Add Homonym Attacks (21)

Add Homonym Attacks! #21

Ad Hominem: Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.
Ad Hominem Attack: An argument that focuses on a personal attack as opposed to the subject in question.
Add Homonym Attacks!: The process by which one inserts a homophone and it bites you.
(It also serves as the title to Inside Pulse’s representative column in the world of Critical Thinking, Science and Skepticism.)
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But First

Just because something is a non-profit organization, doesn’t mean it is worth a damn. (People will get on my case for calling Locks-For-Love a frivolous and useless charity.) But even worse than that point is this one: just because something is a non-profit organization, doesn’t mean that it isn’t made up of a bunch of motherf*ckers.

Take, for instance, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It is somewhat of a cliche to attack them nowadays. At the very least, it seems redundant after the fine job done by Penn and Teller. Just in case you have been living under a rock, PeTA is full of crazy motherf*ckers who seek “total animal liberation.” Total animal liberation means no zoos, no circuses, no scientific medical testing, no pets, no seeing eye dogs, no farm animals, no honey, etc. PeTA tries to achieve this end by doing such things as funneling money to the occasional arsonist, domestic terrorist group, and euthanizing nearly 2/3 of all the animals it shelters.

Motherf*ckers.

At any rate, you’d be surprised what you’d find when yo look at seemingly innocuous organizations. Sure, you might expect Greenpeace to be filled with scientifically illiterate bastards, but what about The Union of Concerned Scientists? And what could I possibly have against Mothers Against Drunk Driving? Mothers good, drunk driving bad. Doesn’t it seem open and shut?

The Union of Concerned Scientists

The Union of Concerned Scientists is surprisingly enough, not very good at science. You see they start out with a political agenda, and then seek out data to confirm it. That’s lousy science right there folks?

Who the f*ck are these people? If you’ve never heard of them, read the news for a week. They are bound to pop up some place or another. Newspapers often defer to them as experts, and are quick to publish the latest nonsense cooked up by them. If you are reading a news story about possible consequences for X, Y and Z, without any corroborating data, chances are the UCS is behind it. If you are reading some nonsense about how Suburban Vehicles causing global warming, or global warming causing blizzards and tornadoes, chances are these idiots are publishing their daydreams once again.

A handy little site called Activist Cash keeps tabs on these knuckleheads.

By any real scientific yardstick, the Union of Concerned Scientists has a lousy track record. Their predictions are often laughably, and sometimes tragically, wrong. A few examples:

In 1997 UCS organized a petition that warned of “global warming” and advocated U.S. ratification of the Kyoto treaty. It was signed by 1,600 scientists, and so UCS declared that “the scientific community has reached a consensus.” But when a counter-petition that questioned this so-called “consensus” was signed by more than 17,000 other scientists, UCS declared it a “deliberate attempt to deceive the scientific community with misinformation.”

UCS invested significant resources in “a multiyear effort to protect Bacillus thuringiensis, a valuable natural pesticide, by bringing high visibility to a preliminary report on the toxic effect of transgenic [biotech] corn pollen on the Monarch Butterfly.” Unfortunately for them, both the USDA and the EPA have concluded that Bt corn is only a threat to the crop-devastating insects it’s supposed to kill.

Based, we suppose, on some “science” or other, UCS’s Margaret Mellon predicted in 1999 that American farmers would reduce their planting of genetically enhanced seeds in the year 2000, saying it “probably represents a turning point.” What happened? Just the reverse. Planting of biotech crops has increased in 2000, 2001 and 2002 — and shows no sign of slowing down.

In 1980 UCS predicted that the earth would soon run out of fossil fuels. “It is now abundantly clear,” the group wrote, “that the world has entered a period of chronic energy shortages.” Oops! Known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas have never been higher, and show every sign of increasing.

To improve fuel efficiency, UCS argues for lighter tires on SUVs. But lighter tires are blamed — even by Ralph’s Nader’s Public Citizen — for tread separation. 148 deaths and more than 500 injuries were attributed to tread separation in Firestone tires alone.

These guys are bullshitters, plain and simple. Unless they provide some actual quantifiable data, ignore them.

