President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
See Full Big Line
(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
See Full Big Line
(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
See Full Big Line
(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
See Full Big Line
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
June 04, 2010 08:53 PM UTC
140 Comments
and deliciously refreshing.
They should bottle it and sell it in health food stores as “Marcellus Elixer”. Or just pipe it down to Pittsburgh and use it to brew Iron City.
Kathy Hall Cola.
It’s clearly the environmentalists’ fault. If only they’d allow more deepwater drilling, we wouldn’t have to drill onshore so much.
This has nothing to do with Colorado. Colorado doesn’t have Iggles or Stillers, unlike Pennsylvania.
Extreme Greenies:see now why we push”drill,baby,drill”of known reserves&promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?
It’s about jobs. If McInnis eliminates the O&G regs, we’ll have some explosive, out-of-control wells of our own. And what does that lead to? Jobs for haz-mat crews, jobs for doctors and nurses, jobs for moteliers to house families evacuated from the raging wells, jobs for PR folk to explain how it’s all OK, and then some well-paying environmental cleanup jobs. This is the way out of our nightmare!
Oh, and why do they call it “water?”
Sure, it’s mostly water, but there’s lots of other nasty shit in there.
It’s for the same reason they call it a “Water Closet.”
OMG.
Seriously? McDonald’s recalls some toy glasses cause they have cadmium in the paint.
We have seat belt laws for gosh sake.
When I was a kid we used cadmium as a condiment. I ate lead paint, we used leaded gasoline for the lawnmower – loved the smell – and we “car surfed” in the back of the Chevy station wagon.
Pffft.
We need the gas. The gas producers say they need to frac. Who really cares what’s in the fluid? I mean, they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t safe, right? the free market should be free, that way it don’t cost nothin’ and it will give us the best solution.
but hardly compares with the vast oil spill in the Gulf. Wasn’t there some chemical plant that blew up a few years ago. Tragic, but of such limited scale that it was in the news for maybe a few days.
Gee, thanks BJ, we wouldn’t have realized that without your explaining it to us. Just chalk it up to acceptable losses?
But as for the Gulf oil spill — guess what?
BP Halliburton Transocean blame each other in Gulf oil spill
That Bloomberg article reads like The Onion. This is such a catastrophe.
Yeah, unfortunately for BP, it’s not from the Onion. From another Bloomberg article:
Transocean and Haliburton will also chip in a few billion, I suspect.
Then I expect you’re right. They damn well created the mess, and the least they can do is pay for their share of the cleanup.
This is all Bill Clinton’s fault.
The president is supposed to be prepared for cleaning up messes made by greedy, unprincipled companies, huh?
Would you say this if Bush was at the helm? Of course not!
Say, how did Bush do on the 9/11 thingy what with no military planes in the air on the particular morning?????? How was his birthday going as N.O. was underwater????
documentary that shows President Obama reading My Pet Goat for a half hour before doing anything. Or President Obama congratulating BP for a job well done. Or…. cutting taxes for the wealthiest 1% and borrowing the money form China to pay for it.
Well, actually I can wait.
Bush and his admin cleaned up N.O.? (I presume that’s what you are referring to.) What a giant clusterfuck.
Clinton made FEMA (and the VA system, BTW) responsive and respected. Bush II returned both to the patronage jobs that his father had made them.
So how was a site cleanup reflective of the Boosh misadministration?
If anything, they really botched up the air quality information. Whitman stated that it was fine (the quality) when it wasn’t. Many sick and dying people still because of that.
But wouldn’t it have been easier to prevent 9/11 in the first place than clean up? Like, you know, listen to the outgoing Clinton team when they said that this potential should be the new president’s #1 priority?
So we reelect the super fuck up.
He went after the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.
we fought Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And no, it doesn’t matter if they were there in the first place. And yes, Sadaam Hussein was a brutal dictator who’s reign was America’s fault and needed to be taken out. And…
Hecka of Job Rummy
“Cleaning up” does not mean military action.
Especially when said “cleaning up” has been such a dismal failure…..and there were no tarists in Iraq to begin with.
So how the hell did you get a teaching position at CU when you can’t even think as well as most high school seniors? Or your students?
