October 03, 2015 By: Juanita Jean Herownself Category: Uncategorized
Ben Carson. Bless his heart.
I need to quote him exactly. In explaining climate change, he called it complex.
“Just the way the Earth rotates on its axis, how far away it is from the sun. These are all very complex things. Gravity, where did it come from?”
Uh, it’s not magic or God making our feet into suction cups if that’s what you mean. Try this, Dr. Carson.
Thanks to Bryan for the heads up.
Welcome to The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.
My name is Susan DuQuesnay Bankston. I live in Richmond, Texas, in the heart of Tom DeLay's old district. It's nuttier than squirrel poop here.
I am honored and privileged to know Miss Juanita Jean Herownself, hairdresser extraordinary and political maven. Since she does not have time to fiddle with this internet stuff, I type her website for her and you can read it if you want to. If you don't, she truly does not give a big bear's butt.
A lot of what I post here has to do with local politics, but you probably have the same folks in your local government.
This ain't a blog. Blogs are way too trendy for me. This is a professional political organization.
It’s really quite simple…We are being controlled by the random fluctuations of a complex system.
1(https://www.facebook.com/NewYorkerCartoons/photos/a.237223479636271.67874.155328717825748/961459770545968/)
Ben Carson is six years younger than I am and apparently many decades more ignorant. Climate change (from other than human causes) was explained very well in my childhood (overlapping his somewhat) by The Golden Book of Natural History, up to knowledge known back then. It included evolution (with dinosaurs and eohippus and so on), geology, astronomy, which foods came from where, etc, etc. Lots of etc.
Anyway, on climate change, it was very clear that CO2 was a greenhouse gas, forming a sort of blanket so the sun’s heat couldn’t radiate away as fast, and that increasing CO2 was the cause of past warm periods. Every child in school who had a half-decent science class in the 1st through 6th grade had also been told that, even in Texas public schools. Maybe Ben Carson was daydreaming of being President? Anyway, it wasn’t all that complicated–simple enough to go in a science book for children.
The anthropogenic side of it wasn’t realized for a couple decades later. Variation in CO2 percentages wasn’t yet detectable as outside normal known variation…and as the guys said who wrote the original paper that first pointed out the problem, the system’s reaction would not be a clear signal for another 20 years, in the 1990s, if CO2 continued to increase at the same rate.
2Now he’s getting his talking points from the Insane Clown Posse. (NSFM)
3Gravity doesn’t exist. Note the number of rwnj that constantly fall off the extreme right edge of the flat Earth.
4Or as Dan Rather once said,”Here is the sequence of events in no particular order.”
5Dr. Carson has apparently appointed renown idiot/fascist Bill O’Liely as his science adviser. “The tides come in, the tides go out. Nobody knows …”
6PKM, I saved a LOL (but not the link, alas) which has a photo of Bill O’Reilly captioned, “Tides come in, tides go out. You can’t explain that,” followed by a photo of Buzz Aldrin captioned, “It’s called the Moon, you ****ing idiot.”
Some people look at complex stuff and say, “I wonder how that happened. I should talk to or read people who know about it, or investigate myself if no one knows.” Others look at the same complex stuff and say, “I don’t understand this, so it must be God.” As far as I’m concerned, life is more fun and more fulfilling (and more sane) if you are, and associate with, the first type of person.
7Ben Carson reminds me of the modern day Sherlock Holmes (played by Bandersnatch Cumberbund) who only learned stuff he thought he needed to know–and didn’t bother with anything else.
8Gravity, it flew out of the empty space between your ears, Mr. not ever to be president.
9RHea that jpg sounds like a classic! I did a wide search and couldn’t locate it. Possibly something posted on a blog generated from one of the many apps available.
Maybe if you on the image you have saved, then the original png or jpeg will display.
I would really, really love to find that one!!!
10Carson learned science from graffiti, bumpers stickers & t-shirts from back in the day that said “There is no gravity, the earth sucks.”
11Uh, is that a rhetorical question, or do we go down the rabbit-hole?
The problem is that the Earth is NOT in infinite system, it’s just very, very big. Unfortunately, our ability to create waste products (including greenhouse gases) is also very, very large (and getting larger). Returning to the theme of astronauts and the Moon, viewed from Space the Earth (as we know it) is a small and fragile bubble wrapped around the land and water on the surface. This ain’t the Bronze Age, and we have a better version of the creation story (that for a believer such as myself) is all the richer for taking billions of years and remnants of supernovae to create little old us.
Sure those are complex things that one can try to understand, if one wishes. I just think that human storytelling from the Bronze Age isn’t as good as the 21st century.
