One evening in Toronto, Atwood invited me to her home, where we sat in its spacious kitchen on tall stools at a counter, overlooking her wintry, barren-looking garden. Graeme Gibson poured three glasses of whiskey while Atwood sorted through Christmas cards, dispensing with the chore as efficiently as if she were slicing rhubarb. I remarked on an aspect of “Oryx and Crake” that had moved me. The protagonist, Snowman, apparently left alone in the world, strives to remember unusual words he once knew. Atwood writes, “Valance. Norn. Serendipity. Pibroch. Lubricious. When they’ve gone out of his head, these words, they’ll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.” Reading this passage in recent months led me to think about the catastrophic devaluation of intellection that seems to have occurred in American society: the willful repudiation of rigorous thinking, and objective facts, that helped propel Trump to victory. I remarked to Atwood that it felt like a prescient metaphor.Why does crap like that keep happening?! It's like it's a... catastrophic devaluation of intellection.
It seems that these days all trains of thought lead to Trump. But perhaps the pibroch summoned him.
Pibroch? What does it mean? We know "lubricious," but "pibroch"? Here it is in Sir Walter Scott's "Lady of the Lake":
No rude sound shall reach thine ear,
Armor's clang or war-steed champing
Trump nor pibroch summon here
Mustering clan or squadron tramping.
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160 comments:
Larger context from the poem:
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;
Dream of battled fields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.
In our isle's enchanted hall,
Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,
Fairy strains of music fall,
Every sense in slumber dewing.
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Dream of fighting fields no more;
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.
'No rude sound shall reach thine ear,
Armor's clang or war-steed champing
Trump nor pibroch summon here
Mustering clan or squadron tramping.
Yet the lark's shrill fife may come
At the daybreak from the fallow,
And the bittern sound his drum
Booming from the sedgy shallow.
Ruder sounds shall none be near,
Guards nor warders challenge here,
Here's no war-steed's neigh and champing,
Shouting clans or squadrons stamping.'
"the willful repudiation of rigorous thinking, and objective facts, that helped propel Trump to victory."
That's a big part of the problem that the Left has with Trump. He doesn't *sound* like them. It is a class thing. A perception thing. Trump is all about deeds, not words. Obama sounded nice but what did he actually do other than completely screwup healthcare, the Middle East and Europe?
They don't understand Trump or the people who voted for him.
So the lesser mind adjusts to something that upsets their paradigm. In this case 2 ditsy women who pretend to be more intelligent than they are surround themselves in a bubble that lets them hold on to their pretensions. The only way they can accommodate for Trump?
"Reading this passage in recent months led me to think about the catastrophic devaluation of intellection that seems to have occurred in American society: the willful repudiation of rigorous thinking, and objective facts, that helped propel Trump to victory."
These people just are not as smart as they think they are.
Has it not occurred to you by now that New York City is, in fact, mentally ill?
Mockturtle beat me to it- it is a form of mental illness, and in people not nearly as intelligent or deep thinking as they believe they are with all their hearts.
Why does crap like that keep happening?! It's like it's a . . . catastrophic devaluation of intellection. It seems that these days all trains of thought lead to Trump.
Funny coincidence: I had that very thought a year or so ago reading comments on your blog.
In 1983, I was on book tour promoting "A Whack on the Side of the Head." Back then publishers used to spend a lot more money to send authors to various cities to do radio, tv, and newspaper interviews. For example, I went to 25 cities in 27 days and did 110 events.
Anyway, if you're an author on tour, you criss-cross with and meet many, many other authors who are also out promoting their books. Usually you chat with them in a green room or in passing out of an editor's office. Sometimes you'll see somebody in Seattle and then two weeks later see them in Atlanta. The great majority are very nice people grinding out the hustle of self-promotion.
The only person I crossed paths with who was unpleasant and very self-centered was Margaret Atwood who at that time was promoting The Handmaid's Tale.
And when I saw the word pibroch, I immediately thought of the Scott poem, though I had forgotten the exact line also used "trump".
And the poem really does have nothing at all to do with Arthurian legend, despite the title.
@Achilles Absolutely. Her comment is no different from Hillary's comment about "deplorables" only with more arcane terminology. It could not be possible for the lower orders to have actually analyzed the pros and cons of the presidential choices. If they had done it properly they would not have chosen Trump. Hogwash!
Everything is politics with liberals. The personal is political. Everything can be tied, one way or another, to the current bogeyman.
Liberals are such bores.
My son has already informed me that there is no longer any such thing as a conversation that doesn't mention Trump. I have since noticed that this is true.
There's a lot of truth to that, David. Liberals are far too impressed by pretty words. They think bad ideas are good if argued well, good ideas are bad if argued poorly. For all their mourning the death of intellectualism, their thinking is ossified. Petrified. They haven't had an idea in generations. But they are for progress. See, it's right there in their name.
Atwood should mind her own Canadian business.
Ann Althouse said..., I was transported by this scene and so delighted by the time I got to the word "lubricious" that I ordered myself to remember that word so I could find it in the text and make a blog post when I got home.
Lugubrious is even better. Well, as a word, if not a concept. I once got the phrase "lugubrious undulations" into something I wrote for school and felt pretty good about it.
Norn. That's a good, woody sort of word. Lubricious. Perfectly dreadful. Bit tinny.
Here's something for Ms. Mead to chew on: over 60 million people voted for Donald Trump. It would take supreme arrogance to think that not one of those 60 million is smarter than her. Not one wiser than her. Not one more caring than her. I'll put it plainly: at least one person out of that 60 million is everything Ms. Mead claims to admire and hold dearly and yet voted for Donald Trump. It's absurd to doubt it even if I can't name that person.
I don't give a flying circus what she thinks of the other 59,999,999. I want to hear her explain in clear terms why that one person voted for Trump. And if she can't, then she needs to sit out the conversation because she hasn't thought enough about it to have an opinion worth listening to.
I guess sad wave does pale in comparison.
I would say that pibroch is also a tinny sort of word.
Get used to it, Althouse.
khesanh0802 said...
@Achilles Absolutely. Her comment is no different from Hillary's comment about "deplorables" only with more arcane terminology. It could not be possible for the lower orders to have actually analyzed the pros and cons of the presidential choices. If they had done it properly they would not have chosen Trump. Hogwash!
Global warmists are the best. They don't realize how unscientific their theory is.
Youtube is wondrous resource.
