Disqus - Latest Comments for mauro7inf

Re: Eschaton: Morning

mauro7inf — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 08:06:56 -0000

I'm not Christian, but... doesn't Christmas actually end on Jan 6 at Epiphany?

Re: Eschaton: The US Has A Lot Of Extreme Weather

mauro7inf — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 12:48:03 -0000

Believe it or not, the hot places in the world are usually about 30 degrees off the Equator and inland. That's because the moisture from those 30-degree latitudes usually ends up moving towards the Equator into the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), so right on the Equator you get jungles (see: Congo) while off the Equator you get deserts (see: Sahara, Kalahari). Of course the topography will make a difference as well. Brazil is almost entirely tropical, with the exception of the southeast, while the dry regions of South America are actually further south and in Chile, in the rain shadow of the Andes. Meanwhile, most of Brazil has historically been covered with rainforests (both the Amazon and the Mata Atlantica) and swamps (Mato Grosso), and the bits that aren't near the coasts are largely, well, the Amazon and the Mato Grosso. It's always warm in Brazil, but it's almost never hot. As a kid, we'd definitely get hot in Brazil, but nothing compares to that summer day in San Jose (in CA) where it was, like, 115.

Re: Eschaton: Culinary Crimes

mauro7inf — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 11:36:44 -0000

An Alaskan salmon fillet (probably high-quality) with ketchup on a bun sounds... pretty good, actually? I mean, seriously, ketchup is today's Barney: people hate it because hating it is fun. There's nothing wrong with ketchup. It's a good flavor. It goes well with lots of things (not chocolate ice cream, as my 8-year-old self discovered, but lots of other things). Are there better sauces out there? Sure. But ketchup is decent, flavorful, and can brighten many dishes (especially if it's on the spicier side). Don't hate on ketchup just because everyone else does!

Re: Eschaton: The Culture War

mauro7inf — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 09:25:09 -0000

I still disagree with this take. The Culture War is anything but trivial. That's kind of the point. Like, you might say that shoes on M&M's is trivial, but the Culture War is not about shoes on M&M's; it's about the ways of thinking that led to shoes on M&M's changing. Those people want to make American culture basically stop respecting people, stop becoming greener (see the Xbox fiasco), etc. The Culture War is very real and is not about red Starbucks cups; it's about the attitude that wants to consider diversity a good thing. The Culture War seeks to marginalize everyone who isn't them. This is not trivial at all.

Re: Eschaton: "Culture War"

mauro7inf — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 15:04:42 -0000

Why don't you think the Culture War is important? I see you talk about this pretty often and I just don't get it. I know the War on Christmas gets ridiculed, so maybe you're lumping them all together, but conservatives are really serious about this stuff, and it's one of the ways they have to demonize liberals and point at the downfall of American culture as the liberals' doing. The Culture War issue du jour is drag queens for some reason, and it might sound trivial, but it's directly attacking the idea of accepting people who are different, which is the cornerstone of social liberalism in the US. Labeling something a part of the Culture War isn't dismissive; it's taking things out of the realm of policy differences and into the realm of life-or-death issues that will either preserve the conservative social order or topple the whole of society and let the liberals live happily. Nobody really cares about the specifics of some tax plan or whatever. What matters is that our precious children don't get exposed to men performing as women (or, God forbid, transgender people peeing nearby, etc.). The rights that the conservatives want to deny people are very, very real, and if they weren't, these wouldn't be Culture War issues.

Re: Eschaton: "Culture War"

mauro7inf — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 11:16:22 -0000

I wholeheartedly disagree.

Culture Warriors believe themselves to be the besieged protectors of Real American Values. Tolerating anything else is capitulation to The Enemy, the liberals who are generally OK with people being themselves unmolested. The issue of trans kids being able to use the correct bathroom, just to take one example, is a case of liberals saying "sure, why would we get in the way of that?" and Culture Warriors bemoaning the end of men being men or whatever the racist bowtie is whining about that day and making sure that trans people aren't allowed to be themselves. The Culture Warriors are specifically fighting against civil rights: abortion, gay marriage, the existence of trans people, recognizing the effect of race/ethnicity on history, etc. It's not a policy discussion about how to best serve Americans; it's a war about having one culture, the white conservative culture, be dominant over liberal culture, black culture (see: conservatives' views on rap music), etc.