12Kids think more clearly than adults, lots of time. Once I was in a third grade classroom with a friend who prefered coal fired power over wind and sun. The kids had seen that the sun could cook food in a solar cooker and that burning a fuel makes it not renewable. This third grader pointed out that coal is dirty and why should we be using dirty coal to make electricity when we have the wind and sun. Kids don’t depend on thinking the right things like adults do. They’re not getting a paycheck.
13They are getting grades, however. Some (not all) can be swayed by a favorite teacher and some are ambitious little buggers even in elementary school. They just haven’t had as many years of pressure to conform…which makes it lots of fun to be around them.
I remember the first-grader who asked me, during a school visit (and in wistful voice) if I could go to the bathroom any time I wanted while writing a book. His teacher was furious, but I remember very well the needing to go and not being allowed out of my seat until recess. And the humiliation of a kid who wet their pants and was scolded.
So I said “Yes, I can…but if I spend all my time going to the bathroom, the book never gets written, so I have to spend time at my desk, too.”
14Anybody who paid the least bit of attention in middle school science class knows how gravity works. Now, just how did you get that medical degree, Ben Carson?
15Rhea, there’s one worse than “I don’t understand this, so it must be God.” … “I don’t understand this, so it didn’t happen” …(or it’s a librull conspiracy) …
16Rhea, O’Liely is a graduate of a good prep school and college wherein the faculty must be about to cut their wrists in despair over his obstinacy and obfuscation all for his own amusement. He damn well knows better!
17BarbinDC says:
October 3, 2015 at 10:45 am
“Ben Carson reminds me of the modern day Sherlock Holmes…”
Especially that episode where he self-identifies as being a “high-functioning sociopath”.
Come to think of it, all of the Rethuglican candidates fit that description. Excepting that “”high-functioning” bit…
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(TV_series)#Critical_response )
(and I think I have VCR tapes of every PBS/Brit Sherlock series produced, got to convert them to digital/DVD some time, or just buy the boxed sets)
18PKM, I did a hunt myself and can’t find the source; maybe the website where I got it has gone down. Looks like I downloaded it on 30 Jan 2015. If there’s some way you can give me your email address (without broadcasting it to the world) I can send you the jpeg.
19Rhea, thank you. Would probably require using the overworked Miss Juanita Jean as a note passer. So maybe better to send it to Uncle DaChipster so the jpeg can be shared with everyone here.
Or, maybe the unparalleled John K can draw up something given your description.
It’s impossible to mock Republicons with words; they know so few words. Cartoons really are the best medium to communicate with them.
20epo, haven’t you visited Gravity, Iowa? It’s southeast of Des Moines. I think the population is 5 and I don’t believe it is incorporated. They do have a lovely town sign that includes the following quip:
“If Gravity Goes, We All Go.”
I love that town.
21I’ll wager the faculties at Yale, University of Detroit Medical School and Johns Hopkins hold their heads in their hands when he spouts his unscientific views on climate change, gravity and anything else which shows his ignorance of established fact.
22They should.
It has long been my own understanding that doctors do not make functioning politicians. First (of Humana fame) never, ever “got the memo” when he was in the Senate and Coburn had one damn weird fantasy life!
23Astronomically planet Earth [or planet Ocean, as many of us prefer], the planet should be cooling since our slightly elip-tickle orbit is stretched out away from the Sun causing a cooling cycle. That was the collection of data that gave rise that we were in an anthropomorphicly anomalous cycle evidenced by warmer surface temps. The FACT is warming … local, global or regional is a symptom of CLIMATE SHIFT.
The Atmospheric Geology class is now closed.
24The story apparently originates on the Occupy Democrats site, but Snopes says that isn’t what he said.
25Origuy–thanks for the links.
26What frightens me so much more than the imbeciles in the Republican circus (way, way, way past the clown car) is that so many people believe them. Has education really failed that drastically in our country, or is it just the money that pays the carnival barkers to overwhelm the masses with their BS? Scares the hell out of me.
27For those who want the text of O’Reilly’s “tides” conundrum go to Newshounds (we watch fox so you don’t have to). Search O’Reilly tides.
28Sooo, climate change is caused by – the solar system? No, Ben honey, that would be the seasons.
BarbinDC – Bandersnatch Cumberbund?? Great,now I’ll never get that guy’s name right on the first try again – thanks a lot!
Did you know that he was also the voice of Smaug in the new Hobbit movies? One of my great nieces has a massive crush on him. I thoroughly approve – he’s The Thinking Girl’s Sex Symbol.
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