The Other Day I Saw a Hummer with a License Plate Holder that Read "I Eat Organic"
I don't know Santa Barbara City Council Frank Hotchkiss from a hole in the ground (or anywhere else) but anyone who is a real estate agent and pissed about the Light Blue Line Project shouldn't make it past the bias meter even at the wreck-of-the-News-Press. That's particularly true when in an article entitled "Hotchkiss Vows Common Sense" in the Daily Sound, we get this line about global warming (that others have also offered as brilliant):
We can’t even predict the weather in three days and you are telling me this is accurate?
I assume with logic like that, Hotchkiss eschews modern medicine, too. After all, while medicine says he will die, his doctors can't predict when. So clearly all the rest of their knowledge must be worthless.
Seriously, the study of the weather is meteorology. The study of long-term changes in the world's "weather" is climatology. A person who can look good, can stand in front of a green screen while pointing to the right place, and can announce people's birthdays--that person can at least "play" a meteorologist on TV. A climatologist is someone like James Hansen who has a M.S. in Astronomy and a Ph.D. in Physics and then works for NASA. Of course, the White House tried to stifle Hansen from talking about global warming, but that's a different blog entry. Or just more proof people just don't want to hear the bad news and are more than willing to stick their hands in their ears and sing LA-LA-LA really loudly. (The good news for them is sound travels more poorly under water.)
Indeed, someone on Blogabarbara I think wrote in a comment something to the effect of "how can we explain this to children? Won't the Blue Line just frighten them?" To which I answer--"let's hope just enough." The whole point of the line was to say, "This is what might happen--if we don't act."
But now our problem is that we can't even commit the first act of recognizing there's a problem.
We can’t even predict the weather in three days and you are telling me this is accurate?
I assume with logic like that, Hotchkiss eschews modern medicine, too. After all, while medicine says he will die, his doctors can't predict when. So clearly all the rest of their knowledge must be worthless.
Seriously, the study of the weather is meteorology. The study of long-term changes in the world's "weather" is climatology. A person who can look good, can stand in front of a green screen while pointing to the right place, and can announce people's birthdays--that person can at least "play" a meteorologist on TV. A climatologist is someone like James Hansen who has a M.S. in Astronomy and a Ph.D. in Physics and then works for NASA. Of course, the White House tried to stifle Hansen from talking about global warming, but that's a different blog entry. Or just more proof people just don't want to hear the bad news and are more than willing to stick their hands in their ears and sing LA-LA-LA really loudly. (The good news for them is sound travels more poorly under water.)
Indeed, someone on Blogabarbara I think wrote in a comment something to the effect of "how can we explain this to children? Won't the Blue Line just frighten them?" To which I answer--"let's hope just enough." The whole point of the line was to say, "This is what might happen--if we don't act."
But now our problem is that we can't even commit the first act of recognizing there's a problem.
Labels: light blue line swinger
posted by George at 8:13 PM
15 Comments:
We can’t even predict the weather in three days and you are telling me this is accurate?
That line sounds eerily familiar.
"I assume...blah...medicine..."
You know what happens when you start assuming, George.
And I thought you folks were against fearmongering? Isn't it one of your major problems with the current administration that you believe they are in the business of spreading fear about our current situation on the war on terror? But it's okay to scare the kids just a little on this one?
We won't have to wait another 1000 years before America is attacked again by the medievalists, and even your "science" (sorry no wikipedia citations handy) says our grandkids will all be dead when before anything catastrophic happens with the climate.
If Jake Gyllenhall can survive "The Day After Tomorrow" I'm not going to worry too much about it.
I'm surprised the realty community hasn't realized that when sea level rises, all that property downtown limited to four stories or sixty feet will be transformed into buildings with only two stories and thirty feet tall.
Sounds like a great redevelopment opportunity.
Somebody please just put a stake through irony's heart already would'ja? Did our pal McBigBird really refer to "medievalists" in the same sentence in which he scare-quoted "'science'"?
I've seen the future, and its IQ is about 85.
