beam us up, scotty
by way of background, let me first say that the original star trek was a forbidden pleasure of my formative years--we siblings each got a 30 minute per-week ration of prime time tv that could not be combined with other offers, so to speak, so the rules, if they were to be followed, never allowed for hour-long indulgences like star trek, the avengers, or i spy. (we weren't stupid, we knew it was because people kissed and/or beat up other people on those shows, but what could a kid do in those days?) well, of course, kids could exploit the permissiveness of relatives during visits, or take advantage of the don't-ask-don't-tell convenience of being over at friends' houses, so it's not like i don't know everything there is to know about the adventures of james t. kirk and his best friend spockie (not to mention emma peel and john steed and kelly robinson and alexander scott, but this isn't about them...)
but to get back to the point at hand, it is with a smirking case of "where have i seen and heard this all before?" that i read this morning that osama bin laden is blaming the US for global warming.
remember whenever jimmy k was stymied by an undefeatable foe? remember what he did to always win? yup, that's right. he always tag-teamed with spock and bones to propose a logical conundrum that would make the bad guys' computers go into hyperdrive and smoke and flash until they burned out on the ultimate illogic of it all. (tastes great... less filling... tastes great... less... whirrrrrrrr-kaplunk). so this morning we wake up to find out that our #1 arch-nemesis slash mountain cave bogeyman is not only still at large and saying mean things about us, but also that he's parroting back our rhetoric on global warming. can you just hear the back room state department slash department of homeland security soundtrack right now?
"osama bin laden is evil and always wrong... osama bin laden believes in global warming... osama bin laden is evil and always wrong... osama bin laden believes in..." whirrrrrrrr-kaplunk.
but do not for a moment think this one is about global warming. the evidence can be interpreted in lots of different ways, and that does NOT necessarily mean we aren't going to sweat to death on an arctic ocean beach in northern canada, just as it does NOT necessarily mean that it's all wrong just because al gore was the one who said it. (replay the previous paragraph replacing "osama bin laden" with "al gore" and you'll immediately understand why no republican can possibly believe in climate-change and will argue you to death about it regardless of what they ever might have thought about the evidence had they seen it first with an open mind).
no, what this one is really about is get smart.
you know, get smart? get smart, being a 30 minute show, was my first and always tv love, and love it i do with a passion that abides to this day. ("would you believe...") well, the antics of control vs kaos and don adams vs bernie kopell make just about as much sense to me today as our current efforts to wage our "war against terrorism" and it's public face, osama, and this latest spate of headlines just clinches it all.
think about it: you could raise a turn of the century person from the dead and say the word "anarchist" in their ear and watch the exact same nonsense occur in their eyes that turned the assassination of archduke ferdinand into world war one. or you could talk to any cold warrior you like down at the nursing home and whisper "communist" to get the complete 411 on what mutually assured destruction looks like. and we are absolutely just as ridiculous in the head with our bizarre obsession with the word "terrorist", and mistaking a band of organized (and deadly, i'll give you deadly) criminals with any sort of significance beyond that which should require nothing more than a highly-organized police action to track 'em down and put 'em in the dock.
no, instead we've gone control vs kaos bat-shit crazy and by doing so created a global movement of opposition to us that ultimately makes about as much sense together as "tastes great" vs "less filling". they hate us because they hate us. we may rationalize that we started out hating them because they hate us, but we've got to admit to ourselves now that we're so far into hating them for the sake of hating them that we've become caricatures of ourselves. it's even gone to the point that if one of 'em puts out a sound byte on global warming, we're even putting THAT on the front page.
puh-leeeeeeze.
osama doesn't know jack shit about climate change. actually, now that you mention it, most folks arguing against it here don't know jack shit about it either, other than they don't like the politics of the people who are insisting on the idea.
oh, yes, questionable study data makes for good headlines, but anyone who enjoys hanging out in banff and jasper provincial parks in alberta, canada as much as i do, and traipsing up to see where the glaciers aren't anymore on day trips in those big cat vehicles where they let you drink beer on the way, isn't exactly hard to convince that something is very, very different today than it was only a few short years ago.
the one thing i DO know is that osama is the last guy i'd think could have anything useful to say about it.
of course, my local paper wasted half its front page on some nonsense about a fringe political group representing barely over 10% of the electorate (i.e. the republican party) and the recent election that's now way over a week old, but i guess i've come to expect wasted newspaper space like that from being here these past couple of years...
"and... LOVING IT".
but to get back to the point at hand, it is with a smirking case of "where have i seen and heard this all before?" that i read this morning that osama bin laden is blaming the US for global warming.
remember whenever jimmy k was stymied by an undefeatable foe? remember what he did to always win? yup, that's right. he always tag-teamed with spock and bones to propose a logical conundrum that would make the bad guys' computers go into hyperdrive and smoke and flash until they burned out on the ultimate illogic of it all. (tastes great... less filling... tastes great... less... whirrrrrrrr-kaplunk). so this morning we wake up to find out that our #1 arch-nemesis slash mountain cave bogeyman is not only still at large and saying mean things about us, but also that he's parroting back our rhetoric on global warming. can you just hear the back room state department slash department of homeland security soundtrack right now?
