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"Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... skip wrote: "Mark Leuck" wrote in message ... "Tom Sherman" wrote in message .. . No, you like most people are unwilling to see things as they are and how they could be. This is understandable, because the normal human brain is not capable of handling such a disconnect - to know than only a small handful of the six billion have the true freedom to pursue real opportunities, while the rest are held in servitude by economic or social restrictions will certainly lead to mental disorders. You can not handle the truth of how bad things are, so you create clever intellectual arguments to convince yourself that things are acceptable and getting better. It is why you refuse to see evil where it clearly exists. We are doomed to a miserable existence by greed and avarice. -- Tom Sherman - Earth Damn talk about being disconnected....I pity you Tom What you are seeing here is quintessential Tom Sherman. His contention that we are doomed to a miserable existence by greed and avarice is the cornerstone of his beliefs. You will never again have to wonder why he is miserable. Or wonder how he can think as he does. He just told you why. And he won't budge an inch from that belief. No one has had any success in moving him from that position. Why should I move from a position when I am right? I wish I could be a delusional lemming happily marching towards the cliff, but it is my great misfortune to have gained true understanding of the dark side of human group behavior. I could happily ignore the situation and discuss recumbents, but then some right wing blowhard has to crap on the group, ending the illusion. At that point, I am willing to fling poo well after the bovines have returned to their agricultural structure abode. Again, according to simple empiricism the trend is moving in the opposite direction from what you claim, and has been for more than a century. People are better educated, better fed, better entertained, more free, more secure, and according to IQ tests actually smarter, than they ever have been before. There is less poverty and misery with each passing year, not more, except in those places where the left still has its totalitarian demonstration projects. We will all be better off with the ecological damage from resource overuse and global warming (not a myth, but something that is already happening, unless you are in denial). Enjoy seeing billions suffer. Again, making it up aren't you? There is near universal agreement among climatologists about global warming, with most of the dissenters being on the payroll of the hydrocarbon extraction industry. Giving them credence is like giving the Flat Earth Society credence in a discussion about astronomy. The same is true about resource overuse. Do you just uncritically buy everything those with a corporatist, neo-feudal agenda say? Or do you have a vested interest in promoting their policies? Why do you want to argue this in a recumbent bicycle forum anyhow? I really don't, but I am happy to **** off those who do. Last I heard there was close to a consensus that the climate shift that has taken place since the beginning of industrialization is well within the bounds of natural climate change. This isn't tough to verify. Have you had your hearing checked? For complete figures and graphs go to: http://www.techcentralstation.com/032403B.html Excerpt from *Is the Arctic Melting?* by Willie Soon: quote The Basic Data Figure 1: Arctic-wide temperature anomalies (in ?C) from 1875-2001 relative to the mean of 1961-1990 interval, with the number of stations producing the temperature set in each decade. (Courtesy of Igor Polyakov of IARC at the University of Alaska) Figure 1 shows the annual time series of the Arctic surface air temperature from 1875 to 2001 as it was recently reconstructed by Igor Polyakov and colleagues at the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) in Fairbanks, Alaska and the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. The sources of this new temperature record include measurements from land stations, floating buoys on the ocean and even drifting stations on sea ice. Detailed documentations of the methodology and spatial sampling strategy had been published in papers that appear in Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate and the American Geophysical Union's EOS. Figure 2: Distribution of surface air temperature stations on land, ocean or sea-ice for the composite Arctic-wide temperature record in Figure 1. (Courtesy of Igor Polyakov of IARC at the University of Alaska) Figure 2 shows you all the locations poleward of about 62?N (with the Arctic circle defined as the zonal ring around 66?N) where the air temperatures are sampled to produce the Arctic-wide temperature history shown in Figure 1. What's Happening? So what do we see in Figure 1? First note that the maximum annual Arctic-wide temperature anomaly - the difference from the mean temperature for 1961-90 as plotted by the blue dash line - reached a maximum of 1.7?Celsius in 1938. That compares with a maximum of 1.5?C in 2000. Next, notice the blue solid curvy line. It gives a 6-year running average of the annual temperature anomalies plotted as a dotted blue line. This line helps focus on the climatic changes of longer time-scales, instead of year-to-year weather "noise" in the dash-line. Now, for a more interesting part: Just for the sake of discussion, contrast two views of the record. Compare the red curve that was drawn by a straight