Excellent analogy!
A legislature could try to end climate change by declaring that some CO2 could identify as nitrogen, but EVEN if that CO2 became 'legally nitrogen',the quantity of greenhouse gases building up in the atmosphere would not change, and the earth would keep warming. 4/n
— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) March 29, 2022
Comments
16 responses to “Legally nitrogen”
Excellent idea.
I’d rather identify as argon.
We could save a lot of trouble by calling oil and coal renewable.
Well, people are already talking about “clean coal”, so…
Oh dear. The instructions for our composting bin say that we should try to balance “carbon” and “nitrogen”. What if we’ve been mis-elementing our waste all these years?
@iknklast How noble of you.
@iknklast – you argon regret it
Didn’t the Ohio state legislature pass a bill making pi = 3?
[googles]
No, it was Indiana (in 1897), and it didn’t actually pass. Republicans tried it again in Alabama about ten years ago.
“That long-held empirical value of pi, I am not saying it should be necessarily viewed as wrong, but 3 is a lot better,” said Roby, the 34-year old legislator representing Alabama’s second congressional district, ushered into office in the historic 2010 Republican mid-term bonanza.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republicans-introduce-leg_b_837828
@iiii,
That was satire. In both cases.
It’s one of the things that bugs me about the law and judges. There are really smart people involved. They usually have great facility with language, especially written form. They are also so deeply invested in the law that they I think genuinely can’t see the frame of reference outside that, except maybe through a mirror darkly. In my work I’ve seen judges make a “finding of fact” that is quite at odds with physical and empirical facts as the technical experts involved understand them. It’s a finding of legal fact, not physical reality.
I’ve been living in Alabama for over ten years, Roby was my “representative”, and pi has been near and dear to my heart since high school days. I would have known of this if it were real. The linked Huffpost article is satire, and it was updated to note that the author has become aware of another satiric piece on the same topic some fifteen years earlier. Popular topic for satire, not so much for actual attempts at legislation.
I expect climate catastrophe will lead to a lot of people identifying as argon. “Disaster! We Argon!”
I certainly do periodically.
Erm… https://www.livescience.com/50085-states-outlaw-climate-change.html
No new ideas, I guess? Sigh.
NUISANCE FLOODING??????
ibbica, Nebraska has something similar.