thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
become one, until we as individuals truly feel that something bad might happen to us. Which makes McCain sound perceptive, because long term issues like climate change do not portend tangible imminent threat. And without a sense of being personally threatened, we dont act much more than those yakking Senators do.Until a majority of us feel personally threatened by specific and significant negative impacts of climate change, were just not going to be concerned enough to act. Its frustrating, since the discipline of risk communication is available to the climate change communicators, but they dont appear to be paying attention to what it has to offer.More on this at onrisk.blogspot.com.The science of human behavior, particularly the psychology of risk perception, robustly shows that we use two systems to make judgments about risk; reason and affect, facts and feelings. It is simply naive to disregard this inescapable truth and presume that reason and intellect alone will carry the day. Thats just not how the human animal behaves. Even as potentially catastrophic as climate change might be, if people dont sense climate change as a direct personal threat, reason alone wont convince them that the costs of action are worth it.There are still too few scientists and policy leaders describing the potential impacts of climate change on a local level. This is an admittedly dicey business because its hard to know specifically what changing the climate of the planet is going to do to Denver or Delhi or Dusseldorf. But there is plenty of scientific evidence of the harm climate change might do at the local level. These potential local risks need to be emphasized, in the concrete terms that will give people more of an idea of what climate change might do to them.My concern about the last paragraph above is related to the high level of uncertainty in regional climate predictions. Note how the word might has to be used to stay true to the science, which would immediately deflate the concreteness that David says is necessary to trigger action. Does this mean its an impossible task?Heres another comment by David providing a pretty sobering assessment of whether reason can ever dominate deeper human traits, including tribalism and what might be called now-ism, as societies weigh choices in the next few decades:The very concept of sustainability is predicated on reason...that humans can see the collective harms their behaviors are doing, and, as rational actors, correct those behaviors. But there is overwhelming evidence from all sorts of fields that our behaviors are not so much a product of reason as they are the result of our overpowering animal instinct to survive. Nearly all of your stories are evidence of the consequences that arise from the fact that we are still human ANIMALS, doing what evolution has programmed us to do...acquire the resources that improve our chances of survival (and procreation).Even the argument that Behaving the way we are now is destructive, and hurts our chances for survival is an argument based on reason. It requires individuals to think rationally and act in the
name of the greater common good rather than instinctively in their own self-interests. Were just not programmed that way.As Garret Hardin wrote in his famous essay, The Tragedy of the Commons (Science, 162(1968):1243-1248), Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.So here we are in a globalized world of 6 billion individuals instinctively seeking what they can get from the commons were all a part of, going to at least at least 8 billion before a predicted population crest, each one of us contributing to the mess about which you report, and our hopes rest on behaving more rationally, when the evidence says thats not how we behave.Kind of a bummer. But I think this fundamental truth has to be considered in the whole discussion about the damage were doing to our future and the hopes for finding some better way. This isnt an argument, just an observation which I offer for consideration in your future thinking and reporting.Finally, heres a snippet from Davids latest comment, reacting to my piece on the whiplash effect in climate science and journalism:The psychology of risk perception also confronts us with the reality that issues like climate change just dont ring our alarm bells. We use a dual process of reason and affect to gauge the threats we face. Intellectually, climate change is threatening, sure. Majorities say so in nearly every survey. But emotionally, climate change is distant...an idea...not a threat that individuals feel is going to directly impact them. You see this in surveys too. Ask a few friends Name one way that climate change will significantly negatively impact you in the next 10 or 20 years. Most of the people I know struggle with that one. Which is why, while majorities say they are concerned about climate change, they shrink to minorities when asked to support carbon taxes or higher energy prices or, God forbid, changing personal lifestyles. Without feeling personally threatened, people just dont respond to risks urgently at all. Its just the way it is.I dont suggest were trapped in these realities. There is hope here. It strikes me that all these insights are potential tools for thinking about how to reach the public with the information necessary to motivate the behavioral and political changes we need to get our arms around this threat.So can we grow past our basic nature? Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University has written that because the human brain does not change, technology must.Or is there something deeper than technology that must change? Interestingly enough, Jesses brother, Kenny Ausubel, the founder of Bioneers, is pursuing social and ethical evolution framing choices around natures bounty, and limits.Interesting family, interesting questions. Escola de Samba Perola Negra, Camila Barbosa - Rainha de Bateria & Adriana Alves - Madrinha da Bateria (and in the last two pictures that is just exactly what she is doing): Down.
sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased. Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God. Mateo 14, 22-33: Logo a seguir, compeliu Jesus os discipulos a embarcar e passar adiante dele para o outro lado, enquanto ele despedia as multidoes. E, despedidas as multidoes, subiu ao monte, a fim de orar sozinho. Em caindo a tarde, la estava ele, so. Entretanto, o barco ja estava longe, a muitos estadios da terra, acoitado pelas ondas; porque o vento era contrario. Na quarta vigilia da noite, foi Jesus ter com eles, andando por sobre o mar. E os discipulos, ao verem-no andando sobre as aguas, ficaram aterrados e exclamaram: E um fantasma! E, tomados de medo, gritaram. Mas Jesus imediatamente lhes disse: Tende bom animo! Sou eu. Nao temais! Respondendo-lhe Pedro, disse: Se es tu, Senhor, manda-me ir ter contigo, por sobre as aguas. E ele disse: Vem! E Pedro, descendo do barco, andou por sobre as aguas e foi ter com Jesus. Reparando, porem, na forca do vento, teve medo; e, comecando a submergir, gritou: Salva-me, Senhor! E, prontamente, Jesus, estendendo a mao, tomou-o e lhe disse: Homem de pequena fe, por que duvidaste? Subindo ambos para o barco, cessou o vento. E os que estavam no barco o adoraram, dizendo: Verdadeiramente es Filho de Deus!Ivan Illich looked at the story of The Good Samaritan, and discovered there a network of agape, spiritual love, based upon touch, based in flesh.Imagine for a moment that you are Peter, in a stormy sea in the darkness of night, and for some reason you step out onto the waves to go to Jesus when He calls you, but you begin to sink until He stretches out His hand and pulls you up.Is it just possible that He was smiling when He chided, "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?"Or, if you read my last post carefully, imagine that you are a prostitute working in Vila Mimosa, and one night for some reason you let yourself come, maybe it happens to be the Dia Mundial do Orgasmo - and the next thing you are marrying the guy and leaving 'the life' (as they call it).Born again? Is that it? :-) Be
Officer KrupkeYou've done it again.This boy don't need a jobHe needs a year in the pen.It ain't just a question of misunderstood,Deep down inside he's no good!Riff: I'm no good!Jets: We're no good, we're no goodWe're no earthly good.Like the best of us is no damn good!The trouble is he's lazy.The trouble is he drinks.The trouble is he's crazy.The trouble is he stinks.The trouble is he's growing.The trouble is he's grown.Krupke, we've got troubles of our own!Officer Krupke,We're down on our knees!Riff: 'Cause no one wants a fellaWith a social disease!Jets: Dear Officer KrupkeWhat are we to do?Gee, Officer Krupke,Krup you!Preta Gil, daughter of Gilberto Gil now the ex-Minister of Culture, and was Rainha da Bateria de Mangueira. Her blog, and another blog (the same blog?) with lots of photographs. She is reported to have said, "Estou gorda mas estou linda e gostosa." / "I may be fat, but I'm beautiful and tasty." Indeed, if she didn't say it she should have :-)Down.