line from 1875 to 2001 versus the four green lines drawn over four intervals in Figure 1. The red curve describes the longest-term temperature variation resolvable in this Arctic record, and it shows a change over the period of about 1?C per century. What does the trend mean? Some people take it and argue, "See, the Arctic climate is warming; it's warmer today than 125 years ago. As CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels has increased during that period, that likely has contributed to that warming." But there's another way to look at the record than a relatively straight line. That is to consider multi-decadal shifts of the temperature, as seen in the four green lines, from a cooler condition in 1875-1920, to a warmer condition in the period1921-1955, then returning to a cooler condition for the years 1956-1985 and finally a warmer phase from the mid-to-late 1980s onward. This latter view is considered more natural. More than that, it is also considered more consistent with our current understanding of how the sea ice, ocean temperature, salinity and circulation, air circulation and temperature, as well as many important land processes, including river runoff and snow, interact and produce the responses of the Arctic climate system. From this perspective, one finds an Arctic climate that has a preferred tendency to produce variability that oscillates in decadal and multi-decadal periods. Several careful analyses of the sea ice changes over the Arctic also point to the dominant role played by atmospheric circulation. That component affecting the climate appears to be locked in a 50-80 year cycle - a natural see-saw - that is both large in amplitude and persistent in its timing. During these 50-80 years cycle, certain regions in the Eastern Arctic will warm a lot (as in the 1990s), while parts in the Western Arctic will cool, and vice-versa with the alternating phases of the oscillation./quote So basically the temperature oscillations are within the normal range and periodicy. A clever statistical analysis of one set of data that ignores many other things that are happening. I will be happy to laugh at the upcoming disasters and tell everyone, "I told you so." Right, it'll prove nature was on your side all along right? And this doesn't strike you as even remotely perverse? You must be considerably younger than I took you to be. Again, from the article: quote The association of the observed warming trend of about 1?C over 100-years for the Arctic temperature, as seen in Figure 1, to CO2-global warming is implausible for two important reasons. First, 70 to 80 percent of the rise of man-made CO2 in the air to date came after the 1960s. Yet, Figure 1 clearly shows that a large part of the 100-year warming trend was contributed by a pre-1960s increase in temperature. That was at a time when the air's CO2 content was still low. Secondly, and this is a somewhat surprising fact for scientists, when the long-term temperature trend was calculated in Figure 3 using at least the 100-year long record, both the Arctic- and Northern-Hemisphere-wide warming trends have similar values. What is so surprising about that? Well, it contradicts all the known predictions in the amplification of the polar warming. Those predictions from climate models that consider anthropogenic greenhouse gases - primarily CO2 from burning fossil fuels - to be forcing global warming say that the Arctic should warm by 1.5 to 4.5 times the global mean warming. And that is not happening. And there's no explanation for why it is not. One explanation typically invoked to argue why there has been less rapid warming in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere (Asia, Europe and America) in previous decades is so-called man-made sulfate aerosols - soot and smog - put out by industry provided a cooling factor. (Don't ask why or how the greenhouse-warming promoters are so sure of this aerosol cooling possibility while considering only one particular kind of aerosols out of many more.) But that effect is expected to be minimal, and it isn't present in the remote Arctic, thus offering no explanation to the lack of warming amplification there. The complaint the "Arctic is melting" as a result of fossil fuel use thus has no basis from the climate records of that region and that for the Northern Hemisphere. So, it is no wonder that reports purporting to prove that are confusing and contradictory./quote By the way, did you check out Owsley's site? His discussion is about a non-human-produced global warming trend that could lead to a huge ecological disaster, of global proportions... ironically producing mega-cyclones that usher in an ice age. It has nothiing to do with human pollution. And there are other purely natural disasters that dwarf anything man can produce. So even if there is an ecological disaster, that doesn't mean that we produced it. What I want to know is what your agenda is in trying to discredit the general consensus on global warming? Practicing for job interviews as a right-wing pundit? What I want to know is what difference my "agenda" makes? For all you know I might very well be a leftist, concerned about the way the left is undermining its own credibility by insisting on political correctness. The point is that the "consensus" is manufactured out of that PC-ness, which if you know anything about history you'll know is a legacy of Stalinism. I think that in the wake of the delegitimation of the left that took place after the fall of the Berlin Wall they settled on environmentalism as their new religion. This, in spite of the fact that the biggest polluters on the planet were in left-oriented economic systems. Plus, I'm just an empiricist. If someone claims there's a tight correlation between CO2 and global warming and the actual correlation is either small, zero, or even negative then I can't help thinking that's relevant. There is clearly a warming trend, but there's little evidence that it's related to anything man is doing. And if the Owsley scenario is plausible, what we need to do is completely different from what the global warming advocates demand... because there's nothing we can do to stop the trend. What we need to do is prepare to meet it. (This assumes that he's right, and that the threat is imminent, which are both a long way from being proved.) |
