D'kian Posted July 3, 2009 Report Share Posted July 3, 2009 I suppose you're all familiar with the joke/hoax about Dihydrogen Monoxide. One goes on to describe it in horrible terms (it rusts metal, it's used as an industrial solvent, it's found on cancerous cells and tumors) and then one demands it be banned forever from all consumer products, removed from every last square inch of the planet and so on. Of course Dihydrogen Monoxide is an accurate, but not correct, way to say "water" (which does rust metal, is an industrial solvent and is found on cancerous cells; in healthy cells as well). It's an old joke/hoax, but it has prompted the clueless to sign petitions urging government to ban water. So I wonder, can we do the exact opposite for another compound? Let's see, we begin by lisitng all the wonderful thigns it can do: It helps plants grow, in fact plants die if it's not present. It can put out fires all by itself It adds sensory enhancement to certain drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic It's used in the manufacture of many useful chemicals, such as carblic acid. It exists freely in nature and it's easy and heap to obtain. This would be followed by claims the government wants you to do without it. Aything else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Space Patroller Posted July 3, 2009 Report Share Posted July 3, 2009 I suppose you're all familiar with the joke/hoax about Dihydrogen Monoxide. One goes on to describe it in horrible terms (it rusts metal, it's used as an industrial solvent, it's found on cancerous cells and tumors) and then one demands it be banned forever from all consumer products, removed from every last square inch of the planet and so on. Of course Dihydrogen Monoxide is an accurate, but not correct, way to say "water" (which does rust metal, is an industrial solvent and is found on cancerous cells; in healthy cells as well). It's an old joke/hoax, but it has prompted the clueless to sign petitions urging government to ban water. So I wonder, can we do the exact opposite for another compound? Let's see, we begin by lisitng all the wonderful thigns it can do: It helps plants grow, in fact plants die if it's not present. It can put out fires all by itself It adds sensory enhancement to certain drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic It's used in the manufacture of many useful chemicals, such as carblic acid. It exists freely in nature and it's easy and heap to obtain. This would be followed by claims the government wants you to do without it. Aything else? Are you kidding? Do you know how HARMFUL that stuff is. If you breath it it will kill you faster than Carbon Monixide Immersion causes the skin to wrinkle The gaseous state causes burns to the body Impact on the solid state can cause injury I'm sorry but now you've got me steamed up. It's not a n ice thing at all And that's just for starters. The EPA oughta have an emergency program to remove it at whatever cost and don't let those damn Replicans water down the effort Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D'kian Posted July 3, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 3, 2009 Are you kidding? Do you know how HARMFUL that stuff is. I think there's some part of "exact opposite" you missed BTW this wonder compound is guaranteed 100% non-poisonous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffS Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 It helps plants grow, in fact plants die if it's not present. How about, "Makes all life on this planet possible."? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D'kian Posted July 4, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 How about, "Makes all life on this planet possible."? Good one. "It's produced by all living beings." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Space Patroller Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 I think there's some part of "exact opposite" you missed Do tell. I hink it's called 180 degrees out of phase. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D'kian Posted July 4, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 There's also the matter of what to call it. I think there's an outdated term for non-metallic oxides, but I haven't found it yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John McVey Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 SP is right. I wouldn't be so quick to get a bandwagon going on this one. CO2 isn't as benign as H2O. The harms caused by it as a substance aren't the kind of major stretch that had to be done to get the DHMO scare up and running. An exact-opposite campaign would be a flop for that reason, and just make those who use it look unscientific. It helps plants grow, in fact plants die if it's not present. Growing concentrations of CO2 in water will acidify that water, and cause havoc for plant life. Soda water is corrosive. It can put out fires all by itself There are substances that are more reactive than carbon. If they catch fire then they can strip the oxygen out of CO2 and thus burn - magnesium is a classic for this, for instance. Therefore directing a stream of concentrated CO2 at some fires will make them worse because you're giving them a source of oxidiser at high doses. It's used in the manufacture of many useful chemicals, such as carblic acid. True, but its not a good tactic to raise this in today's day and age. DuPont felt the need to ditch "through chemistry" from its slogan for a reason. It exists freely in nature and it's easy and heap to obtain. That is context-dependent. In nature it is neither as common as you think - air concentration is a mere 0.04%, twenty times less than argon - nor is it cheap to extract useable samples. Seen the price of a CO2-extinguisher refill, lately? It is possible to get it in bulk industrially, but that will be contaminated with other stuff (eg SO2) that requires expensive scrubbing to clean to get to say food-grade standards. BTW this wonder compound is guaranteed 100% non-poisonous. Again, SP is correct. If the concentration in the air exceeds some level (just a few %) then the same thing as per plants above applies. In this case the CO2 will dissolve in your blood-stream and acidify it beyond the pH regulatory system's ability to compensate for. Result = painful death. That, for instance, was why they were so anxious to get the CO2 scrubbers functional on Apollo 13, not simply concern for the oxygen levels. This also means be wary of using CO2 extinguishers in enclosed spaces. JJM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Space Patroller Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 SP is right. I wouldn't be so quick to get a bandwagon going on this one. CO2 isn't as benign as H2O. The harms caused by it as a substance aren't the kind of major stretch that had to be done to get the DHMO scare up and running. An exact-opposite campaign would be a flop for that reason, and just make those who use it look unscientific. Growing concentrations of CO2 in water will acidify that water, and cause havoc for plant life. Soda water is corrosive. There are substances that are more reactive than carbon. If they catch fire then they can strip the oxygen out of CO2 and thus burn - magnesium is a classic for this, for instance. Therefore directing a stream of concentrated CO2 at some fires will make them worse because you're giving them a source of oxidiser at high doses. True, but its not a good tactic to raise this in today's day and age. DuPont felt the need to ditch "through chemistry" from its slogan for a reason. That is context-dependent. In nature it is neither as common as you think - air concentration is a mere 0.04%, twenty times less than argon - nor is it cheap to extract useable samples. Seen the price of a CO2-extinguisher refill, lately? It is possible to get it in bulk industrially, but that will be contaminated with other stuff (eg SO2) that requires expensive scrubbing to clean to get to say food-grade standards. Again, SP is correct. If the concentration in the air exceeds some level (just a few %) then the same thing as per plants above applies. In this case the CO2 will dissolve in your blood-stream and acidify it beyond the pH regulatory system's ability to compensate for. Result = painful death. That, for instance, was why they were so anxious to get the CO2 scrubbers functional on Apollo 13, not simply concern for the oxygen levels. This also means be wary of using CO2 extinguishers in enclosed spaces. JJM I was just making fun of the eco's In fact Pure Oxygen is dangerous in the form of O1. The kind of distorted thinking I was demonstrating is what you get when you allow nutbaggery to continue unchecked and allow the fraudulent to go free after committing the fraud. People, implicitly but unknowingly using the Objectivist idea of the mission of government; barring fraud, figure "since they're not being put away, what they're saying must be true". After that the mechanism of the Big LIe cuts in and people end up buying into the fraud. When I was a kid, if someone lied, they were silenced and a price was exacted. That was normal and a deterrent. An advanced, free society depends on the integrity of its information stream. Because of division of labor, we can't all be oceanographers, atmospheric scientists or vulcanologists and even these specialties don't overlap in the same person. It's the job of the media to both disseminate what is true and quash what is false. When it fails to do so, it's the job of government to step in, if for no other reason than to prevent hysteria. In the case of the eco's their falsehoods have been understood for decades whetheri it's global warming, acid rain, high-tension lines, CFC's PCB's DDT: All of it. What I did was a parody of what you would see in an eco campaign. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John McVey Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 What I did was a parody of what you would see in an eco campaign. Irrelevant. Their campaigns work because there is a backdrop of plausibility to them. Leaving aside the issue of what exactly is the point of this CO2 campaign, it wont work as a parody because the plausibility of the harms is higher and the impact of the claims is lower than applied to water. A campaign that overlooks this is going to make the campaigners look, to the educated, like cracker-barrel twits from fly-over country making fun of what they don't understand, and, to the uneducated, apt to lead them into harm's way for real if they took it seriously. JJM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffS Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 A campaign that overlooks this is going to make the campaigners look, to the educated, like cracker-barrel twits from fly-over country making fun of what they don't understand, Isn't that kinda' the point though? Or, at least to expose those who would endorse such a campaign as the "cracker-barrel twits" they are. Those who endorse these campaigns do so because it "sounds good." They either do no research, or ignore what research they have. They ignore the sage advice of "everything in moderation" and jump straight to either the government needs to use its guns to completely ban this "bad" thing, or it needs to use its guns to force everyone to make more of this "good" thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capitalism Forever Posted July 4, 2009 Report Share Posted July 4, 2009 Aything else? Helps plants grow faster and using less water, making our Earth greener and saving our most precious resource. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tito Posted July 5, 2009 Report Share Posted July 5, 2009 If your objective is to have a laugh, maybe this is the campaign for you. As I'm sure everyone here is aware, if your objective is to persuade - it must be done on a much more fundamental level. Pick your battles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John McVey Posted July 5, 2009 Report Share Posted July 5, 2009 My point is that both the humour and polemic value of using CO2 in this fashion is minimal. The problems associated with CO2 are too real for a campaign to get more than ten feet before being slapped down by the viros in a manner that is plausible to ordinary people. Consider the claim that CO2 is 100% safe. That sort of claim, if taken seriously by say a student of scuba diving or the parent of one, can get people killed. Some joke. If you try to make humour out of this sort of thing then the viros will have a goddamn field-day with you. JJM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Space Patroller Posted July 5, 2009 Report Share Posted July 5, 2009 If your objective is to have a laugh, maybe this is the campaign for you. As I'm sure everyone here is aware, if your objective is to persuade - it must be done on a much more fundamental level. Pick your battles. Actually, you do both. Satire has been a useful tool since the days of Jonathan Swift. Nothing sticks a pin in and lets the air out of a pompous ass like derisive laughter and nothing does that better than showing what an ass the pompouse ass is. "...then the law is a ass" has done a greater job to discredit legalism than 1,000 treatises which are over most persons' heads anyway Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Space Patroller Posted July 5, 2009 Report Share Posted July 5, 2009 My point is that both the humour and polemic value of using CO2 in this fashion is minimal. The problems associated with CO2 are too real for a campaign to get more than ten feet before being slapped down by the viros in a manner that is plausible to ordinary people. Then you might as well surrender and get it over with. Consider the claim that CO2 is 100% safe. That sort of claim, if taken seriously by say a student of scuba diving or the parent of one, can get people killed. Some joke. If you try to make humour out of this sort of thing then the viros will have a goddamn field-day with you. Anything can be strung out to such a level of remoteness that it can be the cause of destroying the world in 20 minutes. That's what contextualization is all about. The fact is that a satirical campaign is, in this case, a mimic of the opposition to show what a bunch of dopes or how dishonest they are. Satire is part of a larger campaign just as artillary is part of a military campaign or sappers are part of siege warfare. You cannot reason with eco's, the've shown that over the last 4 decades. When Rand was confronted with the unreasonable, she would talk by them. Well the same is true of eco's. You use satire (amongst other techniques) to label and dismiss them and you use other techniques like information dissemination to displace the lies or kookdom with the facts. They've been peddling global warming for 20 years and have been unable to lock it up. As proof, they have retreated to "climate change" which shows a crack. It's time for them to go. My uncle could deflate a person in about two seconds. He'd just refer to them as "Professor Hot-Ass ["You're a real Professor Hot-Ass; you are" in a mocking voice]" bringing up the image of the classic lunatic "scientist" with some bizarre obsession. In fact the whole liberals' universe is starting to look like Bizzarro World. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D'kian Posted July 5, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 5, 2009 Consider the claim that CO2 is 100% safe. That sort of claim, if taken seriously by say a student of scuba diving or the parent of one, can get people killed. The claim is our nameless chemical (I never said CO2, BTW) is 100% non-poisonous, not 100% safe. Of course it's not 100% safe. If you allow too much of it to displace oxygen you'll die of oxygen starvation. But that's true of other inert chemicals like He or N2. Nothing is 100% safe. Anything at all can kill you in the right (or wrong) conditions. You can drown in a puddle of water, you know. That's no reason to ban water, or fine people who allow puddles to form on their property. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tito Posted July 6, 2009 Report Share Posted July 6, 2009 Actually, you do both. Satire has been a useful tool since the days of Jonathan Swift. Nothing sticks a pin in and lets the air out of a pompous ass like derisive laughter and nothing does that better than showing what an ass the pompouse ass is. "...then the law is a ass" has done a greater job to discredit legalism than 1,000 treatises which are over most persons' heads anyway Jokes don't change minds. Unless you count the argument from intimidation as convincing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capitalism Forever Posted July 6, 2009 Report Share Posted July 6, 2009 Jokes don't change minds. What makes you think so? A joke can be used to convey an idea, and ideas can change minds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Space Patroller Posted July 7, 2009 Report Share Posted July 7, 2009 (edited) Jokes don't change minds. Unless you count the argument from intimidation as convincing. They expose the foolishness of their target: Read "A Modest Proposal" or TARTUFFE: THE GREAT IMPOSTOR. The minute someone says "... Yeah, they are like that" it starts to penetrate. Satire does not occur in a vacuum. I did say it's "... part of a larger camaign". In c1970 MAD magazine's David Berg used to do "the Lighter Side Of..." feature. ONe month it was "Ecology" and the person was moaning the fate of bugs and things and ess told that the things he proposed was harmful to persons and he said "Oh. I don't care about people" after putting on a display of concern for seemingly every living or quasi-living thing on the planet. That struck a chord with everyone who wasn't a screaming lefty (and their reactions were like Landru or Nomad when Kirk got at them) that I showed it to. Edited July 7, 2009 by Space Patroller Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John McVey Posted July 7, 2009 Report Share Posted July 7, 2009 Okay, I've made my point and it's just being consistently not understood. I don't support a campaign in this manner, so I am leaving it at that. JJM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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