I am increasingly confident that we are going to win the same-sex marriage battle, and often, I am pleasantly surprised by how quickly support is becoming the majority position. However, Andrew, this graph may not be the best way to make the case to holdouts still suffering from the ick factor.
Link to Andrew via Kevin Drum, via Peter Suderman. The last link is worth reading: it's a conservative describing how he came to see the light on this issue.
(h/t: @AdamSerwer)
Just noticed Neil deGrasse Tyson telling Nick Swisher to correct his teammate Curtis Granderson's misunderstandings of atmospheric physics.
#nerdlove
Sadly, Prof. Tyson appears to have forgotten that baseball is 50% pitching, 50% hitting, and 50% defense.
__________
[Added] Also (from the background on his Twitter page): Love the baseball card of Nick when he was on the Athletics. Bring back the DFH look, Nick! The Hater of the Hirsutes is dead!
I came across this a while ago, in a print edition (!) of The New Yorker, and just remembered it while moving a stack of magazines.
To the recycling bin, of course.
As morally superior citizens of planet Earth, we Prius owners consider it our duty to keep finding new ways to enlighten those eco-heathens who are still floundering in the eco-darkness, even as our cars sometimes fail to decelerate when the brake pedal is depressed, a violation of Newton’s third law of motion, caused by global warming. Herewith, some suggestions from the “Things to Do with Your Prius” message board.
Here is my favorite:
At the next Luther Burbank Day vegan barbecue and weed roast, back your Prius up to within a few feet of the folks lounging on the grass, with the engine running, and explain that its super-clean exhaust system is actually freshening the air.
While looking for the Bush pic in the previous post, I happened across this:
A rugby league fan is drinking in a Yorkshire bar, when he gets a call on his mobile phone. He hangs up, grinning from ear to ear, and orders a round of drinks for everybody in the bar, announcing his wife has just given birth to a typical Yorkshire baby boy weighing 25 pounds.
Nobody can believe that any new baby can weigh in at 25 pounds, but the rugby fan just shrugs and replies, 'That's about average in Yorkshire...like I said, my boy's a typical Yorkshire baby boy. Gonna be a rugby league player.
Congratulations showered him from all around, amid many exclamations of 'WOW!' One woman actually fainted due to sympathy pains.
Two weeks later, he returns to the bar. The bartender says, 'Say, aren't you the father of that typical Yorkshire baby that weighed 25 pounds at birth? Everybody's been making bets about how big he'd be in two weeks. So, how much does he weigh now?'
The proud father answers, 'Twenty pounds.'
The bartender is puzzled, concerned and a little suspicious. 'What happened? He already weighed 25 pounds the day he was born!'
The Yorkshire-man takes a slow swig of his Samuel Smith's, wipes his lips on his shirt sleeve, leans into the bartender and proudly says, 'Had him circumcised...'
For reasons beyond my understanding, this was the logo atop a recent post at America’s Shittiest Website™ (I have enlarged it):
I can only think of this:
Which, IIRC, was Photoshopped from this:
Who knows. Given that it was an Andy McCarthy post, maybe it was meant to precondition the reader for the batshit craziness to follow?
For no particular reason; just that it's a cool chart:
Pic swiped from Paul Kedrosky, via a tweet from Christopher Mims.
Following the link from the former, it looks like it was put together by Bill Rankin, who is pursuing a dual Ph.D., in the history of science and architecture at Harvard, and who enjoys graphic design and cartography in his spare time. Either this guy has 72 hour days and no need for sleep, or I am even more inferior than I thought, but never mind that. The above chart appears here, on his hobby site, Radical Cartography. From the home page, follow PROJECTS → BROWSE BY GEOGRAPHY → THE WORLD → POPULATION to get there, if the "here" link doesn't work. Be advised that if your tastes for nerd eye candy are at all like mine, you risk losing the rest of the day.
[Added] I am by no means close to being done browsing this site, but I wanted to note that I particularly liked the "Underdevelopment" map of Manhattan.
[Added2] Animated map of time zones: slow | fast.
[Added3] A new word! endorheic, a geographical term which means an internal basin that does not drain outwardly. Not all water, it turns out, ends up in the sea. Who knew? From the Physical Geography page.
[Added4] World railways. Be sure to download the full-size image.
[Added5] U.S. Empire.
[Added6] From a link in the Research Candy section of Bill's academic page: "graph of the development of the US patent system." (PDF) Note especially the one titled "Patent Activity (per million population)."
[Added7] From same section: "graph of US construction activity, 1915–1960."
[Added8] Back to the RadCart site: "Place-Name Etymology."
As you probably know, I'm no fan of any organized religion. But if we're going to respect the freedom to worship for some, we're going to respect it for all.
And with that, I will turn it over to someone who says it better than I do.