Here is a pibroch.
For once, Readering is correct- there is no bottom to the amount of crazy the Left can descend to.
tim maguire said... There's a lot of truth to that, David. Liberals are far too impressed by pretty words. They think bad ideas are good if argued well, good ideas are bad if argued poorly.
I have to disagree with you there, tim. It'd be easy to allude to WFBuckley or George Will as counterpoints, but I'm afraid your diagnosis is out of date. It's probably true that the Left was too focused on fancy-sounding ideas/arguments to the detriment of actually sound ideas/arguments...but that's not really where we are, today.
Today the Left is offended at the notion that ideas or arguments other than their own exist. They don't argue at all, for the most part--they mock any positions other than their own. They assert the allegedly self-evident truth of whatever their current beliefs are (even when those beliefs are contradictory and/or brand new) and give any other beliefs or ideas a hate-label (that's racist, that's sexist, that's privileged, etc).
It's true that intellectuals have a tendency to fall in love with theories and that sophisticated-seeming theories are all the more alluring. It's true that there was a time when the Left was driven by intellectuals and that the Left still gives much more weight to intentions than to realities. It's not true that the Left is led, today, by intellectuals or any coherent intellectual movement. (The non-Left is splitered enough that the same is true there, too, but few people on the non-Left would claim their intellectual movement really runs things).
The Lefty people who brag about how they "love science" are the same ones who say "the science is settled" and call for purges of any scientist or educator who even asks a question that might offend Lefty beliefs. That's what we're dealing with, today; it'd be enormous progress just to get back to a time when they were defending bad arguments!
readering: "Get used to it, Althouse."
We are all getting used to the Lefts accelerating descent into madness.
samsondale, ISWYDT. :-)
I see Yancey beat me to it.
For some Trump has become a sort of "King Charles's head", a symptom of madness whose sudden intrusion into a discussion indicates the madness is uppermost. (see David Copperfield for reference).
I think it's the lack of a true liberal education which makes it so hard for some. They have quit trying to find out what the other side thinks - the snowflakes at the universities are the clear manifestation of the trend. So they know no way to accept the election. So they keep going over it and over it. And now trying to prove that Trump is the theme of all dystopian novels whereas anyone who has read them knows that the large, centralized, scientific bureaucratic state is the enemy in most science fiction and most dystopian novels. So their reading must be causing actual cognitive dissonance because they've been told that dystopian novels are about Trump whereas they can see clearly the novels are about themselves.
But no, no, they are about Trump. Trump, Trump.
And also they've been worshipping Obama and as soon as Obama got a chance he fled with all the money he could get to the South Seas and left them with the consequences of his administration and with Hillary/Valerie Jarrett as leaders.
But no, no, Trump is the bad one. Trump, Trump,
"Has it not occurred to you by now that New York City is, in fact, mentally ill?"
The scene takes place in Toronto.
But Rebecca Mead does live in Brooklyn.
She was born in London.
"Youtube is wondrous resource. Here is a pibroch."
Yeah, I found that too. I considered embedding it, but the quality of the video just wasn't good enough, especially after the top-notch poetry.
@Whirred Whacks
Whoa!
Why does crap like that keep happening?! It's like it's a... catastrophic devaluation of intellection.
Those who did not vote for Trump have no interest in ignoring the impulsive and vulgar things he has said. Think back to the beginning of the campaign. The attack on that Indiana judge? The discussion of his dick on a debate stage?
Now think about those outside of the US, who have no particular interest in the supreme court. They did not vote for Trump have no interest in ignoring the rather shocking things he said during the campaign.
I'm not sure you understand how Trump looks to those living outside the US who travel to the US for work. Atwood is Canadian.
Mem Fox, and elderly Australian writer, has been detained at a US airport and it's getting a lot of international press. Canadians coming home from vacation are having trouble in US airports.
Atwood has an self-interest in disliking Trump. She's a writer and scholar who travels to the US for academic talks. If detention can happen to Mem Fox it can happen to her.
The willful repudiation of knowledge and skill with words happens in K-12.
That's where it happens, the blame is clear and complete, and its been going on for decades.
You will not find kids exposed to Walter Scott, or much of any poetry at all. I will sometimes quote a line - and this is among clever and experienced men - even the trite Tennyson "Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do & die", and it is always unheard of, a piece of original wit.
In my day, out across the Pacific in our Catholic school, we 50 little brown boys had to memorize Scott's "Lochinvar" (4th grade I think, and just one out of dozens of other poems over the years). That is unthinkable in a US school.
@samsondale
LOL
HoodlumDoodlum,
The Lefty people who brag about how they "love science" are the same ones who say "the science is settled" and call for purges of any scientist or educator who even asks a question that might offend Lefty beliefs.
I'll tell you what: Get all "the Lefty people" to sign off on vaccines and GMO crops and nuclear power and fracking, and then maybe we can say "the science is settled." Until then, neh.
just FYI Canadians are flipped out about Trump.
I know a Canadian who turned down a job offer from Google, and others who contemplated tech jobs but are not throwing in their hats because of the politics.
hey more jobs for Americans.
But it's a-political people reacting like this. Trump disturbs people.
Those who did not vote for Trump have no interest in ignoring the impulsive and vulgar things he has said.
So don't ignore them - just dispense with the idiotic assumption that there aren't valid reasons for fine human beings to vote for someone who says impulsive and vulgar things.
[Formal discussions around what to do about the problem of people preferring good-sounding bad arguments to bad-sounding good arguments date back to Plato; Encylcopedia of Philosophy: Sophists. But you know that--I'm not mansplaining, I swear!]
We're: "But it's a-political people reacting like this. Trump disturbs people"
The formula for large scale disruption and change without disturbing anyone still eludes us.
Unexpectedly.
When Canadians say Not My President, they're right. After all, Hillary carried Ontario, particularly the wealthy suburbs of Toronto.
Pibroch! Professor, you were just talking about needing a word for the feeling of needing a word for something, and I felt it! What is the word for seeing a new, obscure word shortly after you first learned it? I just finished reading "Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson two days ago, and learned the word pibroch for the first time. Alan Breck Stewart concedes defeat to Rob Oig in a bagpipe duel after Oig plays the clan's pibroch better than he. I never imagined that I'd encounter that word again, much less so quickly and in such a different context. Thanks for the linguistic lift!
buwaya,
You are right, in more senses than one. It is unthinkable, and it ought to be thought. There is really no excuse for not thinking it.
