Global Warming

AP: Skeptic finds he now agrees global warming is real

I'm not gonna guess on the causes. I would take global warming deniers seriously, but they always got an agenda. Notice how people who deny global warming always drive SUVs or other gas-guzzlers?

Not that the global warming believers are much better. They got an agenda too. They use global warming to push people around.

Me? I believe the climate's changing. No way around it. The past two years in Mississippi have been crazy. We've had some of our hottest and coldest temperatures in years. I can take people seriously when they say it's a natural change, but I can't take them seriously when they say it's not changing. It is.

Here's a long three-part article, Global Warming Ethics by Jack Marshall. It says everyone's wrong. It's great. Read all three parts. They don't link to each other, so bookmark them all. Or bookmark this page!
Part 1: Convenient Misrepresentations
Part 2: The Offset Illusion
Part 3: Ideology and Bias

Why I Love Mississippi

If you live in Mississippi you see news articles all the time about how horrible it is to be here. Here's an example:

NEW YORK (Routers) - A new study shows that a higher percentage of people in Mississippi watch "Jersey Shore" than in any other state. "This proves that Mississippi sucks at everything," said one distinguished scientist. "If you're from Mississippi, kill yourself. You're trapped. Nobody will take you seriously - I know I won't. We had this one scientist here from Mississippi, and we all made fun of him so much that he quit and got a job at McDonald's. Serves him right."

Of course that scientist has never been to Mississippi, but he's an "expert" anyway. We got our share of problems, but I like it here. Would I live somewhere else? Probably, but Mississippi will always be part of me.

I love how we're proud of how uncomfortable summer (May 15-October 15) is. We may panic at an inch of snow, but we're PROUD of our 100-degree summers with high humidity! We can handle it, and YOU can't! Because we have air conditioning everywhere.

I love how green everything is in summer. I'm colorblind and most greens look dull, but not Mississippi summer green. It's so bright it looks like computer animation.

I love our normal winters. Kind of cold but not *too* cold. We think 10 degrees is the coldest temperature known to mankind.

I love how most of the state, with a few exceptions, is down on itself. This ain't Texas. We don't have big egos.

I love how we never do anything halfway. If we're good at something we're THE BEST. If we're bad at something we're THE WORST. No mediocrity in Mississippi.

I love our stupid college rivalry between two schools who usually suck at football. If one's good at football the other one never is. Speaking of which...

I love the fact we got the best college in the world, Ole Miss. Too bad we also got Mississippi State.

I love how even the girliest girls here love football as much as the guys.

I love getting on the freeway and going 5 under the speed limit in the right lane and people are fine with that.

I love the fact people don't get mad if you don't drink.

I love how when every other state picks on us, we pick on... Arkansas. Don't ask me why.

I love that we rejected the Arizona immigration law other states passed. There may be anti-Hispanic prejudice here, but it's less than other parts of the country such as Alabama.

I love that we have more African-American elected officials per capita than any other state - makes sense because we got more African-Americans per capita than any other state.

I love how we remember our history - we've moved past the 1960s because we remember them. A long time ago I read about an Orson Scott Card story where one group had murdered a bunch of people or something else horrible. Their punishment was they had to tell everyone what they did, and their descendents had to say what their ancestors did. This is what goes on here. Some people say it's in the past and we need to forget and move on. We'll never move on if we don't remember our past mistakes and avoid them.

We can stand to change on a lot of things. Our legacy of racism will haunt us forever. We've done a lot to overcome it, but there's still more work to do. We got in the news for blatant homophobia last year. We got a high poverty rate. Our economy is horrible now. But I love Mississippi anyway. If you don't live here you won't understand.

Political Correctness

Ever notice how the only people who bitch about political correctness are white? "Political correctness" is supposed to be some vast conspiracy to make people care about other people who are not like them. I don't get it. Nobody says they're politically correct. When people say they're politically incorrect, it's always an excuse to trash people. Listen. There is nothing edgy or rebellious about being "politically incorrect". When you say "I'm not PC! Racial epithet! Racial epithet!" it tells me you're an asshole, definitely white and straight, probably male, Protestant, able-bodied, etc. Do you want to give out that much info about yourself online? I could steal your identity.