Those other disagreements you cited -- the authenticity of a sandwich, whatever -- that's not related to the Culture War. It might be a cultural discussion, but it's not serious or widespread or a jihad against a different American subculture. The Culture War is.

Re: Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway

mauro7inf — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 15:04:11 -0000

I think we do actually need to understand and reach out to them. Contrarian opinion, I know, but it's important. The fact is that Trump supporters got that way because they were dismissed and ignored. Remember Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment? All good liberals understood exactly what she was talking about, sighed, and thanked the gods that her opponent was someone as incompetent and unlikely to win as Donald Trump. But it turns out that there are a lot of those deplorables in that basket. There are a lot of people who hold deplorable views, and our deploration of those people is what drives them to unite under the MAGA flag. For decades we've been saying that racists are inferior people. We're been using political correctness as a moral cudgel, pronouncing our disdain for those with inferior views, with the vague assumption that the vast majority of people are good and decent and not infected with those inferior views. But guess what? Right-wing nationalism is popular! Those people we look down on came together in large numbers and overwhelmed us in enough states for Trump to win the presidency. Those people we look down on, those people whose votes we don't want, those people actually vote and have power over our lives. We need to understand and reach out to them because they actually matter, as much as we want to pretend that they don't. As awful as that sounds, those Nazis control our government. If we're going to stop them, we need to understand them and engage with them. No other way.

Re: Eschaton: The Mall With An Amusement Park

mauro7inf — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 11:12:51 -0000

So I actually grew up with amusement parks in malls. When I was little, the highlight of a weekend would have been to go to Barra Shopping (in Rio) and go on the rides and play in the arcade. I have no idea how much money any of this may have cost, but at least there it probably wasn't much. This was... late 80's, early 90's. In the occasions when I'd be visiting my grandparents in Sao Paulo, there were a couple of malls there (I remember one called El Dorado) with, like, serious amusement park stuff, playgrounds, rides, etc. Definitely the idea of a fun weekend as a kid. It must have been boring for my nono who had to watch me, but on the other hand, it must have been better for him than actually going shopping with my nona, so... win-win?

That said, this was 30 years ago and in a different country. American culture is different. But if it's well done, a mall amusement park would actually attract kids who have literally no desire to try on pants, as well as their fathers, who also have literally no desire to try on pants. Point is, I hate trying on pants.

Re: Science predicted the eclipse, so why do so many doubt climate change?

mauro7inf — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 11:18:56 -0000

This is a dangerous false equivalence.

Not agreeing with the science is simply not plausible when it comes to eclipses; the model we use to predict those is extremely robust. On the other hand, the models used to predict climate change are far less robust. We understand the physics of eclipses very well, and we know that any deviations must be small. On the other hand, global climate models are massively complicated things describing a massively complicated system, with important phenomena happening at scales too small to model that have a potentially regime-changing impact at large scales.

We currently have very high confidence that the results of these climate models, in the aggregate, are valid, but this very high confidence is still orders of magnitude lower than the confidence we have in eclipse predictions, which we can predict to the minute a century out. To be sure, we *are* heading for climate disaster, but it's not the same thing. Eclipses modeling is only slightly less robust than Earth rotation modeling, so your headline might as well have read:

"Science predicted this morning's sunrise, so why do many doubt climate change?"

Not all of science's predictions hold equal weight.

Again, just to be clear, climate change is not only real but is already happening, and part of it is certainly due to CO2 emissions (but things like deforestation/desertification are also components of climate change). But the predictions themselves are educated guesses. They're *good* educated guesses, but they're far from the certainties of the next eclipse or tomorrow's sunrise.

Re: Music theory for nerds

mauro7inf — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 11:46:36 -0000

A couple of things.

First, the 17/9 interval for the major seventh is *really weird*. The interval you're probably looking for is 15/8, as it's a major third (5/4) above the perfect fifth (3/2). (That said, the 15/8 major seventh is considerably flatter than the equal-tempered one, which makes it more awkward as a leading tone. Math is a divergent sequence of compromises.)

Second, "major" and "minor" just mean "bigger" and "smaller" in Latin (or something resembling Latin, anyway), respectively. In the diatonic scale there are two kinds of seconds, the bigger one (C-D, D-E, F-G, G-A, A-B) and the smaller one (E-F, B-C). So we call the C-D interval a bigger second and the E-F interval a smaller second, or, partly in Latin, major second and minor second. Fourths and fifths (and unisons/octaves, too) only really exist in one form, with the tritone considered a very different thing, so a fourth or fifth that hasn't been changed in some way is "perfect" (in contrast with "altered", "augmented", "diminished", etc.). By the way, major/minor chords are actually named after the size of third that they use, and major/minor scales are named after the chords that they use. When we talk about the minor scale, we're a few steps away from what "minor" actually means!