I myself have my head so crammed full of remembered words that it's a miracle anything new gets through, and sometimes the old words swarm around through my head while I'm attempting to sleep. Most of them aren't poetry, though. I envy you.
Re Mem Fox -
This has been going on for decades. The INS has been awful to foreigners for a very long time. I suspect the meme is being pressed harder now, but you would have seen the same thing (randomly) last year or five years ago or 20 years ago.
It seems that these days all trains of thought lead to Trump.
Because he's the nation's (and world's) most powerful man AND a walking demonstration of cognitive dissonance in the extreme. The indispensable nation's head of state talks out of both sides of his mouth every other sentence, can't construct a coherent thought - let alone a coherent policy. Of course thoughtful people are going to react as they do to a liar so recalcitrant as to be incapable of coherently reconciling any two thoughts in his orange expanse of head covering. What is wrong with you that you find that so hard to understand?
This has been going on for decades. The INS has been awful to foreigners for a very long time. I suspect the meme is being pressed harder now, but you would have seen the same thing (randomly) last year or five years ago or 20 years ago.
no something weird is going on. There's too many stories of people being detained. Henry Rousso -- French Holocaust historian -- was held for 10 hours at Houston. He would have been sent back in handcuffs if an immigration lawyer at the University he was traveling to for a talk hadn't intervened.
Reminds me of a gaggle of giggly prepubescent girls speaking pig Latin.
Rousso has been traveling to the US for talks for years. So has Fox.
Ann objects: "Has it not occurred to you by now that New York City is, in fact, mentally ill?"
The scene takes place in Toronto.
But Rebecca Mead does live in Brooklyn.
She was born in London.
You miss the point entirely. Your source is the New Yorker Magazine. They will only feature those whose mental illness mirrors their own.
All Roads now lead to Mar a largo on the seven isles of Palm Beach.
"Intellection" is an interesting word probably last seen printed in the NYT Crossword.
Speaking of lubricious, a good lube helps with High Trump Attack Speed, as the Norks will wake up to this weekend.
DJT says the Norks and the ObamaCare Repeal must go first. Then comes the lubricious Tax Cuts.
So don't ignore them - just dispense with the idiotic assumption that there aren't valid reasons for fine human beings to vote for someone who says impulsive and vulgar things.
Somebody like Atwood lives outside of the US and isn't going to understand the significance of certain domestic politics. I also don't think she'll understand the partisanship. Canadians aren't that political, in general and don't argue much about politics in their social life. Everything is more chill and people are less partisan.
Look, people are f'in' nuts about Trump. They were also nuts about Chimpy BusHitler McHalliburton, but this is a new level of crazy. It's like millions of people bet their shirts on Hillary, and lost.
Incidentally, Trump is called the "orangutan," probably because it alludes to "orange," though in the original language that nuance isn't there. (I believe it means just "man of the forest.") Bush 2 was "Chimpy." Reagan was always associated with "Bedtime For Bonzo." Can we please stop calling all Republican presidents apes? (Michelle Obama was admittedly once called an "ape" by one commentater, but her husband never was.)
Tim Maguire observes: Everything is politics with liberals. The personal is political. Everything can be tied, one way or another, to the current bogeyman.
Liberals are such bores.
Indeed they are. I have an acquaintance who, upon my remarking on what a beautiful day it is, will launch into a tirade about climate change. They are almost robotic in their knee-jerk responses.
The INS has been awful to foreigners for a very long time.
Back in the '80s we had a Professor of Electrical Engineering from the University of Alberta do some summer research at our lab in Minneapolis. Every time he took a weekend off to visit Edmonton, our boss had to go to MSP and fish him out of the INS lockup for some paperwork infraction.
While New York may have, at one time, been the hub of intellectual thought and achievement, it has long ceased to be the case. New Yorkers are the last to know.
"What is wrong with you that you find that so hard to understand?"
There is a great deal else to understand, such as the effect of the US professional media abroad. CNN is effectively the US BBC (or Pravda), the NYT and such are the source of information for all the upper classes. Trumps enemies are the entire (or nearly so) source of US news and opinion.
What the outside world knows of the US passes through some very particular filters. This is not new. I came to realize this decades ago, when I discovered the National Review in the Army&Navy Club library (That was the old Manila US Officers club). This was not Time or Newsweek or even the WSJ, there were, it seemed, different points of view in the US.
"Why does crap like that keep happening?! It's like it's a... catastrophic devaluation of intellection." Please, no faux questions. Why, oh why do progs want to politicize ever damn thing, obsess about Trump, piss off the deplorables, fight their culture war by any means necessary, and not give a damn (yeah, that word again) about what sensitive folks in Madison, WI, might think?
"Somebody like Atwood lives outside of the US and isn't going to understand the significance of certain domestic politics." She may not understand it, but that has never prevented foreign progressives from signaling their superior virtue and intellect by looking down on the American deplorables or deplorable Americans, and celebrating the proper fellow progs--like O in Berlin.
"Everything is more chill and people are less partisan."
This used to be true of the US as well. But things have changed, I think gradually since the 1990's and with extreme speed since 2015.
Pibroch - A High Lament.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVGWYpgbGlE
In case anyone was as lost in this conversation as was I. Besides, the cello is a wonderful instrument.
Indeed they are. I have an acquaintance who, upon my remarking on what a beautiful day it is, will launch into a tirade about climate change. They are almost robotic in their knee-jerk responses.
Rest assured, we find your thoughtless love of irresponsibility equally boring and robotic.
Never mind the pibroch, we are become Poshlandia.
Canadians aren't that political, in general and don't argue much about politics in their social life. Everything is more chill and people are less partisan.
I'm Canadian, actually.
the willful repudiation of rigorous thinking, and objective facts, that helped propel Trump to victory.
Any rational person would conclude these people are crazy. They tried to pass legislation based on the insane premise that one in four women on college campuses is sexually assaulted. Their entire set of professed beliefs is a fantasy.
Who has been claiming for decades even the goal of objectivity is racist?
Why do they think their mythmaking is not part of the public record? Absurd!
Separately shouldn't we take such statements as admissions they know they are lying?
"...Global warmists are the best. They don't realize how unscientific their theory is."
Indeed they don't. They have obliterated the public space where debate could occur and now they stroll through it, emitting these fatuous comments as if they had any truth value and, hearing no objection, assume they are correct.
