News Weakly - 9/28/19

The End of the World as We Know It
Greta Thunberg really gave it to them this time. "How dare you!" She told the UN to get right on that end-of-the-world climate change problem. (I could almost hear, "Don't make me come back here.")

My problem is not with Thunberg or climate change or the UN. I do question the wisdom of taking direction from children. But my real problem is with the continuing question, "What do you want?" They say things like "100% clean energy by 2050," but what is that? It isn't what what they seem to think it is. The same science that warns of the impending doom of climate change also says that if all human activity ceased tomorrow, the temperatures would continue to rise for 2 more decades. Science tells us that the current conditions are due not merely to fossil fuels, but to the entire Industrial Age. If we are to fix this problem (and some scientists say it's too late), the solution appears to be a return to an agrarian society without modern technology because everything we do with modern technology produces climate impact. (If you think I'm exaggerating, consider Bernie Sanders who suggested it would be wise to kill babies in 3rd world nations to improve climate conditions.) What do you want us to do? Seems like it's either the end of the world as we know it (eliminate all modern technology world wide and most humans) or the end of the world as we know it (everyone dies anyway).

And Now for Something Completely Different
It shouldn't really be a surprise. In a world where reality is decided by how I feel about it, it stands to reason that eventually a man can become a mother. The courts in the UK have ruled that "An individual who is born female but later becomes male and gives birth to a child should be legally regarded as a mother." Now, that seems thoroughly reasonable to you and me, because he is actually a she. But she's not. They ruled that the man is classified as a mother. Fred (the name the biological woman assumed) wanted to be called the father. No one can convince him that "father" is a person who provides the sperm and "mother" the egg for this transaction. But, hey, in a world where "literally" can be used to communicate "not literally" and you can feel like a different gender and that's real but you can't feel like a different race and have it be real, why would we expect otherwise? (If the court was to rule with what we like to call "science," they would have ruled that the woman who gave birth was the mother, regardless of how that woman felt about her gender.)

Inconsistency
Mattel is coming out with a new line of dolls in contrast to Barbie, the epitome of femininity. These will be "gender-neutral dolls." Because children "don't want their toys dictated by gender norms." Of course, no one is paying attention to the fact that when John decides to be Judy he takes on as many "Barbie" features as he can. Because gender is not what we think it is ... unless it is. That is, this isn't a move to not be dictated to; it is a move to eradicate differences we cannot avoid being aware of.

Divide and Conquer
So apparently, unbeknownst to me, someone somewhere in some hate group has used the "OK" hand symbol -- yeah, that one with thumb and index finger forming an "O" and the other three fingers up to kind of make it look like a "K". Bam! Now it's a hate symbol. You signal to someone that it's "OK" and you're a hater. And heaven help you if you do it while wearing a "bowl style" haircut. Hate!! So says the Anti-Defamation League. The standard for declaring a symbol as hate appears to be that it is used a lot by people that hate. Given the vast array of people who hate and the large numbers of symbols they use, shouldn't be long before anything at all qualifies. ("Hey, did I just see that white supremacist smile? I've seen a bunch of them do that. We'll call a smile a hate symbol.")

The Solution of "Awareness"
Greta Thunberg, et.al, want us, as one of the solutions to the horror of climate change, to be more aware of the climate change problem. AOC, as one of the solutions to poverty, wants us to be more aware of the poverty problem. Parents of 13-year-old "Diego" of Moreno Valley wanted the school district to be more aware of the problem of bullying in their schools. They knew; Diego died anyway. Maybe "awareness" isn't the solution it's cracked up to be. "We're beyond 'thoughts and prayers' -- 'awareness' is a better answer." Not so much.

Van Ban
Alek Minassian, a 26-year-old Toronto man, is what they call an "incel" -- an "involuntary celibate." These folks are over the top. The military has warned of possible violence at screenings of the new movie, Joker, from this group. Minassian is reported to have run down 10 people in Toronto last year with a van in frustration over never having had a girlfriend.

Lawmakers are working hard to ban vans and to make sure incels have girls in order to save lives. No?

Not the Babylon Bee
Climate change is insidious. NASA is saying that Venu was habitable "for up to 2 billion years." What happened? A sudden climate change made it "a hellish world." They know this because they ran their climate change modeling software on Venus and proved it. (No one appears to be asking, "Um, is it possible that your climate modeling software is not right?") If it wasn't a NASA site, I would have chalked the story up to satire.

Loving Their Kid
In Portland, OR, parents of a 6-year-old boy are beginning their son's transition to being a teenage mutant ninja turtle after he expressed his wishes to be one. "It's important for parents to listen to their kids' every desire and immediately affirm that desire," his dad said. "Imagine how much harm you would do to your kids if you impressed your beliefs on them instead of listening to their subjective opinion of reality."

Must be true; I read it on the Internet.