 501(c)4s were being created in violation of the law. Now, this is a violation of the law that the IRS seemed to not take much issue with, but that was before thousands of them appeared out of thin air. (Thanks to Citizen's United)
Many of the ones that should not be allowed to exist had obviously political names.
Let's make an analogy here: Let's say there is a neighborhood where street parking is allowed, but only by residents. Residents are supposed to put stickers on their cars, but they sometimes do not, and that law has been almost completely ignored, and it ties up too much time in the courts if the cops ticket a resident, so they ticket no one.
And then let's say that a new college opens just past that neighborhood, and now 1000 college kids are parking on the street. So the cops wander up and down the street, putting tickets on every 'college-looking' car. (If they hit a resident by mistake, well, that can get straightened out in the courts.)
This is _not correct behavior_. It is, in fact, misbehavior. It's called profiling instead of actually doing your damn job. The legality of a car should not be judged by what it looks like, and the legality of an organization should not be judged by the name. There are actual standard, and those standards should be enforced.
It is also _entirely expected behavior_ by an underfunded police department.
Now, notice that I've been presenting this in a politically neutral manner, whereas certain people seem intent on making this something to do with the 'right'.
No. From what I can tell, they just picked the _most common_ political keywords of the incorrect 501(c)3s, and those really were right-wing ones, considering the ratio of right vs. left groups being created. (To continue my analogy, let's assume it's a mostly white neighborhood, and a mostly black college, so 'college-looking' included things that also indicate race, so on top of it the police look racist. So now it's a big race issue that actually has nothing to do with anything.)
The 'scandal' of 'politics' has rendered the entire actual issue here meaningless. The IRS should not have been caring about the names of groups, and, perhaps more importantly, they should have been REJECTING these groups. (Which, indeed, would have rejected more right-wing groups than left-wing, because there _were_ more of those groups.)
The problem here is complete inability or unwillingness of the IRS to enforce the law. And then some random profiling (Which looked political) while _continuing_ to be unwilling to enforce the actual law. (As opposed to the pretend law the IRS was enforcing, where 501(c)4s could be somewhat political.)
Actually, the problem is the law. There's not a hell of a lot of point for 501(c)4 groups in the first place, and even less point for them to be allowed to keep their donors anonymous.
Erm, while I have read a few of these questionnaires , you appear to have several question in your list I haven't seen anywhere.
What are your religious views?
I have not seen any questions at all about religion. Or heard anyone else mention such question. Nor do I find it plausible that the IRS would ask an _organization_ what religion it was.
Which people do you talk to?
Well, this would be an absurd question if actually phrased like that, but, again, I have not see that question. I've seen demands to turn over training material and presentation and stuff, but not 'Which people do you talk to?'.
Give us the names of all your donors.
Yes, that question was very inappropriate, and warrants a full investigation as to how it got in there, along with the targeting in the first place.
Give us the names of everyone who has interned with you.
Erm...firstly, no, I haven't see that question. Secondly, who interns for for an organization is _not private information_, and something the government actually already has the right to know, just like they have the right to know who that organization employs.
List all your unofficial contacts.
Much like 'Which people do you talk to?', this is complete nonsense as a question and not something the IRS has asked.
Give us backdoor access to all your websites.
And, again, nope. No one asked that.
So, I think the point of the article is well proved: Conservatives can't manage to refrain from making stuff up, even in the midst of _actual government misbehavior_.
All of the effects of the rule are bad and unfair and none good.
It's actually rather astonishing how many school rules fall exactly under that category.
All dress code rules fall into that category. None of those make the slightest bit of sense, at all. Including rules for dances and whatnot. It is the damn students' dance, and they can wear whatever they want.(1)
All rules about weapons fall into that category. If you actually were going to commit the _felony_ of assault and murder, why would school rules stop you? (I'm talking more about knifes than guns. I don't have any real problems with not letting students carry guns, although it's worth pointing out that's already illegal in most states on school grounds and hence doesn't need a 'rule' about it.)
All rules about 'drugs' fall into that category. We already have a perfectly functional set of laws about who can have and take which drugs. (Don't get me wrong, I'd be fine with a rule that allowed teachers to check that laws were being followed. I'm just taking issue that the school should be forbidding people from possessing a substance they legally can possess.)
The idea that a school needs an entire separate set of 'rules' in addition to the law of society is near complete nonsense.
I guess there a few rules about specific circumstances that could reasonable exist, like 'Students must get a parking pass before parking at the school' and 'Students must return tray to window after eating' and 'No running in the hall' (Although those are less 'school rules' and more 'signs on the wall'.) and a few classroom rules like 'Students can't use their cellphone in class' (Although classroom rules, ultimate, are the job of the teacher to set.)
But something like 90% of school rules are set by insane power-mad despots who want to control people and have managed to luck upon a job where they can do just that.
I'm mainly talking about high schoolers here. Elementary schoolers probably need a bit more structure.
1) I actually find it rather baffling that people don't understand the entire concept of high school dances and sports and stuff. All that really is an attempt to show students how to be social. It's a sort of enforced 'community' that they live in, and pretty much all decisions should be left up to them. Yes, they will make stupid decisions, but that's what high school is for. It's not the job of parents or administrators to come along and interfere except to stop extreme problems. (Aka, you do have to chaperon them, but that's it.)
It explains everything, even contradictory things, and can never be disproved because each event is just more evidence, no matter what the event was.
