House of Eratosthenes

The eighty-fourth award for the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) is hereby presented to Robert J. Avrech at Seraphic Secret, for this gem:

There is no dialogue possible when one side is armed with information and facts, and the other side insists on a fossilized, delusional narrative.

Holy crap, can I ever relate with that.

Context?

Friends getting together, who almost never discuss politics because one couple is inclined one way and the other couple is leaning the other. But on this latest of occasions, the subject of global warming comes up! “You don’t believe in global warming?” inquires the pro-democrat-party, anti-human-achievement couple, incredulously.

Climategate? They hadn’t even heard of it.

But still they claimed the mantle of possessing a superior command of the relevant information. They had all the answers. They even used those four thoroughly worn-out words, the four that have been amalgamated into one. You know what I mean: Thescienceissettled.

Hat tip to Rick, who says the global warming believers need an intervention. I think with the hardcore cases like this, there’s something to that and they probably need a lot more than just intervention.

When you’re trying to present yourself as being thoughtful about something, it’s all fine and good when you’re doing some thinking and it’s still okay when you’re not doing any thinking, but trying to convince others that you are. The latter case is a liar, but at least he knows what he’s doing. My point is, if you’re sane, you should at least know, internally, whether you’ve been doing real thinking or not.

I’m not commenting upon the liars. They are not part of what is alarming me here. I’m not commenting on the “Just Because of the East Anglia Scandal, Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t Happening” people. They, at least, have thought things through enough to come up with their latest slogan.

I’m choosing a target with surgical precision. I’m talking about keeping it straight in your own head how much thinking you’ve been doing.

Lots of people in the global warming camp seem to have slipped this cog. They’re parroting talking points…which by itself isn’t raising a red flag quite yet…but then, down in the marrow of their bones, they don’t seem to comprehend this is what they’ve been doing. They really and truly do seem to think they’ve been thinking. Independently. Skeptically. Critically. As in — gathering information for themselves, and making up their own minds. When that’s the furthest thing from what they’ve really been doing. They seem to have lost track. Climategate happens, and their response is…well, nothing. They don’t even want to know what it is.

That’s a problem.

Are these people doing real things? Driving buses, performing surgery on pets, fixing someone’s brakes…stuff like that? Someone should be finding out.

Mr Avrech is a stranger in a strange land.

(that’d be a conservative writer working in hollywood).

he’s worth reading.

As for the others, all you can do is hope and pray that their madness doesn’t infect the next generation.
- pdwalker | 02/21/2010 @ 08:50
You know what I mean: Thescienceissettled. Hat tip to Rick, who says the global warming believers need an intervention. I think with the hardcore cases like this, there’s something to that and they probably need a lot more than just intervention.

Well…I think Iran needs an intervention. A military intervention. But hey, what do I know?

And actually, these two situations – Iran’s nuclear program and the MMGW controversy, that is – actually have a few things in common.

Both have die-hards who insist on believing the “official” story, even though the mask is off and the curtain has already been pulled back.
Both have a significant but so-far-unheeded group of people on the other side saying there’s something fishy going on here.

Where they differ is this: One is either non-existent or at best, out of our control, yet being spun as a crisis requiring immediate attention. The other is a real crisis which is being largely ignored, downplayed, and otherwise dealt with completely inappropriately.

I’ll leave it to you all to determine which is which.
- cylarz | 02/22/2010 @ 00:07

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Sunday, February 21st, 2010