Anon etc.

"…the National Rifle Association has a little list of 497 people and organizations who are in some..."

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:36:12 -0500

“

…the National Rifle Association has a little list of 497 people and organizations who are in some way, shape, or form anti-gun. It makes for hilarious reading, although it’s sort of frightening to think about the demented minds of the people who assembled it.

The list consists of 141 organizations, 228 celebrities, 27 “national figures” who are somehow different from celebrities, 37 journalists, 41 corporations and/or corporate CEOs, and 23 media outlets, all of whom are out to pry that Bushmaster from your warm, live hands. Some of the organizations make perfect sense. The American Civil Liberties Union. Sure. The American Trauma Society. I have no idea what precisely they do, but okay, it stands to reason that if trauma is their racket, they’re probably not big on people amassing large numbers of automatic weapons. Women Strike for Peace. You don’t say!

It strikes the reader of the full list that the net is being cast rather widely. Physicians for Social Responsibility, for example, has plenty to do besides think about guns. Same with AARP. But to me it’s the large number of religious organizations, from the Unitarians to the Methodists to the Church of Christ on over to the U.S. Catholic conference, that begins to suggest the odor of paranoia that will wash over us as we proceed to the rest of the list.

The celebrities section is a hoot. I get George Clooney; he’s a famous and influential man who dabbles frequently in the political arena and makes no secret of his liberal views. Ditto Ed Asner and Martin Sheen and Russell Simmons. I’d allow that an NRA that wasn’t at least Googling people like that occasionally to see what they’d said about guns lately would be an NRA that wasn’t doing its job.

But … Sandy Duncan? If you’re not 45, I doubt there is any chance that you have the remotest clue who Sandy Duncan is. Musician John McDaniel, apparently best known for conducting the orchestra on The Rosie O’Donnell Show? “Interior designer” Margaret Kemp? Vinny Testaverde??

”

- MICHAEL TOMASKY,writing in The Daily Beast, “The Strangest NRA Story Yet.”

Paranoia and delusion know no bounds.

Good thing these guys and gals have guns.

(via inothernews)

okcyounever: Horse mask part II

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:23:02 -0500

okcyounever:

Horse mask part II

The 8 Greatest Wars Ever Fought By Fox News | Cracked.com

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:41:49 -0500

The 8 Greatest Wars Ever Fought By Fox News | Cracked.com:

reallyfoxnews:

1. Obama’s War on Religion
2. The War on Christmas
3. Liberal War on Success
4. War on Fossil Fuels
5. Obama’s Gay War on Marriage
6. Michelle Obama’s War on Food
7. The War on Men
8. The War on Women

Photo

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:40:46 -0500

STFU, Conservatives: For #RoeAt40, all of my favorite pro-choice resources

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:38:27 -0500

STFU, Conservatives: For #RoeAt40, all of my favorite pro-choice resources:

stfuconservatives:

As my long-time readers know, abortion is an issue I’m very passionate about. So passionate that I have a bookmarks folder simply labeled “Abortion” that has about 75 links in it. For your edification, some of my favorite response to pro-life ignorance:

“Banning abortions would decrease…

Leaton Jones knows me so so well!

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 18:19:15 -0500

Leaton Jones knows me so so well!

First attempt at growing oyster mushrooms!

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:27:26 -0500

First attempt at growing oyster mushrooms!

@bsade01 (at United States Botanic Garden)

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:20:14 -0500

@bsade01 (at United States Botanic Garden)

Was not expecting all this snow! How beautiful! (at Deep Creek)

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 09:14:06 -0500

Was not expecting all this snow! How beautiful! (at Deep Creek)

think-progress: Know your rights before you vote.

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:46:41 -0500

think-progress:

Know your rights before you vote.

newsweek: Having trouble voting at the polls? NewsBeast Labs...

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:45:04 -0500

newsweek:

Having trouble voting at the polls? NewsBeast Labs put together this awesome little tool to help voters report instances of voter intimidation, long lines, or any other issues throughout the coming 24 hours. Keep this handy, pass it around. Most importantly, VOTE.

phroyd: An Educated Opinion Is Hard To Dispute!

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:43:49 -0500

phroyd:

An Educated Opinion Is Hard To Dispute!

election: slacktory: bindersfullofburgers: US Presidential...

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:42:02 -0500

election:

slacktory:

bindersfullofburgers:

US Presidential Election Polls

John F. Kennedy vs. Richard Nixon

Jimmy Carter vs. Gerold Ford

George W. Bush vs. Al Gore

Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney

Binders Full of Burgers is “visualizing the US Election 2012. with burgers & fries.” Which is a clever way to trick a nation of people who are statistically fat and bad at math into looking at charts!

You’re probably late to this meme, so now’s the time to ketchup.