Hell, teachers are getting in trouble for teaching ‘global warming’ out in these parts and a college can get away with that? It’s criminal…
It’s not really malpractice.
It’s just that the people who are awarded teaching assistantships are less competent than the people who are awarded research assistantships. No adviser worth his salt is going to risk his NSF grant on a moron.
It was a joke. Hell, even I had a teaching assistantship.
I had a research assistantship.
So Nyaah Nyaah to you.
I tried to get the navel-gazing research assistantship, but it was in high demand.
Instead I helped lead a 300 level environmental ethics course…
That’s much more useful work than I did.
I was cooking limestone in a pressure vessel at 250 degrees C trying to duplicate Mississippi-valley type lead-zinc deposits.
And keeping a separate, secret, lab notebook because my adviser’s theories didn’t work.
If they did, I would be Dr. Ralphie. But they didn’t.
(which is also imminently more readable) I taught from the Monkey Wrench Gang among some more standard texts. It was pretty fun, actually. I promptly went on to pizza delivery after I finished–a very suitable career for anyone with a philosophy degree, although I was a bit under qualified.
Oh wait.
Glad we Osama bin Laden!
Oh wait.
Good thing we struck Iraq
Its on private property
It was approved by the local government, whose political make up I do not know–although the Mayor is Republican
Thus it is not ‘in its place’
Thus it is within the legal framework proscribed by local government, you know the government closet to the people
It is on private property
Are you arguing that:
There should be no Freedom of Religion in the US?
That your opinion in Colorado, or that of some DC bureaucrat should trump local authority (please cite the Constitutional provision that allows such)?
That private property rights should be ignored?
You are nothing if not inconsistent there Blow, but I know what you’ll say…
Please get you head examined. I worry for your well-being.
Glad to know ClubTwitty spends his days fretting about my well-being.
Like when I see a sad child at the Post Office
Libs never care about the poor, they just expect government to handle the problem to get it off their conscience.
Lucky for you, I believe that the safety net should apply to fools as well. Are you saying you want to compare charitable giving, remember how great that worked for old Scooter?
I know, I know. Your response is coming, and it will be the equivalent of…
It’s intellectual, moral, and social impoverishment. All joking aside, it is a kind of tragedy. Certainly, any individual suffering from it, all those whom he encounters, and the society as a whole marginally affected by his counterproductive contributions, suffer its consequences.
if he had been governor of Pennsylvania they would have had stiffer oil and gas regulations that would have prevented the problem. It’s Ritters fault because he isn’t governor of Pennsylvania.
were something other than a mindless partisan algorithm on a political blog, you’d be in a position to save us all from Obama’s “incompetence,” and other challenges to humanity.
Unfortunately, in the real world, the space-battle program I wrote in C++ 15 years ago for my first and last programming class is more useful to humanity than your political “analysis”.
Lol, I like it. Fits you to a T.
to go back over your previous posts to link to the several times other posters have pointed out your infantile penchant for saying some version of “I know you are, but what am I?”, but you’re definitely not worth that much effort. What a phenomenal putz!
Which has been pointed out repeatedly. You posit nonsense yet think you are clever. What you imagine are reasoned arguments are neither. It is quite the study in dumbass.
various types of things that reproduce and diffuse through some medium, such as genes, viruses, and ideas or attitudes. Your contribution to public discourse is clearly that of an ambitious bacterial infection, offering nothing of value put filling every interstice it can find with its noxious puss, infatuated with itself but repugnant to all others. Clearly, you absorb the disgust you engender with such equanimity because you lack the imagination and self-awareness to be informed by it.
Your newest contribution, in your sig line, is to take your infantile “I know you are, but what am I” to a new level, essentially misattributing a statement by implying that it referred to someone other than the person to whom it referred. It’s almost identical to quoting someone who says “I condemn anyone who says ‘I despise all (whatever)'” as having said “I despise all (whatever).” Even among the slimiest of people, there are few who ever stoop that low. But every now and then, we are reminded that such disgusting slimeballs do indeed exist, and that they will continue to cross our paths from time to time.
Of course, it’s always a delight to be reminded of the political ideology that such people usually adhere to. The vast, mostly silent majority in the middle can only be pushed away from your odious ideology of ignorance by such odious representatives.