Re: Erick Erickson Demands Marco Rubio Drop Out Of The Presidential Race

mauro7inf — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 10:47:44 -0000

> They'd rather lose with Rubio and stay home in November than ally with Ted Cruz and even have a shot in November.

A shot at what, a Ted Cruz presidency? How is that any better than Trump? The GOP is fUxx0r3d.

Re: Why We’re Addicted To Panic

mauro7inf — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 12:17:04 -0000

> Obviously that whole crispy-critter ozone-depletion scenario was somewhat off-target.

Well... actually, we managed to prevent disaster on that one. See the Montreal Protocol ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... ).

Re: An Open Letter To Christians Complaining About “Prayer Shaming”

mauro7inf — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 01:38:10 -0000

> I mean, if you really believed this, why does it bother you so much? God’s wrath is going to torment me in the afterlife forever, supposedly. Isn’t that enough?

That's a good question, but there's an element of the answer that you're missing. The God of the Bible doesn't just deal individual punishments. That's a very naïve view of how this literary character works. If we, as a community, don't do the stuff he says, he will punish us *all*, by sending earthquakes and hurricanes, that sort of thing (the nature of the punishment isn't this explicit in the Bible, of course). Furthermore, there's all this apocalyptic stuff that doesn't happen unless people in general follow God correctly. I'm not a Christian, but I think there's a thing where Jesus comes back. I don't know. But you and I failing to behave appropriately is, in their belief, going to hinder good stuff from happening in the world. So, you see, it's really a selfish motive.

Actually, the motive is selfish even aside from this. When Christians complain about this kind of insult to God, they're not *really* complaining on his behalf. They know God can take it. That's not the issue. The issue is the amount of worldly influence and respect they have as a religious group. When you mock their god, you're really mocking them.

I don't mean anything negative by calling it a "selfish motive"; in fact, it's just the opposite: they have some fairly legitimate gripes in this case. You say God doesn't need their defense. That's true both in the case of a huge perfect singular God and in the case of a non-existent deity. But Christians -- and Christianity -- are not God. They're defending themselves.

Now, why isn't God defending them instead? Well, that's the whole non-existence thing. Not existing can really put a damper on the range of things you can do.

Re: Eschaton: America's Worst Humans

mauro7inf — Sun, 25 Oct 2015 15:55:57 -0000

I don't like making fun of anyone's weight, but in all seriousness, that milkshake is why he's fat. I used to drink them. Then I read the nutritional information and found out that they have NINETY-SEVEN GRAMS OF SUGAR. That is a VERY, VERY LARGE AMOUNT. I'm still fat, but I certainly don't drink those anymore.

Re: Ben Carson: Pledge of Allegiance and other ‘founding documents’ prove America is a Christian nation

mauro7inf — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 12:24:16 -0000

> Ben Carson said the motto, “In God We Trust” — which was adopted in 1956 — proves that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.

Carson was born in 1951. How could he be expected to remember something that happened when he was 4 or 5 years old? #60sKid

Re: Cristiano Ronaldo Thinks Lionel Messi Is A Motherf***er

mauro7inf — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 23:17:44 -0000

News story: Dog Bites Man.

Re: Government waste includes Swedish massages for rabbits, monkey gambling lessons

mauro7inf — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 17:24:37 -0000

This might not be the greatest example of a scientific study, but Coburn wasn't on the board that approved it so he has no idea what he's talking about. The other study, about teaching primates to gamble, seems extremely interesting and important, so the point about him being an anti-science idiot still stands.

But let's go back to this rabbit study. For some reason, scientists felt it was necessary to explore the effects of massage on muscle tissue. It doesn't really matter if rabbit physiology can be extrapolated to humans -- we've learned something about how mammal muscle fibers work in general, which is a step forward in our understanding of biology. Who knows what we might do with this information? Maybe it will lead someone to develop better meats for human consumption. Maybe the same principles can be applied to synthetic tissue. Maybe in robots. Whatever. It's science, and just because we can't see the direct applications of this knowledge right now doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

One can argue that the government shouldn't be spending money on science at all. Tom Coburn isn't arguing that. He's arguing that massaging rabbits is a poor use of government resources -- which is a stupid position to take, since he doesn't actually understand the scientific reasons for the study, or at least wasn't communicating them appropriately. And there's a good reason why he doesn't understand the scientific reasons for the study, too: he's a senator, not an NSF funding board member. It's not his job to read grant proposals. So here he is, making fun of scientific research that he doesn't understand to try to drum up outrage about science spending.

