From this NPR segment on climate science:
Michael Mann, a professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania, has been awarded more the $1 million in damages after a trial in D.C. court.
Michael Mann, among the world’s most renowned climate scientists, won a defamation case in D.C. Superior Court against two conservative writers.
Mann, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, had sued Rand Simberg, a policy analyst, and Mark Steyn, a right-wing author, for online posts published over a decade ago, respectively, by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Review.
Mann is partly responsible for one of the most consequential graphs in climate science, one that helped make the steep rise in global average temperatures from fossil fuel use understandable to a wide audience.
One doesn’t have to look hard on social media to find people with no scientific training claiming that climate change is a hoax, and, in particular, that the folks who have spent their entire adult lives studying the subject are charlatans and grifters.
I attended a lecture at the University of California at Santa Barbara a few years back at which the keynote speaker claimed that “what was once science now is politics, where people with ‘PhD’ at the end of their names are sucking down grant money to study a phenomenon that they know does not exist.”
This would have been an outrageous claim if it were made anywhere, but in front of hundreds of people at UCSB’s physics building?
Perhaps the case here reminds us that defamation is not covered as free speech. If you make baseless and slanderous claims about another person, be prepared to fork across some serious damages.
Renewable Energy
Is It Odd that Many Words in English are Supernumerary? Or Is that Superfluous? Extraneous? Unnecessary?
Not at all.
English has an uncountable thousands of words it doesn’t need. If you don’t believe me, check out “A Word a Day,” and learn the meanings of words that are completely useless. The last two days brought us:
- April 14: Flocculent (adjective: having a fluffy, woolly texture).
- April 13: Impetrate (verb: to obtain by request or entreaty).
Maybe this impressed people a century ago, but if I wrote that a sheep was flocculent, I think you’d be rolling your eyes.
While some English speakers 400 years ago were discovering gravity, developing calculus, using newly minted telescopes to explore our solar system, and refining our understanding of logic as originally put forth by Aristotle, others were inventing words for groups of animals.
Sure, it’s useful to have words like “pack” (for dogs), “herd” (for cows and horses), “flock” (for birds), and perhaps a few others. But what about a group of owls (a parliament), flamingos (a flamboyance), or ferrets (a business)? And that’s just the beginning.
By contrast, Spanish has too few words, IMO. For those interested, here are the 15+ possible meanings in English of the verb “llevar.” As someone who made an honest attempt to learn the language, I’d go into panic mode when someone would say something with any conjugation of that verb. S***! Is he talking about wearing something, Giving someone a ride? Bringing something? Getting along well with someone? Stealing something?
If you believe that a loving God has a plan for you, and is steadily guiding you towards happiness, then you disagree with the assertion here.
The rest of us are forced to admit that the universe is cooly indifferent to us and the outcome of our lives here on Earth.
This doesn’t mean, btw, that our lives are meaningless, but it does compel us to create our own meaning as we make our choices as we go along.
Another point to be made here is that there is no “galactic cavalry” that is going to come charging in, guns ablazing, to save us from the criminal insanity of the Trump administration.
Mark Kelly, like the vast majority of his fellow Americans, wishes to see Trump removed from office, as the president is clearly criminally insane.
That doesn’t make him, or any of the rest of us, guilty of sedition.
Is It Odd that Many Words in English are Supernumerary? Or Is that Superfluous? Extraneous? Unnecessary?
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The Universe Doesn’t Care About Us
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