And good job on all the big words you managed to string together! You must have been brushing up on your vocabulary in your failed quest for public office.
in your on-going attempt to demonstrate that you’re not as much of an idiot as apparently everyone, on the left and the right, recognizes you to be, the only way you can attempt to be clever is by using others’ words (since you have no capacity to be clever in your own words). And by repeating the phrase “I know you are, but what am I” with a winking emoticon three times, you somehow believe you have defused the fact that that represents the extent of the depth and substance of all of your posts and responses.
There is one thing and one thing only you have proven in your posts: The good judgment of the Colorado Bar and Colorado courts.
I had you confused with GoldenEye for a moment. Too many raving idiots to keep track of!
but I suppose that’s to be expected. My point was that when you guys are hurling the childish insults in the first place, you have no ground to complain about childish comebacks.
You started posting in the tone of an obnoxious idiot, combining your own cluelessness with an attitude of delusional superiority, and have earned almost universal animosity in return.
don’t be such a colossal ass as to claim to have made any “subtle points”. All you’ve posted so far are shallow platitudes, blind and unsupported ideological assertions, delusional claims of intellectual superiority, infantile refrains, and phrases created by others that you recognize are far more clever than anything you could ever come up with on your own.
According to you, with your Master’s degree and 3.89GPA, you’re not really an ignorant fool. You just play one on the blogs.
Very convincingly, I might add.
in Scrap booking…good job!
Which I must say, you seem to have plenty of.
I’m sure we can find a connection between Obama and Acorn and the installation of this rig, the poor decision to transition it from a drilling rig to a production rig and somewhere in all that we’ll find Obama’s real Kenyan birth certificate.
blame those who insist that the government shouldn’t mettle in business’ affairs, as you do, since it’s that pseudo-economic nonsense that has led to the underregulation responsible for this catastrophe.
That your man Maes wants to ‘beg forgiveness’ for suggesting that the chemicals be disclosed…
That this activity is happening in neighborhoods–literally hundreds of feet from people’s homes–imagine a mere ‘mile wide chemical spill’ spewing toxins across and closing airspace around your mommy’s suburb (where I presume you live?).
Would you then still parrot the stoopid?
This type of incident is the result of lax regulation. The answer–to prevent such things–is better regulation, Colorado’s new rules didn’t go far enough (we need the federal FRAC Act) but they’re a start.
I mean there are dumbasses, there are supreme dumbasses and then there’s you.
And you shouldn’t make any presumptions, because you’re always wrong. Liberal bloggers live in their mommy’s basement. Conservative bloggers have real world jobs.
Let that blow your mind.
A teaching assistant who thinks that means he’s brilliant. c-l-u-e-l-e-s-s!!!
Dude, a teaching assistantship is not a real job.
…is how you can spend all day here, making many dozens of posts, and then infer that you have a “real world job.”
How is that possible? Two options that I can see.
1. You are a paid right wing “blogger.”
2. You don’t have the “real world job” that you allege to. That you aspire to.
Since most paid bloggers seem to focus on a candidate, and you don’t, I’m heavily leaning toward #2.
Notice when I started posting a lot, and when finals occurred. See my previous post as to my job. I teach college courses at CSU.
unlike yours as to the facts and statements I make, and their veracity. My opinions are informed by facts. Yours are uniformed and almost exclusively your ‘facts’ are wrong, ill-informed, generally baseless.
I own my business, which is doing quite well. My basement is a mess, I don’t think even you would want to live down there.
so I guess that’s one less liberal blogger the world has to worry about. Of course you think your track record stands up to scrutiny. The question is what does everybody else think. And by everybody I do mean everybody, not just your comfortable little circle of buddies at ColoradoPols.
The free-market advocating Economist magazine endorsed Obama in the 2008 presidential election, and 80% of American economists polled favored Democratic over Republican economic policies. Most of the rest of the developed world (you did emphasize that you meant “everybody,” didn’t you?) thinks that Americans are throwbacks, having been on the cutting edge 223 years ago, but then stagnating in the clutches of an ossified ideology that failed (relative to the rest of the post-WWII developed world) to heed Jefferson’s admonishment to adapt our social institutions to changing times.
