Hence the entire screed starts out with a falsehood. But that doesn’t matter when you are defending a cause.
Lies in the defense of the planet are no vice.
Your pizza may be cold now, but the general consensus is that the pizza is likely to warm up by several degrees over the coming decade.
The controversy is to what degree this pizza warming is caused by human action and how much can be attributed to other natural cycles.
I think we are going to need to take a few samples and run some tests.
I like the style of teaching them in order to mock them. However, the fear is that too many stupid people out there think sarcasm is genuine sincerity, a kind of Poe’s Law brought to life. When Gordon Gekko said “Greed is good” and people cheered instead of booed, that’s when you know some people just won’t get it despite the evidence, or maybe because they, unlike you, do have a dog in this fight and promote one side because it fattens their wallets, like a poster on this board and this thread who obviously works for one of the oil companies.
What are they putting on that pizza these days?
Hahahaha
Really, because that is just a monumental waste of time and distraction - assuming you mean ‘teach’ as in school. The curriculum is crammed enough already without having to inject it with bullshit.
In a history or religious education context, sure.
…creating an initial false impression of equivalence.
Well, there’s your first problem. There is absolutely zero evidence for creationism. It isn’t even about evidence.
Back in that sepia-toned age, at least he would return to the thread and spar with detractors afterward, rather than simply nailing his scroll to the thread door and scampering off to hide in the bushes, peer through binoculars and self-flagellate.
And the media just up and invented the polar vortex to explain away cold temps that disprove global warming - Rush said! Because if Rush hasn’t heard of something, it couldn’t possibly exist.
So that’s what you young people are calling it, these days. Us old timers called it ‘self-abuse’ or ‘choking the chicken’.
I hadn’t realized that you could hover over them and get a name; I was trying to figure out the “Time Cube” one. (I do know about the Time Cube web site – a masterpiece of illucidity – I just couldn’t figure out the “rotating square” graphic.)
Thank you! You saved me some time!
First, I think you got whooshed. Second, teaching the controversy would be an excellent exercise in critical thinking. It shouldn’t involve ending with “people disagree, no one knows” it should end with "here are the zillion reasons why creationism is bullshit. Now, use the same principle to examine other “controversies.” That would be useful. The creationists would have a fit, of course.
When I was a kid in NY back before this latest round of lunacy started we learned that people used to believe that the earth was created - and that they were wrong.
I enjoyed the OP, but I’m much more enjoying laughing at the posters who clearly didn’t read the whole thing and are trying to insult the OP, but falling on their face instead. FXMastermind and Mangetout, especially.
OK, having ground the whole wall of bollocks through my eyes now, I’m none the wiser. So… whatever.
Pizza Guy, your wish has come true! Here’s a controversy being taught right now:
"Many young people turned to drugs and immoral lifestyles; these became known as hippies. They went without bathing, wore dirty, ragged, unconventional clothing, and deliberately broke all codes of politeness or manners. Rock music played an important part in the hippie movement and had great influence over the hippies. Many of the rock musicians they followed belonged to Eastern religious cults or practiced Satan worship.” - from America: Land I Love (8th grade Louisiana history textbook, 2013)
I’m guessing the next chapter of this textbook explains how this led to a Kenyan becoming POTUS. This book is available on Amazon.
Great OP too!
That quote got my attention.
I agree with everything Vinyl Turnip says on this subject. He also speaks for me.
I refer you to the authors Shermer, Dawkins, Hitchens, and the like.
The person you quoted was saying something true but irrelevant. It’s a common argument tactic, much the same way throwing off chaff is a common dogfighting tactic: Distract them with nonsense they follow so you can run away.
Environmentalism isn’t for the Earth. It isn’t even for “the environment”, of which there are many which are constantly changing in subtle ways anyway.
Environmentalism is for humans.
Environmentalism is about creating an environment palatable for humans to live in, not just for now, not just for tomorrow, but for decades and centuries to come. It’s a refined form of selfishness, as opposed to the simplistic “I want it now” form which is encouraged by the quarterly-report-thinking CEOs engage in.
There will come a time when we know enough, and can afford enough energy, to actively shape our environment in more long-term positive directions. We aren’t there yet, so the smartest course of action is to preserve what we have and generally keep it as clean and about as pleasant as an un-managed environment can be.
Now I’ll get to butt heads with the hair-shirt greens, who think humanity is a blight on the Pristine Mother-Goddess Gaia and that we should somehow live with absolutely no impact whatsoever. Nonsense. Termites build mounds, coral polyps build reefs, and humans build cities. None of those behaviors are automatically terrible. Some of what we do is detrimental, but it is detrimental to the interests of Homo sapiens sapiens, not some reified deified nonsense from a warmed-over half-baked mythology.
Environmentalism is, foremost, about avoiding a human-scale latter-day oxygen catastrophe; after that, it’s about making sure we have interesting animals to look at and pleasant places to live; by and by, it’ll focus on making this place a real garden spot, and doing the same to Mars and Venus.
Now that I’ve shown the OP how to do bizarre and rambling the right way, I’m off to acquire foodstuffs.
Eh, I thought it was kind of entertaining and rather well written. Topic paragraph stating his thesis: check. Examples bolstering his argument: check. Argument for alternative option: check. Summary: check.
I’ll give him a B+. Man, I’m glad you guys didn’t teach my tenth grade English composition.