David Attenborough takes a novel and courageous stand. Let’s “sort out life on earth, first.” [Paywall]
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone make that argument before, except a lot of people, for decades.
“America? Let’s sort out life in Europe first.”
“Europe and Asia? Let’s sort out life in Africa, first.”
It’s obviously a mindless prescription for never settling new territory.
Some uncomfortable truths about Islam:
Mohammed was quite clear about what he wanted. For all the abrogations, the Koran is reasonably clear on what it expects its followers to do. Mohammed’s history was that of a man who tried to convince the Arabs that he had seen an angel by telling them and failed, and who succeeded only when he killed enough of them, not to mention the Jews and any other infidels hanging around the place.
That is the history of Islam.
Germany was not a nation of monsters. It was a nation that behaved monstrously. The average German would not stick his neighbor in an oven in his basement or chain him up as a slave. He would however do these things in Poland because he was contextually contaminated by a monstrous ideology.
As an individual he was a nice man who loved his children, petted his dog and enjoyed street fairs. As a loyal member of a system run by the Nazi Party, he would do monstrous things. And then when the Nazi machine was switched off, he would go home to his wife and children without ever killing anyone else.
He was not a good man. Good men don’t do the things he did. But he wasn’t a budding serial killer. He was just doing what a death cult told him to do.
As I noted over the weekend…
@Vote4Wallace The parallels between the Nazis and the Islamists are more numerous and much closer than many want to concede. @instapundit
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 15, 2014
Also, Barack Obama and John Kerry lecturing Muslims on what is and is not the nature of Islam is a theater of the absurd.
The story has become a torrid romance.
Thoughts from Andrew Sullivan. Almost thirteen years ago.
My views have changed very little since. Have his?
So nonsensical, it isn’t even wrong.
I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but this looks like an interesting master’s thesis.
As I noted on Twitter:
Anyone who continues to push "97%" nonsense is either pig ignorant or a lying demagogue. No other options. http://t.co/BVKTYuC3Tw
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 5, 2014
Judith Curry explains:
I think we need to declare the idea of a 97% consensus among climate scientists on the issue of climate change attribution to be dead. Verheggen’s 82-90% number is more defensible, but I’ve argued that this analysis needs to be refined.
Climate science needs to be evaluated by people outside the climate community, and this is one reason why I found Kahan’s analysis to be interesting of people who scored high on the science intelligence test. And why the perspectives of scientists and engineers from other fields are important.
As I’ve argued in my paper No consensus on consensus, a manufactured consensus serves no scientific purpose and can in fact torque the science in unfortunate ways.
And José Duarte is appropriately brutal:
Will it literally kill us with kindness? Paging @elonmusk.
I have some thoughts on how many should vote, how many bills should be passed, how many treaties should be ratified, and how many regulations should be promulgated, over at Ricochet.
” target=”_blank”>biography of this underappreciated scientist.