Scientists do not have an very accurate model of long-term weather, and there are lot of things that we are not sure how much temperature change will effect. I've read something the other day that pointed out that global warming changes two things about tornadoes, one of which makes more tornadoes and one makes less, and we don't actually know which is more important, so it's entirely possible global warming is reducing the amount of tornadoes. (Statistically, the amount of tornadoes is roughly the same, it's just that we are building denser so they are more harmful.)
However, there is ONE thing that goddamn global warming predicts...GLOBAL WARMING.
You appear to have this idea that just because we don't actually know the results of raising the temperature higher and higher and higher that, uh, it somehow isn't happening. That does not make any sense at all. There are specific things that we know happen with higher average temperatures. We have more drought, at least on average. Thus crops die. We have melting ice caps. We have deserts expand.
_Those_ are the bad thing, and those bad side effects are not up for debate. (Unless you want to debate the temperature increase itself, and feel free to do that, but you can't actually debate the fact that a temperature increase would result in those bad things.)
We _also_ are going to get random weather patter changes in random places, and because we don't fully understand many of the reasons weather patterns exist in the first place, we're pretty crappy at predicting the changes. But, generally speaking, randomizing the weather at all is a bad thing. Yes, one or two areas might luck out and get less tornadoes or less blizzards, but the vast majority of places are going to just have random changes that devastate the ecosystems. (Yes, ecosystems adapted...but it sucks to be living through it.)
None of the scandals really have anything to do with Obama, only the IRS scandal had any actual wrong doing, and I actually think the IRS scandal has less teeth than even reasonable people think. (I don't think it even qualifies as a 'scandal' in any sense, much less one that has anything to do with Obama.)
However, I think the point the article is making is that a _sane_ opposition would be able to use the IRS issue to throw some dirt on Obama, along with a little dirt from the AP thing. Not much dirt, but some.
I don't believe I interpreted anyone's motives. I merely pointed out that _any_ plan whatsoever that involves writing checks and giving them to poor people, for any reason whatsoever, is going to _incredibly_ unpopular with the right.
I ascribed no motive to this. Nor did I condemn it in any way. (I did use a bit of hyperbole, but hopefully everyone understands that most people would rather pay people money than be burned to death, and that was, indeed, hyperbole.)
Do you disagree with my statement? Do you think that the right _would_ be willing to pay for poor people signing up to be organ donors? Do you think they'd approve of any government plan that resulted in poor people lining up to receive money?
I actually find this habit of people objecting to me stating _what is clearly the actual position of the Republicans_ to be rather annoying. And it's never 'The right doesn't think that' or 'Republicans wouldn't do that', it's always 'David, stop painting them to be evil'.
I didn't call them _evil_. Neither did Mike Schilling for that matter. We made no moral judgments at all.
I simply stated what I suspect would be their position on a hypothetical law, based on other positions they have. If you disagree with what I think, then say so. Perhaps you can make an argument that Republicans _would_ be in favor of it.
But if you agree with what I thought, and you also think that position is morally wrong, then that's _you_ calling them morally wrong, not me.
You can actually solve a hell of a lot of problems in society by just _paying people to do the right thing_.
There's some sort of Philosophical Truth in that statement, somewhere.
Of course, the problem is that, at this point, the right sees the government actually handing money to human beings, especially _poor_ human beings, as the greatest horror imaginable, so would likely object to this. (1) Instead, they would demand it as a tax rebate...which would hilariously mean it was the middle class 'selling their organs', not the poor.
Incidentally, we can solve the problem of people not serving jury duty the same way...actually paying a _reasonable_ amount of money for their time, instead of wages that would actually be illegal under minimum wage laws. And provide child care.
And low voter turnout, too. And low voter registration. And recycling.
And the fun thing is, instead of paying for _enforcement_ of stuff, you can simply set up an office and have people _come to you_. If you're going to fine people for something, they will hide it and dispute it and you need court and whatnot, whereas if you're going to pay people for something, especially something that is no real effort on their part, they will show up at government offices and provide evidence to you. With no work on your part!
It's a crazy idea, I know. Paying people do things we want them to do.
1) Despite the fact it is not actually handing money to anyone, and is in fact exactly the same thing as the usage fees the far right seems to think the government should collect from everyone instead of taxes...except in the other direction. But I honestly believe that the right would rather DIE IN A FIRE than to hand poor people money.
I think if you showed up outside the Warehouse with the knowledge you gleaned from the show (assuming you watch it), Artie would get you to talk to the Regents post-haste.
That's a good point, and it makes me realize there's an exploit in the hypothetical. Namely, you can arrive _during a plot_. No one ever said you had to arrive in the 'now' of a TV show.
Now, admittedly, if you're just some random guy, you can't cut it very close, and there's not any way you're going to track how to call the Warehouse, so you have to fly there...
...but show up a few days before, for example, the disastrous season three finale and explain who you are and how events are about to go entirely pear-shaped?
Yeah, they might indeed loan you an artifact. Actually, you'd have a pretty good chance of becoming an agent, considering their recruitment policy.
Kidneys are one of those things that I don't have problems with paying for, if you can convince me that there is very little harm in donating a kidney. And the article is right...having a backup kidney is almost completely useless, as they always fail together. It only helps if someone shoots you in the kidney or something.(1)
So if we can invent some sort of public system to pay people to donate kidneys that was are sure are not going to make the person who donated life's worse off, and cover expenses in case it does, than I am okay with it.
1) You know, whoever designed a human to have backup part was stupid. Backup hands and backup eyes and even backup testicles, sure, those are on the outside, and can get physically damaged. But the stuff _inside_ fails because the system fails, and hence both of them fail at once! (Well, barring cancer, but for most of human history no one had any ability to remove the defective one.) What would be much saner is to only run one kidney or one lung, and only turn the second one on if the first failed.
