Inspector
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Posts posted by Inspector
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Is this irrational?
Don't be silly. If you like it that much, it's hardly going to be terrible enough to be worth giving up. Also don't listen to the overblown nonsense that the food Nazis put out about soda. Here, have a read of this.
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I'm really sorry to hear your father is a dumbass who doesn't understand what love is. You could always get loans and scholarships.
I don't think love is what the man doesn't understand - I think psychology is what he doesn't understand: as in, there is no magic way to snap one's fingers and not be gay. (the failed Stan Marsh method if you will)
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Aside from that, the Phoenix area is nice if you can bear heat and heavy trafic.
It is nice, if you like your weather sunny and dry (which I very much do). If you don't, you may find Seattle appealing - personally I find that depressing and I'm not alone, if you check the suicide statistics for Seattle (they're somewhat high). But some people I've met find it beautiful so it depends on the individual.
As for Phoenix, while the traffic can be heavy in places, it's not nearly as bad as Chicago or LA.
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I'd have said that Illinois, California, New York City, and DC are right out on account of the gun laws leaving the citizen completely stripped of his right to carry. But recent developments may change that (I'm not holding my breath).
So that aside, I'd still say California is ridiculously expensive and also subject to nonsensical laws (which were what made it so expensive). New York is nearly as bad in terms of expense and the onerous government which caused it. Even outside the city, you are still subject to the problems caused by its government. (I've heard it described as a "money vortex" which sucks the rest of the state dry) Most of the East Coast from DC up is the same way, with some small notable exceptions.
From the sound if it, you'd probably also want to eliminate states which don't have a lot of development. Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska and so forth. Utah's full of Mormons, who although polite folk as individuals make collectively for a strange government best avoided. I'd also steer clear of run down areas like Detroit, Gary, St Louis, and the like.
It may help to get a map.
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Aequalsa, I believe this adds nicely to your point.
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Yeah, I uhh.... made a thread about it awhile ago.
Yes I saw what you did there. Good show.
I don't think this guy thinks so much as he follows the "popular" opinions of others.Heh. Perhaps "think" is too strong a word.
Is there anyone reading this who would disagree with this statement in any way?Not I. Repeal the lot.
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almost without exception most [politicians] I have known were truly dedicated to public service and doing what they thought was right.
...And "what they think is right" is environmentalism, so there you go.
The reason that, despite the money and all other factors you list, companies are unable to defend themselves against the power of environmental groups is that nobody (except Objectivists) is offering a moral counter-argument to environmentalism. Environmentalism is not opposed in principle and its core premises are neither denounced nor even identified. It is caved into slowly and incrementally.
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Another thing is that, like it's already been mentioned, businessed find a way to benefit from the environmental movement. There is a lot of marketing going on to convince people to buy there products because they are green. Or they benefit from zoning off land to "protect the environment" because it drives up real estate prices in the area.
Or, like was mentioned earlier, it was a manufacturer of CFL's that lobbied to ban incandescents. Businesses are more than happy to lobby for principles that undermine their very right to exist, if they think they can find some pragmatic, range-of-the-moment gain by which they can club their competition over the head via government action.
This is not new. Look at the history of business regulations - it's pretty much always been like this.
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The working assumption here appears to be that policy makers are all mushy-headed bleeding hearts. Maybe so, but I don't find this a compelling argument to say "Well, their judgment is clouded by emotion." This may be true for children or the average working man. But I mean, I can't picture Carl Levin is sitting in his office in Washington fretting about bunnies.
Mr. Levin may or may not be a bleeding heart emotionalist. But who do you think votes for Levin? And don't you think he knows it?
On a side note:
This may be true for children or the average working man.Ah, but you repeat yourself.
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If it weren't for the wackos, and also myriad other evils, we wouldn't even be having this discussion...
So completely true. So much analysis of this topic only looks one or two moves apart from our current situation. Very few look at how fundamentally the greens and government have created this problem and how completely non-existent it would be in their absence.
Think $0.25 per gallon gas or similar. Ah, but then imagine a non-inflated, gold-backed dollar...
Sorry I'm going to have to stop before I start getting angry at just how much has been taken from us.
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the energy density is not much higher than for the latest battery technology (500-1000 W*hr/kg v. 400+W*hr/kg).
