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To be skeptical of climate models and credulous about things like carbon-eating trees and cloudmaking machinery and hoses that shoot sulfur into the sky is to replace a faith in science with a belief in science fiction. This is the turn that “SuperFreakonomics” takes, even as its authors repeatedly extoll their hard-headedness. All of which goes to show that, while some forms of horseshit are no longer a problem, others will always be with us.
Posted on November 15, 2009
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We must stop her from laying her billions of Eggs and impregnating half a trillion biped species with slorpain bird beings before it is too late! Robostani D-1200, take the helm of the Bedford Battlestar One and go too full hyper drive. We have a rendezvous to complete at the Soluugon Binbithuu critical Asteroid RDO12-360 colony that is under seize by the dOvemaster before he makes another attempt to reveal the eyeyOlk.
perfectlymadebirds, “The Bedford Battlestar One is in Hot Pursuit of the Slorpain Bird Being Queen”Posted on October 30, 2009
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It could be that sometimes our greatest freedom may be to choose freedom from freedom.
Peggy Orenstein, “Going Offline in Search of Freedom”Posted on October 30, 2009
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Imagine what a dinner conversation would be like if you had decent table manners, but the ears of a lizard. Not only would you have to stop eating whenever you wanted to speak, but, because parts of your ears are now attached to your jaw, you’d have to stop eating whenever you wanted to hear anybody else, as well. With no fork action on your end, your waiter would soon conclude that you were obviously “done working on that” and would whisk your unbreached baked ziti away.
Natalie Angier, “In Mammals, a Complex Journey to the Middle Ear”Posted on October 14, 2009
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Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time….
George Orwell, “Looking Back On The Spanish War”Posted on October 4, 2009
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The sight of a watercolour would be far more transgressive.
Nick Cohen, “Why the Tate’s posing curator is so passé”Posted on October 4, 2009
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Today, the walls of Plato’s cave are so full of beamers, disco balls, plasma screens and halogen spotlights that we don’t even see the shadows on the wall.
Koert van Mensvoort, “Fake for Real”Posted on October 4, 2009
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It became increasingly clear that we were gearing up for another close encounter with militant idealism—by which I mean the convenient but dangerous redefinition of political or pragmatic questions as moral questions….
Joan Didion, “Obama: In the Irony-Free Zone”Posted on October 4, 2009
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… it will be the biggest pumpkin the world has ever seen, smashing the record of 1,689 pounds and possibly coming in at more than a ton, an accomplishment that is to competitive pumpkin growing what the 4-minute mile was to track and field.
Michael Levenson, “Pumped up”Posted on October 4, 2009
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We’re already heavily into substitutes and people don’t know that,” Pauly says. “If we have to have substitutes for the substitutes and substitutes for the substitutes’ substitutes, when does it end?” he asks. “It ends when we have nothing left.
Posted on October 4, 2009