The Economist magazine, along with most of the rest of the developed world and the vast majority of Americans who work with information for a living (e.g., scholars and journalists), has also always advocated for single payer universal healthcare, gay rights, robust domestic environmental regulations and robust international treaties to deal with global environmental issues such as global warming.
Yes, there is a significant faction in America which, like you, lives in a vacuum, from which all factual accuracy and sound reasoning have been banished, replaced with a completely fabricated reality detached from the modern scientific processes by which more reliable information is produced.
Whether this faction is large or not, whether it is the majority or not, does not define how correct or incorrect it is. Legal or de facto segregation was once supported by the majority of American citizens; that didn’t make it right. As it happens, your faction only shouts the loudest; poll after poll demonstrate most Americans, when push comes to shove, are not extremists, and do not adhere to your blind and dysfunctional ideological platitudes.
In other words, the “everybody” you cite is one small, ignorant, fanatical faction, opposed by the vast majority of humanity and the vast majority of Americans, and, perhaps more importantly, by reason and goodwill, regardless of how many or how few adhere to those guiding principles.
In the ground water for a long time.
http://www.springerlink.com/co…
Because if so you’re a hypocrite.
I personally drive an electric car.
This does mean you support coal powered plants, though, at least for the most part right now.
We’re on Fort Collins wind power, and we’re installing a 5 kW photovoltaic array this month. More than enough to cover the driving we do.
The problem I see is that we all just assume that, “oh, oil/coal/etc. are dirty and always will be”, followed up by, “and none of solar/wind/etc. can replace all of it”. When, in reality, a portfolio of renewable options exists and could, if developed, supply most of our day-to-day energy needs if used in combination. Think solar – wind – geothermal – combined with a transformation in how we use energy.
I don’t quite understand the “no we can’t!” attitude that seems to have gripped the country. Personally, I would love to preserve our environment for my children, while simultaneously starving the money pipeline that feeds the terrorists. But maybe that’s just me.
I think most people would use alternative energy if it became practical and economical, it’s just that up to this point it hasn’t been. Personally I think algae based oil might be the first source of energy that could actually replace gasoline, but we’ll see in the coming years.
The problem right now is that supply and demand are such that costs for renewables are high. Someone has to be an early adopter to get the market moving. I guess that would be me 🙂
But a combination of increased supply combined with increasing cost in oil (if you think we are approaching peak oil, as I do) means that we will be switching to renewables at some point. The big question is – how much of an enjoyable environment will we have left when that happens? Which is why I advocate tax breaks for renewables, along with appropriate fees for all energy development which covers the full, true cost (including, in this case, prorated cleanup costs).
but sometimes we get it wrong, like with ethanol. If something truly has the potential to become commercially viable I have no problem with giving it a bit of a push, but if it doesn’t work it just eats up money that would have been better spent elsewhere.
even without accounting for the massive externalities.
You just spit up talking points like a burping baby.
Its not everyone who embraces the ‘no we can’t’ attitude. Me, I believe in American ingenuity.
I don’t approve of government spending money on that at all. Only socialists believe government should be involved in private business like that. So I guess that shoots down your cute talking point line. I believe in American ingenuity, not government bureaucracy. Which is exactly why the private sector should develop energy rather than the public sector. Since the private sector is subject to the laws of supply and demand, it is a much more efficient method of development.
Yeah- because that free market to th emoon and back worked out so well.
Or the free market creating universal k-12 education.
Or the railroads.
The interstate highways.
Commercial aviation.
Or this very internet.
I could go on- but what’s the point? The “free market” private sector solution ideology has you blinded. IT’s ok – and I’m not complaining The free market gave us Visa and Windows and Mac OS and New Coke and Breaking Bad and pills for ulcers and a zikkion other great things.
But otherwise agree–what’s the point?
Without the massive subsidies propping up oil and gas, and coal, and if the externalities of those sources were really put into the companies bottom line, renewables would be on a much more even playing field today.
Just like the passenger rail would be more “competitive” if it was subsidized like air and car.
That’s news to me. I’m still waiting for my check from the government.
(And please let me know when you are on the road so I can warn everyone else to stay off).