Incidentally, my state already does this...for $5 off the driver's license registration. Yes, apparently donating your organs is worth five whole dollars. (But only if you drive.)
By 'a system' do you mean somewhere else? Because I really have no idea of what the laws are elsewhere.
Here is my invented system: Pay people $500 to sign up to be organ donors, starting at age 18.
That's it. Currently, the signed up organ donor average seems to hover around 20%. And based on poor college students that I know, something like 90% will sign up for anything that will pay them $500, especially if they don't actually have to do anything, and this has the added bonus of being for a good cause.
Now, you'll notice I didn't invent any way out of this system, because I don't actually care. I think if, by signing up, you committed to be an organ donor for five years, and then at the end of the five years, you can opt out or stay in, almost all people signed up would just stay in. (If everyone actually does opt out, we could fix that by providing renewal payments, but I suspect we don't need that.)
If 90% of people were organ donors, we wouldn't have to worry about 'buying' organs from anywhere, or try to carefully figure out incentives and laws to keep people from being worth more dead.
Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what the laws are about any of that.
I just hear stories about family members refusing to proceed with donation, which in my mind is roughly akin to family members asserting that they aren't going to read the will and instead will divide up the deceased's property how they want...it's complete nonsense. That's not how that works. A dead person's estate _owns_ their body.
I guess there's a point where prepping the body still counts a 'medical decision', and not 'property laws', but that just demonstrates that organ donation agreement needs to include an aspect of living wills.
But I don't actually know if this needs to change anyway. If we actually pay people for this, if something like 95% of all people are signed up, then just 5% of them is more than enough for all needed organ donations. And presumably the percentage agreeing would grow as organ donation became the default assumption for everyone.
What would make me change my mind? When we have at least attempted the _slightest_ effort to actual encourage organ donations after death, and that attempt has then failed.
I like how we've nonsensically leaped to 'Letting people sell organs', which at best would just let people sell organs that they have two of. (So, uh, kidneys then. And lungs, maybe?)
And not given the slightest amount of thought to 'Hey, maybe the government should somehow reward signing up to becoming an organ donor enough that people actually do it.', which would, duh, not only result in even more kidneys and lungs but also hearts and retinas and whatnot.
It is _trivially_ easy to create an organ donation system that does not have perverse incentives and does not take advantage of the poor, so why on earth would we create on that did?
I can't think of what specific Warehouse 13 you're talking about. They just got trapped in a book the last episode, but that was a property of that specific book, and they just left it when the story ended, so that wouldn't work in general. (And they got trapped in a comic in the webisodes, but I don't remember that well.)
However, if anyone _does_ have the ability to hope in and out of TV shows, it would be them.
But a big problem is, if you're just some random person in that universe, no way you're getting into the Warehouse, much less running off with an artifact. You could physically locate the place (It's the 'IRS warehouse' outside Univille, SD.) and pester the employees, but that's about it.
I'm not sure that declining the invitation would be a good idea...seems to me that could focus the plot on you. You'd end up dead, and the host of the party will be informed while Jessica Fletcher is standing right here, she will decide to investigate, and it would be a Clue that you did not attend the party.
No, if you find yourself in the Murder She Wrote universe, you must _immediately_ murder Jessica Fletcher. And not remotely. (That will just end up killing someone else due to her Plot Armor and she'll solve the murder.) Run up, and stab her repeatedly. Do not worry about getting caught...the _only_ way to actually catch criminals in the Murder She Wrote universe is for Jessica Fletcher to pretend to be trapped in an empty room with them and get them to confess and then they attempt to kill her while the police listen in.
Now, depending on how the world works, other people step in to attempt this trick. So, as a rule of thumb, never attempt to murder anyone who is listing circumstantial evidence against you. Ever. It is a trick. Pretend to be baffled, and then go along willingly with the police. They will have to release you due to 'lack of evidence', because there is no such thing as 'evidence' in that universe.
While The Real World is just pretending to be the real world, how about any talk show, which actually_are_ set in the 'real world'? (Just stay away from the political ones, or you could accidentally end up in a world where certain politicians are trying to destroy America.)
Hey, who wants to make a quick TV show with me about a very nice superhero, able to stop meteors, set in 10,000 BC, who has the power to exit, along with anyone else who has joined him, any fictional work he's put in? ;)
It really seems like that's a more ethical use of everyone's time.
Actually, the best bet to save the world would be to find a TV show that has done a 'Trapped in TV land' episode. Because in that universe, the technology to exit the TV show they're in already exists. (This might be slightly different tech than inter-dimensional portals.)
Go there, grab the tech, exit the show, go into the Superman TV show or something, exit that world with Superman in tow, and save the world that way.
The danger of the Quantum Leap universe is that God might take an interest to your arrival and suddenly _you_ now have a job putting right what once went wrong.
I think it should be pointed out that you can get into the Star Trek universe safely...you just need to join it in the _present_. As Star Trek canonically has cryogenic suspension from the present day (Khan, that business guy in TNG, etc...), you can just wait it out. But watch out for the nuclear war in the 2060s.
Or you can just find one of the many time machines...I'd suggest meeting up with the Voyager crew in 1997 and lie about being a time traveler from their time (You should know enough stuff about the Federation _and_ the near future of 1997 to convince them) and need a lift, but then you're stuck on Voyager, ugh.