I can no longer be bothered to argue with them, but am grateful for their comments as an easy guide to whom I should avoid.
As for The New Yorker: it has been unhinged since Trump won the election. Some psychiatrist should provide an exegesis of this Diary of a Madman.
@FWBuff
Ha. Yeah, I know that feeling.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
It seems that these days all trains of thought lead to Trump.
Because he's the nation's (and world's) most powerful man AND a walking demonstration of cognitive dissonance in the extreme. The indispensable nation's head of state talks out of both sides of his mouth every other sentence, can't construct a coherent thought - let alone a coherent policy. Of course thoughtful people are going to react as they do to a liar so recalcitrant as to be incapable of coherently reconciling any two thoughts in his orange expanse of head covering. What is wrong with you that you find that so hard to understand?
4/14/17, 4:15 PM
And yet, with all that, and more, your life has not changed one little bit.Weird, huh?
"But it's a-political people reacting like this."
These days apolitical is just another word for crushingly ignorant Facebook hysterics.
"...Global warmists are the best. They don't realize how unscientific their theory is."
Of course. Far more "scientific" to cling to the only possible alternative: That atmosphere has NO effect on climate because... untold variables most save the fortunes of the noble coal industry. As promised to Noah after the ark landed, the effects of humanity's impacts on the earth will be rescued from the almighty.
Yep. That's a scientific one, for sure. And the one that y'all more or less believe.
And in the service of administration that believes lead, asbestos and chlorpyrifos are not problematic to human health.
Why can't you reckless idiots just live in the toxic waste that you think is so important for industry to be able to spew?
Rick: "Separately shouldn't we take such statements as admissions they know they are lying?"
Yes.
Vaclev Havel captured perfectly the nature and tactics of the left's lies in "The Power of The Powerless" amongst other offerings.
The lefties know they are full of crap so they must create a Maoist like terrified conformity in all phases of life because leftism is a hollowed out house of cards that no lefty can allow to be rigorously scrutinized in any way, lest it all comes tumbling down.
And yet, with all that, and more, your life has not changed one little bit.Weird, huh?
Geez, what's the matter with you? A few too many wayward swings of the sledgehammer to your temporal lobes?
Nope, I haven't spent my life wondering about how the phony liar Trump has been ruining America. It's only been three months since you dildos gave him the opportunity to do so, after all.
Reading this passage in recent months led me to think about the catastrophic devaluation of intellection that seems to have occurred in American society: the willful repudiation of rigorous thinking, and objective facts, that helped propel Trump to victory. I remarked to Atwood that it felt like a prescient metaphor.
I'm sorry, show me a time when someone has stuck a live microphone in front of Margaret Atwood and lefty boilerplate hasn't come flying out of her pie-hole.
Atwood just seems to exist in a permanent state of pissy.
Atwood just seems to exist in a permanent state of pissy.
Well, because you keep voting for politicians (pussy grabbers, among them) who are obsessed with over-regulating her vagina.
Trumpie just did the full Evangelical and got his congressional goon squad to remove federal funding of the most important clinics for contraception, sexually transmitted infections, fertility, pregnancy care, and breast and cervical cancer screening from qualified health providers.
If only you reproductive micro-managers spent as much time making sure the healthcare of your sperm production apparatuses were funded for only the "morally correct" purposes.
TTR: "Well, because you keep voting for politicians (pussy grabbers, among them) who are obsessed with over-regulating her vagina."
I did not vote for Bill Clinton nor Ted Kennedy.
Oh wait. Kennedy was a just a drunken manslaughter-er.
Apologies.
I'm not quite seeing the connection there, Drago.
wwww @3:56 PM:
Nothing you said here addresses the irony of some very soft-headed (at least when it comes to politics) people pretending to have standing to assess "rigorous thinking" re the political views and beliefs of the people with whom they disagree. That they don't like Trump, what he says, what he stands for, what he does is neither here nor there on that point. They are not defending their views via rigorous intellection, despite their claims. (These are people, after all, who have tranced themselves into believing, on no evidence whatever, that decades' worth of political dullards, lightweights, and utter mental mediocrities are superior intellects.)
That Althouse (or anybody else) doesn't "understand how Trump looks to those living outside the US who travel to the US for work" has no bearing whatever on whether this or that outsider's views are the result of informed, rigorous evaluation, or soft-headed ignorance. (That you're nattering on about it in lieu of any actual defense of the alleged "rigorous thinking" behind these people's opinions demonstrates lack of ability to think very rigorously yourself.)
TTR: "If only you reproductive micro-managers spent as much time making sure the healthcare of your sperm production apparatuses were funded for only the "morally correct" purposes."
I am unaware of any instance where a baby popped out of a scrotum, but then again I haven't spent a great deal of time searching for such occurrences.
Of course, these days it's possible some left-wing Bio-psychologist might inform me that some sperm "identify" as an embryo and so must be treated as such.
The Toothless Revolutionary: "I'm not quite seeing the connection there, Drago"
Then I feel compelled to share with you a link to a wonderful wine club: http://www.mercurynews.com/2013/12/27/wine-the-best-wine-club-for-40-a-month/
Great wine, great value.
I am unaware of any instance where a baby popped out of a scrotum, but then again I haven't spent a great deal of time searching for such occurrences.
As I am unaware of any instance where a baby "popped" out of a fertilized egg.
Once it's in the woman's body, I guess that's when the senatorial septuagenarians of the south become really interested in these things, it seems.
Thanks for the wine tips!
Now at the risk of buzzkilling the finer pursuits in life, I wanted to share that I found this tidbit on misplaced priorities interesting.
TTR: "As I am unaware of any instance where a baby "popped" out of a fertilized egg."
It is indeed a mystery where all these brand new genetically distinct humans come from.
An amazing and wondrous mystery.
TTR: "Now at the risk of buzzkilling the finer pursuits in life, I wanted to share that I found this tidbit on misplaced priorities interesting."
I'm afraid that there is no number of arrests of GOP lawmakers in bathrooms that will validate the mistaken belief that one can change their biology simply by wishing it were so.
BTW, that wine club is fantastic. The price per bottle is quite low and the quality is outstanding.
Are you saying that a baby and a fertilized egg are the same thing?
Are you saying that you find the role of "the scrotum" in this whole business "amazing," and/or mysterious?
You must be in store for quite the edifying journey.