Transcript here, if you like.
Along the lines of the previous post, here is another chart also courtesy of Ezra Klein. Another beautiful example of the visual display of quantitative information, i'n't it? Click it to big it.
Next time you hear some Republican politician describing his plan to Get This Economy Going By Preserving Teh Bush Tax Cuts, just remember: gray goo.
Let us all praise Paul Ryan!!!1!
See Ezra Klein for details.
Hat tip to Oliver Willis (RTed by @sonjablair), who predicts:
Conservatives will no doubt dismiss this reality with the well-worn “math is for nerds” defense…
Also, math is gay. Plus it was invented by Muslins.
(x-posted)
Announcing ... the Calvin & Hobbes Search Engine!
And oh, yeah, it works. Unlike most new search engines, where of course I test by typing in my own name, in this case I had a better word: snowmen. Because who doesn't think of those in the middle of August?
Hat tip to Chris Mealy, who tweets:
I checked, and there's nothing about peeing or praying, so take that shit off your cars
I can't decide between TBogg's "9 Out of 10 Foxes Prefer More Foxes In Henhouse" and (via @edroso) Eric Hague's "Our Daughter Isn't a Selfish Brat; Your Son Just Hasn't Read Atlas Shrugged."
Notes on the Politics of Fear and Loathing
I observed elsewhere a couple of days ago that Bryan Fischer of The American Family Association had posted a screed on the AFA site, bellowing, "No more mosques, period." As in, anywhere in the US. He also insists that "Muslims cannot claim religious freedom protections under the First Amendment." I came across this via Lauri Apple, who noted some other examples of similar such bed-wetting, too.
Now, here's another, more detailed and comprehensive look from Stephan Salisbury, which begins as follows.
The Far-Right's Anti-Mosque Mania Spreads from Ground Zero to Across the U.S., Pointing to Dark Politics Ahead
The phony 'debate' over the construction of an Islamic cultural center near the former World Trade Center portends darker things to come.
August 11, 2010 | There is a distinct creepiness to the controversy now raging around a proposed Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan. The angry “debate” over whether the building should exist has a kind of glitch-in-the-Matrix feel to it, leaving in its wake an aura of something-very-bad-about-to-happen.
It’s not just that opposition to the building has coalesced around a phony “Mosque at Ground Zero” shorthand (with its echoes of dust, death, and evildoers). Many have pointed out -- futilely -- that the complex will be more than two blocks from the former World Trade Center, around a corner on Park Place, and will feature an auditorium, spa, basketball court, swimming pool, classrooms, exhibition space, community meeting space, 9/11 memorial, and, yes, a prayer space for Muslims. The shorthand still sticks.
Nor is it just that this is only the most visible of a growing number of nasty controversies over proposed mosques in Tennessee, California, Georgia, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Illinois as well as Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and Midland Beach, Staten Island, in New York City. Such protests are emerging with alarming frequency. Nor is it simply that political leaders -- from Republican presidential wannabes to New York gubernatorial hopefuls -- have sought to exploit the Lower Manhattan controversy. (Sarah Palin demanded that “peaceful Muslims” step up and “refudiate” the plan; Newt Gingrich denounced the building of such a “mosque” as long as Saudi Arabia bars construction of churches and synagogues; Rick Lazio, a Republican campaigning for the governorship of New York state, asserted that the plan somehow subverted the right of New Yorkers “to feel safe and be safe.”)
No, it’s the déjà-vu-ness of the controversy that kindles special unease, the sense that we’ve been here before as a country, and the realization that, for a decade, a significant number of our nation’s political leaders have been honing an anti-Muslim narrative which fertilizes anti-Muslim sentiment to the point where it is now spreading like a toxic plume, uncapped and uncontrollable.
The mosque controversy is not really about a mosque at all; it’s about the presence of Muslims in America, and the free-floating anxiety and fear that now dominate the nation’s psyche. The mere presence of Muslims at prayer is now enough to trigger angry protests, as Bridgeport, Connecticut, police discovered last week. Those opposing the construction of the center in New York City are drawing on what amounts to a decade of government-stoked xenophobia about Muslims, now gathering strength and visibility in a nation full of deep economic anxieties and increasingly aggressive far-right grassroots groups. Lower Manhattan and Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Temecula, California, are all in this together. And it is not going to go away simply because the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission gave its unanimous blessing to the Islamic center plan. Since that is the case, it’s worth pausing to consider what has happened here over the past 10 years.
(h/t: @ronaldjackson)
Remember that crazy Kansas Jesus Lady who was running for governor? You know, the one with God on her board of directors (of her website?)?
Sounds like a total scam artist kinda got busted. Or maybe she's sincere, and really is that deluded! We don't judge. We just pass you along to Jack Stuef.