Up, Down.aka, Blah, blah, blah, ... Bang! (see article in previous post Are We Stuck With Blah, Blah, Blah, ... Bang?, Andrew C. Revkin, August 4.)1. Learning to Speak Climate, Thomas L. Friedman, August 5.1. Know-Nothing Politics, Paul Krugman, August 7.I'm not sure ... but the invitation said that it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience!*************************************************************Learning to Speak Climate, Thomas L. Friedman, August 5. Ilulissat, Greenland: Sometimes you just wish you were a photographer. I simply do not have the words to describe the awesome majesty of Greenlands Kangia Glacier, shedding massive icebergs the size of skyscrapers and slowly pushing them down the Ilulissat Fjord until they crash into the ocean off the west coast of Greenland. There, these natural ice sculptures float and bob around the glassy waters near here. You can sail between them in a fishing boat, listening to these white ice monsters crackle and break, heave and sigh, as if they were noisily protesting their fate.You are entirely alone here amid the giant icebergs, save for the solitary halibut fisherman who floats by. Our Greenlandic boat skipper sidles up to the tiny fishing craft, where my hosts buy a few halibut right out of his nets, slice open the tender cheeks and cut me the freshest halibut sushi Ive ever tasted. Greenland fast food, quips Kim Kielsen, Greenlands minister of the environment. We wash it down with Scotch whiskey cooled by a 5,000-year-old ice cube chipped off one of the floating glacier bits. Some countries have vintage whiskey. Some have vintage wine. Greenland has vintage ice.Alas, though, I do not work for National Geographic. This is the opinion page. And my trip with Denmarks minister of climate and energy, Connie Hedegaard, to see the effects of climate change on Greenlands ice sheet leaves me with a very strong opinion: Our kids are going to be so angry with us one day.Weve charged their future on our Visa cards. Weve added so many greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, for our generations growth, that our kids are likely going to spend a good part of their adulthood, maybe all of it, just dealing with the climate implications of our profligacy. And now our leaders are telling them the way out is offshore drilling for more climate-changing fossil fuels. Madness. Sheer madness.Most people assume that the effects of climate change are going to be felt through another big disaster, like Katrina. Not necessarily, says Minik Thorleif Rosing, a top geologist at Denmarks National History Museum and one of my traveling companions. Most people will actually feel climate change delivered to them by the postman, he explains. It will come in the form of higher water bills, because of increased droughts in some areas; higher energy bills, because the use of fossil fuels becomes prohibitive; and higher insurance and mortgage rates, because of much more violently unpredictable weather. Remember: climate change means global weirding, not just global warming.Greenland is one of the best places to observe the effects of climate change. Because the worlds biggest island has just 55,000 people and no industry, the condition
of its huge ice sheet as well as its temperature, precipitation and winds is influenced by the global atmospheric and ocean currents that converge here. Whatever happens in China or Brazil gets felt here. And because Greenlanders live close to nature, they are walking barometers of climate change.Thats how I learned a new language here: Climate-Speak. Its easy to learn. There are only three phrases. The first is: Just a few years ago ... Just a few years ago you could dogsled in winter from Greenland, across a 40-mile ice bank, to Disko Island. But for the past few years, the rising winter temperatures in Greenland have melted that link. Now Disko is cut off. Put away the dogsled. There has been a 30 percent increase in the melting of the Greenland ice sheet between 1979 and 2007, and in 2007, the melt was 10 percent bigger than in any previous year, said Konrad Steffen, director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, which monitors the ice. Greenland is now losing 200 cubic kilometers of ice per year from melt and ice sliding into the ocean from outlet glaciers along its edges which far exceeds the volume of all the ice in the European Alps, he added. Everything is happening faster than anticipated.The second phrase is: Ive never seen that before... It rained in December and January in Ilulissat. This is well above the Arctic Circle! Its not supposed to rain here in winter. Said Steffen: Twenty years ago, if I had told the people of Ilulissat that it would rain at Christmas 2007, they would have just laughed at me. Today it is a reality.The third phrase is: Well usually ...but now I dont know anymore. Traditional climate patterns that Greenland elders have known their whole lives have changed so quickly in some places that the accumulated experience of older people is not as valuable as before, said Rosing. The river that was always there is now dry. The glacier that always covered that hill has disappeared. The reindeer that were always there when the hunting season opened on Aug. 1 didnt show up.No wonder everyone here speaks climate now your kids will, too, and sooner than they think.*************************************************************Know-Nothing Politics, Paul Krugman, August 7.So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now! Four legs good, two legs bad! O.K., I added that last part.And the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something Ive been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the party of ideas, have become the party of stupid.Now, I dont mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly dont mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives. What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that theres something effeminate and
