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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Who would have thought American politics would have come to this, i.e., the parallel to Orwell’s “1984”?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I just met a woman whose company develops and deploys sustainable agriculture solutions, and I had the opportunity to ask her about her viewpoints on the topic.  A quick summary:

• No-till farming.  This is an agricultural technique for growing crops with minimal disturbance of the soil.  It decreases the amount of soil erosion, while increasing: the amount of water that infiltrates into the soil, soil retention of organic matter, and nutrient cycling.

• Spot spraying.  As one might hope in the information age, the idea of spraying certain chemicals, whether they are intended to kill insects or weeds, can be minimized.  Modern technology makes this possible.

• Vertical farming.  We’ve all seen this concept whereby (thus far) relatively small amounts of produce are grown indoors, in containers that encourage the plants to grow “up” as opposed to “out.”    One’s initial reaction might have been negative:  OK, we have the sun above, the fertile earth below, and rain that has made “horizontal” farming work, for the last 10,000 years.  What’s the matter with letting nature takes its course?  The answer resides in the growing scarcity of arable land and fresh water.  We now have grocery stores that grow the produce they sell on their roofs.

• Social media’s scorn of vegans.  There have been vegetarians for the last couple of hundreds of years, but it’s only been in the blink of an eye, since the dawn of social media, that meat-eaters have begun to ridicule those who have decided that killing and eating cows (or sheep or pigs) may be bad for human health, cruel to the animals, and bad for the planet.  By ridiculing sensitive and thoughtful people, humankind has arrived at a new level of meanness and stupidity.

• Plowing under rain forests to make room for more cows.  It was at this point that this erudite, sophisticated woman dropped the F-bomb to describe her repulsion for a society that eagerly welcomes its own death if that means more hamburgers.

Great to meet a kindred spirit.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

As shown at left, voter fraud, albeit rare, does occasionally exist.  My personal theory as to why it’s so uncommon is that the penalties are harsh, and the prospect of changing the results of an election are infinitesimally small.

This moron and (former) attorney is doing three years, and, when released, will be looking for work, perhaps as a bartender or grocery clerk.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Congratulations to Mr. Johnson of rural Georgia for his ability to see that Donald Trump is anti-American.  Unfortunately, his viewpoints on this subject land him in a slim minority in the Deep South, but it’s worth noting that the overall U.S. electorate is not as ignorant and blind as many people believe.

Moreover, voter turnout in going to be off the charts.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Well, all this may be true.  But there is a voice to the contrary, and that’s Donald Trump’s.  He’s convinced close to half of the U.S. electorate that, even though he’s a pathological liar, that he’s the only one telling the truth and guiding this country in the right direction.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Seems unlikely.  But this guy’s meme on Marjorie Taylor Greene certainly made me smile.

In fact, however, I believe MTG is actually good for progressives, because of her  bottomless capacity to make asinine claims like this one.

You go, girl.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I doubt it.  Most Americans can see that the consequences of another Trump presidency would be dire.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Yes it is.  Inflation is a general increase in the prices of goods and services in an economy.  There are many potential causes of rising prices, but they don’t change what we call this phenomenon.

It would be nice if our government would do a better job at trust-busting.  A key reason that corporations can gouge their customers is that they can.  Here’s what Europeans pay for various services:

Cell phone: $25 / month

Cable TV:  $25 / month

Interest: $47 / month

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Considering that the polls are notoriously unreliable, we can only make educated guesses as to the numbers of Trump and Harris voters who will cast their ballots in the November presidential election. As shown at left and discussed at length in other posts, a significant number of wealthy and highly educated people who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 have dropped him like a hot rock, as it becomes more obvious by the day that he is criminally insane.

I’m sure that the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, quoted at left, likes his riches as much as the next guy, and eagerly accepted the enormous tax cuts he received when Trump took office in 2017.  It appears, however, that Mr. Hoffman is not blind to the fact that Trump brings with him considerable chaos in all things social, diplomatic, and economic — associated with his mental instability.  Perhaps Hoffman’s also something of a patriot and doesn’t want to see his country’s democracy collapse into authoritarian rule.

Again, it’s impossible to know the impact of all these captains of industry, military leaders, and of course, Trump’s former staff and cabinet members, where only four out of 44 support him for re-election.  One can only hope that this effect is significant, at least among the top layer of traditional GOP voters.

But let’s be honest.  For every Reid Hoffman out there, there are probably a hundred thousand heavily armed morons who believe that God sent Trump to make America great again.  Many of them have never heard of LinkedIn, and certainly couldn’t care less what some silver-tongued Stanford grad (class of 1990) thinks about the world.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

As we approach the one-quarter mark in the 21st Century, it appears that the only real trend in American society is its growing ignorance.

We’re not becoming more considerate drivers, kinder to others, more athletic, or better parents.  But, as shown here, we are capable of beliefs that have zero thinking behind them.

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