All or nothing, baby

It really bothers me how divided and brutal this whole Global Warming thing has become. (I capitalize "global warming" because it is its own entity -- the claim that humanity is causing the planet to warm unnaturally) It's taking away attention from the overall picture of a cleaner, more sustainable existence that has been crusaded for for well over a century. Someone wearing a pro-global warming action t-shirt is pretty much the poster child for every environmentalist in America.

Businesses (oil companies, polluting factories, auto manufacturers) would love the opportunity to discredit anything pro-environment, from reports to legislation. Not to mention that most of the public isn't even willing to change their lifestyle now for environmental reasons. If Global Warming turns out to be wrong, environmentalists everywhere are going to lose LOTS of credibility. People are going to say, "You don't know what you're talking about, so I don't have to listen to you anymore."

Global Warming turning out to be wrong would not only ruin environmentalism's reputation, but could also ruin science's reputation.

Now I'm sure that if or when Global Warming begins to affect our way of life in America, we will begin to see changes. Sadly, that is the only way the majority of the public would support some serious changes.

This world needs improvements. We need to change our way of life sometime soon. Something is going to have to change even if Global Warming just turns out to be a massive scientific blunder. Our environment is a wreck right now with or without climate change. Let's do something.

no title

So during the first day of my Learning Theory psychology class my professor pretty much explained why we were using science and following evolutionary theory instead of using religion and philosophy. This is very upsetting to me. See, psychology is a science. The fact that he had to justify using science and evolution to the entire class is insanity. And he went on about it for a while too -- almost 30 minutes.

Sadly, someone even left the class after he was done with that speech. I don't know what the fuck that girl thought this class was going to be about, but how could what the professor have said possibly come as a surprise? Such a surprise that she had to leave the class! It's not like the professor was bad-mouthing or discounting religion.

He just defined what learning is and said it is a scientific account; Science relies on operational data (stuff that is publicly observable, testable, verifiable) while philosophy relies on rational data and religion relies on faith. Then that girl stopped taking notes, closed her notebook, got up and peaced out. Maybe she misinterpreted what the professor was saying. Or maybe it was too much truth for her to handle.

Something interesting I learned was that the development our species is thought to have gone through has a result of evolution is recapitulated in the form of human embryonic development. That is, while we think humans evolved from fish ultimately into primates and then into humans, a human embryo goes from having gills (which eventually turn into something else on the face) to having a prehensile tail which later disappears.

Evolution: fish -> primate -> human
Embryonic development: gills -> tail -> human

It should come as no surprise, then, that behaviors and understanding levels that occurred over evolution also recapitulate in the form of a child's mental development from birth to adolescence.


Anyways, that's that. It's a pretty cool class so far.