clash of the eliterati
Poe’s Law:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.
And so it goes. A few thousand ersatz conservative vaporheads gather in DC, only to find themselves as the next laugh line on Letterman and the illustration in Wiki under “Fuqtard”. Not only were they the joke, but the joke was on them, too. Another exercise in useful idiocy.
Oh and then there’s the denial by the deniers who tried to deny that they denied any part of the denial . . . a further adventure in the anals of the Anti Science Society (ASS), the members of which must be found to be contaminated with – or carriers of – Anti Science Syndrome which, according to Joe Romm, can be diagnosed in the following way:
If you suspect someone of ASS, look for the repeated use of the following phrases:
- Medieval Warm Period
- Hockey Stick
- Michael Mann
- The climate is always changing
- Alarmist
- Hoax
- Temperature rises precede rises in carbon dioxide
- Pacific Decadal Oscillation
- Water vapor
- Sunspots
- Cosmic rays
- Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark
- Ice Age was predicted in the 1970s
- Global cooling
Individually, some of these words and phrases are quite useful and indeed are commonly used by both scientists and non-scientists who are not anti-science. But the use of more than half of these in a single speech or article is pretty much a definitive diagnosis of ASS.
When someone repeats virtually all of those phrases, along with multiple references to Al Gore, they are wholly a victim of ASS — in scientific circles they are referred to as ASS-wholes.
Romm, gentleman that he is, neglected to mention that poking fun at ASS-wholes is known as “ASS-play”.
Some of you already know that. But a few may need to take Yoga lessons from my friend cutshot so that you can assume the same anatomically impossible positions he’s so deftly mastered.