"who are obsessed with over-regulating her vagina."
From my perch in these United States, I don't see anything that resembles an over-regulated vagina. To the contrary, I see no regulation at all. They are wild and free to roam, across mountain, forest and plain, and it seem that they (often disconcertingly) do just that.
I'm afraid that there is no number of arrests of GOP lawmakers in bathrooms that will validate the mistaken belief that one can change their biology simply by wishing it were so.
Are you saying surgery and endocrine therapy do not alter biology? That those acts are just wishes?
We need to send all those physicians back to religious school!
"Are you saying that you find the role of "the scrotum" in this whole business "amazing," and/or mysterious?"
On this point we must defer to the local authority in these matters, the estimable Laslo.
From my perch in these United States, I don't see anything that resembles an over-regulated vagina. To the contrary, I see no regulation at all.
Not only that. I have it on good evidence that you've never seen a vagina at all, either.
@www
The fact that there are more stories in the news about people being detained at airports, etc. is not proof of a greater incidence of such things so long as: a) news media want to promote the narrative that all people entering the country are subject to poor treatment because of Trump; and b)people who hate Trump have a much greater incentive to publicize every trivial -- and not so trivial -- run-in they have with customs or TSA, which advances the same narrative.
@Toothless,
Atwood just seems to exist in a permanent state of pissy.
Well, because you keep voting for politicians (pussy grabbers, among them) who are obsessed with over-regulating her vagina.
Well, considering that Atwood's pussy lives with the rest of her in Canada, our votes here in the US don't affect it very much, do they?
And like Atwood's pissiness started with Trump, but she was all sweetness & light under Obama. 'Cause, you give all those nasty-ass feminists a Democratic administration & they're all out baking cookies or singing Kumbaya with the kids at the playground. Amirite?
The Toothless Revolutionary: "Are you saying that a baby and a fertilized egg are the same thing?"
I'm saying those two "things" are simply a genetically distinct human being at different stages of development.
"Are you saying surgery and endocrine therapy do not alter biology? That those acts are just wishes? "
Not sufficiently. A poor mockery of the real thing is the best they can manage.
I'm saying those two "things" are simply a genetically distinct human being at different stages of development.
I don't understand what genes have to do with it. Comatose and even neurologically dead humans also have the same genes they had at earlier stages of, well, development.
Not sufficiently. A poor mockery of the real thing is the best they can manage.
Why are you the judge on what's sufficient for the patient? Do you tell other patients what therapies are best for them? That's quite a bit of meddling. I hope that once you ever do see that fabled vagina you wonder about, that you never have an intersex baby with it. You should look at what "prosocial" interventions used to be prescribed for those poor souls.
Well, considering that Atwood's pussy lives with the rest of her in Canada, our votes here in the US don't affect it very much, do they?
She feels for her sisters. Just like Trump's defenders say that we are tomorrow's Syrians. Or yesterday's embryos.
And like Atwood's pissiness started with Trump, but she was all sweetness & light under Obama. 'Cause, you give all those nasty-ass feminists a Democratic administration & they're all out baking cookies or singing Kumbaya with the kids at the playground. Amirite?
Someone please pass me the right-wing translation decoder ring for this one.
"I have it on good evidence that you've never seen a vagina at all, either."
Ah, you found us out. In my culture we do it Bedu-style, behind sheets and without looking.
It takes a mighty man, or a mighty interest!
TTR: "Are you saying surgery and endocrine therapy do not alter biology? That those acts are just wishes?"
I'm saying that Bruce/Caitlin Jenner is a male at the cellular level throughout his body, regardless of what he pumps into his body and what he has lopped off.
Ah, you found us out. In my culture we do it Bedu-style, behind sheets and without looking.
It takes a mighty man, or a mighty interest!
"Can you hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your penis?"
I'm saying that Bruce/Caitlin Jenner is a male at the cellular level throughout his body, regardless of what he pumps into his body and what he has lopped off.
I didn't know that individual rights applied to cells.
I was under the impression that they applied to the entire body of the person - as a whole, individual entity.
It takes a mighty man, or a mighty interest!
And a mighty imagination! ;-)
Angel-Dyne said......they don't like Trump, what he says, what he stands for,... Angel-Dyne said...
I'm curious about what Trump stands for, not to very soft-headed (at least when it comes to politics) people pretending to have standing to assess "rigorous thinking", but in general. Is there a way to describe what Trump stands for in a neutral way without assuming that one is either for it or again
"Do you tell other patients what therapies are best for them? "
This is quite normal, isn't it? If some madman asked you to cut off his legs or put out his eyes because of some sexual fantasy he's got, would you?
Or take sex out of it - whats so special about sex anyway? What, perhaps, if some lad asked for steroids for the sake of his athletic self-realization? Or a lifetime supply of opioid drugs? Or to be turned into a lizard?
Or lets not bother with surgery and drugs. If I identified as a multi-millionaire, and said I would be dreadfully unhappy unless that was achieved, would I then have a claim on millions as a medical treatment?
TTR: "I didn't know that individual rights applied to cells."
No one is saying Bruce/Caitlin can't do what he wishes but I am saying that his unhappiness is no reason for me to suddenly discard basic biology. Which is what the left demands.
Just because Bruce wants to do something that's legal in no way changes his biological reality.
He can lop stuff off and take as many hormones as he'd like and you know what that makes him? A dude who had stuff lopped off and took lots of hormones and who simply dresses the way he prefers.
But he's not a chick.
Where's the fetus going to gestate?
"Can you hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your penis?"
At times, it has certainly seemed that way!
A helpful hint, marriage (eventually) cures this condition.
Or take sex out of it - whats so special about sex anyway?
I dunno. Maybe once you have it, you'll find out.
Or maybe not.
Skipping Ritmo.
"but you would have seen the same thing (randomly) last year or five years ago or 20 years ago."
Yes, a friend of mine from Australia came to visit and brought his girlfriend, a woman of about 40 who owned a "horse station" in the Northern Territories. It was around a million acres, as I recall.
At Customs, she was stopped and taken to an interrogation room because, when she was asked her occupation, she replied "Retired."
She was a very good looking woman who appeared younger than her age. That was about 20 years ago.
No one is saying Bruce/Caitlin can't do what he wishes but I am saying that his unhappiness is no reason for me to suddenly discard basic biology. Which is what the left demands.
