i'm actually rather convinced that matt lee's purpose in these daily briefings is to waste time in order to prevent legitimate questions.
the question deserved the response it got, as a consequence of it's utter naivete. how are the iranians supposed to know what the americans don't want them to do? yeesh. the subtle propaganda in the question isn't the idea that the iranians are malleable to american influence - for in truth they are, and anybody that knows the situation knows this (despite matt's enforcement of the axis of evil narrative). rather, the subtle propaganda is the idea that the iranians can somehow get out of the situation they're in by playing along - that the americans are reasonable actors in the conflict, driven by rational concerns and a desire for dialogue. ask ghadaffi or saddam or even assad how well that worked out.
it's not a question of whether the iranians care about or know what the americans want. it's a question of whether the americans care if the iranians are being co-operative. the answer is they don't.
the "incentives" driving the sanctions are not to change the behaviour of the regime, they're to try and incite the population to revolt.
this ends one of two ways...
1) the regime is overthrown.
2) iran becomes a russian protectorate.
....and the "detente" driving talks is a reaction to the increasing likelihood of the second option, not something coming out of a desire to bring the iranian regime back into the international community. on that point you have to give the obama administration a little bit of credit. that's something successive american administrations have not really taken seriously.
"if you grab his tail, he might take off..."
yeah. take off, eh.
hosers...
deathtokoalas
we've seen a few videos of these "crystal clean" lakes, and...
clear water like this is generally not indicative of a healthy lake. a healthy lake has plant-like stuff floating around in it.
you know what actually creates that kind of a situation? acidification. the clarity is generally a response of the ph sinking to a point that it can't support any kind of life. these crystal clear lakes that have been destroyed by acidification to the point that they cannot support life are called "dead lakes".
that doesn't mean that every lake that looks like this is the result of acid rain. there are other factors that may create the same result. but a lake in a mountain in slovakia would likely not be this clear unless it's been destroyed by emissions floating south from germany.
Michal Špondr
Maybe there are just no plants in such height. :-P And maybe it's a melted snow which got frozen again, snow doesn't contain animals. If you were right, Europe should be full of such lakes because of the emissions.
deathtokoalas
europe is full of these lakes, and slovakia is the most affected area.
Nox Solitudo
I mean, Slovakia usually gets a lot of emissions floating SOUTH from Germany, and probably north from France too.
deathtokoalas
yeah, it's not like this is something that hasn't been studied to death. there's a lot of industrialization in the east of france, but it's the tremendous industrial production in germany (and, to a lesser extent, production in russia) that are the culprits here. really, it's a little surprising how few people have an awareness of this. if you google something like "acid rain europe", you'll see a number of maps that designate the worst areas as existing in a swath through the center of europe that includes sweden, poland and the former czechoslavakia.
SuperMegaUltraPigeon
I thought it was clear because of the shear altitude meaning there is little dirt or plant/animal life, sort of like an isolated lake.
deathtokoalas
yeah, i know this is an idea out there, but i don't think it's really accurate.
so, why do some high altitude lakes lack fish? obviously, fish need a way to migrate to the lake - they can't fly in. they could maybe get dropped by a bird, but that's a fluke thing, and unless they're asexual or pregnant they can't breed alone anyways. so, a relatively new lake that has no way for fish to get in to it will not have fish in it. but, those factors don't apply as well to other types of life. the idea that high altitudes eliminate soil, plants, insects, mammals, etc is not accurate. these kinds of things exist at all altitudes...
nor is there any connection between the glacial origin of a lake and it's ability to sustain an ecosystem - except that sometimes these lakes have unique ecosystems. there are glacial lakes all over canada with elaborate ecosystems. some of the best fishing is in the rocky mountains.
similarly, high altitudes are not a buffer against the high acidity in the rain in the region - which is well established. looking at pictures of the lake doesn't tell me anything. but a google search for tatra mountains and acid rain pulls up several results.
i'm acknowledging that i'm putting two and two together, here. but acidification is really a far more likely explanation for the clarity of the water than the idea that there's no life or soil because it's an isolated glacial lake. glacial lakes are isolated from the waterways in the region. they're not isolated from all the other ways for life to find their way to them. and, they're generally not void of life - unless they've been acidified.
SuperMegaUltraPigeon
You are probably right, i was just doing my bit of speculation. However i imagine even at such altitudes if the lake wasn't acidified then even some form of algae might live, causing the lake to not be clear.
deathtokoalas
ok, i've deleted enough people regurgitating something they read at some pop science website to make a final point and close the thread. just because you've found a link to something on slashdot or reddit doesn't mean the information in the link is worth reading. and, it's certainly not a reason to swing it around the internet like a biblical quote.
my point is that the popular media perception of this is probably wrong.
yes, black ice is more transparent than snow. but what this describes is how well you can see through the ice. it doesn't describe how well you can see through the water. a healthy lake full of black ice would be...black. because the water would be full of stuff. that's why they call it "black ice".
to get that kind of clarity through the lake, you have to be dealing with extraordinarily clear water - water that really only exists as (1) water coming from treatment plants and (2) water in lakes killed off from acidification.
thread closed.
