Letters to the Editor
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Very interesting
Only 350 letters, the majority towards the end coming from a food fight among about 4 posters, and most dealing w/ the global warming issue.
So either alot of people stopped reading the Paglia column, as promised, or the registration policy is working to fulfill some of its avowed purpose.
Wonder what the page click count was this time around.
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Ho Hum, Pot Calling Kettle Black and All That
For all of your complaints about assumptions, let me throw some back at you:
"You smear without thinking, or knowing, which hardly makes you a good person."
"If Eastern thought was so smart, they'd take better care of their people in all the thousands of years they've been around. That's my take, from our country that's only been around for 250+ years."
"But you just can't seem to stop yourself. . . who may not have ever had to endure such a life."
I rest my case. Yes, I have travelled--I spent 2 years in China. And for the record, I prefer life here.
Dude, your posts are full of so many half-assed assumptions that you're forced to clarify later that it's hilarious that you'd call me a bad person based on few comments in a thread.
"And that, my friend, is the truth."
No, it's a bunch of hot air.
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More Greenwalds Fewer Paglias
Glenn Greenwald is the only reason I have a premium account with Salon. But bringing in Camille Paglia is like dropping a sack of horse shit on a blueberry muffin, while you may really have wanted that muffin, you're not going to eat it now. I want my muffin without the horse shit please.
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A quickie, and then I gotta study
Doc and Sam - quit with the mudslinging. We're over that. Take a breath, go on a walk, cook some tasty food, and renew your stores of patience.
Sam - thanks so much for your post and for your story. It felt privileged to have earned enough of your trust for you to open up about yourself. I promise to respond in kind, but I need to temporarily abandon this forum because I have an enormous exam tomorrow morning on endocrinology, the female reproductive tract, and breast cancers. So for the next eight hours I'll be studying pictures of warty and bloody vaginas, cancerous and lesioned breasts, and people with big goiters and bulging eyes.
So until tomorrow: cheers to all!
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Skeptical about climate change?
Ms. Paglia expresses skepticism about global climate change, the enormous dangers it poses to life on earth and the fact that the climate change we're seeing today is caused by humans. Very few of the world's climate scientists share Paglia's skepticism.
Global climate change is not liberal dogma, it's science. When it comes to culture and politics, I'll listen to Paglia. When it comes to science, I'll listen to scientists.
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Can we break a thousand?
Let's see the story published yesterday, we're at a little over 330 posts now.
Five hundred is definite...a thousand probably pushing it, but you can't say Salon's not getting its' money's worth.
The sad part is...all these eyeballs, and the only ads are for Salon premium and It Can Happen Here. Ahh well, I’m sure the banner ads for Lexus will come soon enough.
As to the content of Camille's posting, as always perfectly designed to tweak, annoy, and offend, with out being truly offensive.
It's funny to watch people scramble at the suggestion that global warming may not be the horror show that some would like us to believe.
That isn't denial of the reality of the situation, just an acknowledgement that A) we really don't have the foggiest inkling of the timetable or outcome of global warming, despite recent reports to the contrary and B) Most lay people really don't understand the science involved in large scale climate predictions let alone the basic physics involved in global warming; Ms. Paglia, as much as I love her, included.
Simply put the primary cause of warming is proximity to the sun, as Miss Paglia rightly points out. Now, whether or not this proximity combined with excessive CO2 concentration has put us on a warming trend that is greater than our world has ever experienced is yet to be known. The recent highly politicized report (politicized both on the left and the right) serves as a dire warning, a modern Cassandra if you will. However as important as it is to remember that Cassandra was right, it is likewise important to remember that she was only speaking about the status quo of Trojan society. Troy falls, but Greece stays whole, and Virgil tells us that from the ashes of Troy will rise the power of Rome.
It is to complex a story for one snapshot of the earth at an instant to cause the rending of garments and the gnashing of teeth.
Conservation is a great idea, but for the same reason it was a great idea in the 70's, fears of peak oil. Global warming is a long term issue, best faced by dealing with the short term problems we must already deal with. If we worry more about peak oil, (which high oil prices are making us do) we will limit our carbon output and make global warming an inconsequential concern.
It's all about perspective, and this is where Ms. Paglia is correct, the minor machinations of man can no more destroy life on this planet than it can to create it. We are but a part of a great machine that has been unwinding for millennia, all we can and should do is ensure our own survival as a species, which we've done all right at so far, and have no reason to presume we will fail in this action in the future. Even the darkest predictions of global warming have the planet's ecosystem simply returning to a state it existed at millennia ago, man will adapt, and so will the wild species, as they did millennia ago.
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Joseph
Since I truly appreciate a voice of reason, I'm not going to answer the doctor. I, too, am sick of it. I'll speak to you after your exams.
Good luck.
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Oh, dear...
...she is a me-me-me addict. But its good to have her around. It puts her ideas into a perspective among all the ideas. I disagree with this howl of disdain for her. I don't want the same-old, same-old. We need an elbow in the ribs every now and then to keep our game fresh. We need that eccentric aunt who shows up every once in a while, who is so nutty we get a little gaa-gaa until she leaves. I like a stew of things. Reading her, also, offers me the opportunity to experience that little flash of gratitude to the web for giving me access to this huge world of thinkers. Alright, I know many of the readers do not believe that she is a thinker. Paglia is seriously thinking, a lot. Guaranteed.