What is it that you're being asked to do? I don't see how it affects you.
It affects how Jenner's physical body has been as aligned as modern medicine can manage with his/her neurobiology. Which is also "basic biology." If the understanding/sensation of one's own gender is not neurobiological then that would take a stretch to believe.
Just because Bruce wants to do something that's legal in no way changes his biological reality.
The mind requires the brain, and neither one of us live in his/hers.
But it makes no sense to assume gender dysphorias are imagined. It makes no sense to presume that the way his/her mind interacts with his/her hormones was producing the self-identity of a male.
But Jenner is somewhat of an extreme case, I agree. A bit too Schwarzenegger-esque to come off as womanly.
Not all aspirants to his/her outcome are as awkward in achieving it.
Skipping Ritmo.
Thanks!
It's always good to hear you declare, before anything else, the lengths you must go to in order to fight your strong, urgent inclination toward me.
"I dunno. Maybe once you have it, you'll find out.'
Haha. The point is you have an unhappy person, that you propose to make happy through medicine. There are ten thousand reasons to be unhappy, only some of them have to do with sex. Is everything on the table? Would you ask a physician or a heath care system to do anything at all anyone requests, however absurd or damaging? There is a vast range of human desires and delusions you know.
Don't wiggle Ritmo. Face it like a man. Bring up your store of courage, abandon thy snark, and reveal your soul, that poor sad thing. Write some poetry maybe.
Like some men think they're women and some women think they're men, Michael K thinks he's me.
He finds me impossible to avoid.
He's drawn to me like a moth to flame.
TTR: "What is it that you're being asked to do? I don't see how it affects you"
The left is demanding that everyone "accept" the "truth" that Bruce/Caitlin is a woman.
He's not. And he never will be. He is still a human being worthy of the respect all human beings deserve, but he ain't a chick.
TTR: "Like some men think they're women...
.. and some women think they're men...
...Michael K thinks he's me...
...He finds me impossible to avoid...
...He's drawn to me like a moth to flame..."
Needs a bit of work but there's a song in there somewhere.
TTR: "But it makes no sense to assume gender dysphorias are imagined. It makes no sense to presume that the way his/her mind interacts with his/her hormones was producing the self-identity of a male."
I agree with this.
I'm not arguing with any of it.
I'm saying Bruce/Caitlin is a biological male.
Period.
Is everything on the table?
YEP. With technology, eventually. Sure is.
Would you ask a physician or a heath care system to do anything at all anyone requests, however absurd or damaging?
I'm not the one doing the asking, you "poor sad soul." You keep forgetting who's business any of this is.
As far as determining damage vs. improvement, I trust the medical research and practice is further along on that than you are.
There is a vast range of human desires and delusions you know.
But only one buwaya puti, however, to sort out one from the other.
How important a role you must fulfill in this regard. You have doubtless spent much time with transgenders in order to paternalistically, and completely devoid of any outside, social pressure or bias - with only a care to their own well-being, observed what's best for them.
Oh, that's right. You're a Republican. You did no such thing. You just pulled a prescription out your butt with only your overriding, imagined concern for social conformity and stability motivating you.
TTR: "You did no such thing. You just pulled a prescription out your butt with only your overriding, imagined concern for social conformity and stability motivating you."
Lots of that "social conformity" breaking out everywhere......the lefties are in charge.
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/student-newspaper-of-hillary-clintons-alma-mater-openly-threatens-those-who-refuse-to-adapt-their-beliefs/
snip from the Wellesley article: "This being said, if people are given the resources to learn and either continue to speak hate speech or refuse to adapt their beliefs, then hostility may be warranted. If people continue to support racist politicians or pay for speakers that prop up speech that will lead to the harm of others, then it is critical to take the appropriate measures to hold them accountable for their actions."
So, conform or.....else.
Nice little Maoist enclave they've got going up there.
The left is demanding that everyone "accept" the "truth" that Bruce/Caitlin is a woman.
If gender is not in the brain then if we were to perform a phallectomy on you (or anyone else) I presume you/they will behave and "feel" like a woman the next day.
Decades of miserable experiences in the medical literature prove that this is definitively not so.
Lots of that "social conformity" breaking out everywhere......the lefties are in charge.
Hopefully when it comes to researching the pros/cons of medical interventions, reality is in charge. Reality being required of the evidence that science inc. medical science relies on.
Trump disturbs people.
To be fair, a lot of them were already disturbed.
"with only your overriding, imagined concern for social conformity and stability motivating you."
Of course, because without social conformity and stability there is nothing at all.
That is common sense. Granted, common sense can be uncommon, as we see in certain situations.
More, we live to serve, no to be served. A man is justified by his obligations, his duty, not his desires, whims and pleasures. We are after all social animals. One of his duties is to be "normal", to perform his natural functions as expected by family, clan and tribe. This is not a popular idea these days, but it is so anyway.
On Filipino romanticism and the essential role played by ladies cotton shifts -
Traditionally, white cotton shifts were the ubiquitous womens underclothes. Women and nubile girls wore these at all times, even when bathing, even in flagrante. Come spring (or rather anytime, though it may have been a bit more difficult to see through the downpours of the rainy season), young men's fancies turned to laundry.
Yes, laundry.
The womens laundry and bathing section of the village creek, as the wet shifts turned transparent.
This is (or was) a thing in that bucolic past.
http://www.fernandoamorsolo.com/Fernando-Amorsolo-Women-Bathing-and-Washing%20Clothes-7463.jpg
To be fair, a lot of them were already disturbed.
We're going to need a bigger basket.
Buwaya: thanks for the glimpses, as it were, of the erotic power of laundry!
So much more useful than the endless barking by your interlocutor.
Piobaireachd is the classical music of the highland bagpipe. The Great Music or Ceol Mor.
Here's a good video of an arrangement. My instructor is the soloist.
https://youtu.be/7ojD3_QKFTg
oops
It's absolutely true that there was a "willful repudiation of rigorous thinking, and objective facts, that helped propel Trump to victory."
I mean, it's well-known out colleges and universities have been, for decades, full of entire departments that explicitly repudiate both. While the people in the other departments do nothing, at all, to try to fight the rot. It would be obvious to anyone capable of rigor of thought that after a few decades, the enemies of rigor and objective facts, their institutional collaborators, and the people trained by them, will eventually not be accepted by the masses as a source of rigorous thought and objective facts.
