Letters to the Editor
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Just wrong in so many ways
One usually has to read Paglia's musings as mere cant. Her latest musings do not fail to disappoint. Although, for a change, she actually does say some things that actually are based in logic and sense on Iraq...but then she careens off into never never land with a screed on Hillary, most unfortunate, based on no intelligent observation, merely positing her biases. Whereas Hillary bashing (my, what a novelty!) was a warmup, Paglia goes off the deep end with her global warming rant. Once again, she proclaims without facts,denying evidence that not only has become indisputable but is rock solid. Never one to delve into a subject with too much concern for truth, I find her latest ravings a supreme display of Paglia's egomaniacal nature. She's Ann Coulter without the cocktail dress...on a 7am talk show.
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what is this weird thing you've got about global warming
it's true that the PRECISE effects are not known and it is certainly true that humanity and civilization will survive, but it is absolutly beyond question that global warming is occuring, that people are causing it and that it would be much better if they would cause less rather than more in the future, if you are worried about irrationality it would be better not to irrationally conflate two completely different ideas.
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get lost Paglia.
get lost Paglia.
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The Who Today
I'll agree with you that The Who, in their prime, were the quintessential angry rock and roll band, but what about now?
I attended their "farewell tour" in 1983, and damn, I wish they had stuck to that. What does it say about us, and rock and roll in general, that those two geezers are still milking their former glory while producing nothing new of merit?
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This is gonna be awesome.
I could take or leave this column every month. Mostly leave.
But the letters thread that follows every one just can't be beat.
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Dianne Feinstein??
Geezus, Camille ... give us a break. As reported in this very magazine, she "Voted in FAVOR of funding the Iraq War without conditions; Voted in FAVOR of the Bush White House's FISA bill to drastically expand warrantless eavesdropping powers; Voted in FAVOR of condemning MoveOn.org; Cast the deciding vote in August on the Senate Judiciary Committee in FAVOR of the nomination of far right Bush nominee Leslie Southwick to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2006, Feinstein not only voted in favor of extending the Patriot Act without any of the critical safeguards sought by Sen. Feingold, among others, but she was one of the most outspoken Democratic proponents arguing for its extension ("I have never been in favor of allowing any provisions of the Patriot Act to expire."). Also in 2006, she not only voted in favor of amending the Constitution to outlaw flag burning, but was, as she proudly described herself, "the main Democratic sponsor of this amendment." You are the smartest idiot we've ever encountered.
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Not that she'll read this or care,
but Paglia writes and opines about global warming like one who has no doubt that she will not live long enough to feel its effects in any way. It makes me think that she has no one near or dear to her who might either. Hers is the ultimate selfishness.
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Huh?
This kind of partisan rancor and mutual recrimination are the sad legacy of two self-destructive administrations in a row. Bill Clinton's lies about his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky paralyzed the government and tainted his legacy, while George Bush's poor judgment and managerial ineptitude have mired us in an endless, brutal war with little chance for a happy ending.
"Two self-destructive administrations in a row"?
It's unseemly to draw any sort of equivalence between Clinton lying about a sexual affair and Bush initiating a war that has destabilized the entire Middle East, killed hundreds of thousands, and cost trillions of dollars.
Oh well - six of one, half dozen of the other.
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Super Rats
Super rationals are people who must have empirical evidence for everything, including their breakfast cereal. Super-Rats come from all walks of life, all political parties. George Bush is a Super-Rat, he had all the evidence to go to war in Iraq, it never occured to him that it was a lousy idea. Right now the Wall Street Super-Rats are taking the market to new highs, (and assuming what they don't know can't hurt them, the whereabouts of all those leveraged securities and their market value.)
Super-Rats often fail to regard the consequences, because the empirical data is staked in their favor. Other Super Rats fail to act, because they can't put the data together, even while the consequences are staring them in the face. The Super-Rats are frozen by data overload, leaving the field wide open to the risk takers, who want to play dice with the universe. The risk takers alternately promote their ideas, based on selective information, and attempt to block actions when there is not enough data to support the view. If the information on Global Warming was in the hands of the current Pentagon lackeys, we would be cutting CO2 emissions tomorrow.