Bryan, I was thinking it was Dennis "I Left My Sense of Humor in the 20th Century" Miller, but realized it was Stossel this morning. Thanks for the confirmation.
Good one, Ahab. In Santa Barbara that will be 85 soaking wet.
I'm sorry McConfrontation...the only thing scary about the lightblueline project is that people like you deny that the future of the earth and life-as-we-know-it is at stake here. You can bury your head in the sand if you want to, but please don't ask others to join you in your folly.
By the way, the actor's name is Jake Gyllenhaal.
You folks are mixing it up. It was George who said he "hope(d the light blue line scared children) just enough," not me. My point is that the light blue line and so-called climate change is NOT scary, or at least not as scary as the very prescient threat the medievalists pose.
I hope I'm still allowed to call the bad guys medievalists, it's kind of like name calling. I guess I could get away with "Muslims whose views are so extreme that they want to behead your five year old on tv because they think he is an infidel."
Anon, I'm not begging you to join me in my folly, just trying to insert the contrarian view into this otherwise one-sided commentary.
Apologies to Brokeback Jake for the mis-spelling.
Right, because Category 5 hurricanes are as nothing compared to two confused dudes driving a Jeep into Glasgow airport. Katrina, for example, killed 1800 people, a miraculously low number for such a storm, and destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings.
And I beg your pardon, mcconfrontation -- I didn't realize you had such a "prescient" problem with "medievalists" in Santa Barbara. What kind of a response do you recommend? Maybe raising a great bleu wall your faire towne round? And sinken ye an feresome donjon? 'Swounds!
Right. The terrorists in Glasgow were "confused."
This is the problem I have with alot of people in Santa Barbara. There's no problem with Muslims HERE so no reason to be alarmed about terror attacks on our nation. Will you be leading the charge to secede from the Union, Captain? If you are an American then your attitude toward the security of our nation is a poor one. But don't worry you're not alone. As I posted on blogabarbara, I noticed the disinterest in terror around here not long after 9/11. As a guy who narrowly escaped the WTC attacks, and knew several of the innocent citizens who were brutally murdered that day, your worldview is offensive to me.
My recommended response is to secure the national borders now (I don't care what color the wall is but if you like blue let it be blue) and continue to fight the terrorists overseas; continue the heightened state of alert here and give the intelligence agencies all the tools they need to gather the information they need to keep our nation secure.
Funny that you're a regular here and you didn't know exactly where I was coming from? My position hasn't changed since I started posting here.
I've seen the future, and its IQ is about 85.
A clever way of saying what I noted several times the other day.
As I posted on blogabarbara, I noticed the disinterest in terror around here not long after 9/11.
As I responded there, we're concerned that Osama bin Laden is still on the loose due to an medievalist 85-IQ level approach that shows no ability to make distinctions and no comprehension of root causes. Indeed many of the bad guys are medievalists, but they are to be found among us as well as out there.
Muslims whose views are so extreme that they want to behead your five year old on tv because they think he is an infidel.
I find the view that all Muslims should be cut down with daisy cutters to also be extreme, and I think both are similarly motivated.
Isn't it one of your major problems with the current administration that you believe they are in the business of spreading fear about our current situation on the war on terror? But it's okay to scare the kids just a little on this one?
The difference of course is that fear was used dishonestly to justify an attack on a nation that posed no threat to us, an attack that was illegal under the very international laws that were set up in response to Germany's attacks on nations that posed no threat to them but were justified using similar tactics, versus an appropriate and honest level of concern about a real threat.
Sorry George, sound travels faster and farther in water than in the air.
Nice post George -- and I've had some interesting comments over on BlogaBarbara as well from some of the same people....the important thing is that Hotchkiss doesn't see the forest for the trees -- because he sees blue in the line and red in his anger towards council. It takes much more than that to win a council race....conservatives don't walk and that's why they lose. Will he be different?
I'm sorry your neighbors aren't as interested in terror as you are, mcconfrontation. Good thing you have the Internets to satisfy your obsession.
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