But, of course, the products of these institutions are not going to be able to think rigorously enough to notice that obvious conclusion. They will fail to notice that when they look at Trump, they're looking in the mirror -- themselves, only with the sides reversed.
She wouldn't know 'rigorous thinking' if it were injected into her skull with a large bore syringe.
Steven, that was my opinion during the election, that Trump was a pure unadulterated reflection of the culture and intelligentsia.
But since the election I have come to the conclusion that I was giving too much away. Trump is smarter and more capable in every way than these twerps.
And that is not a good thing.
Even the Washington Post's Food/Recipe page has calamitous references to Trump. The other day they had an article about slippers and managed to slip in a Trump dig! Here's a Jungian take on that ➜ http://tinyurl.com/lxwvqo9
Awesome! Trump's head as a nautilus/Fibonacci series! Love it. What the guy lacks in ability, he compensates for with geometry!
Sound the Pibroch loud and high!
Frae John o'Groats to the Isle of Skye.
Lucien,
Yeah, agreed that's quite possible. I'm not sure what's going on with it.
@Toothless,
Better be careful with Buwaya. I found his theme song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CURNBsE8TZQ
Looking at this post (as well as others) and the tags for this post some folks must ask if Trump derangement syndrome can only apply to folks who aren't DJT-y?
No deranged; no deranged; you're deranged; no, you're deranged.
Althouse to New Yorker and NYT: you're deranged.
Carry on.
Althouse to New Yorker and NYT: you're deranged.
Right. Because the first thing that comes to people's minds when they think of Trump is, "sane." "Mentally healthy."
Hahahahaha.
Right. Because the first thing that comes to people's minds when they think of Trump is, "sane." "Mentally healthy."
Hahahahaha.
Saner than you are, Ritmo. But, then, who isn't?
And so the cult of Kek continues to grow.
Saner than you are, Ritmo. But, then, who isn't?
How charmingly stupid. The "I know Trump isn't but what are you?" defense makes its debut appearance.
Pee-Wee Herman would be proud. Don't tell me that you, too have been masturbating to dirty films in public theaters, mockturtle. It would ruin my whole image of you. Being a sexual bore is probably your greatest virtue, after all - at least to people who find virtue in those things.
"Right. Because the first thing that comes to people's minds when they think of Trump is, "sane." "Mentally healthy.""
The coolest thing is that Althouse's attempted slight of hand is so clumsy. Sometimes she says folks who are not into DJT must state the specific issues/situations/characteristics where he's deficient. At the same time, she's not into allocating weight to such lists that document exceptional lying and specific political changes that harm people, even though they're ubiquitous.
And yet, according to Althouse, it's the folks w/ POVs based on specific facts--that she pretends don't exist--who are deranged.
"Saner than you are, Ritmo. But, then, who isn't?"
Speaking of another Althouse inconsistency.
Has anyone figured out when, according to her, it is ok to make joke re mental illness and when it's terrible to do so?
It goes w/o saying that the unacceptable joking situation must tie back to some personal (friends/family/etc) experience in her life.
Althouse's empathy is strong in her vortex, but nonexistent outside. E.g., she's one kid away from saying FU gays.
Even the Washington Post's Food/Recipe page has calamitous references to Trump. The other day they had an article about slippers and managed to slip in a Trump dig!
When Sean Spicer announces that the "emperor owns no bathrobe" we're on a very slippery slope.
Piobaireachd (preferred spelling) is a taste of what music in heaven would sound like. If there was such a place.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
Of course. Far more "scientific" to cling to the only possible alternative: That atmosphere has NO effect on climate because... untold variables most save the fortunes of the noble coal industry. As promised to Noah after the ark landed, the effects of humanity's impacts on the earth will be rescued from the almighty.
Here is your chance to explain the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming before I do it for you. I have already done this with a variety of professors. As soon as you start asking about correlation coefficients and confidence intervals they shut right up. That is when they realize what they are doing. How long will it take you?
Yep. That's a scientific one, for sure. And the one that y'all more or less believe.
Projection is all you have. I can explain and accurately state your side of the argument probably better than you can. You have to make up what I think though.
And in the service of administration that believes lead, asbestos and chlorpyrifos are not problematic to human health.
More projection. Boring.
Why can't you reckless idiots just live in the toxic waste that you think is so important for industry to be able to spew?
Deal. We will live in the world we created. It is all around us. Pretty livable if you ask me. You go live somewhere where there is no petroleum based electricity. Afghanistan meets that requirement.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
Right. Because the first thing that comes to people's minds when they think of Trump is, "sane." "Mentally healthy."
Hahahahaha.
I know it entertains you to sink to this level. It is boring though and you can do better. You are not Inga.
I cannot help but think that R&B, in real life, looks like Donald Pleasance with a clip-on ponytail.
This is how "progressives" think:
In the 1950s, Truman ordered the armed forces to integrate the races.
This caused the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
So, if the armed forces of the United States are forced to consider "global warming" when killing people, the world will be saved.
Yep, that's it. That's all there is to progressivism in 2017. There is nothing else. This is as good as it gets.
Achilles: "As soon as you start asking about correlation coefficients and confidence intervals they shut right up."
Quite true.
It's telling that none of the models created work when run in reverse.
Gee, it's almost like the models don't actually capture all of the relevant variables nor the variable interactions and thus, aren't actually reflective of reality.
Maybe the fact that we don't have data readings from the vast majority of the planet factors in here. Not that it matters to the lefties. They will be more than happy to simply continue "filling in" the "blanks" with the data needed to justify their funding and political decision-making.
And that should be more than good enough for the complete reordering of society....with the left in charge of how every person lives their lives.
Unexpectedly.
Checking sound with Sir Walter:
Definition of trump
1
a : trumpet
b chiefly Scotland : jew's harp
2
: a sound of or as if of trumpeting the trump of doom
This weekend certainly has depressing news - The Trump of Doom is appropriate.
...the willful repudiation of rigorous thinking, and objective facts, that helped propel Trump to victory.
Yep, there's nothing like progressive smartitude and brainicality
The crap that keeps happening does so because it is all they've got. If they admit or even consider they, the superior people, were wrong about Trump then they are no longer the superior people but just ordinary fools.
"The final event was the pibroch, performed by the police chief of Pickax. The centuries-old tradition called for a lone piper to play a succession of pieces increasing in difficulty, all the while walking slowly about the stage. For the piper it was a challenge; for the audience it was a mesmerizing experience, almost spiritual in it's effect. The crowd watched in total silence. Polly claimed to have been in a trance."