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"Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Jon Meinecke" wrote in message news:1109771963.e8f6cbc4cac64c5dfbb50a14b323ae92@t eranews... "Freewheeling" wrote: "Jon Meinecke" wrote Consider "argue this" in a broader context encompassing the general content and ongoing nature of this thread (and others before and likely to come). You're some piece of work, Tom. You and Markos "Screw 'em" Zunida (Daily Kos) share a common ethical tradition, apparently. I have a hunch this is a valuable comment, but I can't quite make out what it means. What?-- your comment calling Tom "some piece of work" or my observation concerning the broader context about the following exchange: "Tom Sherman" wrote Why do you want to argue this in a recumbent bicycle forum anyhow? "Freewheeling" responded: Oh BS. [Tom] actually brought up ecology Apparently you're both sufficiently interested in trolling with "this" bait in ARBR to continue posting. Pretty much constrained to this thread, and to about 3 participants, until you joined. And generally genial, thank you. Interesting tango. We've spent two years with much less artistic, measured, respectful, and thoughtful exchanges coming to dominate the newsgroup. The comparison to Markos seems to cross the line into ad hominem. One presumes you think your arguments logically stronger than to need to resort to fallacious rhetoric. It's a slippery slope. I find this comment somewhat amusing in context. Zuniga is hardly a pariah with the anti-Bush crowd. He's fairly mainstream, though a good deal more raw than, say, Josh Marshall. Mainstream Democrats publish ads on his blog, for instance. Strictly speaking I have no idea whether Tom follows Zuniga, but I sure wouldn't be shocked to find that he does. You may be surprised at the contention that Tom feels some of us our duped, or remain willfully ignorant, of how "bad things really are," but this is actually doctrinaire Marxism. It's called "alienation leading to false consciousness." I don't know where he picked it up, and for all I know he doesn't know it's Marxism, but there it is. I came up with it based on my own observations, thank you. I have no need to behave like an academic and throw out all sorts of names. It is just like all the academics that try to quantify quality of life, but have no idea how much of a hell hole [1] many of the workplaces in the US are, how middle class suburban society isolates people from proper human relationships, and how the lack of a social safety net causes many to feel that they are in an enforced economic servitude, with their existence at the whim of the privileged. So, we should just forget about trying to actually understand any of these things from an empirical perspective, and just let our prejudices and impressions rule? Gosh, it'd be great if work were like a party for everyone, but not only is that rather unrealistic... it's probably the case that human happiness isn't as simple as the *Theory of Alienation* makes it out to be. The bottom line, however, is that freedom from labor is achieved only through ownership of capital... which replaces labor. And the left always seems to stand on both sides of that issue, insisting that we somehow make labor less objectionable while simultaneously creating more of it for the sake of full employment. If you look at this carefully (as did F.A. Hayek) it's the road to serfdom, for who would want to perpetuate such a system if they knew its implications, other than a group who had decided to become the "new elite?" Get out of the damn ivory tower and experience the real world! [1] I have worked in several of these, and have the long-term repetitive motion injuries to show for it. Like you're the only one, huh? I've also done farm work, having grown up on a farm and cattle ranch, and it ain't no picnic either. -- Tom Sherman - ****ing Contest Hell |
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Jon Meinecke wrote:
... As I said, interesting tango.... There's no reason it need be unpleasant, in my opinion, as that has its own destructive effect as civil discourse suffers.... In words Ed Dolan would use, "Screw civil discourse!" If people want to **** on the newsgroup, I will be happy to make the pile higher. -- Tom Sherman - ****ing Contest Hell |
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Freewheeling wrote:
"Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Tom Sherman" wrote in message .. . skip wrote: "Mark Leuck" wrote in message ... "Tom Sherman" wrote in message . .. No, you like most people are unwilling to see things as they are and how they could be. This is understandable, because the normal human brain is not capable of handling such a disconnect - to know than only a small handful of the six billion have the true freedom to pursue real opportunities, while the rest are held in servitude by economic or social restrictions will certainly lead to mental disorders. You can not handle the truth of how bad things are, so you create clever intellectual arguments to convince yourself that things are acceptable and getting better. It is why you refuse to see evil where it clearly exists. We are doomed to a miserable existence by greed and avarice. -- Tom Sherman - Earth Damn talk about being disconnected....I pity you Tom What you are seeing here is quintessential Tom Sherman. His contention that we are doomed to a miserable existence by greed and avarice is the cornerstone of his beliefs. You will never again have to wonder why he is miserable. Or wonder how he can think as he does. He just told you why. And he won't budge an inch from that belief. No one has had any success in moving him from that position. Why should I move from a position when I am right? I wish I could be a delusional lemming happily marching towards the cliff, but it is my great misfortune to have gained true understanding of the dark side of human group behavior. I could happily ignore the situation and discuss recumbents, but then some right wing blowhard has to crap on the group, ending the illusion. At that point, I am willing to fling poo well after the bovines have returned to their agricultural structure abode. Again, according to simple empiricism the trend is moving in the opposite direction from what you claim, and has been for more than a century. People are better educated, better fed, better entertained, more free, more secure, and according to IQ tests actually smarter, than they ever have been before. There is less poverty and misery with each passing year, not more, except in those places where the left still has its totalitarian demonstration projects. We will all be better off with the ecological damage from resource overuse and global warming (not a myth, but something that is already happening, unless you are in denial). Enjoy seeing billions suffer. Again, making it up aren't you? There is near universal agreement among climatologists about global warming, with most of the dissenters being on the payroll of the hydrocarbon extraction industry. Giving them credence is like giving the Flat Earth Society credence in a discussion about astronomy. The same is true about resource overuse. Do you just uncritically buy everything those with a corporatist, neo-feudal agenda say? Or do you have a vested interest in promoting their policies? Why do you want to argue this in a recumbent bicycle forum anyhow? I really don't, but I am happy to **** off those who do. Last I heard there was close to a consensus that the climate shift that has taken place since the beginning of industrialization is well within the bounds of natural climate change. This isn't tough to verify. Have you had your hearing checked? For complete figures and graphs go to: http://www.techcentralstation.com/032403B.html Excerpt from *Is the Arctic Melting?* by Willie Soon: quote The Basic Data Figure 1: Arctic-wide temperature anomalies (in ?C) from 1875-2001 relative to the mean of 1961-1990 interval, with the number of stations producing the temperature set in each decade. (Courtesy of Igor Polyakov of IARC at the University of Alaska) Figure 1 shows the annual time series of the Arctic surface air temperature from 1875 to 2001 as it was recently reconstructed by Igor Polyakov and colleagues at the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) in Fairbanks, Alaska and the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. The sources of this new temperature record include measurements from land stations, floating buoys on the ocean and even drifting stations on sea ice. Detailed documentations of the methodology and spatial sampling strategy had been published in papers that appear in Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate and the American Geophysical Union's EOS. Figure 2: Distribution of surface air temperature stations on land, ocean or sea-ice for the composite Arctic-wide temperature record in Figure 1. (Courtesy of Igor Polyakov of IARC at the University of Alaska) Figure 2 shows you all the locations poleward of about 62?N (with the Arctic circle defined as the zonal ring around 66?N) where the air temperatures are sampled to produce the Arctic-wide temperature history shown in Figure 1. What's Happening? So what do we see in Figure 1? First note that the maximum annual Arctic-wide temperature anomaly - the difference from the mean temperature for 1961-90 as plotted by the blue dash line - reached a maximum of 1.7?Celsius in 1938. That compares with a maximum of 1.5?C in 2000. Next, notice the blue solid curvy line. It gives a 6-year running average of the annual temperature anomalies plotted as a dotted blue line. This line helps focus on the climatic changes of longer time-scales, instead of year-to-year weather "noise" in the dash-line. Now, for a more interesting part: Just for the sake of discussion, contrast two views of the record. Compare the red curve that was drawn by a straight line from 1875 to 2001 versus the four green lines drawn over four intervals in Figure 1. The red curve describes the longest-term temperature variation resolvable in this Arctic record, and it shows a change over the period of about 1?C per century. What does the trend mean? Some people take it and argue, "See, the Arctic climate is warming; it's warmer today than 125 years ago. As CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels has increased during that period, that likely has contributed to that warming." But there's another way to look at the record than a relatively straight line. That is to consider multi-decadal shifts of the temperature, as seen in the four green lines, from a cooler condition in 1875-1920, to a warmer condition in the period1921-1955, then returning to a cooler condition for the years 1956-1985 and finally a warmer phase from the mid-to-late 1980s onward. This latter view is considered more natural. More than that, it is also considered more consistent with our current understanding of how the sea ice, ocean temperature, salinity and circulation, air circulation and temperature, as well as many important land processes, including river runoff and snow, interact and produce the responses of the Arctic climate system. From this perspective, one finds an Arctic climate that has a preferred tendency to produce variability that oscillates in decadal and multi-decadal periods. Several careful analyses of the sea ice changes over the Arctic also point to the dominant role played by atmospheric circulation. That component affecting the climate appears to be locked in a 50-80 year cycle - a natural see-saw - that is both large in amplitude and persistent in its timing. During these 50-80 years cycle, certain regions in the Eastern Arctic will warm a lot (as in the 1990s), while parts in the Western Arctic will cool, and vice-versa with the alternating phases of the oscillation./quote So basically the temperature oscillations are within the normal range and periodicy. A clever statistical analysis of one set of data that ignores many other things that are happening. I will be happy to laugh at the upcoming disasters and tell everyone, "I told you so." Right, it'll prove nature was on your side all along right? And this doesn't strike you as even remotely perverse? You must be considerably younger than I took you to be. Again, from the article: quote The association of the observed warming trend of about 1?C over 100-years for the Arctic temperature, as seen in Figure 1, to CO2-global warming is implausible for two important reasons. First, 70 to 80 percent of the rise of man-made CO2 in the air to date came after the 1960s. Yet, Figure 1 clearly shows that a large part of the 100-year warming trend was contributed by a pre-1960s increase in temperature. That was at a time when the air's CO2 content was still low. Secondly, and this is a somewhat surprising fact for scientists, when the long-term temperature trend was calculated in Figure 3 using at least the 100-year long record, both the Arctic- and Northern-Hemisphere-wide warming trends have similar values. What is so surprising about that? Well, it contradicts all the known predictions in the amplification of the polar warming. Those predictions from climate models that consider anthropogenic greenhouse gases - primarily CO2 from burning fossil fuels - to be forcing global warming say that the Arctic should warm by 1.5 to 4.5 times the global mean warming. And that is not happening. And there's no explanation for why it is not. One explanation typically invoked to argue why there has been less rapid warming in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere (Asia, Europe and America) in previous decades is so-called man-made sulfate aerosols - soot and smog - put out by industry provided a cooling factor. (Don't ask why or how the greenhouse-warming promoters are so sure of this aerosol cooling possibility while considering only one particular kind of aerosols out of many more.) But that effect is expected to be minimal, and it isn't present in the remote Arctic, thus offering no explanation to the lack of warming amplification there. The complaint the "Arctic is melting" as a result of fossil fuel use thus has no basis from the climate records of that region and that for the Northern Hemisphere. So, it is no wonder that reports purporting to prove that are confusing and contradictory./quote By the way, did you check out Owsley's site? His discussion is about a non-human-produced global warming trend that could lead to a huge ecological disaster, of global proportions... ironically producing mega-cyclones that usher in an ice age. It has nothiing to do with human pollution. And there are other purely natural disasters that dwarf anything man can produce. So even if there is an ecological disaster, that doesn't mean that we produced it. What I want to know is what your agenda is in trying to discredit the general consensus on global warming? Practicing for job interviews as a right-wing pundit? What I want to know is what difference my "agenda" makes? For all you know I might very well be a leftist, concerned about the way the left is undermining its own credibility by insisting on political correctness. The point is that the "consensus" is manufactured out of that PC-ness, which if you know anything about history you'll know is a legacy of Stalinism. I think that in the wake of the delegitimation of the left that took place after the fall of the Berlin Wall they settled on environmentalism as their new religion. This, in spite of the fact that the biggest polluters on the planet were in left-oriented economic systems. Plus, I'm just an empiricist. If someone claims there's a tight correlation between CO2 and global warming and the actual correlation is either small, zero, or even negative then I can't help thinking that's relevant. There is clearly a warming trend, but there's little evidence that it's related to anything man is doing. And if the Owsley scenario is plausible, what we need to do is completely different from what the global warming advocates demand... because there's nothing we can do to stop the trend. What we need to do is prepare to meet it. (This assumes that he's right, and that the threat is imminent, which are both a long way from being proved.) What I want to know is why you feel impelled to **** on the newsgroup, by posting right-wing opinion, with a bunch of boring citations on the side? -- Tom Sherman - ****ing Contest Hell |