I was thinking you might want to be in a dramatic universe with super-crime-solvers in it, like CSI or Bones or Psych or something, for safety reasons, until I remembered that those universes also have a surprising amount of serial killers wandering around, and lots of people end up dead before our heroes show up.
From the point of view of a non-main character, all most TV universes look basically the same. Would you actually know or care you're in the universe of the Big Bang Theory or Arrested Development or Breaking Bad?
Hey, what if you entered a TV show that was explicitly set in _this_ universe due to lack of fourth wall? Like Letterman or other talk shows? And won't they be really confused inside that show when the meteor doesn't kill everyone?
I don't entirely agree, because you've changed it from what you stated the 'shallow' opposition was. There are shallow people on both sides. What Morat20 and I were disagreeing with was that shallow people on the left were in favor of 'more' government.
The 'shallow' position on the right is, indeed, less government. Anti-government.
The 'shallow' position on the left is _not_ more government. It might be just randomly giving large amounts of money to the poor, or demanding that businesses hire minorities, or demanding that no one ever build anywhere that animals live, or whatever.(Although those are more parodies of the left that don't actually exist, but I will assume that they exist in real life _somewhere_.)
But the left, even the shallow left, is not 'pro-government'. If, for example, someone were to propose that the government build an FBI station in every single town and staff it, the shallow left would be just as confused as everyone else.
Even the most shallow person on the left is only 'pro-government' to the extent that they think they have a problem and they think they have come up with a government solution to it. They're not 'pro-government' in some sort of abstract. (1)
OTOH, if someone were to propose closing down post offices...hey, wait, the right actually is trying to secretly do that, right now. And there no problem with the post offices right now, and the right is working, right now, to get rid of them, for no reason other than they are 'government'.
1) Well, I presume there's some shallow left person who has come to the conclusion that to create jobs government should make up pretend jobs and hire everyone for them, and to do that the government should become huge as a goal in and of itself to 'create jobs'. But even this imaginary person is only 'pro-government' in that they think the government would be solving a problem.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Why Conservatives Can’t Win the Non-Male Vote, “I’m Fishing Speechless” Edition”
Problem is, I don’t see a lot of prominent conservatives talking about this kind of stuff in an intelligent manner.
...as opposed to all the other stuff that prominent conservatives talk about in an intelligent matter? ;)
On “This Is Why the GOP Can’t Have Nice Things”
I've pretty much stopped talking to George at this point, who readers may notice only took issue with my pointing out that a Roland Emmerich movie was, in fact, a movie, and The Day After Tomorrow is no more a real prediction than Godzilla was. He apparently had no rebuttal to both my explanation of drought plus increased rainfall _or_ my pointing out that no one is predicting sealevel change to go backwards, accepting both those to instead dispute the idea that crappy science fiction is a real prediction.
So I will address the prediction of shutting down thermohaline circulation. While there _is_ a theory that that could shut down, nothing that happens in that movie is even vaguely predicted by it. (As was pointed out by the very article that was linked to by George!)
While the shutdown itself could be near instant (Or not, we don't know), it wouldn't cause instant temperature changes, nor would those temperature changes be anywhere near as fast as shown, or as large, or even happen in the same place!
Shutting that down simply means that the temperature of a few places become more in line with their latitude...Scotland eventually turns into Sweden, for example. And Iceland into Greenland. And France into Canada. And, at the other end, Georgia into Tunesia, or, if you prefer, Texas.
All that, of course, is an exaggeration (It's not _just_ latitude and thermohaline circulation that effect the temperature), but the point is that the thermohaline circulation moves warmth up the New England coast, takes it across the ocean, and slams it smack into Europe, making _both_ those places more livable than their latitude would otherwise imply. (And stirring up the ocean while it does it, which makes it more liveable too.)
If you've been paying attention, you will also notice that the thermohaline circulation does not actually effect the temperate of New York very much, (New York is at the same approximate latitude as Spain and Italy and Japan, the temperature is fine there anyway.) which means trying to assert that The Day After Tomorrow has anything to do with that exceptionally stupid.
In fact, The Day After Tomorrow is not quite as stupid as that, and the freezing of New York is due to some 'super storm', not the collapse of the thermohaline circulation. George Turner: Making less sense than Roland Emmerich.
On “Is This Wrong?”
The general purpose of having kids move quietly down a hallway is to avoid disrupting other classes and/or offices.
See, I agree entirely with that, but the simple fact is, that at schools, almost _all_ rules are justified with 'It would disturb other students'. This is because the courts have said that students actually have some rights, but schools can restrict them if such rights would 'disturb' education.
So you end up with nonsense like dress codes in high school being justified to keep from 'disturbing' classes. (Which had some interesting slut-shaming going on, considering that the most enforced dress code was skirt length.)
So while 'Care for self, care for others, care for the environment.' actually does make sense, the problem is that often the fascista who get placed in charge of schools just nonsensically justify things using essentially that.
I wish I could find my old high school handbook, to quote some of these rules. And note these were _pre-Columbine_ rules...the year after I left high school, Columbine happened, the fascista really ramped things up, and my brothers had to go to school with transparent bookbags. (Because no one can hide a weapon on themselves, or just pull one out in the parking lot.)
You know what annoys me? When I was a teenager, I was assured that all this would make sense when I was older, that teenagers think they know everything but don't. I am now 34, and looking back, I have learned...I was entirely right about everything, and a lot of adults really are just fascist assholes towards teenagers. That's not to say a lot of teenagers aren't stupid, but their stupidity doesn't justify the idiotic system that teenagers have to live in. (In fact, I have to suggest that a lot of teenager's stupidity is _due to_ rebelling against such a system.)