P.S. She now says she is no longer a Republican. Too crazy? Not crazy enough? No. We said we weren't going to judge.
Ah, the good old SCLM. They won't rest until they kill us all. Misrepresenting Paul Krugman (Bai's own colleague, no less) just to help a Republican look good. Bai is Balanced™! He likes Bipartisanship&trade! No matter how insane the other side is! And Krugman is Shrill!
And you must also see this next PK post (mostly Jon Chait, actually): "I Am Washington." Glad at least one guy besides PK has the guts to tell the truth about Paul Ryan and the non-stop tongue-bath he's been getting.
Just in case the Republican Party base was too dumb to follow the conspiracy theory Bachmann and Angle were yelling about on Fox last night, the RedState Trike Force is here to help!
(h/t: Riley Waggaman | x-posted)
This strikes me as plausible. That she would say this, I mean. As with Sarah Palin rolling her eyes upon learning that a disgruntled erstwhile constituent was a teacher, Republicans like these love to hate on teachers. And why not? Uneducated voters are their best friends.
Keep in mind that Angle dismissed the BP escrow money secured by the White House as a "slush fund," an assertion she later retracted. Call it the Bachmann-ization of GOP candidates: The constant elevation of the rhetorical stakes to the point where good faith disagreement is no longer possible or even desirable.
The Tea Party hallucinations have grown so overheated that politics can no longer merely be clash of visions or ideologies. It's about rescuing the republic from evildoers. Everything Democrats do must of necessity be nefarious, even vaguely criminal.
Video of this crazy talk (whence the screen grab above) has been posted by harryreid2010. Glad to see someone is paying attention. We do not actually want people like Michele Bachmann and Sharron Angle running our country. That would be very bad.
(x-posted)
Charlie Stoss, via Henry Farrell:
There's a deceptively simple question that's been bugging me this week, and it is this:
What is the minimum number of people you need in order to maintain (not necessarily to extend) our current level of technological civilization?
There are huge political ramifications hiding behind this question. Let me unpack them for you.
Both posts are quite interesting.
Follow-ups, which I'm bookmarking here because I'm out of gas: Charlie's "Mediocrity" and "Space Cadets."
[Added] See also this later post.
A few of us were going back and forth over in the Bh.tv forums about the fatigue and frustration provoked by having to rebut, over and over, the nonsense we hear from global warming denialists. I did end up one subthread by saying this:
Originally Posted by TwinSwords
I have no idea how you maintain your optimism.By looking at where we were a decade, and two decades, ago. Sure, it could be a lot better, but it could also be a lot worse. I also take comfort in the positive trends I see in much of the rest of the world. We're not yet at the point where a majority is ready for the action we should take, in this country or worldwide, but we're getting there. Many, probably most, people are at least open to some first steps. And meanwhile, the out-and-out denialists have largely been pushed out of the Overton Window -- they are seen by everyone except wingnuts as the cranks that they are. The responsible denialist position, if that's not too much of an oxymoron, is now basically at "we can't afford to implement these mitigating efforts." But at least they are admitting, yes, there probably is a problem, and yes, humans probably have something to do with it.
And then a few hours later while browsing the Twitter, I came across something that reminded me of that thread. What follows is another re-post.
Here's a good illustration of why I'm hopeful about the long run. You would not have seen an article in the Daily Mail saying this, just a few years ago:
I have long been something of a climate-change sceptic, but my views in recent years have shifted. For me, the most convincing evidence that something worrying is going on lies right here in the Arctic.
It's worth having a look even if you're tired of reading about this issue -- gorgeous prose and pictures.
For the more hard-core, a related blog post on Climate Progress, commenting on the article, and talking about the author -- Michael Hanlon -- and his evolving views. Also, more signs of hope, in a more general sense, in the last paragraph of that post:
The Mail’s shift in editorial line today follows similar moves by the Washington Post last week and the Canadian conservative National Post newspaper. In turn these followed a series of independent reports exonerating the scientists at the centre of manufactured controversy over so-called ‘climategate,’ and a series of retractions of the articles that formed the basis of that media controversy.
That "National Post" link is a must.
(h/ts: @climatesafety and @skepticscience, both RTed by @ClimateDebate)
P.S. Great background image at that middle tweet-link.
[Added] Response in the forum from Starwatcher162536, FTW:
I'm sure in twenty years conservatives will be clamoring that it has always been the conservative position to advocate for vigorous environmental protections, and unlike those pesky liberals, they are the true environmentalists. History repeats itself.
[Added2] Another sign of hope (although I think John Cole would offer a finger-wag of caution: "Peak readership for anti-science blogs?"
[Added3] Follow-up post.