deathtokoalas
i should maybe put this in my own post. the brilliance of zappa is that 75% of his audience never really figured it out. kids today are sorting through his work, and they still don't really get it...
so, what is this? what this actually is is frank going to a doors concert (or something like the doors, in los angeles in the mid 60s), saying "this is the dumbest goddamn thing i've ever seen", realizing he's gotta do something similar if he's going to gig and responding with a tongue-in-cheek parody of it.
it may come off as sort of groundbreaking. and it certainly is, in a certain respect. it's bitingly satirical, in a way that foreshadows punk rock.
but it's not meant to be taken seriously. like, if you want to listen to this and drop acid to it, go ahead. his estate'll take your money - in frank's name. but he's laughing in his grave....
like, if you can imagine being at a zappa show in the mid to late 60s...
it's full of hippies, of course. it's that place and time. but what zappa's doing, the whole show, is making fun of the audience. he's taking their culture, exposing how stupid it is by taking it to the most absurd extremes it can go and then selling it back to them...
...and they're largely just oblivious to it. hey, they're having a good time, right? too stoned to care....
as performance art, it's brilliant.
but it remains very poorly understood.
what i'm getting at is that you're not supposed to listen to this and think about how ahead of it's time and influential it was - despite it being influential and ahead of it's time.
you're supposed to listen to this and laugh at how blatantly idiotic it is, and by extension understand how blatantly idiotic the counter-culture of the time really was.
CommieCotch
What I like about you is you're smarter than everyone else who's ever lived.
deathtokoalas
well, i think i know a touch more than nothing at all. that's a little bit exaggerated.
Kian Stra
well.. It seems to me, that Zappa just like weirdness and absurdity in music. He didn't like the drug culture and he had conservative ideals (but not like any conservative), but I definetely think he liked the spirit of counter-culture of the 60's, as he himself was against alot of mainstream concepts both musically and otherwise.
deathtokoalas
i think what you're picking up is that he was frustrated. he was ready to build a new society, as was promised to him growing up. but, he looked around at what he had to work with and he just laughed. you couldn't build a tree fort with these bozos.
frank wasn't really a conservative, he was more of an anarchist. and, this is the problem that anarchists consistently deal with: if the whole world was like us, we really wouldn't need a government. we could build a wonderful utopia. we would respect each other. we'd clean the fucking toilets, and we wouldn't even bitch about it. we're ready for this.
but, then we look outside our rooms and realize we're in this perpetual three stooges skit and have little choice but to shake our heads and resort to some kind of art.
Kian Stra
Zappa gets asked if he's an anarchist in this interview, and he responds that he's not, he's a conservative. I think it's honest, because they are discussing a serious topic (censorship/freedom of speech). He later gets accussed of being an anarchist, to which he shakes his head disapprovingly. He answers that he prefers legislation based on morality in form of behaviour as opposed to morality in form of theology (but whether this is his personal point of view or just the prefferable point of view in this context isn't clear).
Off course he might had changed his political views over the years, I'm not sure about that :)
also if someone is truly an anarchist, you wouldn't build a new society. You would destroy the structures that make up a controlling society. So a better metaphor would be destroy a new society, haha. Okay now i'm just fucking around. Have a pleasant New Year's Eve!
deathtokoalas
well, actually i think you've stated frank's view fairly succinctly in your second comment - he was all about destroying the "new society", because he realized it was the same as the old one. but, building and destroying are also the same thing.
anarchism is a really broad term, and i should have known i was going to get a reaction like this. but, there is a core streak in anarchism that overlaps with old-fashioned conservative concepts of upholding codes based on behaviour. in order to have a society free of governance, we need a behavioural process of self-governance - a social revolution. frank is denying he's an anarchist, then describing a key tenet of anarchism.
see, i think frank may have thought he was a conservative, and perhaps identified weakly with a concept of old democrat conservatism with strong roots in agrarian concepts of liberal anarchism, however warped they may have been, but he was highly critical of the conservatism of his own period. i know he self-identified. but, you have to interpret what he's saying correctly. and, the truth is that these words become very confusing well before zappa's period, and have remained confusing, in evolving ways, since.
so, i didn't say he was a raving anarchist. i suggested that it makes more sense to categorize his views as more anarchist than conservative, if you're going to throw the words around at all.
at some point, one needs to address a motive for the type of social criticism he engaged in. he's not demonstrating a passivity towards activism, he's demonstrating a sincere sense of disappointment in it's then contemporary form.
Kian Stra
I think you're right. I also think what he describes in the interview is quite anarchism-related, but Zappa isn't only an anarchist - he's more plural ideologically, and that's probably why he doesn't want to get pigeonholed :)
deathtokoalas
yeah. i'll grant you that the idea of defining anarchism is this constantly dangerous contradiction in terms, although i think it's less profound of a problem than a lot of people suggest. i mean, you don't want to go walking around saying "anarchism is this list of principles" - even if that list of principles is fluctuation to change, reaction to empiricism etc. although, at some point, you have to do that.
i think the reason he reacted so badly is because it was used as an epithet, rather than a description. and, that kind of thing resonates and has effects. i also think his decision to claim he was a conservative was more meant in the sense of contrasting him with his opponent. neither his denial nor his self-identification should really be read too far outside of the interview's context.
