Quote:
Originally Posted by MsDemeanor
Aj, the largest desalination plant in the US is in Tampa Bay, FL. It's had numerous problems over the years and still isn't running at full capacity, but I'd venture a guess that its use could be impacted by the spill, should the oil flow near shore in that area. Of course, you and I know that the people who run the plant and the people who run the city aren't completely stupid - if oil is going to be an issue, they'll shut down the plant.
Little facts aside, that's still not going to cause any of the nonsense in that article. I'm not sure it even takes critical thinking to see how absurd it is; paying attention to the "this how clouds form and where rain comes from" lecture in elementary school should cover it.
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Ms D;
Thank you for the correction. I was rushed writing that last post because I was trying to get the post done before I took Jaime to a nice French restaurant for our anniversary. As such I didn't have time to fact-check whether or not desalination was used in American cities along the gulf.
I also want to thank you for the points you made to Rufusboi because they were spot on. We live in a world saturated by information and yet people don't take the time to get even the most basic facts down. What's more, while it's important to teach people how to think there are books that any literate person capable of reading at a 7th or 8th grade level could get through that will help you learn HOW to think logically. (It's a skill and I am mystified why no one would suggest that one could become a pianist--of any skill level still worthy of the name--only after practice but people assume logical and rational thinking is just something that magically happens.)
There are books one can buy at Amazon or check out of any public library that are, for all purposes, a philosophy 101 class. And not dry stuff either. Janet Radcliffe Richards (a British feminist) has two books--one out of print but available the library nevertheless--that are textbooks for philosophy 101. They are "Human Nature After Darwin" and "The Skeptical Feminist". Both use their subject matter to do double-duty--if you know nothing about Darwinian theory the first is a reasonably good introduction to the theory and at the same time, also teaches critical thinking skills. The latter book does the same thing for feminism--introduces the subject and teaches critical thinking skills while doing so.
Yet people don't avail themselves of all this information they are awash in. So it drives me to distraction when people claim that I'm being somehow elitist to suggest that if someone says, just to take one very familiar howler regarding Darwinism, "if we came from monkeys why are there still monkeys", they are evidencing a deep and profound level of ignorance about the subject. It would be like someone claiming that someone who says 1 + 1 = 5 isn't ignorant of math they've just been fooled by the media or what-have-you. No, anyone who says that 1 + 1 = any real or rational number OTHER than 2 that person is actually, really, and truly ignorant of mathematics and there is no reason to take a single thing they have to say on the subject of math seriously.
As far as the relative intelligences of Obama, Clinton and Palin--it is remarkable that anyone would try to compare those three. The first two are in a class of intellect that were I in the same room as them I would be *humbled* to be in their presence and I’m no intellectual slouch. Meeting either one of them would be, for me, nothing so much as like Luke Skywalker realizing that he was in the presence of Yoda for the first time. (Although I'd be less whiny about it) Palin, on the other hand, evidences a truly breathtaking ignorance about pretty much any subject she spouts off on. What's even more remarkable is that we are supposed to believe that a man who got into one of the best schools in the country on a *scholarship* and then went to the best law school in the country, becoming editor of the most prestigious academic legal publication in the country (can ANYONE here who isn't a lawyer or isn't related to a lawyer name a single legal journal OTHER than the Harvard Law Review?) and then teaching Constitutional law at the University of Chicago (another tier-1 school) is less intelligent than a woman who went to five different colleges--none of them any higher than tier-2 before graduating with a degree in communications? We are also supposed to believe that this same person is more intelligent than someone who ALSO went to a tier-1 school (Yale) on a scholarship and then was a Rhodes Scholar. Really? By that logic, I am the both a faster runner than Wilma Rudolf or Carl Lewis AND a better cyclist than Lance Armstrong since showing *less* ability is somehow, in some strange kind of Zen-inspired koan, to actually show superior ability.