And while the energy density of batteries does seem to be on a steady climb, I don't see how they could increase the energy density of hydrogen fuel cells. If that supposition is true, that would make hydrogen fuel cells a complete dead end.
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That thing is very seriously addictive.
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What if abusiveness is some sort of strange value for an individual.The Objectivist ethics rightly condemns the puppy-owner who tortures and kills puppies for the sake of torturing and killing puppies, not for what he does to the puppies, but for the fact that he finds what he does to puppies pleasurable or beneficial or something worth doing. Objectivist ethics condemns anyone who destroys for the sake of destroying.
~Q
That is really the key to understanding the Objectivist ethics, as opposed to merely the political principle that men must be free to do that which does not violate rights. Ethics speak to right or wrong, and the Objectivist ethics speak to what is good or bad for man qua man - i.e. man as a rational being.
Ethically speaking, you can and must judge whether actions are rational or irrational - good for the life of a rational man or bad. Proper law makes a clear line at what irrationalities it may intervene in and which it must let alone with the concept of rights but that is by no means the dividing line for ethics.
So is the act of torturing puppies because one gets pleasure from torture good or bad for the life of a rational man? Leaving puppies entirely out of the question, one might simply ask: is getting pleasure from torture for its own sake good or bad? You don't need animals at all to ask or to answer that question. Obviously it's bad - it represents downright insanity, which as you described almost certainly means that his emotional wiring is all kinds of messed up and he would be something that rational men would want nothing to do with at all. They would condemn him and watch him like a hawk. This would apply whether he was doing it to dogs, insects, or robots. It's not a question at all of the rights of his property (animals have no rights), but instead a question of the man's mentality. Which as I said is simply sick and dangerous.
But there would be no basis, morally or legally, for taking away his property. That would be a greater evil - the formerly righteous would themselves become the violators of rights. Kind of a "don't sink to that creep's level" thing.
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I find that it does at well, but if there is confusion, Rand began it because Dominique refers to the episode, after the fact, as a rape.
Dominique was not being honest and/or correct in that statement. I was under the impression, however, that you on the other hand were looking to be honest and correct.
So once again I think it is inappropriate to not use scare quotes. And what would best help her case would be if people who know it wasn't rape stopped referring to it as rape.
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Sure, the number 3 is much lower than the number 100, but is that all you're going on when you decide that human CO2 emissions are not impacting? I would think one could only make that argument if the amount of CO2 increase in the atmosphere due to humans was immeasurable.
Once again, I must point out that this is NOT a debate about global warming, but rather about Moose's erroneous, unscientific claims about the NON-greenhouse effects of CO2. In that context, Sophia's statement makes perfect sense as clearly showing that mankind does not even remotely threaten to increase CO2 concentrations to levels which would push out enough oxygen to make any difficulties from a breathing standpoint. As for his second claim that CO2 represents a "pollutant," I have yet to see any evidence in support of that claim. For all he knows, CO2 is like nitrogen - completely inert and harmless to man's breathing. He doesn't know that it is a "pollutant" at all, and yet he saw fit to claim that it was.
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This affair, and the rape scene in The Fountainhead are...
I find it causes a bit of confusion to refer to it as a rape scene as opposed to a "rape" scene. Because it was not in fact a rape.
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Adding to the original post, one has to bear in mind that the conquests of Nazi Germany were all poor countries which were crippled by the Great Depression and hampered by a stark Pacifism. Not only that, but most of Europe had suffered greatly from the devastation wrought by the First World War - something they hadn't even recovered from when the Depression hit. And many of the countries under their domain had joined up via coup and not military conquest. Great Britain, one of their few formidable enemies, was nearly as economically depressed as the continent and was fighting a 16+ front war. And they also trounced Germany in the Battle of Britain despite being very much unprepared.
Really, to say that they had conquered Europe - put in the historical context of the time - wasn't saying much at all. Indeed the supposed strength of the Nazis is largely mythological in nature.
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It's telling you to ramp up your CO2 output and giving you suggestions on how to do it
And for what purpose does it say? Enjoyment. But then the whole point of it is based on the idea that CO2 is harmless - something you say you don't believe.
Suit yourself, but I make my own decisions and won't be ordered about like some rat in a BF Skinner experiment.I don't need an order to produce carbon. I was already planning on it, thank you.
