Once Again, It's This Stuff Again

So, the clowns in Georgia (yep. To quote Adam Savage: There's your problem) are setting up for a fight with the ACLU and the rest of the civilized world. They've set up the Ten Commandments inside of a court house (Why do they do that? Why; of all the places to put them, why blaspheme them by sticking them up in front of one of the most dysfunctional justice systems on the planet?), and to my knowledge, even passed a bill making it "perfectly legal" to do so.

The common argument I routinely here is that they're the foundation for American Law and the foundation for Western Law. Western Law I can't speak too, but I know they sure as hell are not the foundation for American Law; explicitly, the Constitution.

How so? A lot of atheists say that, but very few of them actually stop to explain the number of ways that the Ten Commandments violate the Constitution, expecting people to either know or go and look it up themselves. Well, I have some free time tonight (and an earache; the sinus infection wasn't bad enough, you know. I really hate living in this state, with it's unpredictable weather), so I'm going to lay out exactly how and why the Constitution, if it was inspired by the Bible and the Ten Commandments, as is so commonly claimed, it was as an example of what not to do in a system of law.

The very first thing you have to do when talking about this is decide which of the various versions you want to use. Exodus and Deuteronomy both give two versions with their major and minor differences, and each Christian sect has their own variation on the theme. There are some things that run in common, however, but they're not as many as you would think. When you think about it, the very concept of a "generic" list of 10 Commandments is offensive to at least some Christian sect somewhere, because "generic" usually means "dominate group", which in this case would be some form of Baptist. Because it becomes a theological clusterfuck trying to determine which set to use, however, I'm going to just role with whatever set is easiest for me to find - and because Wikipedia is there for me, and Exodus comes before Deuteronomy, that's the version I'm going to be using. I have no fetish for "original commandments" because, if you recall, Moses supposedly broke the original ones on the ground when he saw that the Americans were worshiping Adam Smith, money, and the golden idol of Capitalism Hebrews worshiping the golden calf, so I personally couldn't care less. I just need an example list to show you how wrong this is, so Exodus will do.

Fuck: Promoting Decency in Language

I occasionally visit Roger Ebert's blog from time to time - I'm not a huge fan of movies, I think the movie industry is a pile of shit and I could only wish Hollywood was half as liberal as the conservatives in the tinfoil hats wearing the persecution complexes say it is - but this one stuck out so I had to comment on it.

I've blogged in the past on bullying. I think bullying is endemic, and I think that the bullies have friends in high places who are willing to excuse their behaviors in the "name of tradition," which is this skewed thing that White people remember when they think about television shows set in the 1950s. In it, little scamps who always said "gee wiz" and wore stripped shirts knocked out Mr. Humperdinkel's back window with a slingshot, and had to apologize and everyone learned a valuable lesson. Bullies as they were remembered are nothing more than bromances waiting to happen. All you had to do was stand up to the bully and the problem went away.

I've commented before how I don't trust people who claim to have good memories. Claiming any of the above was even remotely true and attempting to prove to me that Andy Griffith or Leave it to Beaver are historical documentaries is enough for me to laugh you out of the country (fools like this are already promoting The Flintstones as a historical documentary). The memory is a funny thing, and the way memories are built are influenced less by the actual events and more by the things we see and hear about those events. This concept of the 1950s as a Utopia where the only Black guy on stage was a mailman who was always smiling and you never saw a gay person are memories of the 50s clearly built ex post facto. This argumentum ad excogitari praeterium/ratio ad fraudulenta historia is a framing device through which most conservatives - indeed, most Americans - view the present world.

This is especially prevalent in the way that we tell children to deal with bullies. The rugged independent nature of America dictates that we shouldn't rely on authority for anything, including dealing with our problems. All too often, said authority is the problem in this country, anyway, but that's another point. Because we live in this imagined past, all that needs to happen to deal with a bully is to bust him in the face (unless said bully is a girl. And then, when other girls fight back, we stand aghast a how violent society is making girls. Welcome to the world where no matter what you do you can never win - 51% of the human population lives here. It's not a pleasant place). For those of us anchored here in the real world, without our heads rammed up our ass and lodged in the colon of the made up past, that's not how this works. Not remotely. Violence isn't the answer, first of all, because it accomplishes nothing. Second of all, victim blaming and saying that it's the job of the individual being picked on to fight back leaves a bitter taste in my mouth; it's the job of the bully not to bully. How about that?

Enter a movie named Bully. I've heard in passing about this movie; it's a collection of stories about individuals who have been bullied, with the intent of yank America's head out of it's ass the hard way. It sounds like a pretty good movie - a movie that, unlike Avatar, serves a social function that society desperately needs (because what society really needs is more Magical Native American stereotypes projected on fictional creatures. Especially when most people treat Native Americans like they're fictional, anyway). So, in being what sounds like a pretty good movie, with a useful social function that society very much needs, the MPAA did the usual thing the intelligent folks at the MPAA does: they rated it R so that teens, who the movie is about, wouldn't be able to see it.

Since When did Being a "Weather man" Make You a Scientist?

When the hell did being a "weather man" give you the ability to comment on shit you don't understand, that isn't even your purview of study? Someone get Dunning-Kruger on line one.

In theory, weather people are called meteorologists. Meteorologists don't study the climate - that's the job of Climatologists. Instead, meteorology is an interdisciplinary approach to studying the atmosphere. It, along with climatology, atmospheric physics, and atmospheric chemistry, make up the atmospheric sciences. The difference between meteorology and climatology is that meteorology studies short-term events, while climatology studies long term events.