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She's right about one thing
I can't read her writing; I skim. But give credit where it is due: she's right about Kim Novak in "Vertigo." Perfect bit of casting, that.
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A blast from the past
Ms Paglia needs to brush up on her history. Global warming has been a conservative speciality for many decades. Appended are some von Neumann, Warren, Taft, and Greewalt quotes (sponsored by Forbes Magazine in 1955) from my BibTeX database.
It's amazing how smart conservatives *used* to be!
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@inCollection{vonNeumann:55,
author = {J. von Neumann},
title = {Can we survive technology?},
booktitle = {The Fabulous Future: America in 1980},
publisher = {E. P. Dutton {&} Company},
year = 1955,
pages = {33--48},
jasnote = {von Neumann quote 1: "All major weather phenomena ... are ultimately controlled by the solar energy that falls on the earth. ... "The carbon dioxide released into the atomosphere by industry's burning of coal and oil---more than half of it during the last generation---may have changed the atomosphere's composition sufficiently to account for a general warming of the world by about degree Fahrenheit. ... Intervention in atmospheric and climatic matters will come in a few decades, and will unfold on a scale difficult to imagine at present. ... Such actions would be more directly and truly worldwide than recent, or presumably, future wars, or the economy at any time. ... All this will merge each nation's affairs with those of every other, more thoroughly than the threat of a nuclear or any other war would have done. ... What safeguard remains? Apparently only day-to-day---or perhaps year-to-year---opportunistic measures, a long sequence of small, correct decisions. And this is not surprising. After all, the crisis is due to the rapidity of progress, to the probable further acceleration thereof, and to the reaching of certain critical relationships. Specifically, the effects that we are now beginning to produce are of the same order of magnitude as ``the great globe itself.'' Indeed, they affect the earth as an entity. Hence further acceleration can no longer be absorbed as in the past by an extension of the area of operations. ... The most hopeful answer is that the human species has been subjected to similar tests before, and seems to have a congenital ability to come through, after varying amounts of trouble."},}
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@inCollection{Warren:55,
author = {E. Warren},
title = {The Law and the Future},
booktitle = {The Fabulous Future: America in 1980},
publisher = {E. P. Dutton {&} Company},
year = 1955,
pages = {81--98},
jasnote = {"For as long as the U.S{.} leads the forces of freedom in the world's great ideological struggle, our institutions will be under a global spotlight, and what we do will speak much louder than what we say."},}
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@inCollection{Taft:55,
author = {C. P. Taft},
title = {The familiar men of 1980},
booktitle = {The Fabulous Future: America in 1980},
publisher = {E. P. Dutton {&} Company},
year = 1955,
pages = {633--180},
jasnote = {"We may not be able to prevent localized wars in the coming quarter-century---even ``hot'' wars in which our military forces will have to participate. Southeast Asia is the most dangerous spot, again because of the Chinese. The difficult problem there, as in every area, if to build character, honesty, and responsibility as well as the ordinary know-how of political method in the leaders of small new nations. These qualities are earned, not given; we tend to forget how recently---only seventy years ago---corruption was widespread in our own public life in Washington."},}
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@inCollection{Greenwalt:55,
author = {C. H. Greenwalt},
title = {The slow, steady way of progress},
booktitle = {The Fabulous Future: America in 1980},
publisher = {E. P. Dutton {&} Company},
year = 1955,
pages = {99--114},
jasnote = {(DuPont Company President): "How is mankind to supply its ever-increasing requirements for energy? ... Over the years, many have forecast the exhaustion of our sources of coal and oil. ... It seems quite certain that they will be exhausted someday, and it is essential for our survival that we be ready with as good an alternative as possible. ... There is much talk these days about atomic energy as the answer to this problem. So it may be, [but] I am inclined to think that atomic energy, while important, will be only an interim solution. What we must devise eventually is some way of utilizing more fully the energy that comes to us from the sun. ... The solution of the solar energy problem cannot fail to be of more lasting benefit to manking [than atomic energy]. Today, the best thermal efficiency that we can obtain in growing our crops is perhaps a few tenths of one percent of the energy the sun lavishes on the land. If this could be increased by a factor of ten, the problem of energy and food would be solved for many hundreds of years to come."}, }