2010 CDOT budget (approx) $1.1billion
There would be several ways to measure how we pay this number, and how we could.
The most straightforward is 1.1 billion Г· (total number of registerd vehilces)
Not counting military vehicles, there are 5million active license plates in CO. But only about 3.3 million of those are cars and light trucks.
so 1100 million Г· 3.3 million = appox $340 per car and light truck. If you paid less than that to register your car (you did) than your travel by car is subsiidized.
Now, beyond the CDOT budget, it would also be fair to add in other expenses to the total auto use budget: medical expenses for injuries caused by accidents, pollution caused by vehicles are two large categories. The former is often priced- but not in the “travel by car” calculation. The latter is hardly ever calculated and even less commonly priced.
Do you have a brain? Has it yet atrophied?
who responded to three seperate posts above with “I know you are, but what am I?”
BJ, in a battle of wits, you’re not only unarmed, but all of your efforts only serve to assist those opposed to you who are.
I was poking fun at you guys. Gosh, do I have to explain everything? This gets to be so tedious. It’s funny how you make statements like “all your efforts only serve to assist those opposed to you who are” and assume that the mere fact that you were the one who uttered it makes it true. News flash: nobody cares about your banalities and showy pretenses. Those who have to pretend to care in order to try get you elected must grit their teeth every time you launch into another long-winded, devoid-of-content puff piece.
Yes, that has been our point all along.
Newsflash for you: you claim to know what other readers do and don’t care about, citing something no one other than you claims not to care about (based on an arbitrary assumption no one other than you has made), while simultaneously ignoring the rather massive and sustained actual feedback, from numerous people here, about what they do and don’t care about it. And, guess what? You are almost universally recognized to be an obnoxious and clueless idiot.
To you, fact and reason-laden analyses are “puff pieces,” and meaningless empty assertions are all that is of value. No one else buys it.
Newsflash, Genius: Clapping an emoticon onto something, like saying “just kidding” after saying something particularly offensive, does not somehow erase the content of the obnoxious thing you felt the need to justify with a shallow disclaimer.
…doesn’t mean it can’t be explored for and mined wisely. Which is NOT what we do.
Welcome to the Deep Horizon of deregulation.
there are basically three economic goals to be balanced: robustness (the efficient and voluminous production of wealth), fairness (that the opportunities to partake of that wealth have as little to do with the chances of birth, and as much to do with individual effort, as possible), and sustainability (that the economy producing the wealth does not undermine the systemic base on which it depends).
Modern developed economies are energy hungry, and we participate in them. We also advocate for refining them. While we may live in the world as it is, that does not mean that there is anything hypocritical about seeking to make it what it could be.
More fundamentally, you are engaging in a very common levels-of-analysis error: Social policies are not just the aggregation of individual choices. Rather, they are the incentive structures that we collectively produce through political and cultural processes, and that serve as the context within which we make individual choices.
As has been amply illustrated from within a range of disciplines, included economics, mathematics, and biology (especially evolutionary ecology), decisions that can be individually rational can simultaneously be collectively irrational, leading to a variety of mechanisms for creating mutual commitment mechanisms to achieve collectively rational arrangements.
Enforceable contracts are the simplest and most obvious example: If the parties to the contract would have found it in their own unmediated individual interests to act in accordance with the contract, no contract would have been needed. If they did not find it in their collective interests to make sure that all parties acted in accordance with the terms of the contract, they would not have had any reason to enter into it.
The underlying dynamic which creates this frequently encountered disconnect between individual and collective rationality goes by various names: The free rider problem, the prisoners dilemma, the tragedy of the commons, and collective action problems.
If, for instance, I would like to see a refinement in our energy regime, would I accomplish that by not driving a car? No. What I would accomplish is to make a marginal contribution which would decrease the demand for fossil fuels by an imperceptable amount, and decrease the amount of pollutants emitted by an imperceptable amount, from which everyone would benefit infinitessimally, while I alone would bear the entire costs in time and inconvenience. Some people are committed enough, or noble enough, to make that gesture. But the incentive structure is such that many of the people who would agree to that reduction if everyone else agreed to it to, would not be willing to agree to it unilaterally. That’s why dependence on spontaneous individual contributions to public goods, as every economist knows, underproduces those public goods from a utility-maximization point of view.
