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Lance Groth

lance.groth's picture
St. Paul, Minnesota
Commenter for
1 year 13 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 03/19/13 at 01:45 pm in response to A voting statistic to terrify Republicans (even more than the Hispanic stuff)

When you look at the Republican "autopsy" report, as well as interviews and panel discussions on the news networks, most of their plan has more to do with marketing than any substantive change in the party platform. They still, apparently, blame the way the message was delivered, not the message itself. To the extent that this is true, the Repubs will continue to struggle, especially with young people. The old saying about putting lipstick on a pig comes to mind.

Posted on 03/19/13 at 12:32 pm in response to Gene-splicing and cloning may restore lost species, but not their lost worlds

I have to admit that emotionally, it would be thrilling to see a live Mammoth or saber-tooth cat. But I agree that it is misguided to focus resources on bringing back extinct species only to be novelties for people to gawk at. I would say, rather than cloning these species now, the effort on the genetics side should be to preserve gene banks of endangered and threatened species, and extinct species where possible, for possible restoration in the future, but only if a natural habitat - not...

Posted on 03/15/13 at 02:28 pm in response to Strib on 'tax the rich': 'Competitively uncomfortable'

Funny, isn't it, how everyone claims to want tax reform, but every proposal to do so draws heavy fire from the people who would have to kick up a little more. Hypocrites, all.

Posted on 03/15/13 at 04:20 pm in response to Why do birds matter? Interesting answers from Audubon and beyond

Mr. Franzen's remarks certainly resonate with me, and can be applied to humanity's relationship with all of nature. We see it now in the raging argument over whether or not to allow hunting of wolves.

Some see it only through the cold lens of a spreadsheet - there are x wolves in Minnesota, x more than there were previously, and x% percent of them prey on domestic animals, causing $x in economic damage, and they take down x% of the deer population each year, which compete with...

Posted on 03/07/13 at 08:54 pm in response to Most of what you know about the Cuban Missile Crisis is wrong

Your comment jostled a childhood memory that had long been dormant. I was just a little kid at the time, but I clearly recall my Mom, a school teacher, expressing disdain for anyone who pronounced "cuba" as "cuber". Strange, the things the brain latches onto as salient enough to commit to memory.

Another very early memory also involves JFK - seeing the flag draped casket on the caisson in the funeral procession, on our black & white t.v. I was too young to understand what it...

Posted on 03/07/13 at 01:06 pm in response to Protecting livestock from wolf packs with nonlethal (and colorful) means

Me too. I don't think farmers and ranchers would care too much about the cost of LGD's if it meant they weren't losing livestock to predation. If DNR were practicing science instead of pandering to hunters and trappers, they'd have a pilot program to promote dogs and other nonlethal methods. But their default response to "problem" animals is always to kill, and they see their constituency as hunters and trappers, so they have no interest in gentler methods. Perhaps their hand could be...

Posted on 03/06/13 at 01:24 pm in response to Over half still not on board with gay marriage

" We can impact small margins but can not change major processes. "

Patently absurd. This kind of thinking is precisely why the natural environment is in such trouble. A single human cannot change major natural processes. Seven billion humans wanting to live a modern, affluent lifestyle change everything.

Can't impact major processes? I grew up in prairie country, except that it's silly to call it that because now it's corn field country. The Great Plains was once a vast...

Posted on 03/01/13 at 01:31 pm in response to Paul Krugman is on fire

Austerity *has* failed everywhere it's been tried. Yet here we are with the sequester cuts taking effect, because we can have "No New Revenue", and certainly no more stimulus spending.

It's amazing that modern civilization hasn't utterly collapsed by now, considering that most people are wrong about most things most of the time - and with great conviction!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: We're clever, tool-using primates, but we're just not all that smart.

Posted on 03/01/13 at 01:22 pm in response to More sugar leads to more diabetes, global study finds

This would be a "duh" moment, and gee, Atkins only said this 40 years ago. The presence of corn syrup in almost everything that's in the grocery store, combined with the popularity of sugary sodas, outweighs any other factor in both obesity and type 2 diabetes.

So can we stop arguing about it and finally do something about it? Banning corn syrup would be a start.

Posted on 02/27/13 at 05:10 pm in response to Obama's secret plan for Republican party-cide

Ha! I love this comment. It's pithy and visually evocative, a wonderfully cutting analogy.