So, I posted this short rant on my Facebook wall yesterday and I thought it might be a decent discussion piece:

only humans could be arrogant enough to think that we could destroy or damage large parts of earth’s ecosystems and natural defenses and not manage to change the earth detrimentally. we have paved over, removed, and added things to the land, air, and water, which, even when naturally occurring, do not occur at the rates and levels we have contributed to them.

the earth may have had natural rhythms and periods of warming and cooling, but that’s when left alone with what earth had on its own. what we’ve done to it over the past couple centuries in the name of making our lives easier and some of us richer, cannot – absolutely cannot – have not had any effect. i don’t need any friggin graphs, charts, or studies to tell me that. i just need to not be stupid to know it.

only humans could be arrogant and stupid enough to believe that all we’ve done to it would not make a detrimental difference in the earth’s well being. arrogant and stupid, that about sums us up.

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Ok, I’m sick right now, so I’m going pretty light on this one. I can’t believe I missed it when it was written some 13 odd years ago, but it’s well worth the read as it’s still pertinent. Yeah yeah, I know it’s the Onion, but it’s right on the mark!

God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule

NEW YORK-Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

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So, in honor of the worldwide marches yesterday, I give you a few of my weekend reading on Climate Change.

First, a WaPo editorial urging action:

A climate for change: America should not wait while the world warms

FOR MORE than a century, scientists have understood the basic physics of the greenhouse effect. For decades, they’ve realized humans can affect the climate by burning coal, oil and gas. But the country’s leaders remain divided on the need to curb greenhouse emissions, let alone how to do it.

Among mainstream scientists, this paralysis is mind-boggling.

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I’m pinch hitting for triv tonight, as she is a bit under the weather. She may show up if she feels good enough, but for tonight, ya gots me!

We don’t really have a topic for tonight, so the topic is going to be whatever moves ya! Can e old songs, new songs, stuff you haven’t thought of for a while. It’s open for anything!

I still have some work stuff to finish and a multitude of kitties to feed, so I will be scarce til after 8pm Central time. But I will be grading your choices, lol… On a very easy curve… 😉

So here are a few of mine. This one reminds me of my pop:

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I have one really good article on an idea that Utah put into effect a few years ago that is working. Now if we can only get more places to jump on this bandwagon…

Home Free?

In 2005, Utah set out to fix a problem that’s often thought of as unfixable: chronic homelessness. The state had almost two thousand chronically homeless people. Most of them had mental-health or substance-abuse issues, or both. At the time, the standard approach was to try to make homeless people “housing ready”: first, you got people into shelters or halfway houses and put them into treatment; only when they made progress could they get a chance at permanent housing. Utah, though, embraced a different strategy, called Housing First: it started by just giving the homeless homes.

(snip)

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Well, here’s a roundup of Adrian Peterson/NFL news.

First, Cris Carter says exactly what needs to be said:

Watch Cris Carter take an emotional stand against child abuse on ESPN

“My mom did the best job she could do. Raising seven kids by herself. But there are thousands of things that I have learned since then that my mom was wrong. It’s the 21st century. My mom was wrong. She did the best she could, but she was wrong about some of that stuff she taught me. And I promise my kids I won’t teach that mess to them.”

Apparently, Peterson had another son that got the Peterson discipline in much the same way. I’m sure the NFL is looking into it. Not.

More accusations for Adrian Peterson

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I’ve got 3 articles from my weekend reading for your perusal.

The first one is on the stupidity of the DC politicos and their stupid geniusus:

All these effing geniuses: Ezra Klein, expert-driven journalism, and the phony Washington consensus

In a recent article on Vox, Ezra Klein declared that his generation of Washington journalists had discovered political science, and it is like the hottest thing on wheels. In the old days, he writes, journalists “dealt with political science episodically and condescendingly.” But now, Klein declares, “Washington is listening to political scientists, in large part because it’s stopped trusting itself.” Klein finds that political scientists give better answers to his questions than politicians themselves, because politicians are evasive but scientists are scientists, you know, they deal in “structural explanations” for political events. So the “young political journalists” who are roaring around town in their white lab coats frightening the local bourgeoisie “know a lot more about political science and how to use it” than their elders did.

Hence Klein’s title: “How Political Science Conquered Washington.”

Nearly every aspect of this argument annoyed me. To suggest, for starters, that people in Washington are-or were, until recently-ignorant or contemptuous of academic expertise is like saying the people of Tulsa have not yet heard about this amazing stuff called oil. Not only does Washington routinely fill the No. 1 spot on those “most educated cities” articles, but the town positively seethes with academic experts. Indeed, it is the only city I know of that actually boasts a sizable population of fake experts, handing out free-market wisdom to passers-by from their subsidized seats at Cato and Heritage.

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Going lighter today. I ran across this video of Tim Minchin’s address to the grads of the University of Western Australia in the same ceremony when he received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the university. It’s good and I really really love Tim.

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Well, finally, albeit with their backs against the wall thanks to TMZ posting the video today, Ray Rice has finally been really sanctioned by the NFL and dumped completely by the Ravens. And several players are speaking out against domestic violence as well.

A Punch Is Seen, and a Player Is Out

The National Football League’s handling of a domestic violence case is under renewed scrutiny after a graphic video emerged Monday, leading to the termination of the Baltimore Ravens star running back Ray Rice’s contract and his suspension from the league.

The video shows Rice punching his fiancée, who is now his wife, in the face, leaving her motionless on the floor of a hotel elevator in Atlantic City in February. He then dragged her unconscious body from the elevator.

(snip)

Previously published video of the altercation was taken from a camera outside the elevator and showed only the moments after Rice hit Palmer. But the emergence of the new video, published by the website TMZ, raised questions about what the N.F.L. knew, and when. A league spokesman said “no one in our office has seen it until today,” but he did not respond to inquiries about whether any of the league’s investigators who do not work in the office had previously seen the video.

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Well, good Monday mornin’ to y’all. Since it’s Monday, i’m going light for ya, but interesting.

It seems as though the mystery of who was Jack the Ripper has been solved through DNA.

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