I should note that some folks are against Activist Cash. They dismiss the site as “conservative” because it preaches things like, personal responsibility and common sense. If these things strike you as exclusively conservative things, I pity you.

But hell, let’s look at John Marburger and see what he has to say:

“Regarding the document that was released on February 18, 2004 by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), I believe the UCS accusations are wrong and misleading. The accusations in the document are inaccurate, and certainly do not justify the sweeping conclusions of either the document or the accompanying statement. I believe the document has methodological flaws that undermine its own conclusions, not the least of which is the failure to consider publicly available information or to seek and reflect responses or explanations from responsible government officials. Unfortunately, these flaws are not necessarily obvious to those who are unfamiliar with the issues, and the misleading, incomplete, and even personal accusations madein the document concern me deeply. It is my hope that the detailed response I submit today will allay the concerns of the scientists who signed the UCS statement.
I can say from personal experience that the accusation of a litmus test that must be met before someone can serve on an advisory panel is preposterous. After all, President Bush sought me out to be his Science Advisor – the highest-ranking S&T official in the federal government – and I am a lifelong Democrat.”

Mothers against Drunk Driving

Let me say that I am pro-mother, and anti-drunk-driving. I’m not even a drinker. Don’t drink at all. But the problem with MADD is a simple one. How much money do they need? What exactly do they do?

How much money does it cost to be against drunk driving anyway? Apparently a lot. For the tax year ending 06/30/04 MADD reported an income of nearly 53 million dollars, expenditures of over 52 million dollars, and a net worth of about $25 mill.

52 million dollars. Cripes all Friday! How much lobbying can one do? Let’s see, I only have old data from 1994 on some of the specifics. Yeah I know, that’s a long time ago, but f*ckit I don’t get paid for this shit. Anyways from 1991 to 1994 MADD spent a grand total of 636 thousand dollars on lobbying. That is less than $160,000 yearly. During that same time period, per year, they spent about 2 million dollars on conventions and travel expenses. But hey, that money goes quickly. Travelling is expensive. Also during this time period they spent nearly 19 million dollars on TELEMARKETING. That’s right. According to a 1994 Money magazine, MADD raised over 38 million buck telemarketing and ate half that money in telemarketing fees.

MADD spends about half the money it fund-raises on fund-raisers. Or at least it did ten years ago. Nowadays, they claim to spend about 17 percent, a perfectly acceptable level? Well, somebody must have come in a cleared up the bureaucracy, right? Could be, BUT the American Institute of Philanthropy reports that MADD has just gotten better at hiding this money under the auspices of “educational expenses.” According to Charity Navigator, compared to its peers MADD has the highest proportion of funds spent on expenses and the lowest proportion spent on actual programs.

But hey, you raise 50 mill a year, spend half, you still got 25 to work with, right? That should stop the drunk driving right? Well, you see, sometime ago they switched their focus. MADD isn’t just about stopping drunk driving; they are about drinking and driving. The folks at MADD would like nothing better than to see DUIs written up for any driver with any BAC no matter how minute.

Don’t believe me? Here are some quotes, once again from those lovely Activist Cash folks:

“While a lot of attention is paid to the serious problems of repeat offenders, we don’t want to overlook the casual drinker.”
— Karolyn Nunnallee, former president of MADD, USA Today, December 1998

“It’s not okay to put the keys in the car when you’ve been drinking, forget the limits on BAC. It’s just not acceptable to drink and drive. Period.”
— MADD fundraising letter

“Candy Lightner, MADD’s founder, says she disassociated herself from the movement in 1985 because she believed the organization was headed in the wrong direction. ‘It has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned,’ said Mrs. Lightner, who founded MADD after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver. ‘I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.'”
— The Washington Times, August 2002

“There is no safe blood alcohol level, and for that reason responsible drinking means no drinking and drivng.”
— Former MADD president Katherine Prescott, “MADD’s Mission is to Save Lives,” Chicago Tribune, February 1997

“If you choose to drink, you should never drive. We will not tolerate drinking and driving — period.””
— Former MADD president Karolyn Nunnallee, Today Show, October 1996

