Well, all this is interesting to me, anyway, and that's what matters here. The Internet is a terrible thing for someone like me, who finds almost everything interesting.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Thanks, Obama!
The Ebola stuff is interesting to me, because I remember the hysteria last year, here in Nebraska.
I remember a commenter on a local news site here who observed that our medical personnel were dropping like flies, all across America. What were we going to do when we ran out of doctors and nurses, having lost all of them to this dreaded disease?
Yeah. At the time, one nurse had caught Ebola in America. One. And she hadn't died of it. In fact, she never did die. But in right-wing fantasyland (no connection to reality whatsoever), doctors and nurses everywhere in America were dying off in the Ebola epidemic. Thanks, Obama!
Of course, our right-wing news media helped fuel the hysteria. And when the hysteria could no longer be maintained, our media just ignored it. There was absolutely nothing after that. But then, if you can't scare dumb white people, what's the point to news at all, right?
I say "white people," because the scary black man in the White House, the secret Muslim funding ISIS and spreading Ebola, is the biggest subject of hysteria in my state. Admittedly, there are apparently lots of reasons for hysteria on the right (even if Obama seems to be the cause of all of them).
Speaking of the "scary black man in the White House," got a story for you.
Took my mom down to our insurance agent because she wanted to rework her homeowners policy. Making casual conversation, mom commented about dealing with her health insurance (not affiliated with our aforementioned agent). Our agent started ranting about how "Obamacare is a disaster, it's causing premiums to skyrocket, blah-blah-blah..." (no shit, honey!! I've said all along that ACA was going to be a big cash-grab for the insurance companies).
Sensing the moment, mom lobbed me a softball; "What IS Obamacare?" I reared back and swung for the fence: "It was the Republicans' alternate idea for Clinton's universal healthcare plan." Our agent quieted down and we got back to the business at hand.
Excuse me while I flip the bat and take my home-run trot. :)
Sidenote: About ISIS being "crippled," can we be sure of that? Per this clip from "Homeland:"
The thing about terrorism is that it's easy. Anyone can harm other people, if you have no qualms about that, if you don't care who gets hurt, and if you don't care about dying yourself.
Look at the San Bernardino terrorist attack a month ago. ISIS didn't plan that. A husband and wife just decided to shoot the husband's co-workers (although they did dedicate the attack to ISIS).
Of course, that's a drop in the bucket when it comes to gun deaths in America. Look at the graph here.
It's easy to kill people - especially random people - when you're willing to die yourself. That's why terrorism is the preferred tool of the weak.
Removing the leadership of ISIS wouldn't make any difference to a San Bernardino attack - or not much, at least. But that's not to say that it's useless, either.
Leaders still lead. They plan and they inspire. If you remove their leaders, that will make it harder to plan and carry out huge, coordinated attacks - like the Paris attacks, for example, or 9/11 itself - and those attacks not only rack up the biggest body counts, but also get the most publicity (which is exactly what the terrorists want, of course).
Also, successful attacks are a recruiting tool. You've got Allah on your side, after all. Success is guaranteed, right?
Only,... if your leaders keep being killed, and your plots discovered, that's got to be harder to believe. Continual failure is harder to rationalize away when you have a god on your side, and it certainly doesn't help with recruiting idiots.
It's not hopeless. Terrorists are still human beings. It might be glorious to die for your god in a mass suicide attack. But it's less glorious when your whole organization is on the run and your leaders keep getting killed, one after another. In a situation like that, it's hard to keep the romance alive.
We've seen terrorism before. Look at Northern Ireland. Look at the Baader-Meinhof gang - the Red Army Faction - in Germany in the 1970s. Terrorism isn't new.
We know what has to be done. It just takes courage, and common sense, and decent people willing to stand together (rather than use terrorism for their own partisan political advantage).
We won't ever stop random individuals from killing people because of their beliefs. Look at the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado last November - domestic terrorism by a right-wing Christian.
But an organized group can do a lot more harm than disorganized individuals. And a group can inspire others, too. ISIS will be a footnote in history textbooks eventually. That won't end terrorism, of course, but you do what you can do.
I'm a skeptic. I think it makes sense to have reasons for what I believe, so I apportion my belief to the evidence. You're welcome to disagree. Please, tell me I'm wrong. I probably don't agree with anyone about everything. Why should disagreement be a problem? Check the Pages section below for series posts and links to book reviews and game posts, as well as contact info. Unfortunately, I rarely blog at all, anymore. So don't expect new posts. - Bill
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. - Robert Wilensky
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong - Richard Feynman
The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other. - Sir Francis Bacon
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science. - Hal Clement
No matter how many times a theory meets its tests successfully, there can be no certainty that it will not be overthrown by the next observation. This, then, is a cornerstone of modern natural philosophy. It makes no claim of attaining ultimate truth. In fact, the phrase "ultimate truth" becomes meaningless, because there is no way in which enough observations can be made to make truth certain and, therefore, "ultimate". - Isaac Asimov
The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion. - Treaty of Tripoli, passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams (1797)
I don't doubt the sincerity of dowsers, but even after we've demonstrated that they can't produce results that are any better than chance they'll still go away believing in their abilities... It is like the mother whose son is caught shoplifting on tape. She wonders why someone would want to frame her child by producing a fake video. - James Randi
During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church ... imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. - Mark Twain
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. - Bertrand Russell
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. - Friedrich Nietzsche
I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them. - Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.