— Ernie @ ShortFormBlog

mohandasgandhi: saveplanetearth: “These weather events are not...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 23:38:20 -0400

mohandasgandhi:

saveplanetearth:

“These weather events are not simply an example of what climate change could bring. They are caused by climate change.” ––James Hansen, NASA Climate Scientist

This quote is from Hansen’s must-read op-ed piece in the Washington Post: “Climate change is here — and worse than we thought”:

When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988, I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.

But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.

My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.

In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.

This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks’ time, it’s likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.

These weather events are not simply an example of what climate change could bring. They are caused by climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.

Twenty-four years ago, I introduced the concept of “climate dice” to help distinguish the long-term trend of climate change from the natural variability of day-to-day weather. Some summers are hot, some cool. Some winters brutal, some mild. That’s natural variability.

But as the climate warms, natural variability is altered, too. In a normal climate without global warming, two sides of the die would represent cooler-than-normal weather, two sides would be normal weather, and two sides would be warmer-than-normal weather. Rolling the die again and again, or season after season, you would get an equal variation of weather over time.

But loading the die with a warming climate changes the odds. You end up with only one side cooler than normal, one side average, and four sides warmer than normal. Even with climate change, you will occasionally see cooler-than-normal summers or a typically cold winter. Don’t let that fool you.

Our new peer-reviewed study, published by the National Academy of Sciences, makes clear that while average global temperature has been steadily rising due to a warming climate (up about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century), the extremes are actually becoming much more frequent and more intense worldwide.

When we plotted the world’s changing temperatures on a bell curve, the extremes of unusually cool and, even more, the extremes of unusually hot are being altered so they are becoming both more common and more severe.

The change is so dramatic that one face of the die must now represent extreme weather to illustrate the greater frequency of extremely hot weather events.

Such events used to be exceedingly rare. Extremely hot temperatures covered about 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of the globe in the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. In the last three decades, while the average temperature has slowly risen, the extremes have soared and now cover about 10 percent of the globe.

This is the world we have changed, and now we have to live in it — the world that caused the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed more than 50,000 people and the 2011 drought in Texas that caused more than $5 billion in damage. Such events, our data show, will become even more frequent and more severe.

There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time. We can solve the challenge of climate change with a gradually rising fee on carbon collected from fossil-fuel companies, with 100 percent of the money rebated to all legal residents on a per capita basis. This would stimulate innovations and create a robust clean-energy economy with millions of new jobs. It is a simple, honest and effective solution.

The future is now. And it is hot.

You can read Hansen’s study “Perception of climate change” from the National Academy of Sciences by clicking here. Hansen and his co-authors argue that seasonal-mean temperature anomalies have shifted dramatically to a higher, that is, a hotter, norm caused by anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. Furthermore, related to what we’re seeing today, warmer seasons start sooner, end later, and are hotter than “normal.” This increases the frequency of weather-related natural disasters and their intensity, meaning, we’ll have a lot more natural disasters like tornadoes, droughts, hurricanes, etc., and they’ll be more powerful. The authors add:

It is not uncommon for meteorologists to reject global warming
as a cause of these extreme events, offering instead a meteorological
explanation. For example, it is said that the Moscow heat
wave was caused by an extreme atmospheric “blocking” situation,
or the Texas heat wave was caused by La Niña ocean temperature
patterns. Certainly the locations of extreme anomalies in any
given case depend on specific weather patterns. However, blocking
patterns and La Niñas have always been common, yet the
large areas of extreme warming have come into existence only
with large global warming. Today’s extreme anomalies occur as a result of simultaneous contributions of specific weather patterns
and global warming.

Photo

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 23:37:49 -0400

awomansplace: Licia Ronzulli, member of the European...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 23:37:19 -0400

awomansplace:

Licia Ronzulli, member of the European Parliament, has been taking her daughter Vittoria to the Parliament sessions for two years now.

So cute. Looks like two we have two ayes in the bottom left picture.

Photo

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 23:35:12 -0400

WHEN I THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH WORK I HAVE LEFT TO DO THIS SEMESTER

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 23:25:26 -0400

howdoiputthisgently:

barackobama: This time next week, the first polls will start...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 22:55:03 -0400

barackobama:

This time next week, the first polls will start closing in this election. If your friends might not have the info they need to vote, now’s the time to nudge them.

FEMA: A Case Study in the Difference Between Democrats and Republicans

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 22:54:44 -0400

FEMA: A Case Study in the Difference Between Democrats and Republicans:

…When Republicans are president, they have no interest in making the federal bureaucracy work, and it doesn’t. Democrats, by contrast, take this stuff seriously and appoint people whose job is to make sure the federal bureaucracy does work. And it does.