Finland’s tackling homelessness is a far easier challenge than one might think, insofar as they actually care about stuff like this. Everyone gets free education and healthcare in exchange for the taxes they pay, so their healthy and gainfully employed.
Perennially, it’s the world number one ranking country in the happiness rankings. That’s not hard to understand; it’s a society where everyone takes care of one another. Not a bad way to spend a lifetime.
I have a great deal of respect for the popular physicist Michio Kaku, not only for his prowess as a scientist, but for his capacity to translate his knowledge in a way that communicates to those of us of lesser intelligence.
Here, however, I disagree. Dreams (at least mine) are surreal. They’re the furthest thing from science.
Of course, we’re all, even our scientists, entitled to poetic license.
I just spoke with a guy in the wine industry, and I asked him how, if at all, climate change is affecting what he does.
From his perspective, it’s the horrific wildfires whose smoke imbues (or “taints”) the grapes with an unpleasant flavor that needs to be modified, normally by creative methods of blending.
Here are a few thoughts that had not occurred to me:
When companies get caught “cooking the books,” the fallout is generally brutal. We’ve seen it before—Enron, WorldCom—where shady accounting led to total collapse and bankruptcy. Even when a company survives, trust is shattered, and the stock can stay in the gutter for years.
Lately, I’ve been wondering if the U.S. could face a similar danger. If our government starts manipulating or burying economic data to avoid bad news, there will be a reckoning.
The warning signs would be there: inconsistencies in reports, numbers that don’t add up, and growing doubt from investors and foreign governments. And unless we go full authoritarian, that kind of deception can’t be hidden forever.
If it ever got bad enough, the fallout could be massive—foreign investors pulling out of U.S. markets, interest rates spiking, stocks tanking, and the shockwaves rippling across the globe.
We’re not there yet. But early warning lights are blinking.
The “early warning lights” to which Rapier refers are, of course, Trump’s challenging statistics that make him look bad, e.g., the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics fiasco.
It’s too much to hope that Trump will change his ways and somehow become sane and honest. However, it’s reasonable to hope that Trump will be gone before our nation loses its credibility in the world of global finance and is rendered as irrelevant as Enron.
My alma mater, Trinity College in Hartford, CT, has been named to LinkedIn‘s inaugural Top 50 Colleges list, ranking #42 nationally and #4 among liberal arts colleges. This ranking recognizes schools that “best set their graduates up for long-term career success, looking at real alumni outcomes like job placement rates, career advancement, and professional network strength.”
I make this point not to brag, but only to support my position that a liberal arts education actually does set the student up for success in their chosen vocation. Give a young person four years to ponder the great questions that have been eating at humankind for thousands of years, and good things can happen.
The concept presented at left is important, but one whose only answer is that this civilization is far more likely to go extinct than it is to survive via the cessation of war. I base this on the way our species came to be and evolved to where it is now, over the last 100K – 200K years, based as it is on tribalism and the endless wars between these tribes, combined with slavery and other forms of unimaginable cruelty.
Is there a chance that humankind will encounter some event that will pull us together in some unprecedented way that will overturn these trends? Sure, it’s conceivable.
The most optimistic of our science fiction writers have been working at this for generations. Maybe one of them will ultimately be right.
I just met a married couple who recently retired from a lumber business they ran for 30 years in Southern California. When I asked about any trends they see in the industry vis-a-vis environmental sustainability, they had plenty to say, perhaps the most interesting is the use of steel in building construction as a replacement for wood. This is largely driven by concern for mold on/in wood of all types: lumber and engineered wood products, e.g., OSB (see pic above).
From an environmental perspective, this is unfortunate, as wood is largely sustainable. If you don’t plant trees to replace those you cut down, there soon won’t be any left. And building products sequester the CO2 they absorbed throughout they lives for many decades, even centuries. Compare this with the lifecycle of most plants, which decompose or burn in fires, re-releasing their stored CO2 very quickly.
The manufacturing of steel, by contrast, emits huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
I wouldn’t say he “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” I would say that he’s a pathological liar, and he knows that tens of millions of idiots believe what he says, regardless of how baseless.
Like so many of us, I like to figure out the meaning of vanity license plates. Of course, some are personal and are not designed to be understood, e.g., the car-owner’s initials, or his love for someone named “Judy.”
Others, like the one at left, are clearly meant to be interpreted. But what, specifically, does this one mean? Considering that he lives in this state, is he sorry for Mississippi? Is he sorry that he, for some reason, has (or had) to leave Mississippi?
I’m guessing that this is akin to Neil Young’s line about the state’s neighbor to the east, which goes: “Alabama, you’ve got the rest of the union to help you along. What’s going wrong?” He’s thinking about how nice it would be if Mississippi would stop embracing ignorance and prejudice, and join the rest of the modern world.
I’m not sure that’s a message I’d feel safe displaying in the Deep South, but I salute the guy’s bravery.
Here’s Pete Buttigieg speaking on the subject, and, in my view, he’s 100% correct.
