How Trump Is Regarded by the International Community
Trump’s approval rating at home is hovering at 36%.
Internationally, about half that, depending on the country.
Love the sense of humor expressed at left.
Tagged with: How Trump Is Regarded
Hydrokinetics Is (or Was) a “Boy Thing”
When my son was a little boy, he loved to see speeding railroad trains and the huge earth-movers that operated in landfills. My daughter preferred acting in skits with her little friends. We see this stuff playing itself out wherever we look.
Included in the “boy thing” is hydrokinetics. Speaking for myself, I’m enchanted by the idea of converting the kinetic energy of massive amounts of moving water into electricity.
It’s for that reason that I’m saddened that hydrokinetics is largely a relic of our clean energy past. It’s not a “has been”; it’s a “never was.” By the time people were starting to make progress in terms of efficiency and reliability, the levelized cost of solar PV and wind came crashing down, dooming hydro to the domain of hobbyists and a few niche commercial applications.
CO2 and Climate Change
Senior Energy Analysts and Forbes Magazine contributor Robert Rapier writes:Whenever I write about climate change, some people always respond with anger or denial. The denial crowd tends to stick with classics like “The climate is always changing” or “We don’t really know how much humans are contributing.” I even know one guy—way out on the fringe—who insists CO₂ levels aren’t even rising.
I used to respond by saying we’re running a massive experiment on the atmosphere. If the doomsayers are wrong and we cut fossil fuel use anyway, the worst that happens is slower growth and cleaner air. But if the skeptics are wrong? There’s no switch to flip us out of that mess.
I just started reading The End of Eden by Adam Welz, and he summed it up in a single line: “We are creating an atmosphere in which no humans in history have ever lived.” That’s the heart of the issue. The very air we breathe is slowly changing—and there’s no sign of CO₂ emissions slowing down. Many species are not going to be able to cope with that.
More CO₂ in the air also means more carbonic acid in the oceans, which lowers pH, bleaches coral, weakens marine shells, and threatens the food chain.
And if we want to make that worse? Just keep burning more coal. That’s about the worst move we could make right now.
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FWIW, I can relate to having climate deniers write back to me in anger. It comes with the territory, as they say.
Over the years, I’ve been a guest on many dozens of talk-radio shows, and a caller once called me a cockroach. The host was furious with the caller, but I just laughed. “Not everyone agrees with the climate scientists, some of whom have been studying this subject since the 1970s, I said. “But ‘cockroach?’ That’s a first.”
Tagged with: CO2 and Climate Change
Looking Out for Each Other
Not only is the story at left touching, it’s prescriptive of a way of life that almost everyone would prefer over the one we have now.
Tagged with: Looking Out for Each Other
A Talk with a Young Politician
I just had the pleasure of meeting a freshly minted Boston College graduate who, in the fall, will become an intern for Democratic Whip (second highest ranking House Democrat) Katherine Clarke (pictured). The young man is quite excited about his new position, as he himself aspires to a career in politics.
A couple of highlights from our talk:
I told him that if I run into him in the future, I would love to hear everything he did to remove Trump from office. (I got a hearty chuckle in reply.)
He acknowledged that these are dark days for America, but he said, “If you’re going to be in politics, you’re going to run into both good and bad times. Falling prey to pessimism or despair isn’t a healthy approach.” To which I responded, “Hey, that’s profound. Go get ’em.”
Tagged with: dark days for America
Looking at the Demographics in Rich and Poor States
We’re all seen graphics that remind us that blue states tend to be far wealthier that red states; one of which is at the left. Note that all the wealthiest top six states voted for Harris in 2024, and all the poorest eight voted for Trump.
Why is this? I’m not sure there is a solid answer, other than the obvious: educated people tend a) to be affluent, and b) to vote against would-be authoritarians like Trump.
What do you notice when you drive through California? NVidia, Apple, Google (Alphabet), Facebook (Meta), Visa, Netflix, Uber, Disney, Wells Fargo, Cisco, Salesforce, Hewlett-Packard, and Adobe, to name a few.
If you’ve ever driven through “Trump country,” i.e., the southern, mid-western and plains states, you’ve seen that such financial and industrial giants are hard to come by.
Tagged with: Rich and Poor States
American Authoritarianism
As American actor Jeff Daniels points out, the United States finds itself on the brink of authoritarianism.
Tagged with: American Authoritarianism
For Better or Worse, Human Beings Are Complicated
The answer to Dr. Goodall’s question at left is our intelligence is only part of the package that is humankind. We mustn’t forget about our greed, tribalism, and cruelty.
Tagged with: Human Beings Are Complicated
Elementary School Science
In fourth grade, at age 9, we learned how eclipses work, and why the garbage at left is impossible. How sad that, a generation or two later, we live among morons.
As a clever reader notes: This world couldn’t get any darker. Good for you.
DEI in Today’s Workplace
From Newsweek:
Cracker Barrel has been targeted by a law firm seeking to defend President Donald Trump‘s policies amid allegations that the restaurant’s diversity drives are “discriminatory.”
America First Legal (AFL) has called for an official probe into the Southern restaurant chain “for potential violations of federal and state civil rights laws stemming from its discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.”
Some of Cracker Barrel’s initiatives to develop employees are focused specifically on supporting workers who are women, Black, LGBTQ+, or Latino, according to AFL. This means they “appear to offer employment benefits that are only available based on an employees’ race or sex,” the Washington D.C.-based law group said in a press release on Monday.
At my company’s high-water mark in the late 1990s, I employed approximately 115 people, and we were most definitely “DEI.” I gave explicit instructions to my HR people to hire, all other things being equal, women and people of color, because I thought that it was the best thing for the company, and the right thing to do for our world.
Of course, this was thirty years before the Donald Trump / Stephen Miller era of hate and stupidity. Moreover, my business was part of the public sector, and it never dawned on me that someone would challenge me here, given that I was the one writing the paychecks. I figured that had to count for something.
Today, apparently, all bets are off.
Tagged with: DEI in Today's Workplace
