I’m swamped at work – have to rework two Flash animations and do some major updating on one of my biggest clients websites. And they want it all yesterday, of course. 
So I’ve got a large glass of iced coffee, I’m wearing my Monty Python Killer Rabbit Slippers, and I’m ready to buckle down and get some work done. But first, here are a few things that looked interesting in my Google reader –
Global Warming is a Load of Crap
There have been some interesting global warming posts this week on blogs I frequent.
Al Gore set to rock Antarctica for global warming
Global Warming- It ain’t Happening
Bottom line – the media can’t be trusted to report on this accurately. Most people my age (38) remember the global cooling and population bomb scares of the 70s. (The world was going to end as we knew it by 2000 at the absolutely latest.) I learned this week that media has been hyping terrifying, worlds-gonna-end, climate change stories since 1895! Every few decades they switch from global cooling to global warming. Here’s a clip from the article – the whole thing is a MUST READ.
It was five years before the turn of the century and major media were warning of disastrous climate change. Page six of The New York Times was headlined with the serious concerns of “geologists.” Only the president at the time wasn’t Bill Clinton; it was Grover Cleveland. And the Times wasn’t warning about global warming – it was telling readers the looming dangers of a new ice age. The year was 1895, and it was just one of four different time periods in the last 100 years when major print media predicted an impending climate crisis. Each prediction carried its own elements of doom, saying Canada could be “wiped out” or lower crop yields would mean “billions will die.”
They are able to get away with more than a century of this scaremongering because in the past we just couldn’t get at the archives as efficiently, and people worrying about their daily lives don’t pass this down from generation to generation. But it’s clear that whatever the science is, we can’t trust the media to report it accurately. This ought to be the biggest scandal in the history of journalism – dwarfing even Walter Duranty’s lies. As the article says, “This isn’t a question of science. It’s a question of whether Americans can trust what the media tell them about science.”
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Warmongering
The Victory Caucus is (among other things) exposing the white flag Republicans.
Everybody’s got something to say about the slow bleed – and it’s frequently commentary on what a weaselly, cynical, fundamentally dishonest trick it is.
Once we’ve retreated, and I think the trajectory we’re on now all but demands it, and once the bloodbath is over and a new round of monsters have taken control of Iraq, it will be just as easy for all of them to pretend that they had no role in any of it. And depending on which party happens to be in power when we have to go back into Iraq again, it will be equally easy for them to either support the action or denounce it.
Most of them voted for or supported the war when it started. They turned their backs on the president and more importantly the troops when it got tough. They will have condemned good Iraqis to their deaths to win an all-important victory over a lame duck president they’ve loathed from day one. They will have slowly bled the US military to death. They will have made mincemeat of the idea that America is a reliable ally and a steady force for freedom against jihad and chaos. They will have handed the terrorists and the mullahs a milestone victory and a new base of operations to export the global jihad. And they won’t lose a second’s sleep over any of it.
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‘If You Don’t Believe In Christ, You’re Going To Hell”
Ace has an excellent essay on the odd reaction non-Christians have to the fact that it is basic biblical Christian doctrine that nonbelievers are going to go to hell.
‘If You Don’t Believe In Christ, You’re Going To Hell”
This statement, uttered by Christians, bothers a lot of people. I’m bothered that they’re bothered.
It’s a fairly common claim in religions. It’s as if atheists want to be credited as being “just as good Christians as anyone else.” Well, see, they’re not, because, like, they don’t believe in Christ. That’s sort of, um, central.
I know there are Christian churches that are, let us say, de-emphasizing this whole controversial “Christ” business. “No man enters Heaven but through me” is being rewritten into the more inclusive, “Hey, man, you want to believe in me? That’s cool. But I’m just one of many ways, dude. Take your pick. I’m easy, brother.”
I don’t want to denigrate their religion just as I don’t want to denigrate more, um, textually-faithful versions of Christianity. I will say though that I think there’s an inherent amount of exclusionary rhetoric in all religions, and if you stop trying to be exclusionary, you’re really not providing much of an incentive for folks to come to your churches. If the Episcopaleans now believe (I don’t know this) that Christ is just one of a large number of possible ways to get into Heaven, well, then I guess I can just blow off religion entirely and hope I make it through in one of those less-demanding alternative-admissions programs.
My SAT’s were really high. Maybe that’ll do the trick.
But, getting back to that whole excusionary Jesus Saves thing: We seem to have an awful lot of people who don’t believe in Hell, and think Christianity is bunkum for the retarded, but who are neverthelss going apeshit crazy that people they think are deluded believe they’re going to a place they don’t believe exists.
Makes sense to you? Not to me.
Then just for fun Ace includes some amusing Seinfeld video on this topic – Elaine has a “Christian” boyfriend. No way, after seeing the video, can I refer to that character as a Christian without the scare quotes. But the video is pretty funny.
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