Climatologists are almost universal in their agreement of global warming, and that hey, this is happening. You know - sorta like those inconsequential Brown people in the South Pacific who are loosing their homes due to sea level rise.

Meteorologists, on the other hand, are not.

NASA's made the facts pretty clear, but for a profession where it seems the only real requirement is having nice hair (because being right certainly isn't one of them), a fair number of weather people/meteorologists haven't quite adapted to this.

Let me state that while it sounds like I'm dissing meteorology I'm not. Any field of study is an important one, and the ability to predict short-term weather phenomena with a degree of accuracy is a very important one and one that needs to be respected.

But then, engineering is also a field that needs to be respected. So is being a medical doctor. The fact that you're part of the field, however, doesn't make you immune from making your field look bad when a bunch of you start saying stupid shit.And it does start to reflect on your profession after a while, and if enough people step up and start saying stupid things, it makes you wonder why you can be trusted.

So, why shouldn't I take seriously what some meteorologist (actually, let's be more correct here - weatherman/woman, because in some ways they're not the same thing) has to say on climate change?

Simply put, weather is not climate. Climate is not weather. Climate is the thing that drives the weather; climate is the engine and weather is the reactions within that engine. When the engine starts misfiring, we here in the engine might notice hiccups, but nothing too serious. At least, not until it's too late.

By the way, the current trends are suggesting anywhere from a 1mm/y to 3mm/y rise in sea level, meaning that we'll see anywhere from 1m to 3m by the end of the century. However, there are significant uncertainties here - for instance, a rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet could raise the sea level by as much as 7m (~21ft). the Western Antarctic Ice sheet could be anywhere from 5-6m (~15-18ft). In any case we wouldn't have to worry about Venice being wiped off the face of the planet, because New York may very well take its place. A rapid heating of the earth (possibly caused by a methane burst created by a large expulsion of frozen methane under the ocean's surface, thawed and bubbling to the surface, have the potential to cause extinction events in any measure) could trigger this massive thawing and then it's time to break out the water wings!

1m doesn't sound like a lot. That's only 3.3 feet. Until you realize that you're not taking into effect storm surge. Katrina? Please. There will be days when we're begging to have mild hurricanes like Katrina back. This increase in water is going to have a wonderful impact on the way that the oceans work, and because the oceans drive the climate, this stands a chance of becoming a feedback loop of dramatic proportions (see: thermohaline cycle, and why it may not be here in the future).

Oh, and the extreme weather it'll bring! It'll be fun! There will be cookies. And cake.

So, I reiterate - when the hell did being a "weather man" make you a scientist? And why the hell should I take you seriously, as a weather person, when you run off at the mouth about climate change?

Climate =/= Weather.

I wouldn't go to a dermatologist if I had internal bleeding.

I'm not going to a meteorologist if I think there's something wrong with the climate.

I'm gonna go to a person who knows what the fuck they're talking about. Which universally excludes anyone on FOX news, among other places.

And yet, somehow, deep in the faith of Global Warming Denialism, this has become truth. I don't believe my stomach is bleeding because my eye doctor told me I was fine. These people are bought and paid for by big coal and oil, who, like all companies, can't see the forest beyond the trees. Unregulated capitalism is the engine that will likely destroy humanity. And it'll do it far more effectively than any transhuman technology or AI ever could.

He's Killing that Jacket

So, I'm behind the curve (yet again). Apparently, wannabe presidential-hopeful Rick "Texas Teabagging Thug" Perry has a new political ad out. One of the reasons I'm behind the times is because I really don't watch TV, so I don't see this stuff. Another reason is because I don't deliberately go looking for information on this man, it just has it's way of gravitating to me. And because I'm opinionated, it goes without saying I've got something to say about this abomination of a political ad.

So, without further ado, let's watch this magnificent, Shakespearean-in-its-elegance political ad (am I damning with false praise? Now, now, be fair: Perry is so far lost he deserves all the praise he can get):

People Die In America Because People Die In America

File this one under "shaped like itself." (TVtropes link).

Frothy-mix Santorum (do not Google that man's last name) got an ear full from a young college student - two of them, in fact - and the results of the confrontation highlight the reaction that one gets when you expose a Republican to cold, hard reality.

I suppose I could go for the potassium/water analogy, as chemistry jokes aren't nearly as popular as they should be. However, I figure watching the chemical reaction unfold is more interesting than actually reading about it from a third person perspective. Behold - what happens when you expose a Republican to reality:

And Here's That Family Shit Again...

Enigma's had a rough day today. So you know what that means, don't you?

That's right! It's time to pull up the scratching post and eviscerate me some Republican stupidity. So go ahead and pull up a seat - today's victims privileged assholes pretending to be victims are Focus on Patriarchy, and the application that they ask for college students to fill out for their "Focus Leadership Institute", which, as you can probably tell by the name, is a very reputable institution.

So, let's have some fun, shall we?

AFDI Is Pro-Genocide

For those who don't know, Pat Geller and Robert Spencer are the uber-wingnuts. These two give Michele Bachmann a run for her money in outlandish and stupid outright lies. Well, they've founded one of those Orwellian organizations - the American Freedom (from) Defense Initiative - which is every bit as ominous and menacing as the name sounds. This has been around for a while; the AFDI (All Fucking Dumbass Idiots) is not a new organization. Well, apparently, the organization is pro-Genocide.

Given that this is a right wing noise machine, is anyone surprised? Anyone? Hello?

Yeah, didn't think so.

But we're talking Free Republic levels of Pol Pot worship.