Welcome to your weekend open thread. I hope you’re enjoying this fine weekend. The US now has double the amount of people living in areas with marriage equality. New York is the first state to do marriage equality with a bi-partisan vote (although most Republicans did vote no) and only the second to do it legislatively. (California’s legislature did pass marriage equality but Schwartzenegger vetoed).
Since it’s the weekend, I’d thought I’d use this opportunity to link to some longer pieces that are definitely worth your time to read.
If you have time, I highly recommend you read “My Life As An Undocumented Immigrant” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas.
Earlier this year we discussed an essay by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams about how women are like children and mentally handicapped and how men are just uncontrollable raping machines. Adams continues to dig that hole in this piece in Salon “Scott Adams takes on Salon.” The post features these words of wisdom from Adams:
Scott: On your first bullet point, you are making my point for me. The actual point of the earlier blog post you mentioned was that men don’t argue in situations where the cost of doing so is greater than the gain. The world is watching you make that true for me right now. This debate will probably reduce my income by a third, as feminist forces have already mobilized and started to ask newspapers to drop Dilbert. That’s the sort of risk that men don’t have when they engage in a debate with other men.
I’m at the point now where reading Dilbert in the newspaper just pisses me off.
At Climate Progress, meteorologist Jeff Masters details the last year in extreme weather and its link to global warming in Masters: Driven by Global Warming, “It Is Quite Possible That 2010 Was The Most Extreme Weather Year Globally Since 1816.” Sobering read.
Another must-read for those interested in climate change: “Journey into the weird, wacky world of climate change denial.” This article gives a lot of details about the most celebrated climate change denialists – the 3%-ers (97% of climate scientists say climate change is real and human-caused) and the various other non-experts who claim expertise anyway.