Wretchard tells a tale of genocidal American imperialists — and data gathered by one’s own lying eyes:
Once upon a time I was sitting with some guys who were excoriating the “genocidal American imperialist”. So I asked them a question: how many people do you actually know who’ve been killed by a genocidal American soldier? Nobody could mention a single instance. “Ok,” I said, “how many people do you know who’ve been liquidated by the New People’s Army?” Almost everyone knew one or more. They could see where this was going and therefore added to the argument certain “adjustments”. The Americans were starving the Filipino people; they “ordered” Filipino lackeys to kill peasants. Etc. etc. So they adjusted their mental model to produce their preconception because they couldn’t generate it from their own experience.
Now this is not to say that they might actually be right about the “genocidal American imperialist” but they will have to introduce evidence apart from the data gathered by their own lying eyes. Someone asked me whether ten years of freezing weather would dispel a belief in global warming. I said “no.” When people find that the mothership doesn’t arrive on the scheduled date they just wait some more.
And wait they do, the MV (Motor Vessel) Akademik Shokalskiy, a research ship set out to prove global warming is now for over a week already trapped in ice, the very same ice they’d sought to prove had melted. Chris Turney, leader of the expedition and a professor of climate change, remains adamant that the ice is melting, even as he and the boat are trapped. Not one of the several ice-breakers sent out to help could reach their destination due to the heavy ice.
The Passengers are now waiting for the arrival of Australia’s Antarctic resupply ship Aurora Australis, which has the highest ice breaking rating of the three vessels originally asked to respond.