On “This Is Why the GOP Can’t Have Nice Things”
Sometimes they use it to predict global cooling, citing changes in the oceans’ thermo-haline circulation patterns, most famously in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” where temperatures seemed to be hundreds of degrees below absolute zero.
I want to print this out and frame it as 'Most nonsensical climate change denialism'. You just cited a Roland Emmerich movie as if it was an actual prediction of the future.
That actually happened. In the actual world. You just did that.
We also don’t know that higher temperatures will produce more drought. Many models show that there would be increased rainfall along with fewer extremes (those don’t get much coverage because they’re useless for scaring people). In general we know it should get wetter as it gets warmer.
'Increased rainfall' and 'drought' are not mutually exclusive thing. In fact, you can't _have_ drought under climate change without having increased rainfall. This is because the increased rainfall is due to increased evaporation. Which, duh, results in less water on the ground.
Granted, some of that water is making it back down. And, indeed, near oceans, there will probably be less drought, as more ocean water ends up on land. (Assuming that's the way the wind moves, of course.)
In areas _it already doesn't rain_, aka, deserts, having higher evaporation makes the desert larger and drier, while not actually putting enough water in the air for it to rain. (Changing the humidity from 2% to 4% is not going to make it rain.)
Heat removes water from the ground, and puts it in the air. That is what causes rain, so we will have more rain.
Heat removes water from the ground, and puts it in the air. The lack of water on the ground is the _definition_ of drought, so we will have more of that also.
The fact we're cycling water _faster_ doesn't change the fact that less of it will stick around to make it into plants and animals, and more of it will be floating uselessly in the air. (Unless the plan is to operate giant dehumidifiers to water our food.)
Warmer temperatures have also been modeled to produce sea-level decreases (considered unlikely by the IPCC, but not out of the ballpark) due to an increase in snow piling up on Antarctica, and thus a net gain in polar ice mass.
Except no, that's not what anyone has modeled.
"
Incidentally, another part of this that everyone seems to be missing...501(c)4s are not required to get permission from the IRS to exist in the first place.
From what I understand, you don't actually make 'a 501(c)4'. You _file_ as a 501(c)4. The organization exists regardless.
These groups, probably because they were all working off the same legal template and their lawyers all knew they were in a somewhat illegal area of the law, were trying to get _pre-cleared_ as a 501(c)4, which they did not actually need to do. This pre-clearance or lack thereof in no way interfered with their work or money-flow, it was just a _tax_ delay.
And even if they _hadn't_ gotten it they could have simply filed as a non-profit as a 527 and paid exactly the same amount of taxes. (That is, none.) The 501(c)4 thing was simply to keep from having from having disclose donors.
"
However, I shall assume that you were talking issue with 'I actually think the IRS scandal has less teeth than even reasonable people think. (I don’t think it even qualifies as a ‘scandal’ in any sense, much less one that has anything to do with Obama.)', and explain what I mean by that.
The simple fact is, 501(c)4s were being created in violation of the law. Now, this is a violation of the law that the IRS seemed to not take much issue with, but that was before thousands of them appeared out of thin air. (Thanks to Citizen's United)
Many of the ones that should not be allowed to exist had obviously political names.
Let's make an analogy here: Let's say there is a neighborhood where street parking is allowed, but only by residents. Residents are supposed to put stickers on their cars, but they sometimes do not, and that law has been almost completely ignored, and it ties up too much time in the courts if the cops ticket a resident, so they ticket no one.
And then let's say that a new college opens just past that neighborhood, and now 1000 college kids are parking on the street. So the cops wander up and down the street, putting tickets on every 'college-looking' car. (If they hit a resident by mistake, well, that can get straightened out in the courts.)
This is _not correct behavior_. It is, in fact, misbehavior. It's called profiling instead of actually doing your damn job. The legality of a car should not be judged by what it looks like, and the legality of an organization should not be judged by the name. There are actual standard, and those standards should be enforced.
It is also _entirely expected behavior_ by an underfunded police department.
Now, notice that I've been presenting this in a politically neutral manner, whereas certain people seem intent on making this something to do with the 'right'.
No. From what I can tell, they just picked the _most common_ political keywords of the incorrect 501(c)3s, and those really were right-wing ones, considering the ratio of right vs. left groups being created. (To continue my analogy, let's assume it's a mostly white neighborhood, and a mostly black college, so 'college-looking' included things that also indicate race, so on top of it the police look racist. So now it's a big race issue that actually has nothing to do with anything.)
The 'scandal' of 'politics' has rendered the entire actual issue here meaningless. The IRS should not have been caring about the names of groups, and, perhaps more importantly, they should have been REJECTING these groups. (Which, indeed, would have rejected more right-wing groups than left-wing, because there _were_ more of those groups.)
The problem here is complete inability or unwillingness of the IRS to enforce the law. And then some random profiling (Which looked political) while _continuing_ to be unwilling to enforce the actual law. (As opposed to the pretend law the IRS was enforcing, where 501(c)4s could be somewhat political.)
Actually, the problem is the law. There's not a hell of a lot of point for 501(c)4 groups in the first place, and even less point for them to be allowed to keep their donors anonymous.
"
Erm, while I have read a few of these questionnaires , you appear to have several question in your list I haven't seen anywhere.
What are your religious views?
I have not seen any questions at all about religion. Or heard anyone else mention such question. Nor do I find it plausible that the IRS would ask an _organization_ what religion it was.
Which people do you talk to?