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Freewheeling wrote:
"Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Jon Meinecke" wrote in message news:1109771963.e8f6cbc4cac64c5dfbb50a14b323ae9 2@teranews... "Freewheeling" wrote: "Jon Meinecke" wrote Consider "argue this" in a broader context encompassing the general content and ongoing nature of this thread (and others before and likely to come). You're some piece of work, Tom. You and Markos "Screw 'em" Zunida (Daily Kos) share a common ethical tradition, apparently. I have a hunch this is a valuable comment, but I can't quite make out what it means. What?-- your comment calling Tom "some piece of work" or my observation concerning the broader context about the following exchange: "Tom Sherman" wrote Why do you want to argue this in a recumbent bicycle forum anyhow? "Freewheeling" responded: Oh BS. [Tom] actually brought up ecology Apparently you're both sufficiently interested in trolling with "this" bait in ARBR to continue posting. Pretty much constrained to this thread, and to about 3 participants, until you joined. And generally genial, thank you. Interesting tango. We've spent two years with much less artistic, measured, respectful, and thoughtful exchanges coming to dominate the newsgroup. The comparison to Markos seems to cross the line into ad hominem. One presumes you think your arguments logically stronger than to need to resort to fallacious rhetoric. It's a slippery slope. I find this comment somewhat amusing in context. Zuniga is hardly a pariah with the anti-Bush crowd. He's fairly mainstream, though a good deal more raw than, say, Josh Marshall. Mainstream Democrats publish ads on his blog, for instance. Strictly speaking I have no idea whether Tom follows Zuniga, but I sure wouldn't be shocked to find that he does. You may be surprised at the contention that Tom feels some of us our duped, or remain willfully ignorant, of how "bad things really are," but this is actually doctrinaire Marxism. It's called "alienation leading to false consciousness." I don't know where he picked it up, and for all I know he doesn't know it's Marxism, but there it is. I came up with it based on my own observations, thank you. I have no need to behave like an academic and throw out all sorts of names. It is just like all the academics that try to quantify quality of life, but have no idea how much of a hell hole [1] many of the workplaces in the US are, how middle class suburban society isolates people from proper human relationships, and how the lack of a social safety net causes many to feel that they are in an enforced economic servitude, with their existence at the whim of the privileged. So, we should just forget about trying to actually understand any of these things from an empirical perspective, and just let our prejudices and impressions rule? Gosh, it'd be great if work were like a party for everyone, but not only is that rather unrealistic... it's probably the case that human happiness isn't as simple as the *Theory of Alienation* makes it out to be. I don't see anything being proved, just some people trying to show how clever they are, or to promote an agenda. The bottom line, however, is that freedom from labor is achieved only through ownership of capital... which replaces labor. And the left always seems to stand on both sides of that issue, insisting that we somehow make labor less objectionable while simultaneously creating more of it for the sake of full employment. If you look at this carefully (as did F.A. Hayek) it's the road to serfdom, for who would want to perpetuate such a system if they knew its implications, other than a group who had decided to become the "new elite?" How can ownership of capital replace labor (unless we invent robots to do all the work)? Make some sense. Of course, apologizing for the excesses of the elite can be quite rewarding financially. Get out of the damn ivory tower and experience the real world! [1] I have worked in several of these, and have the long-term repetitive motion injuries to show for it. Like you're the only one, huh? I've also done farm work, having grown up on a farm and cattle ranch, and it ain't no picnic either. Unless your parents (or other relatives that owned the farm) acted in a manner that would be considered abusive on a consistent basis, there is no comparison at all. Try working as a light industrial contract (officially known as "temporary") worker or in a high-speed, repetitive job such as cleaning the intestines from chickens. I have never seen any farm work that required performing the same motion 20,000 times per day. -- Tom Sherman - ****ing Contest Hell |
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"Tom Sherman" wrote