That’s why there is absolutely nothing hypocritical about both driving a car, and seeking institutional constraints on the production of negative externalities associated with that activity.
And of course this is the crux of the disagreement between conservatives and liberals. Big government vs. individual liberties. For me, this is America and it’s founded on freedom. There are not many other places in the world where you can find it, so if you don’t like it just go live somewhere else. Maybe Greece would suit you well, I hear they’ve been having great successes with socialism over there.
Serious question…
he’s ostensibly a person, but clearly also a dinosaur, they apparently coexist today, and in a single entity no less (fossilized, and yet able to post comments on a political blog)! It puts the wonders of the Burgess Shale fossil discoveries to shame. If only Stephen Jay Gould were alive to write a book about it….
Actually, it’s mathematically identical to the theory of evolution, which, through genetic competition for reproductive success, has produced complex patterns of cooperation in nature, many of which are mimicked in human technologies and social institutions. In my academic work, I ended becoming a bit of an expert on the theory of evolution, even though my work was really in institutional economics, precisely for this reason. (It’s simply astounding how completely wrong you get absolutely everything!)
“Liberty” is, obviously, not just freedom from government, but also freedom to thrive. The purpose of government, which is what our Constitution established at the federal level, is to ensure that the liberties of each are protected, by protecting them against infringements on those liberties (and other rights, such as to property) by the actions of others. Liberty, for instance, is decisively destroyed by death, which is why we deny ourselves the liberty of murdering others.
We’ve discovered that it is not only the obvious direct infringements that are salient, but also unobvious and cumulative indirect infringements. Conservatives want to leave corporations with the liberty to contaminate the environment in ways which substantially diminish human health, and in other ways which may lead to catastrophic systemic changes whose consequences may be far more dramatic. Liberals believe that our liberty to breathe clean air and drink uncontaminated water should be protected, just as our lives should be protected from murderers.
Rational people of any ideology understand that it’s not a black-and-white issue (either being for individual liberty, or being against it), but rather a line-drawing exercise; how to balance the right to liberty of those whose actions adversely affect others with the right of others not to be thus adversely affected? That’s a complex and information-intensive challenge, and not one served by your blind and shallow ideological platitudes.
I find it interesting that in evolution you can find the expression of both the American conservative and progressive philosophies; all you need to do is look at what evolution teaches in slightly different ways.
Modern conservatives, IMHO, are working their way back to Social Darwinism. They believe that our society’s strength comes through the individual freedom to act, and is hampered by those less fortunate in our society. Liberals, on the other hand, work on a social principle analogous to the complex systems at work within evolution whereby the survival of the species is sometimes at cross purposes to the maximum benefit of the individual.
This plays out at many levels. Diseases that are too fatal are less common and sometimes go extinct just as surely as societies that over-consume (see: Easter Island), or companies that fail to plan adequately for the future.
The system with the best strength, both in evolution and in society, is one that balances the strength of the individual with that of the health of the group.
A few things need to be kept in mind:
The theory of evolution is descriptive, not normative. It describes the nature of a systemic dynamic, not an imperative for individual or public choice. We do not need to try to conform to evolution’s logic; our decisions in aggregate will do so whether we try or not. Similarly, the fact that something occurs due to evolutionary forces does not make it a desirable occurance: All of the successful conquests, genocides, and exterminations of human cultures have fed into a cultural evolutionary process, but that does not mean that we have to condone those actions. Had we succeeded in avoiding them, the suffering they involved, and the loss to the diversity of forms of human culture incurred, that result would also have fed into our cultural evolutionary process. Evolution isn’t just about eliminating forms, it is also about retaining them. It is incumbent on us to do the best we can to serve the interests of human beings, here and elsewhere, now and in the future, and let the lathe of trial and error work its magic as an overlay to our efforts, not as an excuse for not bothering, or for choosing brutality instead.
there can be some implicit normative components derived from understanding any descriptive theory: Given the dynamics of the system, how do we best serve the interests of human welfare, here and elsewhere, now and in the future? Certainly, understanding how the lathe of trial and error works recommends providing as robust a supply of experimentation as possible, within the constraints of what is humane and reasonable.
