Thursday, April 23, 2015

SAR #15113




Speculation: Danish lawmakers voted 91 to 75 to outlaw sex with animals. I assume it was a secret ballot.

Investment Alert: Scientists say we must leave at least 75% of the world's known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, or fry, that we must reduce our fossil fuel use to zero in the next 35 years. Zero means no coal or gas fired electrical generation. Zero means no gasoline or deisel based cars and trucks. Zero means sailing ships – no containerized behemoths. Think it's gonna happen? In the next 35 years? Voluntarily? A tough choice, but my money's on fry. 
 
Optimists: Pundits now are worried that privacy “could be a meaningless concept in 10 years.” Or less, much less. It's so yesterday.

End of Several Eras: The idea of the university, and with it the concept of a liberal eductation, cannot survive the insults of globalization. 
 
Master Class: House and Senate Republicans are offering to let the public watch them, working with a net from the rich, slash programs for the poor and moderate income households by 40 percent – stuff like food stamps, college loans and so on. They will not attempt the more difficult task of cutting the $1 trillion in annual tax breaks for the top 20%. This is on top of their brave abolishment of the hated death tax estate tax that the richest 5,500 families face. Sure that's another $20 billion a year you and yours will have to come up with, but it's worth it to support the ultra rich in the manner they insist on. Remember, if you're not leaving more than $5.5 million to the kids, you don't pay federal estate taxes.

Place Your Bets: Dr. Oz, "I will not be silenced."

You Want Fired With That? Popeye's has fired a shift manager because she would not (and most likely could not) pay back the money an armed robber got away with while she was in charge. Boycotting is a good idea, wonder why I didn't think of that...

Memories: The Dogwood Debutante Ball in Knoxville, TN is open to young women who are college sophomores, unmarried, and white. 
 
Thought Experiment: Given our Constitution guarantees of freedom of speech, can I say “Killing all the Jews would please God”? Could I put up a sign on my front lawn with that message? Can I pay the local transit company its going rate and plaster my sign on buses and in subway cars? Why not?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Danish no pork - assume this means right wing parties will either go extinct, or membership will be proof of the crime.

Removing Carbonized Meat From The Grill -- This technique will not work now. We've dug out the carbon that was deep, while ignoring all the carbon that is shallow, the 10/30 meter deep 200/300 kM wide swath of permafrost going across Alaska, Canada & Russia. That's already started to kick in, so going to zero emissions this year would be too late. The idea that we're going to start cooking in 50 years time and it will get damn hot in 100 is way off too. None of those well published calculations include gassing off of the permafrost. My rough estimates is we've got less than 20 years before all the ice is gone, and when that water hits the lower level permafrost, it will really kick off a storm of methane & carbon emissions. That's of course ignoring the methane boiling up out of the oceans since I can't estimate how much of that is out there.

Thought Experiment: I guess this means we can shout "Fire" in a crowded theater now. So much for judicial president.

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Sorry to be so late back from the dance... You are, I suspect, closer to being right about the objects in the windshield being much closer than the conservative IPCC will admit.

Rather perversely,, I rather hope to live to see some of the abrupt changes as they occur & fully believe I may with the next 15 to 20 years..

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

actuarially speaking, i may yet have another twenty years on my subscription to life's rich pageant

i know not what the future holds of wonder or surprise - but a significant reduction in global standard of living, or even global population, seems not too unlikely

but whatever happens, this is the future - you got to live it, or live with it, or get out of the way

Anonymous said...

Hey, surprised the Danish news made your list today. I'm afraid I'm one of those vile people now outlawed. The ones where they couldn't prove any harm to the animal(they actually admit that), couldn't provide any proof of the "brothels" they claimed were there, overruled their own ethics council, AND the vet council who didn't like the law. this law effects 4-8% of the Danish population is the studies on human sexuality are to be believed(Kinsey and later studies).

So yea, a fair shake at "good lawmaking" I guess. Find someone no one would defend, and attack them. I'm soooo happy with all of Europe's problems that animals are so much safer, like in Spain where recently you can no longer love a cow, but stabbing it repeatedly with swords and spears is okay and great public display. Or how about cock and dog fighting, those are okay too, the bans removed from the same bill that outlawed sex with animals to "protect the animals".

To dissuade some of the name calling, I'm of above average intelligence, professional, working in a safety critical field, born in a city, have a lot of friends and have kept a wife for 20 years. I have no secrets from those friends and my wife and they judge me sane. My therapist, who I saw for depression which I've had for decades, informed me that she saw no reason to treat anything related to my zoophilia, which is the normal stance PhD psychologists are taking now.

I have great passion for life and this particular topic as you might note, and it is disheartening to see otherwise intelligent people fall for what is a set of lies generated by a "twitter storm" from a shady bunch of Anonymous wannabes. See #OpNullDenmark and then ask yourself if anything they said was actually sourced. The people they quote have come right out and said in a VICE documentary they would say anything to get the laws changed.

It makes me wonder if the libertarian's have it right. It is a shame they are so caught up in the right wing.

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Well, as long as the interspecies sex is consensual, no harm, no fowl.

And I seriously wonder if the libertarians have ever gotten even one thing right...