Well, this would be an absurd question if actually phrased like that, but, again, I have not see that question. I've seen demands to turn over training material and presentation and stuff, but not 'Which people do you talk to?'.
Give us the names of all your donors.
Yes, that question was very inappropriate, and warrants a full investigation as to how it got in there, along with the targeting in the first place.
Give us the names of everyone who has interned with you.
Erm...firstly, no, I haven't see that question. Secondly, who interns for for an organization is _not private information_, and something the government actually already has the right to know, just like they have the right to know who that organization employs.
List all your unofficial contacts.
Much like 'Which people do you talk to?', this is complete nonsense as a question and not something the IRS has asked.
Give us backdoor access to all your websites.
And, again, nope. No one asked that.
So, I think the point of the article is well proved: Conservatives can't manage to refrain from making stuff up, even in the midst of _actual government misbehavior_.
(continued in next post...)
On “Is This Wrong?”
All of the effects of the rule are bad and unfair and none good.
It's actually rather astonishing how many school rules fall exactly under that category.
All dress code rules fall into that category. None of those make the slightest bit of sense, at all. Including rules for dances and whatnot. It is the damn students' dance, and they can wear whatever they want.(1)
All rules about weapons fall into that category. If you actually were going to commit the _felony_ of assault and murder, why would school rules stop you? (I'm talking more about knifes than guns. I don't have any real problems with not letting students carry guns, although it's worth pointing out that's already illegal in most states on school grounds and hence doesn't need a 'rule' about it.)
All rules about 'drugs' fall into that category. We already have a perfectly functional set of laws about who can have and take which drugs. (Don't get me wrong, I'd be fine with a rule that allowed teachers to check that laws were being followed. I'm just taking issue that the school should be forbidding people from possessing a substance they legally can possess.)
The idea that a school needs an entire separate set of 'rules' in addition to the law of society is near complete nonsense.
I guess there a few rules about specific circumstances that could reasonable exist, like 'Students must get a parking pass before parking at the school' and 'Students must return tray to window after eating' and 'No running in the hall' (Although those are less 'school rules' and more 'signs on the wall'.) and a few classroom rules like 'Students can't use their cellphone in class' (Although classroom rules, ultimate, are the job of the teacher to set.)
But something like 90% of school rules are set by insane power-mad despots who want to control people and have managed to luck upon a job where they can do just that.
I'm mainly talking about high schoolers here. Elementary schoolers probably need a bit more structure.
1) I actually find it rather baffling that people don't understand the entire concept of high school dances and sports and stuff. All that really is an attempt to show students how to be social. It's a sort of enforced 'community' that they live in, and pretty much all decisions should be left up to them. Yes, they will make stupid decisions, but that's what high school is for. It's not the job of parents or administrators to come along and interfere except to stop extreme problems. (Aka, you do have to chaperon them, but that's it.)
On “This Is Why the GOP Can’t Have Nice Things”
It explains everything, even contradictory things, and can never be disproved because each event is just more evidence, no matter what the event was.
Scientists do not have an very accurate model of long-term weather, and there are lot of things that we are not sure how much temperature change will effect. I've read something the other day that pointed out that global warming changes two things about tornadoes, one of which makes more tornadoes and one makes less, and we don't actually know which is more important, so it's entirely possible global warming is reducing the amount of tornadoes. (Statistically, the amount of tornadoes is roughly the same, it's just that we are building denser so they are more harmful.)
However, there is ONE thing that goddamn global warming predicts...GLOBAL WARMING.
You appear to have this idea that just because we don't actually know the results of raising the temperature higher and higher and higher that, uh, it somehow isn't happening. That does not make any sense at all. There are specific things that we know happen with higher average temperatures. We have more drought, at least on average. Thus crops die. We have melting ice caps. We have deserts expand.
_Those_ are the bad thing, and those bad side effects are not up for debate. (Unless you want to debate the temperature increase itself, and feel free to do that, but you can't actually debate the fact that a temperature increase would result in those bad things.)
We _also_ are going to get random weather patter changes in random places, and because we don't fully understand many of the reasons weather patterns exist in the first place, we're pretty crappy at predicting the changes. But, generally speaking, randomizing the weather at all is a bad thing. Yes, one or two areas might luck out and get less tornadoes or less blizzards, but the vast majority of places are going to just have random changes that devastate the ecosystems. (Yes, ecosystems adapted...but it sucks to be living through it.)
"
None of the scandals really have anything to do with Obama, only the IRS scandal had any actual wrong doing, and I actually think the IRS scandal has less teeth than even reasonable people think. (I don't think it even qualifies as a 'scandal' in any sense, much less one that has anything to do with Obama.)
However, I think the point the article is making is that a _sane_ opposition would be able to use the IRS issue to throw some dirt on Obama, along with a little dirt from the AP thing. Not much dirt, but some.
The GOP...is not a sane opposition.
On “What is your true rejection: Organ Trade Edition”
...'my interpretation of their motives'?
I don't believe I interpreted anyone's motives. I merely pointed out that _any_ plan whatsoever that involves writing checks and giving them to poor people, for any reason whatsoever, is going to _incredibly_ unpopular with the right.
I ascribed no motive to this. Nor did I condemn it in any way. (I did use a bit of hyperbole, but hopefully everyone understands that most people would rather pay people money than be burned to death, and that was, indeed, hyperbole.)
Do you disagree with my statement? Do you think that the right _would_ be willing to pay for poor people signing up to be organ donors? Do you think they'd approve of any government plan that resulted in poor people lining up to receive money?