Jon Meinecke wrote: ... As I said, interesting tango.... There's no reason it need be unpleasant, in my opinion, as that has its own destructive effect as civil discourse suffers.... In words [D*l*n] would use, "Screw civil discourse!" If people want to **** on the newsgroup, I will be happy to make the pile higher. Choice. Jon Meinecke -- A Zen teacher saw five of his students returning from the market, riding their bicycles. When they arrived at the monastery and had dismounted, the teacher asked the students, "Why are you riding your bicycles?" The first student replied, "The bicycle is carrying the sack of potatoes. I am glad that I do not have to carry them on my back!" The teacher praised the first student, "You are a smart boy! When you grow old, you will not walk hunched over like I do." The second student replied, "I love to watch the trees and fields pass by as I roll down the path!" The teacher commended the second student, "Your eyes are open, and you see the world." The third student replied, "When I ride my bicycle, I am content to chant nam myoho renge kyo." The teacher gave praise to the third student, "Your mind will roll with the ease of a newly trued wheel." The fourth student replied, "Riding my bicycle, I live in harmony with all sentient beings." The teacher was pleased, and said to the fourth student, "You are riding on the golden path of non-harming." The fifth student replied, "I ride my bicycle to ride my bicycle." The teacher sat at the feet of the fifth student and said, "I am your student!" - attributed to Shawn Gosieski New Cyclist, Fall 1988 (and other sources) |
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"Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Jon Meinecke wrote: ... As I said, interesting tango.... There's no reason it need be unpleasant, in my opinion, as that has its own destructive effect as civil discourse suffers.... In words Ed Dolan would use, "Screw civil discourse!" If people want to **** on the newsgroup, I will be happy to make the pile higher. I never thought it would be so easy to induce you to so accurately describe the quality of your discourse. Kudos to Jon! You may have done a disservice to Zach, however, who at least proposed a reasonable hypothesis. |
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"Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Freewheeling wrote: "Jon Meinecke" wrote in message news:1109771963.e8f6cbc4cac64c5dfbb50a14b323ae 92@teranews... "Freewheeling" wrote: "Jon Meinecke" wrote Consider "argue this" in a broader context encompassing the general content and ongoing nature of this thread (and others before and likely to come). You're some piece of work, Tom. You and Markos "Screw 'em" Zunida (Daily Kos) share a common ethical tradition, apparently. I have a hunch this is a valuable comment, but I can't quite make out what it means. What?-- your comment calling Tom "some piece of work" or my observation concerning the broader context about the following exchange: "Tom Sherman" wrote Why do you want to argue this in a recumbent bicycle forum anyhow? "Freewheeling" responded: Oh BS. [Tom] actually brought up ecology Apparently you're both sufficiently interested in trolling with "this" bait in ARBR to continue posting. Pretty much constrained to this thread, and to about 3 participants, until you joined. And generally genial, thank you. Interesting tango. We've spent two years with much less artistic, measured, respectful, and thoughtful exchanges coming to dominate the newsgroup. The comparison to Markos seems to cross the line into ad hominem. One presumes you think your arguments logically stronger than to need to resort to fallacious rhetoric. It's a slippery slope. I find this comment somewhat amusing in context. Zuniga is hardly a pariah with the anti-Bush crowd. He's fairly mainstream, though a good deal more raw than, say, Josh Marshall. Mainstream Democrats publish ads on his blog, for instance. Strictly speaking I have no idea whether Tom follows Zuniga, but I sure wouldn't be shocked to find that he does. You may be surprised at the contention that Tom feels some of us our duped, or remain willfully ignorant, of how "bad things really are," but this is actually doctrinaire Marxism. It's called "alienation leading to false consciousness." I don't know where he picked it up, and for all I know he doesn't know it's Marxism, but there it is. I came up with it based on my own observations, thank you. I have no need to behave like an academic and throw out all sorts of names. It is just like all the academics that try to quantify quality of life, but have no idea how much of a hell hole [1] many of the workplaces in the US are, how middle class suburban society isolates people from proper human relationships, and how the lack of a social safety net causes many to feel that they are in an enforced economic servitude, with their existence at the whim of the privileged. So, we should just forget about trying to actually understand any of these things from an empirical perspective, and just let our prejudices and impressions rule? Gosh, it'd be great if work were like a party for everyone, but not only is that rather unrealistic... it's probably the case that human happiness isn't as simple as the *Theory of Alienation* makes it out to be. I don't see anything being proved, just some people trying to show how clever they are, or to promote an agenda. The bottom line, however, is that freedom from labor is achieved only through ownership of capital... which replaces labor. And the left always seems to stand on both sides of that issue, insisting that we somehow make labor less objectionable while simultaneously creating more of it for the sake of full employment. If you look at this carefully (as did F.A. Hayek) it's the road to serfdom, for who would want to perpetuate such a system if they knew its implications, other than a group