winsor

Gee, and here I had been trying to school you on the evils of racism and Marxism. If racism is evil, there is no 'good' or 'bad' racism, it's all evil. Same goes for sexism. For all Karl's bitching about how one 'class' is better than another, recognizing classes is fundamental to the problem. 'Equality' comes down to equal rights and equal responsibilities, no more and no less. To push for anything else is reprehensible. BSBD, Winsor

I couldn't agree more. We have a legal system, rather than a system of justice. Execution is a problem, since there is no way of which I am aware to handle it in an effective manner. Like it or not, there are some people whose sole benefit to society and the planet at large is their ability to push up daisies, the sooner the better. Having said that, tasking the legal system with sorting out quite who these people are is too much to ask. The number of people on death row who have been definitively cleared by such technologies as DNA analysis is substantial. OTOH, if it is deemed that an individual is too significant a threat to anyone around them to stay on the green side of the sod, euthanizing them in the most humane manner possible is advisable. BSBD, Winsor

Agreed, using 100% nitrogen for, say, 1 hour is much more effective. Anyone who has been in a high altitude chamber can attest that the loss of consciousness one experiences due to extreme hypoxia is painless. Unlike a gas chamber, which uses cyanide binding to inhibit hemoglobin, a nitrogen chamber simply removes oxygen from the equation. People who have succumbed to entering a nitrogen environment generally die before they realize what's happening. The whole idea of execution as 'punishment' is flawed. There are people who are a threat to anyone around them, regardless of where they are. Rather than having them rape, maim and murder such prisoners as are slated to rejoin society, removing them from the equation in a humane fashion is much more beneficial overall. 'Lethal injection' is a poor approach - unless it amounts to an intercranial injection of 230 grains of lead, and oxygen deprivation does not require earplugs. BSBD, Winsor

The economics of fantasy and drivel are well established in the world of religion. Suspension of disbelief is routinely the basis of a lucrative business model. A couple of examples that come to mind are LDS and Scientology. A dispassionate analysis of the literature behind each of those ideologies reveals their bases to be demonstrable, unadulterated nonsense. In both cases, they bring in money hand over fist. The darlings of the Woke movement similarly put forth blather and bring in millions. The bottom line is that attempting to correlate economic success with the validity of underlying principles is a fool's errand. BSBD, Winsor

I followed the recommendation to get a Twitter account a decade and a half ago or thereabouts. After maybe a month I realized that the "must follow" feed was entirely uninteresting after checking it a couple of times, and that I had zero interest in either posting or reading what the twits had to say. I canceled and haven't missed if for a second.

On the one hand I am dismayed by people who appear to think that the planet can support 10 billion people eating organic granola with all energy needs powered by unicorn farts. A quick run of the numbers doesn't quite support that paradigm. The fact that 'renewables' are anything but a panacea that requires nothing more than the the decision to use them has been noted by a professional Thermodynamicist of my acquaintance. I'd love it if all of our food and energy requirements could be met in full and forever without having to dip into our backlog of fossil fuels, but the nasty reality is that they can't. The bad news is that: A) Fossil fuels are a finite resource and their use will be curtailed by us running out. The only question is quite when, and that doesn't change much. There really is no Plan B for their use in the interim, as you have noted. C) Given that our population is increasing inexorably, and is guaranteed to outstrip any supply of food and energy at some point in the unfortunately near future, we're fucked any way you cut it. It was fun while it lasted. Back to everyone bickering about the crappy details, Winsor

He didn't lie, he's clueless.

IIRC, Freakonomics reviewed the correlation between mindless violence and abortion. The bottom line was that the correlation between unwanted children and active viciousness is inescapable. We are given to to perseverating on symptoms when the cause is a third rail. "Climate Change!" is a shining example. BSBD, Winsor

The Mango Mussolini makes Tricky Dick Nixon look like a shining example of dignity, integrity, honesty and decency by comparison. 40 years ago I would have doubted that such a thing was possible.

Look, it's not so much Putin worship as it is throwing him a bone so that we can have Peace For Our Time (tm). Go home and have a good night's sleep.

