Going, Going, Gone With The Wind
It turns out that all the fancy digital imagery that accompanies television weather broadcasts is still assembled mainly from raw data cobbled together from hundreds of little balloons sent up into the sky, twice a day, from far-flung weather stations. And there really is some truth to that old saw about how the smell of things is more noticeable just before a storm. As it happens, scents are released in conditions of low air pressure. It also turns out that sand borne by winds from the Sahara causes fish-killing algae blooms in the waters around Florida, and that clouds of pollution have been found to contain human dandruff, flakes of skin and fur fibres. Some wind-savvy albatrosses sleep during flight and circumnavigate the Earth twice a year, and Gerry Forbes, the head of the Environment Canada station on Sable Island, likes the lift that gales give him when he runs along the beach. They let him leap 10 metres and more in a single bound.
That’s from Marq de Villiers’ new book, Windswept: The Story of Wind and Weather. I review it in the Globe and Mail today. Nevermind my minor quibbles with it; Marq (that's him in the picture) takes great delight in the wonders of the real world, and he tells a fine story.
Among other things, Windswept allows me to become ever more entrenched in my conviction that the real world – the world that consists of facts, examined with an acceptance of the now-nearly-heretical notion of objective reality – is a sufficiently wonderful and horrifying and astonishing place without resorting to to this kind of crap, or this, or this. And this is not an honest retraction.
These people put the case better than I ever have. Read this while you’re at it, and then take heart:
We’re number one!
posted by Terry Glavin at 11:01 AM
7 Comments:
Have you considered cross-posting this at Popinjays, if only to get them talking about something slightly different?
...without resorting to to this kind of crap...
Well, there's crap and there's crap. While I disagree with that Republic article, I'm not sure why it needs to be called crap. Am I missing something?
We’re number one!
Indeed we are.
As I said, Terry, I don't agree with the article, and support Canada's role in Afghanistan. Thanks for explaining your own reasons for disagreeing with it. I don't agree with all of your points, but I can certainly see why you might be angered by some of its assertions.
A thing is a fact or it isn't.
Much of politics is interpretation of the facts and therefore subjective. For example, I don't recall any acts of international terrorism committed by the Taliban, repellent though their regime was, so I'm not sure why you object to that particular fact. Similarly, pointing out that the military forces in Afghanistan are the welcome guests of the government has as much credibility as when the Soviet Union claimed the same thing. Also, it's fairly difficult to ascertain, as you seem to have, the will of the Afghan people in the matter.
I'm not at all sure that the article is crap-label-worthy. In a society like ours, I'd expect dissent on major things like out armed forces in another country, and I'd certainly expect to read about it in an East Van publication.
Out of curiosity, have you seen any such opinion that you wouldn't wouldn't call crap?
Now you're talking complete crap. And I don't have time for it.
Then don't take the time.
A government that depends on the presence of a foreign military force to maintain its power and safety is always going to welcome that military presence in the country. It's a simple tautology, and makes a weak defense against the arguments that you're objecting to (the crap).
The main problem with debates of that sort is that they are muddied by ill-informed rubbish, deliberate misrepresentation of fact, and outright falsehood.
Like all political debates, and from both sides. You don't win many converts by calling their arguments crap, though.
"You don't win many converts by calling their arguments crap, though."
And this is to misunderstand the point of 'debates' and the relationship of argument to debating and what are the 'facts'.
Knowledge is aquired through life.
Debate is about mobilizing knowledge to correspond to the facts.
Argument is about making a subjective standpoint objective.
Hence you talk crap.
I mobilize my knowledge to correspond to facts. When I call someone's utterences crap it's because I'm not interested in winning them over to what I think because they only believe.
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