Recent Comments

1. about 5 years ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Or rather, lots of people try lots of different things, and by chance a few of them make the right guesses. We call them successful. This is a selection bias.

2. about 5 years ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Um, alright so… Let’s see, you’ve been having a long discussion with someone else where you insisted, incorrectly, the law requires bikes to go against traffic. I make two comments, providing a source showing what the law states, and lo and behold: “Give it a rest and move on,” you say. I’m violating your first amendment right, you say.

   Grow a thicker skin, I say. Don’t ascribe moral failings to a person simply because he knows facts that you didn’t, and he made you aware of them. The first amendment guarantees a right to free speech. It does not prohibit people from pointing out when your speech is based on incorrect facts.

3. over 5 years ago on Pearls Before Swine

   okay… Well, it’s the law. And the real data shows that it’s safer.

4. over 5 years ago on Pearls Before Swine

   I’m going to have to support aunt granny on this. Bicycles are supposed to follow the same rules as cars. So they ride on the same side as cars. Pedestrians are supposed to be on opposite side, but not bikes.

   https://www.donkey.bike/usa-cycling-rules/

   “In the United States, everyone must drive on the right-hand side of the roadway. Never ride your bike against the traffic flow.”

5. over 5 years ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Hey – look – it’s someone who thinks like the person who once told me I didn’t have a license plate on my bike so I needed to get on the sidewalk before he ran me over. Guess what, when I spoke to the cops, I learned he was a sex offender and his car wasn’t insured, so he was driving illegally (I’m serious – I looked his name up later and learned he had also been arrested for pushing his partner through a glass door). Tell you what, don’t judge me by the cyclists who offend you, and I won’t assume you’re a violent uninsured sex offender.

6. over 5 years ago on Pearls Before Swine

   I was cycling down Mass Ave (in Boston), when someone pulled up beside me, told me he didn’t see a license plate on my bike, so I should get off the road before he ran me over… The conversation went downhill from there. Later I called the cops and learned he was an uninsured driver so his car had no right to be on the road (oh, and he’s a sex offender).

   Let’s make a deal – I won’t judge you based on my experience with him, and you don’t judge me based on whatever has upset you about cyclists.

7. over 5 years ago on Pearls Before Swine

   1) ice bergs, when melted exactly balance out, so the 90% underwater point is irrelevant.

   2) rjh is right that Greenland and Antarctica are not ice bergs.

   3) pchemcat is wrong

   a) that " the ice in Greenland and Antarctica are both recovering". This is false.Greenland, for example is losing around 200 cubic kilometers of ice a year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet

   b) Additionally “oil fields” in the arctic has nothing to do with the past climate of the arctic, but rather with the past climate where those rocks used to be (plate tectonics is real).

   c) The claim about Krakatoa releasing more greenhouse gasses than mankind in the last 10000 year gets the direction wrong. Each year we release over 10000 Krakatoa’s worth of CO2 (see, e.g., http://www.soe.uoguelph.ca/webfiles/gej/AQ2017/Gruber/index.html – “on average humans produce more than 10,000 times that amount [the amount of Krakatoa] of CO2 each year”. So pchemcat was only off by a factor of 100,000,000.

8. over 5 years ago on Pearls Before Swine

   “and by a fair number of scientists as well”

   And if one side claims (without evidence) that a fair number of scientists question something? Just because they can get people to sit down in front of a TV camera and say “I’m not a scientist, but lots of scientists have doubts about this” does not mean that there is any serious scientific doubt.

9. over 5 years ago on Pearls Before Swine

   “Perhaps you don’t remember Al Gore with this threats of being underwater or whatever it was.”

   Please provide the specific quotes from Al Gore referring to anything being underwater before 2020.

10. over 5 years ago on Get Fuzzy

    Laurel. He said he liked Laurels.