Fossil fuels have allowed us to achieve a standard of living that was beyond that to which what royalty could aspire in the remarkably recent past. They have also allowed the population to expand to previously unimaginable levels. The fact that fossil fuels are finite seems to escape some people. We will never completely run out of coal, petroleum and what have you, but we will reach a point where it will take much more time, energy and money to extract that last ton or barrel. To those people who think producing oil is simply a matter of sticking a tube in the earth and sucking it out, I recommend studying up on the geology involved, as well as the technology involved. I won't digress into that, but suffice it to say that it is not that simple. The bottom line is that there are 8 some odd billion people on this planet, most of whom are dependent on fossil fuels for their way of life - if not for life itself. When sufficient fuel is no longer available to power agricultural equipment, and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides go away, things will get interesting indeed. At that point we might wish that 'climate change' was the worst of our problems. I'm reminded of a line in an old movie where a woman, whose life has just been saved by Jimmy Stewart, asks "just what is a human life worth?!" To which Stewart's character replies "whatever the market will bear, lady, whatever the market will bear." Thus it is with petroleum. BSBD, Winsor

Without your citing the post to which you're responding I can only guess as to its content. Having said that, given that a very large amount of the interaction here is one variation of ad hominem or another, where do you draw the line?

The earth is topographically flatter than a pancake. Anyone from Kansas knows that.

Unfortunately, when she shakes her head it rattles.

During the days of the Evil Empire, an interviewer asked various Soviet citizens whether what Pravda and Izvestia reported was true. The universal reaction was guffaws and scoffing, effectively 'of course not, everyone knows it is bullshit.' If you then asked the same people 'gee, have you heard about the train wreck outside of Vladivostok?' they would quote verbatim the story posted by Pravda and/or Izvestia. Religion is contingent upon the principle of "Credo quia absurdum." Science is more along the lines of "dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum." BSBD, Winsor

There are precisely as many Atheists in Heaven (tm) as there are True Believers. Or Leprechauns, for that matter.

The King was still the King (who relocated my family to a vast estate in Canada).

Unfortunately, when power is thus transferred by violence, the replacement tends to be that much worse. Think the Czar, Allende, Qaddafi, Hussein, etc.. If Poutine is replaced in accordance with vox populi it may well turn out badly. A population that has been fed a constant diet of bullshit is poorly suited to insightful decision making, given the chance. Think Albania, Berkeley and the like. Perhaps the best outcome would be to limit the scope of Poutine's ratfucking to the geographical borders of Russia. Outside of his realm you're in the clear. Cross the border? 'Abandon hope all ye who enter...' and all that. All things being considered, Poutine fails to make Xi look good by comparison. Bringing China into the equation, despots are most dangerous when their power appears to ebb. It is when they have little to lose that they pull out the stops, and Poutine's retirement plan involves pushing up daisies. Thus, the best outcome would be if he could declare victory, repatriate the Ukrainians forcibly relocated to Russia, return the borders to their 2014 status (aw, we didn't want Crimea anyhow...) and move on It will, of course, be the job of someone more Machiavellian than I to arrange such an outcome. BSBD, Winsor

That would be bilingual and straight.

They both deserve to be imprisoned. If you're cool with one, don't bitch about the other.

Though skimming this article seems to reference leaks specifically, I agree in general with The Donald here. https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/03/politics/trump-jail-sentences-mishandled-classified-information-kfile/index.html He should be comfortable in returning to Government accommodations; in this case the Big House rather than the White House, but it's all good. I think the trick is to remove him from the equation ignominiously so that there is no hint of martyrdom. He remains the turd in the soup that is U.S. politics, and neither side of the aisle is immune to his poison. BSBD, Winsor

I linked the video referenced by a mainstream article as the basis of her firing. It was apparently good enough for her employers.

Note the disclaimer.

Two wrongs do not make a right. Three lefts do.

I can't tell who, in particular, you're addressing. Rather a few posters rely entirely on ad Hominem to the exclusion of supporting data or references. Nitpicking those who do provide data and references seems rather counterproductive.