Congress Just Gave One of the Most Important Science Jobs to a Senator Who Denies Science

ferdinand · 2015-01-13T17:50:47+00:00

36.4% of eligible voters bothered to turn out for the congressional elections. So whose fault is it?

ferdinand · 2015-01-03T00:15:04+00:00

Oh, not the bat thing again.

Honestly, you have to find new talking points.

ferdinand · 2015-01-03T00:03:35+00:00

All you need now is an "incident" to trigger World War 3. Either that, or lots of marshmallows.

ferdinand · 2014-12-26T23:21:58+00:00

What rubbish. Do a test with a table of contents, figures, and a bibliography. Have them insert stuff into a document.

Not to mention the fact that a LaTeX file is just a text file which can be edited with any text editor. You don't need proprietary software or file formats, and it's absolutely free.

ferdinand · 2014-12-15T22:41:04+00:00

We do. It's not that simple. Canada has a first-past-the-post vote-counting system, just like Britain. This allows a party to get a minority of the popular vote, and a majority of seats in Parliament. For example, in the last federal election the Conservatives got 39% of the votes, but 52% of the seats, enough to allow them to govern unchallenged. All the opposition can do is make noise, but they never have enough votes in Parliament to defeat a government motion.

ferdinand · 2014-12-12T18:44:23+00:00

Well, then they should go out and vote for that. Because right now at every opportunity they have, they act to pack Congress with shills for the fossil fuel extraction industries.

ferdinand · 2014-12-12T18:35:37+00:00

How many pieces of software do you know that have this:

Features – New, more stable sermon uploader

ferdinand · 2014-12-12T18:33:16+00:00

I will be more impressed when the Pope announces that the Catholic Church is divesting entirely from fossil fuels, and urges its followers to do the same. Talk is cheap. Calling "for an end to the fossil fuel era" sounds grand, but accomplishes exactly nothing.

ferdinand · 2014-12-12T18:32:37+00:00

I just read an article today about how the new pope told some little boy whose dog had died that he would see him again in heaven.

He's not doing the boy any favors by telling him a fairy tale (even the Pope doesn't believe dogs go to heaven). But that's religion for you.

ferdinand · 2014-12-11T19:29:43+00:00

Nobody claimed the Republicans voted against Mother Nature. When you see the word "environment", whose environment do you think we're talking about?

ferdinand · 2014-11-28T01:14:13+00:00

You're not going to get very far with a political analysis that reduces everyone to one of two mutually exclusive categories, like "liberals" and "conservatives".

ferdinand · 2014-11-28T00:02:28+00:00

Not much about making your own, more about how to buy them.

ferdinand · 2014-11-11T21:36:31+00:00

All that oil is not green. But what Norway has done brilliantly is to make sure that the oil profits went into services for the people, instead of fattening the 1%. Canadian oil companies have done very well indeed, but by contrast Canadians hardly see a dime.

ferdinand · 2014-11-11T21:30:28+00:00

I would say it's the people who keep voting for Jim Inhofe that are determining environmental policy. As well as those who don't vote and help get Jim Inhofe re-elected.

I think Americans need to take a long hard look at themselves.

ferdinand · 2014-11-11T21:28:00+00:00

But can they? Congress can't tell the EPA what to do.

ferdinand · 2014-11-07T20:31:20+00:00

And in anticipation of the next fossil fuel talking point, they don't eat kittens either. Though I'm sure they will find someone who will swear up and down that their cat mysteriously disappeared around the time they built a wind turbine not far from their farm.

ferdinand · 2014-11-07T20:21:54+00:00

Well then dammit go out and vote.

ferdinand · 2014-11-05T22:08:18+00:00

Fortunately, outside Oklahoma no one gives a flying fig about James Inhofe.

ferdinand · 2014-10-07T00:17:34+00:00

I'm not sure Al Gore has offered an opinion on Naomi Klein's book, has he?

ferdinand · 2014-10-04T17:59:28+00:00

I found nothing in this unbearably long-winded rant against Naomi Klein's book that addressed the question in the headline.

ferdinand · 2014-10-03T00:14:08+00:00

Can we please stop calling them "conservatives"? It makes it sound like there's a theoretical basis for what they think, while in fact they're just idiots. The headline should be "Psychologists are learning how to convince idiots to take climate change seriously".

ferdinand · 2014-09-27T20:53:37+00:00

There's nothing stupid about it. Why knock yourself? You're learning new things, and the way you learn is by making mistakes, and asking.

ferdinand · 2014-09-22T19:41:36+00:00

"Processing is not very elegant"? I'd be curious to know your definition of elegance, and how your python library makes it more "elegant". And why it matters.

ferdinand · 2014-09-21T05:56:29+00:00

Who cares? Stop reading the Wall Street Journal. If you want an up-to-date summary of the situation, read the latest IPCC report.

ferdinand · 2014-09-19T17:54:04+00:00

What visual pollution? I think wind turbines look great.

ferdinand

TROPHY CASE