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[Edited January 2 2019 -- to remove or replace dead visual-links] Long ago Jonathan and I got some good traction out of a tangle of issues related to Global Warming slash Climate Change. I think we are slated to renew or refresh our earlier exchanges. I am going to poke in links to some he-said/he-saids from a few different threads at different times. One feature of the updated software is an automated 'sampling' of a link posted raw. See below. So this blog entry will be kind of administrative-technical while being built and edited. I haven't figured out if Jonathan and I should impose some 'rules' going in, so your comment may be subject to arbitrary deletion before the field is ready for play. Fan notes included. Adam, see what you think of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, especially the revealing map-based representations of opinion. You can drill and zoom down to state, county, district level to track data across a number of survey questions, where some of the answers are surprising. On some measures at least, the thing it is not found only in the UK, Quebec, Canada: Here's a snapshot of several maps which do not always show an expected Red State/Blue State pattern; [images updated January 2 2019; click and go images] [Deleted image-link] Edited 4 May 2015 by william.scherk Plug my How To Get Where I Got book of books, Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming. Insert link to Amazon, Library link, and to the intro chapter of Weart's companion website to the book. Make sure you include a link to Ellen's mention of a book review. Bob Kolker's June 3 comment is a good hinge. What do we (J and I) think we know about the mechanism Bob sketches? What can we 'stipulate' or what can we agree on, for the sake of argument?

I was thinking about some of the life-learning and wisdom of Nathaniel Branden, half-convinced in my mind that I was remembering a quote accurately, that Nathaniel Branden had written "disagree" and "disagreeable" much like I thought in the title of this entry. I did find a phrase, something like I remembered and put it in fuller context at bottrom. But first some thoughts from the departed. The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of the body. The child's primary business is learning. It is also the primary entertainment. To retain that orientation into adulthood, so that consciousness is not a burden but a joy, is the mark of the successfully developed human being. Nathaniel Branden We do not hear the term "compassionate" applied to business executives or entrepreneurs, certainly not when they are engaged in their normal work. Yet in terms of results in the measurable form of jobs created, lives enriched, communities built, living standards raised, and poverty healed, a handful of capitalists has done infinitely more for mankind than all the self-serving politicians, academics, social workers, and religionists who march under the banner of "compassion". Nathaniel Branden “When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.” Ayn Rand Thinking of someone with whom I have useful disagreements. Watauga Lake, Tennessee.

Brant, some areas of biology are more complicated than flip one-liners ... I think you do well understand that there is variation in genitals. I have explained this before at length here. Please review the 'spectrum' of real-world and recurring cases of babies born with indeterminate external genitalia. It is relevant and not all that complicated in principle: the X and the Y have jobs to do as chromosomes. In a normally developing fetus, their job is done to the norm. It is the not norm I think we are concerned with. You cannot norm an XXY 'girl' pre-puberty. The chromosomal 'sex' type does not always predict the Dick. You should know this, Brant; it is relevant, and it makes your pithy saying unhelpful -- the saying is just an arbitrary assertion if it cannot be supported, and it can be contradicted by reality. That works for me and you. But the function of a restroom is not gender-division, it is to take away wastes and allow cosmetics to be applied while checking out the dog-face beside you. And washing hands after touching yourself down there. The function of a child's bathroom can be divved up by gender and it is the world over, but the bathroom has almost nothing to do with sex in the schools we are 'worried' about. Sex, meaning sexual behaviour, sexual activity, sex. Sex school. We run the risk of distorting reality if we aren't familiar with the ins and outs of actual 'intersex' or otherwise physically/mentally incongruent people, and if we gloss over disconfirming details. Brant, I might ask you to consider a Lesbian in a Ladies Room. Or a Gay Man in a Men's room. Or a couple copulating in an airline restroom. Or a sex crime committed in a locker room or ancilliary single-gender environs. The harms are where? The harms are in the crime. The crimes are in the cover-ups, and abuse of human beings as sexual ends. Thus Jerry Sandusky and the procession of disgusting Catholic abusers and coverups. Thus the concern about hidden abuse of children in the privacy of their homes, but their caregivers. Thus the horrors of badly-run foster and 'care' systems. Thus sexual abuse of minors ... sexual abuse of children, sexual abuse of adolescents and pre-pubescents. That rings dark and true. What doesn't sound as darkly is the harm in Jazz taking her shit with where she wants to? She isn't some hairy Peter Taylor in drag wanting to periscope up widdle gurls skirts or manhandle them. That is on the Hairy Peter. That is his imaginary crime. Brant, if you have ever been the target of Faggot Attack, or been intimate with someone gay or bi who has been beat up, or if you know some 'Trannnnnnnneeee' who has been beaten, beaten to death, contrast that with the Bathroom Crime bullshit being ushered into law in Trailer Park states. The law has penalties. I would like you to go read the text of the laws promulgated to Prevent GayScaryHairyTransRape ... and then give me a one-liner or two. If we are united in anything beyond our interest in reason, it is in our rejection of ignorance. I can always be less ignorant, I can be ready to take on more information. And so can you. When was the first time you Looked At Another Boy's Penis with lust in your loins, Brant? I mean, in a bathroom. When do you use a bathroom to stalk victims? Oh. Tell me that the law should be that Jazz must go squat in the Boy's Room. FFS.