weak about anyone who suggests otherwise has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The partys de facto slogan has become: Real men dont think things through.In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling would produce fast relief at the gas pump. In fact, earlier this week Republicans in Congress actually claimed credit for the recent fall in oil prices: The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking, said Representative John Shadegg.What about the experts at the Department of Energy who say that it would take years before offshore drilling would yield any oil at all, and that even then the effect on prices at the pump would be insignificant? Presumably theyre just a bunch of wimps, probably Democrats. And the Democrats, as Representative Michele Bachmann assures us, want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their government jobs.Is this political pitch too dumb to succeed? Dont count on it. Remember how the Iraq war was sold. The stuff about aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds was just window dressing. The main political argument was, They attacked us, and were going to strike back and anyone who tried to point out that Saddam and Osama werent the same person was an effete snob who hated America, and probably looked French.Lets also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man, declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. Hes not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.It wasnt until Hurricane Katrina when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, if theres a fire on the block, hell run out and help revealed the true costs of obliviousness that the cult began to fade.Whats more, the politics of stupidity didnt just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter. Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.All this is in the past. But the state of the energy debate shows that Republicans, despite Mr. Bushs plunge into record unpopularity and their defeat in 2006, still think that know-nothing politics works. And
they may be right.Sad to say, the current drill-and-burn campaign is getting some political traction. According to one recent poll, 69 percent of Americans now favor expanded offshore drilling and 51 percent of them believe that removing restrictions on drilling would reduce gas prices within a year. The headway Republicans are making on this issue wont prevent Democrats from expanding their majority in Congress, but it might limit their gains and could conceivably swing the presidential election, where the polls show a much closer race.In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to partisanship, for working together to solve the countrys problems. Its not going to happen not as long as one of Americas two great parties believes that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy.Graziele Massafera (b 1982), aka Grazi, this year Rainha da Bateria with Grande Rio, a while ago coming out of Big Brother Brasil (big pronounced big-gee), a sketchy reality contest, then Miss Brasil, spread for Playboy in 2005, bunch of other nudie mags, Rolling Stone in 2007, a princess to be sure, maybe coin a new term? BSP? Brasilian Samba Princess? ... and she swans about with her (plastic) tits hangin' out and a certain smile that becomes increasingly strained, even thin, as the years go by ... or is it just my imagination?Down.
of the address on television. But someone had failed to erect the speaking platform high enough for the 5-foot-9 senator, so only part of his face was visible on TV.That unfortunate someone was Robert Wexler, the 20-something head of Arizona's Young Republicans and the chief choreographer of the evening's events. A livid McCain went back downstairs to look for Mr. Wexler, confronting him in the hotel ballroom."I told you we needed a stage," Mr. McCain screamed at the young man, jabbing a finger in Mr. Wexler's chest. "You incompetent little [expletive]. When I tell you to do something, you do it."John McCain's biography is full of episodes like this. As far back as high school, peers nicknamed him "McNasty." He's been known to fling f-bombs at fellow lawmakers when he doesn't get his way. And in a 2006 poll, Capitol Hill staffers ranked him as the Senator with the "second hottest temper," after Alaska's Ted Stevens.Should we care? I think we should. The most important measure of a human being is the way he or she treats other people, especially those under his or her power. By many accounts, Mr. McCain degrades and demeans them. And there's no excuse for it.He's not the only one, of course. In Congress, abusive behaviour toward underlings is eminently bipartisan. Remember Cynthia McKinney, the ultra-liberal Georgia representative who allegedly struck a Capitol police officer when he tried to stop her at a security checkpoint?Ms. McKinney eventually got voted out of office, but most of Congress's bullies are still going strong. Consider four-term representative Anthony Weiner, a rising Democratic star and a leading candidate to replace Michael Bloomberg next year as mayor of New York. When staffers don't measure up to his standards, Mr. Weiner reportedly throws telephones and kicks furniture.No wonder Mr. Weiner has experienced more office turnover than any other representative in his state's delegation. Since early 2007 alone, Weiner has had three different chiefs of staff. Roughly half of his 20-odd employees have served for less than a year.We've all met people like Anthony Weiner; some of us have worked for people like them, too. You don't want a boss who degrades, harangues and humiliates you. So why would you vote for one?Here you might reply that public officials are elected to, well, serve the public. So if their arrogant and domineering style gets staffers to work harder, it's good for all of us.Let's leave aside the question of whether this style actually produces better results. Even if it did - and I have my doubts - it would still be wrong. Our lawmakers do more than simply make laws; they're supposed to represent us, in every sense of the word. By electing officials who demean employees, we also demean ourselves.How much does personal virtue matter in a public office? During the impeachment of U.S. president Bill Clinton, some of my liberal friends told me that it didn't matter at all. The president's extramarital affairs bore no relation to his public duties, so the public should just butt out.Really? Let's suppose, then, that a