I actually find this habit of people objecting to me stating _what is clearly the actual position of the Republicans_ to be rather annoying. And it's never 'The right doesn't think that' or 'Republicans wouldn't do that', it's always 'David, stop painting them to be evil'.
I didn't call them _evil_. Neither did Mike Schilling for that matter. We made no moral judgments at all.
I simply stated what I suspect would be their position on a hypothetical law, based on other positions they have. If you disagree with what I think, then say so. Perhaps you can make an argument that Republicans _would_ be in favor of it.
But if you agree with what I thought, and you also think that position is morally wrong, then that's _you_ calling them morally wrong, not me.
"
You can actually solve a hell of a lot of problems in society by just _paying people to do the right thing_.
There's some sort of Philosophical Truth in that statement, somewhere.
Of course, the problem is that, at this point, the right sees the government actually handing money to human beings, especially _poor_ human beings, as the greatest horror imaginable, so would likely object to this. (1) Instead, they would demand it as a tax rebate...which would hilariously mean it was the middle class 'selling their organs', not the poor.
Incidentally, we can solve the problem of people not serving jury duty the same way...actually paying a _reasonable_ amount of money for their time, instead of wages that would actually be illegal under minimum wage laws. And provide child care.
And low voter turnout, too. And low voter registration. And recycling.
And the fun thing is, instead of paying for _enforcement_ of stuff, you can simply set up an office and have people _come to you_. If you're going to fine people for something, they will hide it and dispute it and you need court and whatnot, whereas if you're going to pay people for something, especially something that is no real effort on their part, they will show up at government offices and provide evidence to you. With no work on your part!
It's a crazy idea, I know. Paying people do things we want them to do.
1) Despite the fact it is not actually handing money to anyone, and is in fact exactly the same thing as the usage fees the far right seems to think the government should collect from everyone instead of taxes...except in the other direction. But I honestly believe that the right would rather DIE IN A FIRE than to hand poor people money.
On “Thursday Night Bar Fight #10: The “Three Hour Tour””
I think if you showed up outside the Warehouse with the knowledge you gleaned from the show (assuming you watch it), Artie would get you to talk to the Regents post-haste.
That's a good point, and it makes me realize there's an exploit in the hypothetical. Namely, you can arrive _during a plot_. No one ever said you had to arrive in the 'now' of a TV show.
Now, admittedly, if you're just some random guy, you can't cut it very close, and there's not any way you're going to track how to call the Warehouse, so you have to fly there...
...but show up a few days before, for example, the disastrous season three finale and explain who you are and how events are about to go entirely pear-shaped?
Yeah, they might indeed loan you an artifact. Actually, you'd have a pretty good chance of becoming an agent, considering their recruitment policy.
On “What is your true rejection: Organ Trade Edition”
Kidneys are one of those things that I don't have problems with paying for, if you can convince me that there is very little harm in donating a kidney. And the article is right...having a backup kidney is almost completely useless, as they always fail together. It only helps if someone shoots you in the kidney or something.(1)
So if we can invent some sort of public system to pay people to donate kidneys that was are sure are not going to make the person who donated life's worse off, and cover expenses in case it does, than I am okay with it.
1) You know, whoever designed a human to have backup part was stupid. Backup hands and backup eyes and even backup testicles, sure, those are on the outside, and can get physically damaged. But the stuff _inside_ fails because the system fails, and hence both of them fail at once! (Well, barring cancer, but for most of human history no one had any ability to remove the defective one.) What would be much saner is to only run one kidney or one lung, and only turn the second one on if the first failed.
"
Incidentally, my state already does this...for $5 off the driver's license registration. Yes, apparently donating your organs is worth five whole dollars. (But only if you drive.)
"
By 'a system' do you mean somewhere else? Because I really have no idea of what the laws are elsewhere.
Here is my invented system: Pay people $500 to sign up to be organ donors, starting at age 18.
That's it. Currently, the signed up organ donor average seems to hover around 20%. And based on poor college students that I know, something like 90% will sign up for anything that will pay them $500, especially if they don't actually have to do anything, and this has the added bonus of being for a good cause.
Now, you'll notice I didn't invent any way out of this system, because I don't actually care. I think if, by signing up, you committed to be an organ donor for five years, and then at the end of the five years, you can opt out or stay in, almost all people signed up would just stay in. (If everyone actually does opt out, we could fix that by providing renewal payments, but I suspect we don't need that.)
If 90% of people were organ donors, we wouldn't have to worry about 'buying' organs from anywhere, or try to carefully figure out incentives and laws to keep people from being worth more dead.
On “Popular and Wrong”
Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what the laws are about any of that.
I just hear stories about family members refusing to proceed with donation, which in my mind is roughly akin to family members asserting that they aren't going to read the will and instead will divide up the deceased's property how they want...it's complete nonsense. That's not how that works. A dead person's estate _owns_ their body.
I guess there's a point where prepping the body still counts a 'medical decision', and not 'property laws', but that just demonstrates that organ donation agreement needs to include an aspect of living wills.
But I don't actually know if this needs to change anyway. If we actually pay people for this, if something like 95% of all people are signed up, then just 5% of them is more than enough for all needed organ donations. And presumably the percentage agreeing would grow as organ donation became the default assumption for everyone.
On “What is your true rejection: Organ Trade Edition”
What would make me change my mind? When we have at least attempted the _slightest_ effort to actual encourage organ donations after death, and that attempt has then failed.
I like how we've nonsensically leaped to 'Letting people sell organs', which at best would just let people sell organs that they have two of. (So, uh, kidneys then. And lungs, maybe?)