David, for instance, advocated that “fast fail” (was that the term he used?) was the best way to forge social policies, instead of too much emphasis on systemic analysis in order to get it right from the get-go. But, clearly, no one would advocate a completely arbitrary “fast fail” approach: In education, for instance, no one would advocate napalming schools during school hours to see if that improves educational performance. Some amount of front-loaded analysis is required, and efficient.
One of the reasons that human cultural evolution is so much “faster” than biological evolution is that, unlike biological evolution, it does not rely strictly on a blind “fast fail” model. It is front-loaded with human ingenuity and analysis. Not only do random mutations of memes compete for reproductive success, but well-reasoned and imaginative innovations also compete for reproductive success. (Another reason is that memes reproduce far faster than genes, through every act of communication).
when reading some of Nev. Sen. candidate Sue Lowden’s proposals. Do we really want to try implementing ChickenCare to see if it succeeds? Or maybe we should just throw a nuke at the BP oil spill and see if that makes things better, without considering the environmental damage it would do.
Some front-loaded analysis is necessary, rational, and (mostly) done as a matter of course. Trying some things in a “fast fail” approach, as you note (somewhat hyperbolically) can be detrimental and irreversible.
I use them in analogies to point out that the question on the table isn’t really either-or (e.g., either we employ front loaded analysis or we don’t, either we favor “less government” under all circumstances or we don’t, etc.), but rather where to draw the line, and that for us to focus our attention on the line drawing rather than on a debate over a false-dichotomy would be a huge step forward.
Unfortunately, my hyperbolic analogies seem to be more distracting than useful…. Maybe I’ll have to resort to using analogies closer to the zone where the line would eventually be drawn. 🙂
I could counter your hyperbole with a pleasant understatement. 🙂
You respond to an in-depth analysis, based on actual knowledge, with just another meaningless string of words that do nothing other than blindly refute (without offering any evidence or argument to back up the refutation) and antagonize, and then refer to those in-depth and well-informed analyses as being empty and meaningless, while referring to your own truly empty and meaningless posts as being subtle and brilliant. The degree of self-serving detachment from reality involved is simply mindboggling!
Nothing makes him happier than getting you and ClubTwitty riled up.
From the beginning B.J. has boasted of how many responses he was able to gather or how many signature lines he appeared in or how angry his opponents have gotten. That’s why he puts no effort into his arguments, and why his arguments make no sense. He’s just trying to piss you off.
at least from my perspective. Tony Hayward BP CEO? He gets me ‘riled up.’ I am barely annoyed by BJ.
and will stop now (no matter how tempting it is to debunk the next bit of meaningless drivel he belches out). But I don’t agree with you that he’s trying to be an idiot in order to rile us up; I’m convinced that he’s really just as delusional as he claims to be.
I’m convinced that he’s representative of the Bizarro world of the American far-right today, in which well-informed and well-reasoned analyses are arbitrarily designated as the exact opposite, whereas completely unsupported, factually false, irrational platitudes are embraced as the height of wisdom. It combines extreme individualism, anti-intellectualism, and bigotry (not necessarily racism) into one of the most dangerous and potent packages of socially destructive ideology to take hold in America, perhaps ever (even the more particularly odious ideologies in our history have been more limited in scope). This country is facing a movement of anti-social organized ignorance on a scale worthy of serious concern. It’s not an entirely new development, but more a confluence of several threads that have been woven through our history, which have individually succeeded in turning America into an increasingly inferior developed nation by all domestic measures. If we don’t figure out how to remedy this outbreak of collective insanity, that trend will only continue to accelerate, and America will become engraved in history as the country that made a valuable contribution to political evolution, only to itself become an ossified relic thereafter, surpassed in every way by the other developed nations that resumed the refinement of the ideas that had briefly reached a pinnacle here.
…Do you still believe in the tooth fairy?
Our nation was NOT founded on this hypothetical, mythological “freedom” you and your ilk keep prattling about.
It was founded on the right “to be free” to participate in our government, unlike a monarchy. Everyone back then understood the necessity of laws, of individuals complying with those laws.
Does The Whiskey Rebellion mean anything to you? So much for unlimited freedom to do whatever the fuck you want to do no matter how it fucks over every one else.