“The only safe amount of alcohol when you are mixing driving and drinking is zero — double zeros, no alcohol.”— Tina Pascoe, executive director of Los Angeles MADD, “Cop, MADD differ on DUI education effort,” Denver Post, November 2000

“We’re to the point where almost everyone knows that [he or she] shouldn’t drink and drive. The people who are still doing it are choosing to do it. The most effective way to deal with them is to arrest them.”
— David Kelly, Virginia chapter of MADD, in The Washington Post, December 2002

“Now, she [Katherine Prescott, then MADD president] said, the problem may be down to a hard core of alcoholics who do not respond to public appeals.”
— The New York Times

“‘I thought the emphasis on .08 laws was not where the emphasis should have been placed,’ Candace Lightner [founder and former president of MADD] said. ‘The majority of crashes occur with high blood-alcohol levels, the .15, .18 and .25 drinkers. Lowering the blood-alcohol concentration was not a solution to the alcohol problem.'”
— Los Angeles Times, December 2002

“Even MADD’s founder thinks the group has gone too far. ‘I think they’ve become far more neoprohibitionist over the years.'”
— Candace Lightner, as quoted in Investor’s Business Daily, September 2000

Activist Cash also offers these insights into the character of MADD:

Even though there are serious questions about their efficacy, MADD also promotes its Victim Impact Panels (VIP). Many judges around the country require that anyone convicted of a DUI go to one of these panels, where offenders pay MADD a fee to hear victims or relatives of victims of drunk driving crashes relate their stories. But a study of VIPs in New Mexico found that “female repeat offenders referred to VIPs were significantly more likely to be rearrested compared with those not referred, with an odd of rearrest more than twice that of females not referred.” And though MADD, in response to the study, asserted that VIPs were intended for first-time offenders, the study also “failed to demonstrate any effect of VIPs on recidivism rates for female and male first-time DWI offenders or for male repeat offenders.” The authors explain these findings by looking at other studies, and concluding “There is evidence that confrontational approaches are ineffective in the treatment of alcohol problems.”
Despite the findings from this study, and others, MADD continues to promote these ineffective programs — perhaps because they bring in much-needed revenue while allowing members a chance to vent and air their grief.
VIPs are not the only time where, when push came to shove, MADD ignored its principles to keep its coffers full. Another noteworthy case was the 2000 battle over two California ballot initiatives (Propositions 30 and 31) that sought to permit an automobile accident victim to sue the at-fault driver’s insurance company if legitimate claims weren’t paid promptly. Considering that victims of drunk drivers stood to gain an important legal tool, most Californians expected MADD to lead the charge in favor of these new measures. However, MADD aligned itself with a group of out-of-state insurance companies, which collectively ran a $1 million-per-week advertising campaign against the propositions.
MADD defended its position at the time by arguing that drunk drivers themselves, if convicted only of lesser charges, could sue insurance companies under the proposed law. Even after California’s Attorney General disagreed, ruling that Propositions 30 and 31 could never give drunk drivers new rights, MADD never budged from its bizarre contradictory position. The organization’s motive? Money, plain and simple. MADD’s 1999-2000 annual report acknowledges Allstate Insurance Company donated an amount in the “$250,000 and above” category. Nationwide Mutual Insurance gave over $100,000 that year.

Funny that, huh?

Mailbag

I corresponded with IP reader COLIN P on super-hero physics. He brings up this valic concern :

Lastly, I was thinking about some more Superhero Physics Abominations. In the early 100s of Uncanny X-Men (circa 120?), where Alpha Flight uses shenanigans to re-direct the X-Men’s plane into Calgary so as to get Logan back (and in the process, Claremont spells my capital “Ottowa”), Sasquach effortlessly throws a 747. I’ll pretend there’s nothing untoward about this. But it must weigh upwards of 20 tons? I’ll just say. My problem comes when powerhouses such as Sasquach and Colossus fight, none gives an inch, and it takes a Herculean effort, even in relation to their already disgusting power, to topple or throw the other combatant away.
If Colossus weighs 2000 lbs. when armoured (I’m being generous), and Sasquach can throw a 20 ton 747 like I throw a sack of potatoes, no matter how strong Colossus is, Sasquach ought to be able to swat him away like I could throw a mouse across the room. Sure, Piotr probably wouldn’t be hurt, but these powerhouses’ insignificant masses, compared to their physical strength, would have every punch send each other into orbit, no? Doesn’t the Law of Motion or something say so?
good day,

