Sites like that are just click bait sites. They get paid by advertisers based on the number of viewers they get so they post articles with outlandish or ridiculous headlines to generate clicks. Obviously for the reasons zn noted no one with the Rams would consider such a deal and the person who wrote that story most likely knows it. But as I said the story wasn’t written as a serious news piece; it was written to generate clicks.

waterfield wrote:

What the Republicans are selling is that the gains that can be made by curtailing fossil fuels are minor compared to the resulting economic losses. they look at it as a simple cost benefit analysis.

You may be right that that’s what many of them believe but they don’t say it. They either say Climate Change is not happening, or there isn’t enough proof that it’s happening, or if it is happening it’s part of a natural cycle, or that it’s a hoax.

I’d actually have more respect for them if they did come out and say what you described. At least then they wouldn’t be denying the evidence. But they need to reexamine their cost benefit model, because climate change isn’t just going to be a slight inconvenience. It will be catastrophic and I doubt the economy will simply adapt to it.

And combating Climate Change doesn’t have to cost jobs. It can create jobs as well but they will have to be willing to let some old jobs go. This means a shift away from fossil fuels but that’s the industry the Republicans most vigorously protect.

JackPMiller wrote:

zn wrote:

None of them actually exist.

Don’t get taken in by this kind of stuff…it’s mostly fraudulent.

Oh Yeah. How do I exist?

The minotaur never existed, Jack. You have to watch documentaries with a skeptical eye. Most documentaries on TV, even “sciency” ones, are very sensationalist. They are more interested in ratings than informing the public. Those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive as great docs like “Cosmos” have shown, but it takes less effort to just make stuff up.

Zooey wrote:

zn wrote:

waterfield wrote:

Yes-what I meant is that when it comes to this particular issue the Republicans will always default to economics.

This is a good n important thread to start W, thanks for the contribution.

I wonder if diehard dogmatic republicans can be explained by genetics.

I wonder about that, too. And about environmental factors. I’ve been thinking about that since I started thinking more about political “branding,” about identifying with a political brand.

As I said a month or so ago, I think the Republican brand tends to attract people who tend to place a higher value on Authority, and on unsympathetic black and white rules/discipline.

Is that kind of thing genetic? Or is it personality based? I dunno.

Genetic? Eh, I dunno…

I think it’s a mix of psychology and culture.

It’s very appealing because it’s easy. It doesn’t challenge you. It doesn’t ask you to question your beliefs. Its tenants dovetail nicely with all the propaganda you’ve been immersed in your entire life.

Wouldn’t it be nice to think America is the supreme force for good in the world and not question it? Wouldn’t it be comforting to believe in American Exceptionalism? To have unquestioning faith in what your leadership says and does? Damn lefties with their “science” telling us how we’re destroying the biosphere – well we have God and he would never let that happen so stop worrying and start drillin’….

ESPN’s self-immolation continues. Clayton is the best. This is so bizarre.

Hearing there could be an update on Aaron Donald and #Rams contract situation today

— Vincent Bonsignore (@DailyNewsVinny) May 30, 2017

• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by nittany ram.

25 was the perfect age – old enough to be treated like an adult, but still young enough to be excused for those moments of immaturity…

Happy B-day.

Phhht…Aragorn says there’s “always hope” but he fails to back it up with references or studies supporting his claim. He can’t even cite a single example of a situation in which there was a general consensus of “no hope” that was later determined to be false due to the discovery of a reason for hope.

Let’s just say I remain dubious of Aragorn and his unsupported ‘hope’ claims.

Agamemnon wrote:

Unless the Rams get a stratospheric discount, it behooves them to wait at least one year before re-signing Donald.

The conditions for negotiating a deal will never be better than they are now. Nothing is improved by waiting. Both parties benefit by getting a deal done now.

I agree. You don’t wait to sign perhaps the best DT that ever played. When you get an opportunity to sign him you take it. Now, if his demands are unreasonable that’s different but they shouldn’t screw around with him. Don’t give him a reason to think he’s being disrespected. Don’t need any bad blood.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by zn.