You know, on the subject of nihilism, the nihilism that I see here is the idea that simple enjoyment of technology and energy is something to be considered suspect and scrutinized so heavily. That's nihilism.
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I agree with Moose in that expressing a certainty that global warming is a hoax, fraud, etc. is silly;
Ah, but that is not actually the point Moose is making - it is only the point that he has tried to shift the debate to. My original statement - my statement of certainty - had nothing at all to do with global warming. What I was dismissing with certainty in this thread is Moose's own, completely separate claims about CO2's effects apart from global warming.
If you are going out of your way to produce CO2 that you otherwise wouldn't, which seems to be the point, then it isn't about you, its about sticking it to the enviros.What about the multiple quotes I provided which all state they they are encouraging you to enjoy yourself guiltlessly? There is a difference between a day where you are encouraged to feast and enjoy yourself over a barbecue and, say, encouraging people to go out and burn cans of gas in their backyards for no reason. All of the examples provided in quotes fall into the former category and not the latter.
What I see in this day is the simple encouragement of guilt-free enjoyment. Because there is nothing to be guilty about.
I think this paranoia about simple and guilt-free enjoyment of life is the product of decades of propaganda from the environmentalists about "waste" - as if things like disposable products which save men time and effort were "wasteful" - to the contrary, it would be wasteful to spend the precious and irreplaceable time of our lives cleaning and reusing or recycling what could be cheaply discarded. Some people just can't wrap their heads around the idea of just having a good time without going out of their way to look for something "wasteful" to be guilty about.
Me, I will fire up my barbecue grill and my muscle car and have a grand old time - and not just on one day of the year, either. And no, I won't wonder or worry if I'm being "wasteful" or if I'm "producing CO2 that I otherwise wouldn't."
Call me a nihilist if you like. I'll have plenty of colorful things to call you in return.
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Let's just make that view clear then - the view that Moose will not retract or disavow:
Regardless of whether or not CO2 is going to cause a catastrophe for the planet earth, large amounts of it are bad for the air and it is nihilistic to combat the environmentalists by purposely polluting the air.CO2 in large amounts - implicitly amounts that humans are capable of producing* - are "bad for the air" regardless of whether global warming is real or not (scientific claim) and constitute "polluting the air," which means that CO2 is "pollution" (also a scientific claim).
He is perfectly fine to make those claims about science, but anyone who opposes them is overstepping the bounds of their possible scientific knowledge. I am in fact "full of shit" for doing so.
Furthermore, he conflates his claim about the non-greenhouse effects of CO2 with the greenhouse claims about CO2 popularized by the media. He does this in his statements all over the thread, including here:
My problem is with the way that he presents his opinion as though it is the obvious, uncontroversial truth about the subject. If it were that cut and dried, then the debate would look more or less like the Creation/Evolution debate, in which one side is routinely laughed at by the other. This debate isn't resolved to nearly that level. If anything, it is Inspector's side that is the subject of ridicule more often than not."Sides?" This of course refers to the debate about global warming, which is not at all what Moose is claiming. Yes he attempts to gain the mantle of one of the sides of that debate for his own, completely unrelated, claims about CO2.
This is the view which Moose has made known, and as you can see above he stands by it and refuses to retract his claims about the science of CO2.
*despite his later backpedaling, it is inherent in the statement, since if he wasn't referring to the level mankind is capable of producing, then it renders his argument completely meaningless.
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Surely you won't deny that there exists a potential level of CO2 that would be quite harmful to life on this planet. This isn't really even a scientific claim so much as it's common sense.
Of course. An atmosphere of 90% CO2 for example would by definition contain less oxygen and therefore would be unbreathable. Not because the CO2 itself would be a harmful or toxic "pollutant" as you claimed, but simply because there wouldn't be enough of a concentration of oxygen - the molecules of which having presumably been converted to CO2.
Maybe it is in our current capability to produce this level...maybe not.No, not "maybe." I know with certainty that it is not in our current or even anywhere-remotely-in-the-future capability to produce this level of CO2. I can make that statement with the certainty that irritates you so much. Sophia gave the relevant facts already by which this might be known.
But none of this should distract from the fact that Moose attempted several times throughout the thread to conflate the important differences between his claim and those of the global warmingists. (i.e. saying that because of the ubiquity of the GW claims, that therefore I have no business denouncing his, entirely different claim so summarily) Since it is clear now that he knows the difference between his claim and theirs, then he is clearly responsible for the fact that he conflated the two. Whether this is deliberate dishonesty or simply gross intellectual sloppiness I leave to the reader, but that should give an idea of why I responded in the manner that I did.