who had decided to become the "new elite?" How can ownership of capital replace labor (unless we invent robots to do all the work)? Make some sense. I don't know what could possibly make more sense than the proposition that capital is a replacement for labor, but in the sense of performing functions formerly performed exclusively or prediminantly by labor, and in the sense of replacing labor-related income for those who possess capital. Not only is it obvious to me, it was also obvious to Karl Marx. Of course, apologizing for the excesses of the elite can be quite rewarding financially. Get out of the damn ivory tower and experience the real world! [1] I have worked in several of these, and have the long-term repetitive motion injuries to show for it. Like you're the only one, huh? I've also done farm work, having grown up on a farm and cattle ranch, and it ain't no picnic either. Unless your parents (or other relatives that owned the farm) acted in a manner that would be considered abusive on a consistent basis, there is no comparison at all. Try working as a light industrial contract (officially known as "temporary") worker or in a high-speed, repetitive job such as cleaning the intestines from chickens. Oh yes, the poultry factory. I've tried it. Have also worked in a cannery, and a factory that makes ice cream cones. You know, there are people who actually like such work don't you? I have a friend, currently an elementary school teacher, who recalls her days on the automotive factory floor very fondly. I have never seen any farm work that required performing the same motion 20,000 times per day. This is getting silly. If there's a job that's this repetitive there's no reason a machine couldn't do it. The only reason it is not done by a machine is that workers can be found who will work for at least the same cost as a machine, or less. And if a machine were installed to replace them, they'd be out of work. Which is, of course, happening all the time as sophisticated machines become less expensive to produce. All I'm saying is that if this is the trend (which it is) we probably ought to give a little consideration to who owns the machines, and if possible expand such ownership to include those who may be put out of work. Otherwise, we're going to have quite a fine mess! I recommend to you the book *Union Democracy*. It's about the International Typographical Union, which was at one time the only democratic union. (Why are most unions oligarchies or autocracies, I wonder?) It is now mostly defunct, the industry that it once served having been replaced by... the machine you're currently using to communicate with me. |
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Freewheeling wrote:
... I have never seen any farm work that required performing the same motion 20,000 times per day. This is getting silly. If there's a job that's this repetitive there's no reason a machine couldn't do it. The only reason it is not done by a machine is that workers can be found who will work for at least the same cost as a machine, or less. And if a machine were installed to replace them, they'd be out of work. Which is, of course, happening all the time as sophisticated machines become less expensive to produce. All I'm saying is that if this is the trend (which it is) we probably ought to give a little consideration to who owns the machines, and if possible expand such ownership to include those who may be put out of work. Otherwise, we're going to have quite a fine mess!... NO, NO, NO! Labor must be smashed, people must be brought to obedience by having their very existence depend on the largess of the rich and powerful. NOTHING LESS WILL DO! If you can not see that returning to a feudal society, with power based on inherited class status is the goal of the rich and powerful, then you are so naive that future discussion is pointless. You of all people should be aware that this is how the rich and powerful (with a few honorable exceptions) have always behaved. Of course, stating that publicly would limit the employment opportunities in your field significantly – it does not do to oppose the state religion. -- Tom Sherman - ****ing Contest Hell |
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Freewheeling wrote:
"Tom Sherman" wrote in message ... Jon Meinecke wrote: ... As I said, interesting tango.... There's no reason it need be unpleasant, in my opinion, as that has its own destructive effect as civil discourse suffers.... In words Ed Dolan would use, "Screw civil discourse!" If people want to **** on the newsgroup, I will be happy to make the pile higher. I never thought it would be so easy to induce you to so accurately describe the quality of your discourse. Kudos to Jon! You may have done a disservice to Zach, however, who at least proposed a reasonable hypothesis. Just replying in kind to your original right-wing diatribe. Just because it is academic language and has some citations does not give it any value. I still want to know what your real agenda is – if you are hoping to actually change people’s opinions by arguing on Usenet, you are either naïve or full of overblown self-importance. At least Ed Dolan was funny when he ranted. You are not. Sorry. Zach Kaplan mentioned oil prices, You responded with the following troll: “If we can't agree that it's time to end tyranny and totalitarianism it's doubtful that we'll ever be able to coordinate resolution of any of these other "wicked problems" that face us.” -- Tom Sherman - ****ing Contest Hell |
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