When I think about this sort of thing I always think about that scale which discusses advanced civilizations and the theory as to why we can’t find any is because they ultimately destroy themselves before they are able to achieve the sort of technological breakthroughs needed to travel the stars.

Well, the reason we can’t find any other advanced civilizations probably has more to do with our limited ability to sample the universe than anything else. The vast distances and all that. However, there is no guarantee there are other highly intelligent life forms out there. At least from an evolutionary standpoint, intelligence doesn’t seem tonbe all that adaptive. If it was we’d see more species with it. Other hominid groups could have developed it as easily as the group that led to us. Of course it could be self-limiting – just not enough room on this planet for multiple civilization capable species.

I don’t think all highly intelligent species are ultimately doomed though. I could see a quality like altruism arising to dominate a hypothetical civilization in the same way competition dominates ours.

Oh great. Donald’s absence obviously means he wants to be traded. It couldn’t mean anything but that.

Hopefully the Rams can capitalize on this and come out ahead like they did when they traded Dickerson and Bettis.

Zooey wrote:

Not against the Rams, they won’t. They will mostly be punting.

You’re not fooling anybody.

zn wrote:

I forget where this study is so I can’t post it. But I did post it once and I remember it.

The way the study worked was this. First they divided people into how they primarily got their news–tv, print, or the internet. The internet source was not just blogs. It especially includes things like basically headlines sites–where you go and daily they provide new headlines and you click on the articles you want to read.

They then asked people a series of questions based on statements. It was basically a true/false format. Many of the statments were deliberately based on common and active misperceptions. For example, one was, the USA did find the WMD in Iraq, true or false.

They divided the people into who had the most and who had the least percentage of misconceptions, based on their answers. They then matched them up with their primary news source.

The group with the highest percentage of misconceptions in their answers got their news primarily from tv. And mostly it did not matter what the source was–Fox, CNN, NBC, etc. Within the tv category, the group that had the lowest percentage of misconceptions got their news primarily from The Daily Show.

Print was better than tv but it was not the best. All sorts of sources counted–newspapers, news magazines. The people who got their news primarily from print were better than those who relied primarily on tv but they still had a fairly high percentage of misconceptions.

The internet group had the lowest percentage of misconceptions.

The theory was this. Those who rely primarily on the internet for news tended to get their news from headline sites. The reason this was the group with the lowest percentage of misconceptions was because internet readers tend to read more than one source on the same issue. So they click one headline, and it’s in The New Zealand Herald, and the next article on the same topic is from the LA Times, and the next article on the same topic is from the Belleville News-Democrat, etc.

Print readers stick with a narrow range of sources (for example someone who always reads the local paper). As a result they tend not to notice slant or ideological vision.

Internet readers, in contrast, by getting their news from (as it always turns out) a wide range of different sources (because they click more than one headline on the same topic_) are very used to seeing stories reported in different ways with different frames. So they are used to looking for differences in framing and take it that that is just a normal part of reading news. They are always comparing accounts, not simply passively absorbing a single account or 2. They read with this “comparing differences” mindset.

AND among those who tend to get an array of sources on any given issue–which as we all know is easy to do on the internet–it does not matter as much WHAT the sources are. It can be just the LA Times and the NY Times. By reading news this way, these people are always in a position to actively compare accounts. They don’t just passively absorb one favorite source or 2. So reading comparatively trumps the source. For example, the NY Times article you pull up might approach the issue one way, the McClatchy paper you read next might approach it another way, and each has things in it the other doesn’t (even if they are minor things). Doing it this way means people are less likely to have misonceptions about the news than someone who just reads the Chicago Sun Times every day. So someone who relies primarily on print can get unconsciously absorbed into a particular way of framing the news, while the comparative reading on the internet type is well aware of framing and so is used to sorting through and accounting for differences.

.

Yeah, that all makes sense. I think people who are more likely to read the news as opposed to watching it on TV tend to be more intellectually curious anyway. TV is so passive. Click a button then lean back further into your chair, set brain to idle. Reading is more active. It requires your attention. It puts your brain to work.

Vegas odds aren’t based on indepth football analysis. They’re based on a thorough understanding of how to get people to place bets.