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So, I do not see the reason for aggressiveness in your responses, Inspector. If education is your goal, why not just give someone the facts?
I'm happy to explain this, and all such cases if my response seems unusually aggressive.
In this case it is the fact that Moose has made a specific claim - not related to global warming - about CO2 which he will neither address nor retract. He keeps ignoring it and/or changing the subject. He keeps insisting on shifting the discussion to global warming when that is not in fact what my supposedly "full of shit" claim was about. He keeps conflating the widespread claims in the scientific and journalistic communities about CO2 as a greenhouse gas with his, entirely different claim that mankind's CO2 production can create toxic or harmful concentrations from a non-greenhouse perspective.
This, Moose's, claim is an entirely different animal from global warming claims and anyone with a basic understanding of the relevant science very much can dismiss it as laughable. Furthermore, it is in fact a scientific claim - and also one which, unlike the separate issue of the greenhouse effect, has zero support from scientists. Moose for some reason won't see the difference between his claim and the one made by the global warming crowd. But they are very different claims.
Further, my responses have made this point more than clear, yet he continues to ignore, evade, or fail to comprehend them. It's like he wants to pretend that his statement and my response, which I have now highlighted three times, never happened.
The whole thing is dirty pool and I will not let him get away with it.
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I think it's you that has a reading comprehension problem. I have not made any scientific claims in here. I am not prepared to argue either side. I have only pointed out that many actual scientists would think you are full of shit and, as such, it is completely absurd for you to sit here and utter your ultimately uninformed opinions as if they are the obvious and uncontroversial truth.
Moose clearly will not read, but for everyone else's benefit, please see this post here which is itself a repeat of where I previously pointed out Moose's claim. Now I will post it up a third time, since Moose clearly does have a problem in either reading or responding to this point:
(bold mine)
Moose, this is the claim you made. That even if CO2 is not causing global warming, it is still "bad for the air." To my knowledge no scientist or publication - not even global warming believers - has made the claim that CO2 is harmful apart from the so-called "greenhouse effect."
Here, Moose is making the scientific claim that CO2 is a harmful "pollutant" apart from any greenhouse effects on global warming. When I opposed this claim of his, he saw fit to evade that and instead make an argument on the issue of global warming. Well, not so much an argument as an appeal to authority and various profanities, but this is nevertheless beside the point: he is in fact evading the actual point of discussion which I have now directly pointed out three times.
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It is beyond asinine for a non-scientist (i.e. Inspector) to sit here and claim that it isn't even "remotely possible" for man to produce enough CO2 to have adverse effects on the atmosphere.
You have an obvious reading comprehension problem as several people have noted already. I have already repeatedly highlighted your claim which was that mankind's production of CO2 would have adverse effects other than global warming. This is a scientific claim - one which you are not qualified to make and one for which you have yet to provide any evidence or scientific studies for. As Sophia noted, one look at the ppm concentrations of CO2 in order to cause harm, the current ppm concentrations, and mankind's rate of CO2 production proves my statement quite correct, scientifically. This is basic science.
You continue to frame this discussion in terms of global warming vs not, whereas your statement clearly was making a claim that CO2 was harmful apart from global warming (i.e. in terms of toxic concentrations), and this is clearly what I was addressing with my statement that it wasn't even "remotely possible" to produce enough CO2 to be harmful on a non-greenhouse-effect level.
Go ahead and keep making your ridiculously inaccurate criticisms of my posts. You are only making it clear to everyone how wrong you are.
To the others: While I appreciate the support of my position on the Global Warming Lie, that is not in fact what the debate with Moose is about at all. That's just him moving the goalposts. Go ahead and read my statement and his and see what he is actually claiming.
Pepsi
in Psychology and Self Improvement
Posted
What I mean is, unless you have some kind of unusual medical condition or drink 6+ cans a day, it really isn't so many calories that it would be worth abandoning the kind of enjoyment he describes. There are other ways to lose weight.
Besides, soda is demonized all over the place and I think it is largely overblown and used as a scapegoat for the problems which are caused by entire lifestyles of unhealthiness.