Discussion for article #236651
He is a cult leader who in many ways seems to be a stand-in for Obama bin Laden, or any other leader of radical Islam
Um.
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Yep - EDITORS: please change Obama bin Laden to Osama.
PROOFREADING and spelling is gud.
While we’re one the subject of proofreading and spelling and word-knowin’ stuff, more and more I see bobbles like we see here: “demonstrative” instead of “demonstrable” and “hordes” instead of “hoards.” I’ve talked about this with editors and teachers and they’ve been seeing it in recent years too. Spell-check won’t catch it, and it seems that today’s editors, to the extent there’s any editing going on, don’t catch it either.
Yes, thank you, typo fixed!
I think that’s the crux of it. Nowadays, many writers seem to be punching out work at warp speed, reading over their work to see how it sounds out loud. I think when the focus is on how the work sounds if it were spoken as opposed to how it’s grammatically correct, that’s when the errors occur.
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I’m surprised there is no mention of Syria. There is some convincing evidence that drought started that whole debacle, That has created a massive scenario of terror and counter-terror.
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One big factor is the speed, obviously. Another is the lack of layers of backup proofing. At a big metro daily in the '80s, you’d have a number of people reading a piece over before it ran, including copy-desk people whose only job was to catch typos and other small mistakes. Today you’re lucky if the writer reads it over at all before hitting the button. Even when they do, not everyone can catch typos in something they’ve been working on themselves, it’s harder than proofing other people’s stuff, and proofing is a skill all its own anyway.
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I’m a terrible speller and I used to read my papers backwards in college so I’d really look at the word written and not what I meant to write. And I’d check any word I had the least doubt on in the dictionary. But with spell checkers these days you don’t have to do that!
I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.
Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it’s weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.
A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when eye rime.
Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o’er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.
Bee fore a veiling checker’s
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if we’re lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.
Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know fault’s with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.
Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped word’s fare as hear.
To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaw’s are knot aloud.
Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting want too pleas.
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Jesus Crust, it is getting really annoying how much gets through the spell checker.
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It’s worth mentioning Jared Diamond’s work, especially Collapse, as providing a theoretical framework backed by geographical research to back up the idea that environmental change, and the failure to adapt to it, can easily lead to the collapse of an entire society. I don’t know whether Mad Max’s creation was informed by Diamond’s work, but it takes this idea well beyond the merely speculative realm.
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Indeed. A very good book.
“Consider the character of Immortan Joe. He is a cult leader who in many ways seems to be a stand-in for Osama bin Laden, or any other leader of radical Islam.”
“it is hard not to associate this with Al Qaeda and global jihadism.”
"consider the popularity of jihadist schools, "
“Among the Believers”
“The filmmakers received unprecedented access to a jihadist school in Pakistan, at which children are indoctrinated into radical Islam as soon as they learn to read.”
So Noah, why the immediate and specific linkage to Islam rather than a more generic correlation to all forms of apocalyptic and messianic creeds? I could easily adapt this format to reflect any number of different scenarios casting Christians, Jews or any other tribalistic fanatics as villains depending on perspective. Indeed, connecting the idea of a tyrant using water resources as a means of control might make for an even more direct analogy.
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Governor Moonbeam presiding over Ground Zero.
For many who have been thinking hard about climate change for years, trying to understand tipping points and self-reinforcing feedbacks, Mad Max is a happy, best case scenario. One of the great social harms done by the denialism industry is even those who respect science generally land far to the right of the facts, and those who look at the stark reality of permafrost and clathrates, desertification, and ocean acidification are considered fringe.
Hard to run around in the desert on motorcycles when there’s not enough oxygen to fuel the engines. It will take a long time for the oxygen to deplete to non-liveable levels, but long before that, dementia will set in, and the higher CO2 in the atmosphere will only add to that.
But not all hope is lost. Maybe the death of the coral will lead to life-giving algae and seagrass. No need to despair completely quite yet If we’re really really lucky, we might win out to a Mad Max future yet! At least in the southern hemisphere, as the northern one will be bathed in radiation from hundreds of uncontrollable nuclear fuel pool fires. There will be a few in the south, too, but maybe only enough to cause a lot of cancer and mutations, but survivable at the species level?
Meanwhile, let’s keep playing power games in Congress, and paying PR firms to lie to the American people!