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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
For informed skepticism about the Warmist faith, talk to any geologist. They tell us that the climate has been continually changing, and massively, for the entire four billion years of Earth's history. Comparatively little of this period has been affected by human industry of any sort.
I'm responding to idiots like this guy on page 2, but he didn't invent that really dumb argument.
The point is, the Earth has warmed and cooled in the past. No one argues that. To make an argument that this means humans can't affect the Earth's climate not only doesn't follow, it's plain stupid.
Your questions are utterly unrelated to the subject I was addressing.
RE: Trying to find "the cause of homosexuality." Who says their is one cause? I personally think there are about six causes.
Based on simple observation, I have seen people who appear to be near hermaphroditic or asexual. For them, I have no trouble believing that there may be some genetic root.
Having lived in the middle east where homosexuality is rampant, I don't buy a "genetic cause." Guys do each other there because their options are limited, unless they are married.
In Greece, it was probably more prevalent because it was socially acceptable.
And I am also convinced that there are a good number who wound up in the lifestyle because of molestation, recruitment, or Freudian-basd reasons.
And, for now, mimicking lesbians seems to be a trend with young girls.
There may be a dozen reasons. Who knows? For most of the animal kingdom, sexual attraction is based on scent. Maybe the answer is somewhere up in the sinuses for all we know.
Steve in Dallas: (paraphrased) "I've lived through a bunch of 'chicken little' scares, and global warming is just another one of them!"
So if some small factions of scientists have been wrong about theories in the past, therefore larger factions of scientists should be considered wrong about current theories? That seems to be your argument here.
Note that your argument is based on nothing other than "welp, somebody got it wrong before, so how can I trust 'em to get it right now?" Your argument is not based on your own assessment of the evidence and arguments.
Worse yet, your argument ignores all the instances in which scientists' theories were correct, and in which those correct theories were then built upon and strengthened, turning into conventional wisdom. You don't remember those times because they weren't as dramatic and interesting to you.
Basically your entire argument is based on confirmation bias and a resistance to the challenges of higher thought.
This is a really blah column from Paglia. Instead of choosing her own topic and expressing the intricacies of her thoughts and ideas, Paglia has elected a simple question-and-answer response.
But judging from the selection of questions, it is pretty obvious Paglia decided to take the easy way out. Every single questions plays to Paglia's biases and well-worn subjects.
Worse, the Q-and-A format puts Paglia in a bizarre queen-bee position, with questioners mostly praising her and reaffirming her own opinions. Paglia then responds with further reaffirmation. It's like a tonier version of Rush Limbaugh's "dittohead" groupie dynamic.
So I read the whole article, and afterward I'm left thinking, "What did I just read? And what insights did I get from it?" And the answer has to be: Hardly any. That's because nearly all Paglia offers are opinions. They're opinions with a whiff of intellectualism to them, but opinions just they same.
Paglia's take on global warming? Opinion. Evidence be damned.
Anyway, I just gotta say, this Q&A format is weak and lazy. Paglia should try answering some of the more off-the-wall or challenging letters sometime.
but "the manual trades offer guaranteed employment at relatively high wages"? Does she even KNOW anyone in "landscaping, construction, carpentry, metalworking" etc.? My brother is an amazingly skilled carpenter. He has trained with some of the best furniture makers around. In his major city, when homes were going up and being remodeled, he was in great demand for his cabinetry. He has NEVER had insurance or any other benefit--he has always been employed as an "independent contractor," meaning no benefits, no job security, and he has to insure himself against workplace accidents. And this was when times were good. My sister is a metalworker by night, office worker by day, because her "manual trade"--again, one in which she's one of the best--doesn't bring in enough money to live in her city. And landscaping? Does she even think the guys doing that are being paid minimum wage? I share the wish that manual trades in the US were more valued, as opposed to the ephemeral "skills" required in highly paid jobs like management and finance. But it doesn't take an economics degree to see that students are going to college to get a better paycheck, not out of some bizarre snobbery.
I don't know why I bother to beat my head against the Paglia wall. I haven't read through the letters thread yet, but I know what's there: people like me, with their ludicrous little impassioned replies, the faction who threatens to drop their premium subscriptions every time Camille's column runs, and the conservatives crawling out of the woodwork to laud Camille's every stale statement as "refreshing." "Thank you for being so refreshing" they say, about statements that would be regarded as hackneyed if anyone on the right trotted them out, but since a professed leftie is saying them, ooh, so innovative.
Camille, you're the best!
"And let me take this opportunity to say that of all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me in the U.S. and abroad since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitively the stupidest. As a guest on NBC's "Today" show during my 1992 book tour, I was astounded by Couric's small, humorless, agenda-ridden mind, still registered in that pinched, tinny monotone that makes me rush across the room to change stations whenever her banal mini-editorials blare out at 5 p.m. on the CBS radio network. And of course I would never spoil my dinner by tuning into Couric's TV evening news show. That sallow, wizened, drum-tight, cosmetic mummification look is not an appetite enhancer outside of Manhattan or L.A. There's many a moose in Alaska with greater charm and pizazz."
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