A smarter man might try to understand the science a bit better before trying to cut its funding. Not the US Senator from Oklahoma.

Re: Government waste includes Swedish massages for rabbits, monkey gambling lessons

mauro7inf — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:54:05 -0000

I thought Infohe was the stupid senator from Oklahoma. Is Coburn trying to outstupid Infofe with his anti-science idiocy?

Re: Why ISIL Beheads Its Victims

mauro7inf — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 12:57:42 -0000

> To achieve this, the group is trying to rout the Shia-led Iraqi and Syrian governments who claim sovereignty over Sunni territories, and end what they believe to be an illegitimate occupation of Sunni territory. So ISIL attacks Shia government-controlled targets, like police stations and military bases, and attempts to control resources like water and oil as it consolidates power for the creation of a state.
...and commits genocide against the Yazidi.

Daesh (or ISIS/ISIL/IS/whatever) beheaded a handful of Westerners and everyone's in a tizzy. This article rightly points out that these beheadings are just PR for their local goals. OK. But how about massacring tens of thousands of members of a religious minority? How do you manage to leave this part out? Forget the *four* Westerners and focus on the *ten thousand* Yazidi that were tortured, murdered, raped, and the *forty thousand* displaced. While the good/evil narrative does feed off of preconceived -- and generally wrong -- notions about Islam, it's irresponsible not to refer to Daesh (or ISIS/ISIL/IS/whatever) as evil.

Re: These Bacon-Wrapped Ramen Sushi Rolls Are Also Covered in Sriracha

mauro7inf — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:40:07 -0000

Ramen sushi sounds... totally and utterly disgusting. Wow.

On the other hand, bacon sushi is *awesome*. Every once in a while my fiancée gets some sushi-quality tuna and makes rolls, and a strip of bacon inside it makes it taste so good! Not very Japanese, but who cares?

Re: Eschaton: PSA

mauro7inf — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 23:09:02 -0000

Oddly enough, I *was* wondering. Is it like a hard blood sausage (like the Puerto Rican kind) or a soft one (like the Korean kind)? I wish I could try some around Boston.

Re: Subway Removing Shoe Rubber Chemical From Bread « KRON4

mauro7inf — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 05:37:13 -0000

We should start a petition to get them to stop using water to clean their vegetables. This dangerous chemical is responsible for the vast majority of drowning deaths, and worse, it's used in nuclear centrifuges. Some even administer it to prisoners as a torture method. And water is also used in the production of yoga mats and shoe rubber! Let's get this dangerous product out of our food!

Re: Divorcing HBO: Sunday’s Brutal Game of Thrones Goes Way Too Far

mauro7inf — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:32:37 -0000

I'll give you the thing with Talisa, but to be fair, she had to be killed; it would change the story too much otherwise to have her stay around.

However, if you can't stomach her murder in that fashion, how can you stomach Ramsay Bolton, who's much, much worse and whose family sigil is a flayed man? Or Joffrey, for that matter? It's true that it's brutal and cruel, but not more than some of the other stuff that's happened so far.

Re: Eschaton: But We Painted All Those Schools

mauro7inf — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:10:39 -0000

It's not about inspiring. It's about not having graffiti or broken windows in your neighborhood. If you feel like you're living in a clean and respectable place, you will *be* clean and respectable. You can argue that making people's lives better in this way should not be a priority, or that it was not implemented in a way that would give a positive impact, but making fun of cleaning up spaces isn't helpful. Have you actually seen the TED talk in question?

Re: Eschaton: But We Painted All Those Schools

mauro7inf — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 09:36:36 -0000

Atrios, I'm actually a little surprised that you're hatin' on painting schools. Have you seen this? http://www.ted.com/talks/ed... Making spaces prettier can actually have a big impact on civic morale, which is one of the more important components of effective self-government. I'm not saying it was implemented in such a positive way in Iraq -- I have no idea, really -- but painting schools is not a priori a horrible investment.