Of course, you get the odd person who defends political correctness. Like The Angry Black Woman. She, of course, is black, female, and lesbian, so she benefits a lot from political correctness. It's still a good essay. She says a lot nicer than I would,

I feel that Political Correctness promotes tolerance because it forces people to think about what they say and who they are saying it to. It seems to me (and I could be wrong) that people who rail against Politically Correct speech are those who do not want to have to be polite or civil to folks different from them.

Hallelujah. Most political correctness is about respect. Being in three minority groups at once means you face a ton of prejudice. I'll never know what it's like because I'm in all the majority groups. Most people like me don't care about anyone else. If you care about other people, it makes you too "good", and if you're "gooder" than everyone else, Real Men can hurt you with impunity. This is the hell we live in, folks. As a straight white male Christian etc., I have a special duty to not be an asshole.

My complaint about political correctness is it doesn't go far enough. It only protects people the Democrats like. I've heard "politically correct" people say complete bullshit about Mormons. Conservative blogger Ed Driscoll says poor white people are safe targets because they're white. I've seen people say - seriously - it's okay to hate one group because all their members hate another group. The groups vary. People hate people who are different from them. People hate people who don't fit into their world view.

Rolling R's

Some speech sounds are harder to master than others. I've wrestled with Spanish for years and I've never been able to do "rr". Linguists call this an "alveolar trill". It's also in Italian, Russian, and a bunch of other languages. The single "r" is fine but "rr" always gives me problems. Any time I try to do one I get some other sound, more like the "ll" from Welsh. Fortunately, Spanish speakers can understand.

NOT! Do you know how you hear lisps? That's how they hear it. Either they ignore you or they make fun of you. They don't help you. It's a common speech impediment. I don't know if it's genetic or if I'm not used to it. I can make lots of other sounds easily. The French/German "r", a "uvular trill", is real easy for me. I use it when I "speak" Spanish because it sort of sounds like the Spanish "rr". I want to learn the "right" sound someday. Most instructions for learning it make no sense. I may have to accept that I have a Spanish lisp. But I don't know anyone who learned English as a second language who talks like a native. No matter how fluent they are, they sound foreign.

It's ridiculous that I can do the Dutch "g", Welsh "ll", Italian "gli", etc. but not a sound that's common in lots of languages. I don't find any German sounds hard, including their R, their umlaut vowels, or their "ch" sounds. There are other sounds I don't know how to do but they're not in languages I encounter every day.

I read somewhere that most people can do the Spanish/Italian one or the French/German one easily, but not both. I also found out there's a disorder called Ankyloglossia where the tongue is tied to the floor of the mouth. I may have this. I can barely stick my tongue out.

The "th" sounds in English are very hard to learn. (1, 2) They were the last sounds I learned. A lot of foreign speakers use "s" or "f". Some dialects use "s", "f", or "t" for "th". Thankfully, they're rare in other languages.

Linguists call the English "r" an "alveolar approximant". It's only in a few other languages. Here is a list of R sounds in different languages.

One and a Half Cheers for the Southern Poverty Law Center

Southern Poverty Law Center

Sometimes I look around the SPLC web site. Most of their work impresses me. Wikipedia has a long list of civil rights cases they've won. They fight for all kinds of groups. They've made the USA a better place by forcing some places to integrate. They're fighting against the horrible Arizona/Alabama laws that hurt our Hispanic citizens - that law didn't pass in Mississippi. Plus it's fun in a weird way reading their profiles of hate groups and seeing how pathetic they are. They recognize that anybody can be hateful - not all the profiles of racist groups are white racists. There's a few black racists in there too.

But, there's a dark side. They've written before how they think free speech should be restricted. (Link) I'm against hate speech, but outlawing it is a good way to get people interested. That's how human nature works. Plus, the SPLC is liberal to a fault - they think if you don't support Obama, you're a racist sexist homophobe. They think all conservatives, libertarians, etc. are extreme radicals and that liberals can't have any faults. On gay rights, I can understand that position, but they think all Republicans are racist. (Does that make Thomas Sowell, Herman Cain, etc. self-hating black people?)

So, one and a half cheers for the SPLC. I respect them a lot altho I disagree with them some.

EDIT: Sourcewatch has a mostly critical article on the SPLC.