This is not about proof. Science does not use proof. We favor evidence, and the work consists largely of the slow accumulation of evidence in support of ideas, not magically potent proofs that establish an idea as unassailable. - PZ Myers
No, people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. - President Barack Obama
The formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat. - Shekhar Gupta
We are prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small, persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs. - Carl Sagan
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins
120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer. - Sam Harris
To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man. - Michael Servetus, burned at the stake in 1553
Democracy is not about majority rule; it is about minority rights. If there is no culture of not simply tolerating minorities, but actually treating them with equal rights, real democracy can't take root. - Thomas L. Friedman
We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much apparent reason. - Thomas Macauley, 1830
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men. - Edward R. Murrow
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Science is simply common sense at its best - that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic. - Thomas Huxley
There is no absurdity so obvious that it cannot be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to impose it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. - Arthur Schopenhauer
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. ... Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. - President Thomas Jefferson
To be elected in America, no matter from what party, the candidates have no choice but to year after year pledge to lower taxes further and further. We have become the nation of Ken and Barbie, looking good but very poor at the math. - Rack Jite
Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them. - Steve Eley
We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. - President Franklin D. Roosevelt
I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle. - Molly Ivins
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. - H. L. Mencken
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. - Winston Churchill
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2 comments:
Speaking of the "scary black man in the White House," got a story for you.
Took my mom down to our insurance agent because she wanted to rework her homeowners policy. Making casual conversation, mom commented about dealing with her health insurance (not affiliated with our aforementioned agent). Our agent started ranting about how "Obamacare is a disaster, it's causing premiums to skyrocket, blah-blah-blah..." (no shit, honey!! I've said all along that ACA was going to be a big cash-grab for the insurance companies).
Sensing the moment, mom lobbed me a softball; "What IS Obamacare?" I reared back and swung for the fence: "It was the Republicans' alternate idea for Clinton's universal healthcare plan." Our agent quieted down and we got back to the business at hand.
Excuse me while I flip the bat and take my home-run trot. :)
Sidenote: About ISIS being "crippled," can we be sure of that? Per this clip from "Homeland:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct3BsyF64gM
Happy New Year, Bill.
Happy New Year, Jeff.
The thing about terrorism is that it's easy. Anyone can harm other people, if you have no qualms about that, if you don't care who gets hurt, and if you don't care about dying yourself.
Look at the San Bernardino terrorist attack a month ago. ISIS didn't plan that. A husband and wife just decided to shoot the husband's co-workers (although they did dedicate the attack to ISIS).
Of course, that's a drop in the bucket when it comes to gun deaths in America. Look at the graph here.
It's easy to kill people - especially random people - when you're willing to die yourself. That's why terrorism is the preferred tool of the weak.
Removing the leadership of ISIS wouldn't make any difference to a San Bernardino attack - or not much, at least. But that's not to say that it's useless, either.
Leaders still lead. They plan and they inspire. If you remove their leaders, that will make it harder to plan and carry out huge, coordinated attacks - like the Paris attacks, for example, or 9/11 itself - and those attacks not only rack up the biggest body counts, but also get the most publicity (which is exactly what the terrorists want, of course).
Also, successful attacks are a recruiting tool. You've got Allah on your side, after all. Success is guaranteed, right?
Only,... if your leaders keep being killed, and your plots discovered, that's got to be harder to believe. Continual failure is harder to rationalize away when you have a god on your side, and it certainly doesn't help with recruiting idiots.
It's not hopeless. Terrorists are still human beings. It might be glorious to die for your god in a mass suicide attack. But it's less glorious when your whole organization is on the run and your leaders keep getting killed, one after another. In a situation like that, it's hard to keep the romance alive.
We've seen terrorism before. Look at Northern Ireland. Look at the Baader-Meinhof gang - the Red Army Faction - in Germany in the 1970s. Terrorism isn't new.
We know what has to be done. It just takes courage, and common sense, and decent people willing to stand together (rather than use terrorism for their own partisan political advantage).
We won't ever stop random individuals from killing people because of their beliefs. Look at the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado last November - domestic terrorism by a right-wing Christian.
But an organized group can do a lot more harm than disorganized individuals. And a group can inspire others, too. ISIS will be a footnote in history textbooks eventually. That won't end terrorism, of course, but you do what you can do.
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