Toward at the end of last night's epic liveblog:
... this New Yorker piece about the “Ground Zero Terror Mosque-Disco” is actually worth reading even if you don’t want to hear another word about this nutbag white trash crusade against some people in a big liberal city full of gay foreign liberals.
It's a really good post. (By Hendrik Hertzberg.) Not too long. Go.
(x-posted)
E=mc² Is a Liberal Conspiracy.
If it says so in The Trustworthy Encyclopedia, then it MUST be true.
Although ... Phyllis Schlafly's son is evidently a little butthurt. Here's a partial screengrab of his Very Important Project's current home page. (Click image to enlarge, and note that original screen grab is 666 pixels wide. Coincidence???)
What's worse, fundie wingnut math or fundie wingnut attempts at humor?
Also: PK happened to blog about this ("First They Came For The Climate Scientists") BECAUSE HE'S A LIEBRUL and that caused Tom Tomorrow to email him a link to his latest comic. (Which is a truly marvelous comic, but unfortunately, the margins of this blog are too small to contain it.)
(x-posted)
Yeah, I know. I should be fireplaced for that title.
(h/t: Josh Fruhlinger | screen grab from | see also | and this)
Sorry, John H. Richardson. I had to steal the whole thing.
Global Warming vs. the Invisible Hand
August 6, 2010 at 6:54PMYou can measure the honesty of conservatives by their attitudes to global warming. The basic "invisible hand" idea underlying conservative thought is that markets are too complicated for governments to control, so it's better to let capitalism sort things out via supply and demand. This idea is valid maybe 90 percent of the time.
But we don't trust the markets to defend our country. We don't trust them to run nuclear power plants without supervision. We don't trust them to provide us with political leaders. We don't even trust them to provide adequate safety mechanisms in cars, having seen them fight even something as obvious and inexpensive as seat belts.
And global warming really is the ultimate problem for the invisible hand, because markets can't anticipate something that could happen 20 or 30 years from now.
So there are only two possibilities. Since the overwhelming majority of the world's scientists say that global warming is real and caused by humans and could have devastating consequences, conservatives can either ignore the majority scientific consensus or admit that this is a problem that only the government can solve.
"Ignore" seems to be the winning option. According to the last polls I could find, nearly 75 percent of Republicans in and out of Congress choose not to believe in global warming.
This is why Republicans can't be trusted with the keys to the car of government. Seventy-five percent of them look at a blue sky and say it looks green, and never seem to consider that calling blue green fits a little too perfectly with their economic and political beliefs. This is called being out of touch with reality. A more dramatic example could not be found.
But you're not one of those Republicans, so you're eager to test your assumptions by considering the evidence. So check out this important new piece by Bill McKibben, one of America's most valuable citizens. It starts like this:
Try to fit these facts together:
* According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.
* A "staggering" new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40 percent since 1950.
* Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.
* And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn't do less than they could have -- they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.
(Finished reading? Now click here to join McKibben's group of global-warming activists.)
Have you ever checked out Esquire's Daily Politics Blog or their Twitter stream? Pretty darned good.
Levi Johnston to run for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, in reality show
Bristol Palin's ex teams with production company to shop program documenting campaign
#signsoftheapocalypse #saygoodnightamerica
(h/t, and I use the term loosely: @KagroX, RT by @sonjablair | x-posted)
Here are Reihan Salam and Lev Grossman, occasionally dipping into "Realms of Hazy Phenomenology," while discussing Google's looming uncooolness, e-readers, apps as a (the?) new way of life, "social engineering through video games," some new stuff in genre fiction ← ugh science fiction and fantasy, and … like that. I didn't agree with every point made, but I found the whole thing quite enjoyable to listen to.
This diavlog probably won't be to everyone's taste, but if the topics mentioned seem appealing to you, these are a couple of smart guys, and they have a great rapport, so give it a shot.
Visit the alt. video link if you'd rather download an audio or video file instead of sitting here while it streams. See that link in any case for a nice collection of "links mentioned," in the right-hand sidebar. Visit this thread if you're curious about what others had to say.
You can read words by Reihan at Forbes, The Agenda, and The Daily Beast. He also has coauthored a book, titled Grand New Party.
Lev's writing may be enjoyed at Time, Techland, and his own blog, levgrossman.com. His latest book is The Magicians.
Okay, here: "Is Murdoch in denial about Glenn Beck ad boycott?"
Spoiler: the answer is yes.
__________
Keep up the good work, ColorOfChange.org and StopBeck.com!
Matt Yglesias has an op-ed in the WaPo, datelined today (8 August 2010): "Anchor babies, the Ground Zero mosque and other scapegoats."
It's a pretty good read, even as I suspect most of you will think "I already think these things," and I'm happy someone is pushing the message Matt is for people whose reading habits aren't as enlightened as yours.
(h/t: @AdamSerwer | x-posted)