From "The Cat Who Robbed a Bank", by Lilian Jackson Braun.
I just came across the word pibroch two days ago. Low and behold, here I am reading it again.
Now that Trump is learning how much more complicated the world is verses his red-meat tweets his supporters may catch up with him in understanding, while the rest of us who had a reasonable understanding of the world and knew that health care etc is complicated and not solved by one who promises the moon.
David Begley in the second comment gets to the nub.
It's ridiculous, just ridiculous, to call anything in modern literature or literary criticism, rigorous. STEM is rigorous. What that writer is peddling is *mush* not rigor.
roesch/voltaire: "Now that Trump is learning how much more complicated the world is verses his red-meat tweets his supporters may catch up with him in understanding, while the rest of us who had a reasonable understanding of the world and knew that health care etc is complicated and not solved by one who promises the moon"
So much of the "funny" packed into one self-aggrandizing paragraph.
Yes yes, you "know" so much and "understand" so very very much. Thank you thank you thank you!
Now, could you take a moment to link up with obambi and explain to him what "Red Lines" are supposed to mean? While you are at it why don't you also bring him up to speed on all the "workplace violence" driven by the "JV" team we are seeing these days.
Thanks in advance for all your support.
@wwww - I once had three manufacturing plants in Canada that occasionally needed field service help from the engineers who were assigned in the US. If those engineers tried to enter Canada with so much as a tool box, the Canadian border gastapo would detain them in a room for hours until I could get a lawyer involved. The reason they gave was they didn't have a work permit and they might be "taking Canadian jobs." They never figured out that those engineers were necessary to keep several hundred Canadians employed because you can't work with broken equipment. Same thing with vendor access and other necessary interaction with the rest of the world. That does not seem to happen anywhere but in Canada and the Third World and certainly not in the US. BTW, I eventually convinced the BOD to close those three plants and shift the production to expanded Albany, Minneapolis and Renton, WA plants. Seems 95% of you hosers live within 100 miles of the US border, so there's no reason to put up with the hassle of trying to make anything in Canada. So, there's that, which is nice.
roesch/Voltaire: Now that Trump is learning how much more complicated the world is verses his red-meat tweets his supporters may catch up with him in understanding, while the rest of us who had a reasonable understanding of the world and knew that health care etc is complicated and not solved by one who promises the moon.
Posters who are intelligent and well-informed, say intelligent things that indicate possession of a base of knowledge. Then there are the posters who keep telling you how intelligent, worldly, and erudite they are, but who never deign to provide any evidence for these assertions.
This speaks to the essential anti-rigor, if you will, and emotionalism of so much lefty "intellection". A genuinely intelligent and worldly person has no difficulty in recognizing and acknowledging that there are people better informed and more intelligent people than he is, who don't share his views and may be unlikable or even downright repulsive. This is impossible for the species of modern lefty under discussion here, who has been reduced to circular reasoning to evaluate "intelligence", and to using in-group shibboleths as (unbacked) intellectual currency. (See, iirc, Ortega y Gasset on this phenomenon. Alas, O y G, like Orwell, is one of those writers whom lefties always think is talking about those other guys, not themselves.)
Thus we have the comical phenomenon of people like r/V believing that they are a great deal more intelligent, and have far deeper understanding of how the world works, than, say, a Donald Trump.
Reading this passage in recent months led me to think about the catastrophic devaluation of intellection that seems to have occurred in American society: the willful repudiation of rigorous thinking, and objective facts, that helped propel Trump to victory.
The scrawny woman cleverly exemplified the "devaluation of intellection" with her own writing.
"The final event was the pibroch, performed by the police chief of Pickax. The centuries-old tradition called for a lone piper to play a succession of pieces increasing in difficulty..."
Which is not an accurate description of a piobaireachd. It starts with a base melody, the urlar or "ground" and then variations based around increasingly complex embellishments, such as the taorluath and crùnluath. which involve 5 and 7 notes respectively and are played very fast for a "bubbly" sound effect.
"health care etc is complicated and not solved by one who promises the moon"
Just to be clear, you're talking about Obama here, right?
"I'm not sure you understand how Trump looks to those living outside the US who travel to the US for work. Atwood is Canadian."
Really, really, really don't give a shit.
"Why can't you reckless idiots just live in the toxic waste that you think is so important for industry to be able to spew?"
Whereas the largest polluter in the United States in the last ten years has been the EPA.
You keep swingin there sparky. Eventually you'll get a hit.
Progressives don't really think. They just react with the usual left-speak jargon.
Althouse's empathy is strong in her vortex, but nonexistent outside. E.g., she's one kid away from saying FU gays.
4/14/17, 8:54 PM
Touché. In fact, that may be the first intelligent thing I've ever seen you post here.
No... I seem to recall making that remark about you before... But the periods are rather long.
I have already done this with a variety of professors. As soon as you start asking about correlation coefficients and confidence intervals they shut right up. That is when they realize what they are doing. How long will it take you?
It's not an engineering problem. Stop being a buffoon. You don't need endless precision to know whether a theory has more evidence than its competitors. Same with evolution. Its triumph over creationism didn't require "correlation coefficients and confidence intervals" either. You are being asinine. The stakes are high. There is no opportunity to reverse this once the results turn out to be incompatible with maintaining the biosphere in the state that allowed for agriculture, industry and civilization. No one asks for this type of evidence when they administer arsenic to a human. Or anthrax. The effects on life generally are known and you go to jail for doing so no matter how small the amount. I'd like to see you get an expert witness for that one. "Your honor, he only gave a little bit of anthrax! NOT the lethal dose!" Yep. Even Environmental Destruction Agency wingnut Pruitt (who also wants to bring back lead, asbestos and chlorpyrifos) isn't going to take on the court rulings that corroborate the relationship. He knows he would lose - embarassingly. The battle you are fighting is against reality. If you think atmosphere doesn't control climate then go interview for the job of meteorologist on the moon. Interesting weather patterns people find in celestial bodies without atmospheres - i.e. NONE. CO2 is what allows the planet to heat in the first place; without it you wouldn't have temperatures warm enough to be compatible with human life - it would be too cold. This is basic science 101. Get your damn algebra right before trying out your fancy string theory wanna-be dazzlers.
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