My buddy DC also chimes in:

Saw your superhero physics deally. That Warren Ellis sure is sneaky, eh? In the Planetary/JLA
crossover he wrote (the man writes the most audacious and least crappy cross-overs in comics), his
version of Superman was powered by a suspicious alien organ that allowed his body to manipulate
gravity locally, giving him his invulnerability, strength, etc. This meant that the evilother-dimensional version of Elijah Snow lured him into space where his powers gave out and then
just let him sputter out. There’s pseudo-science and there’s pseudo-science I guess. The same
“Crossing Worlds” volume also contains an unnamed cameo by H.P. Lovecraft, who thinks that the
strange embryotic pods appearing in his basement are “negro eggs,” causing Planetary to raise some
super-eyebrows and back up very slowly.

And now, since Moodspins has been broken for me for some time, I give you:

How to Make Decisions
Issue 35

We welcome your letters, questions and desperate pleas for help in this uncaring world. As always, e-mail WBXylo at Gmail.com. And don’t about e-mailing me with puzzle problems; I won’t yell at you.

Coincidence

Oftentimes events coincide. As human beings, it is natural for us to put meaning behind such things. Recently in his Scientific American column, Michael Shermer wrote about this phenomenon. To paraphrase, people are pattern finding machines. We are rewarded for finding a proper pattern, but not necessarily punished for finding a pattern which is merely a delusion.

These false patterns can often lead to irrational beliefs, superstitions, and the ever popular conspiracy theories.

As an aside, I would have to say that my favorite conspiracy theory was put forth by a fellow named Jim Garrison. Garrison claimed that John F. Kennedy assassination was the result of a right-wing, homosexual thrill killing. The homosexuals in question included Jack “Pinkie” Ruby, Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, and the married with two children Lee Harvey Oswald.

But such theories are not limited to events as important as political assassinations. Let’s speak hypothetically.

Let’s say that an extremely popular TV show kills off two characters in one episode.

It just so happens that the actresses that play these two characters were involved together in a DUI scandal.

Now for some, it seems definite that these ladies got drunk becauce they found out that they were getting killed off.

For others it seems definite that they got killed off because of the scandal.

But there is always the distinct possibility that each already knew the arcs for her respective character and had jobs booked around getting killed off. And it could also be a possible that actresses joining an established show at the same time mighthang out together.

Or is that just nutty?

Quote of the Week

When God made the arse, he didn’t say, ‘Hey, it’s just your basic hinge, let’s knock off early.’ He said, ‘Behold ye angels, I have created the arse. Throughout the ages to come, men and women shall grab hold of these, and shout my name!
– Jeff Murdock (“Coupling”)

Puzzle (difficulty: Dare I say, balls hard)
Decode the following as a sentence:

1 0 0 2 0 4 1 8 0

Last Week’s Puzzle
(Difficulty = Meh)
An object which weighs 1 lb on Earth weighs 16 pounds on planet Krypton.
If Superman is 110 Kilograms on Earth, what is his mass on Krypton?

ANSWER: Ah the old mass versus weight trick. While Superman’s weight would be affected by a change in gravity, his mass would not be. Mass is, after all, a measure of the amount of matter in an object.

Eric S. gets credit for providing an freakishly detailed answer to this question:

If Superman has a mass of 110 kg on Earth, he would have a mass of 110kg on Krypton. The pound is the Imperial unit of force/weight, not
mass. The Imperial unit of mass is the slug. By saying that a certain
Mister Kent from Smallville, KS “weighs” 242 pounds, it is more accurate
to say that he has a mass of 7.56 slugs, and in Earth’s gravity, he
exerts a force on the planetary body of 242 slug-ft/s^2, a.k.a. pounds.
On Krypton, he would exert a force of 3872 slug-ft/s^2. The metric
equivalent of the pound is, of course, the newton. On Earth, The Big
Red S would exert a force of (“weigh”) 1078N and on Krypton, 17248N.