"osama bin laden is evil and always wrong... osama bin laden believes in global warming... osama bin laden is evil and always wrong... osama bin laden believes in..." whirrrrrrrr-kaplunk.
but do not for a moment think this one is about global warming. the evidence can be interpreted in lots of different ways, and that does NOT necessarily mean we aren't going to sweat to death on an arctic ocean beach in northern canada, just as it does NOT necessarily mean that it's all wrong just because al gore was the one who said it. (replay the previous paragraph replacing "osama bin laden" with "al gore" and you'll immediately understand why no republican can possibly believe in climate-change and will argue you to death about it regardless of what they ever might have thought about the evidence had they seen it first with an open mind).
no, what this one is really about is get smart.
you know, get smart? get smart, being a 30 minute show, was my first and always tv love, and love it i do with a passion that abides to this day. ("would you believe...") well, the antics of control vs kaos and don adams vs bernie kopell make just about as much sense to me today as our current efforts to wage our "war against terrorism" and it's public face, osama, and this latest spate of headlines just clinches it all.
think about it: you could raise a turn of the century person from the dead and say the word "anarchist" in their ear and watch the exact same nonsense occur in their eyes that turned the assassination of archduke ferdinand into world war one. or you could talk to any cold warrior you like down at the nursing home and whisper "communist" to get the complete 411 on what mutually assured destruction looks like. and we are absolutely just as ridiculous in the head with our bizarre obsession with the word "terrorist", and mistaking a band of organized (and deadly, i'll give you deadly) criminals with any sort of significance beyond that which should require nothing more than a highly-organized police action to track 'em down and put 'em in the dock.
no, instead we've gone control vs kaos bat-shit crazy and by doing so created a global movement of opposition to us that ultimately makes about as much sense together as "tastes great" vs "less filling". they hate us because they hate us. we may rationalize that we started out hating them because they hate us, but we've got to admit to ourselves now that we're so far into hating them for the sake of hating them that we've become caricatures of ourselves. it's even gone to the point that if one of 'em puts out a sound byte on global warming, we're even putting THAT on the front page.
puh-leeeeeeze.
osama doesn't know jack shit about climate change. actually, now that you mention it, most folks arguing against it here don't know jack shit about it either, other than they don't like the politics of the people who are insisting on the idea.
oh, yes, questionable study data makes for good headlines, but anyone who enjoys hanging out in banff and jasper provincial parks in alberta, canada as much as i do, and traipsing up to see where the glaciers aren't anymore on day trips in those big cat vehicles where they let you drink beer on the way, isn't exactly hard to convince that something is very, very different today than it was only a few short years ago.
the one thing i DO know is that osama is the last guy i'd think could have anything useful to say about it.
of course, my local paper wasted half its front page on some nonsense about a fringe political group representing barely over 10% of the electorate (i.e. the republican party) and the recent election that's now way over a week old, but i guess i've come to expect wasted newspaper space like that from being here these past couple of years...
"and... LOVING IT".
posted by kad barma at 9:08 AM
3 Comments:
As to the point about Osama and others not knowing about climate change -- have you read State of Fear? The book is mostly forgettable but the epilogue has a lot of great statistics that throw people's pre-existing beliefs about climate change into question. I can't remember if it was here or on RSOL where this came up before, but just want to say the epilogue is pretty great and it's a quick read.
When he was asked before he died about his purpose in writing the book, Michael Crichton made it clear that he wasn't an ideologue. His point isn't to say that global warming is or is not real, but he's going after people on either side who pretend to understand something they don't. That cuts both ways...on the right, you can make fun of people who talk about climate change as a bunch of environmental namby-pambys, but on the left it's easy to just say you've quaffed the Kool Aid because you heard so much about it in school or in the media.
I will start by admitting that I am not a climatologist and have no understanding of climate change besides what I've read in a few newspapers and magazines. That said, reading State of Fear helped make me more of a climate change agnostic than I ever was before..
Speaking of the environment, I would like to note that not every Cold Warrior is down at the nursing home.
Regards — Cliff
yes, i do think i went too far on that nursing home bit... i think it was my author's hyperbole going into hyperdrive, (see, there, i did it again--it's warp drive on star trek--we weren't saying anything about what R2D2 thinks about global warming were we) and the fact that all the best cold warriors seem to me to be the ones who cut their ideological teeth on korea rather than vietnam, where the rest of us seemed to become ideologically conflicted, and, therefore, not nearly anti-communist enough for the point.
i should also point out that i'm actually a firm opponent of bad science of all sorts, and i personally think the current "global warming" rhetoric is so wrong that it's scary. if ocean levels rise, they rise, and we ought to be prepared for it. pointing out blame is something we can do after we figure out where the saints are gonna play after they win this upcoming superbowl. (and you heard it here first).
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