And not given the slightest amount of thought to 'Hey, maybe the government should somehow reward signing up to becoming an organ donor enough that people actually do it.', which would, duh, not only result in even more kidneys and lungs but also hearts and retinas and whatnot.
It is _trivially_ easy to create an organ donation system that does not have perverse incentives and does not take advantage of the poor, so why on earth would we create on that did?
On “Thursday Night Bar Fight #10: The “Three Hour Tour””
I can't think of what specific Warehouse 13 you're talking about. They just got trapped in a book the last episode, but that was a property of that specific book, and they just left it when the story ended, so that wouldn't work in general. (And they got trapped in a comic in the webisodes, but I don't remember that well.)
However, if anyone _does_ have the ability to hope in and out of TV shows, it would be them.
But a big problem is, if you're just some random person in that universe, no way you're getting into the Warehouse, much less running off with an artifact. You could physically locate the place (It's the 'IRS warehouse' outside Univille, SD.) and pester the employees, but that's about it.
"
I'm not sure that declining the invitation would be a good idea...seems to me that could focus the plot on you. You'd end up dead, and the host of the party will be informed while Jessica Fletcher is standing right here, she will decide to investigate, and it would be a Clue that you did not attend the party.
No, if you find yourself in the Murder She Wrote universe, you must _immediately_ murder Jessica Fletcher. And not remotely. (That will just end up killing someone else due to her Plot Armor and she'll solve the murder.) Run up, and stab her repeatedly. Do not worry about getting caught...the _only_ way to actually catch criminals in the Murder She Wrote universe is for Jessica Fletcher to pretend to be trapped in an empty room with them and get them to confess and then they attempt to kill her while the police listen in.
Now, depending on how the world works, other people step in to attempt this trick. So, as a rule of thumb, never attempt to murder anyone who is listing circumstantial evidence against you. Ever. It is a trick. Pretend to be baffled, and then go along willingly with the police. They will have to release you due to 'lack of evidence', because there is no such thing as 'evidence' in that universe.
"
While The Real World is just pretending to be the real world, how about any talk show, which actually_are_ set in the 'real world'? (Just stay away from the political ones, or you could accidentally end up in a world where certain politicians are trying to destroy America.)
Hey, who wants to make a quick TV show with me about a very nice superhero, able to stop meteors, set in 10,000 BC, who has the power to exit, along with anyone else who has joined him, any fictional work he's put in? ;)
It really seems like that's a more ethical use of everyone's time.
"
Actually, the best bet to save the world would be to find a TV show that has done a 'Trapped in TV land' episode. Because in that universe, the technology to exit the TV show they're in already exists. (This might be slightly different tech than inter-dimensional portals.)
Go there, grab the tech, exit the show, go into the Superman TV show or something, exit that world with Superman in tow, and save the world that way.
"
The danger of the Quantum Leap universe is that God might take an interest to your arrival and suddenly _you_ now have a job putting right what once went wrong.
"
I think it should be pointed out that you can get into the Star Trek universe safely...you just need to join it in the _present_. As Star Trek canonically has cryogenic suspension from the present day (Khan, that business guy in TNG, etc...), you can just wait it out. But watch out for the nuclear war in the 2060s.
Or you can just find one of the many time machines...I'd suggest meeting up with the Voyager crew in 1997 and lie about being a time traveler from their time (You should know enough stuff about the Federation _and_ the near future of 1997 to convince them) and need a lift, but then you're stuck on Voyager, ugh.
I was thinking you might want to be in a dramatic universe with super-crime-solvers in it, like CSI or Bones or Psych or something, for safety reasons, until I remembered that those universes also have a surprising amount of serial killers wandering around, and lots of people end up dead before our heroes show up.
From the point of view of a non-main character, all most TV universes look basically the same. Would you actually know or care you're in the universe of the Big Bang Theory or Arrested Development or Breaking Bad?
Hey, what if you entered a TV show that was explicitly set in _this_ universe due to lack of fourth wall? Like Letterman or other talk shows? And won't they be really confused inside that show when the meteor doesn't kill everyone?
On “Ideology is the Enemy: The Creeping Victory of “Consistent” over “Judicious””
I don't entirely agree, because you've changed it from what you stated the 'shallow' opposition was. There are shallow people on both sides. What Morat20 and I were disagreeing with was that shallow people on the left were in favor of 'more' government.
The 'shallow' position on the right is, indeed, less government. Anti-government.
The 'shallow' position on the left is _not_ more government. It might be just randomly giving large amounts of money to the poor, or demanding that businesses hire minorities, or demanding that no one ever build anywhere that animals live, or whatever.(Although those are more parodies of the left that don't actually exist, but I will assume that they exist in real life _somewhere_.)
But the left, even the shallow left, is not 'pro-government'. If, for example, someone were to propose that the government build an FBI station in every single town and staff it, the shallow left would be just as confused as everyone else.
Even the most shallow person on the left is only 'pro-government' to the extent that they think they have a problem and they think they have come up with a government solution to it. They're not 'pro-government' in some sort of abstract. (1)
OTOH, if someone were to propose closing down post offices...hey, wait, the right actually is trying to secretly do that, right now. And there no problem with the post offices right now, and the right is working, right now, to get rid of them, for no reason other than they are 'government'.
1) Well, I presume there's some shallow left person who has come to the conclusion that to create jobs government should make up pretend jobs and hire everyone for them, and to do that the government should become huge as a goal in and of itself to 'create jobs'. But even this imaginary person is only 'pro-government' in that they think the government would be solving a problem.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.