Green Fraud: BP and Copper Mountain
I saw “100% wind power” banners at Copper Mountain two years ago. The banners refer to the premium Copper pays on their coal-fired electricity to fund wind energy.
The banners were gone this year. I hope the “truth in advertising” squad called Copper out for claiming power from plants not yet built, “perfect” plants, and “perfect” transmission lines. These bogus claims let businesses off easy and hurt funding for wind farms.
The New York Times points out a bogus but effective BP claim:
‘Bring oil to America’s shores.’ How’s THAT for truth in advertising?
Oops.
No, that’s not how the wind power program works. (I can’t recall the official name of it.)
I participated at 100% of usage when I last lived in Colorado. What PS does is figure how much wind generation capacity they have, and then sell that at a different rate than the fossil fueled electricity. Yes, the electricities “mix” if you will, but the allocation is sound.
I remember at one point maybe eight years ago when conventional electricity prices went way up due to fuel costs. All of a sudden everyone wanted to join the wind power program which was suddenly cheaper.
“Sorry, no can do. At capacity. Get in line.”
So, being 100% wind power is a legitimate statement. As to why two years ago and no longer, there are several possibilities. 1) They decided that it wasn’t worth paying a premium price for juice, 2) The P.R. had run its course but they were continuing the program, or, 3) The banner was worn out.
Nothing is forever except forever.
I didn’t even think to question CCW’s statement, figuring that Copper was on some rural co-op, and those often do use “wind credit” systems.
But according to Xcel’s page, Copper Mountain is served by them, which means that if they purchased wind power, they really did purchase wind power.
The news today says it was brought under control after 16 hours. No Deepwater Horizon for the gaspatch, sorry to disappoint you ambulance chasers.
Didn’t you need power to turn on your computer and post this blog? Hypocrites…
in an evacuation center among friends?
Unless you’re the guy sitting next to GOPwarrior. Then you’re just stuck in hell.
Underground coal mining country.
I’ll bet even the evacuation center was a shot-and-a-beer place.
And since PA is a large sea, the relatively small size (compared to the Gulf disaster) means everything is OK. Oh wait, never mind.
The effects of an incident is directly related to the size of the resource it impacts, I mean in the real world. In the zit-popper world, not so much.
You’d think you’d be happy they got it under control, but oh no. Don’t accidents happen even to the safest operators?
I’m glad they got it under control, I’m concerned what might result from a similar ‘accident’ in Colorado.
We’re driving the energy business out of Colorado, isn’t it? When you get right down to it, your “concern” would rather see all drilling shut down than minimizing the risks and proceeding, wouldn’t it?
http://www.deltacountyindepend…
http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/…
http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/BL…
Need more? There are hundreds of wells being proposed in just one BLM resource area, many more on other BLM and USFS lands, private, etc. Then there are waste pits, pipelines, compressor stations all being planned or under development.
I know that you love your GOP talking points, and I know since you have no actual facts to back them up you think that by repetition alone they become true…
But I, unlike you, have higher standards of proof. And its obvious that the energy industry 1-never left and 2-is actively planning its next round of expansion.
Do you support these proposals or oppose them? Did you ever stop and think that you liberals questioning everything the industry proposes is why they believe Colorado is hostile to them?
shall we say, a wee bit overblown?
But I guess in the zit-popper world such gross hyperbole is what you call a ‘fact’?
The greenie cite one set of numbers and the industry cites another. Everybody agrees drilling has significantly gone down in Colorado over the past two years, that’s the fact and we are arguing over opinion of the cause.
sensible regulation have driven industry from the state. But nice shift in the argument zit-popper.
Drilling has gone down all over the Mountain West in the past two years and it is slowly coming back up.
Industry didn’t flee, they shut in their wells and laid down rigs until prices came back up. It’s what zit-poppers such as yourself might call ‘Economics 101’ you know supply-and-demand.
A lot of activity moved to the shale plays, which had a lot to do with decline as the onset of those fields coincided with the worse global recession in modern times… etc. etc. etc.
I’m going outside to play. Its too nice of a day to repeat the obvious to obviously ideologically-blinded idiots.
Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article…