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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Young readers may not recognize this scene from 1975’s “Blazing Saddles,” where the black dude has been appointed the new sheriff of a town on the western frontier.  The bigoted white folks are extremely resentful, and here, the amiable town drunk is consoling him:

What did you expect? “Welcome, sonny?” “Make yourself at home?” “Marry my daughter?” You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.

Coincidentally, an old friend asked me recently what I believe makes up the Trump base.  I replied that a Trumper needs to be in one (or both) of two groups:

a) The extremely unintelligent, and/or

b) Those whose brains are wired, either via genetics or lived experience, to be indifferent to the needs of other people.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

I almost clicked on this, then suddenly noticed that it’s sponsored by Chevron.

Oh sure. I trust the international criminal organization, convicted of dumping carcinogenic waste into the rivers of Ecuador, deliberately poisoning the indigenous people, for an honest report on what causes fluctuations in retail gas prices–or anything else.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I highly doubt that Facebook gives a rat’s ass about your campaign, just like the vast majority of other Americans.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Here’s a new concept in electric transportation that I don’t expect to catch on.  Imagine you park your car somewhere on a sunny day, you unlock a roof-mounted container, and pull out an array of solar PV that you then unfold and drape over your car.  You plug the array into your car’s charge port.  When you’re ready to leave, you reverse the process.

While the car is parked, you get a maximum of 1200 Watts, meaning that you’ll need about 30 hours of sunshine to charge your base-model Tesla Series 3 from 20% SoC to 80%.

Aside from the issues of cost, added weight, wind-resistance, theft, and vandalism, how long will it take the average driver to conclude that this is a royal pain in the ass?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Why on Earth would anyone have expected anything else?  Concern for others is so far off-brand for Trump, it would be like McDonalds serving fresh-squeezed turmeric juice and wheat germ.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Uncategorized

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Trumpism is that the top people who worked for the former president during his term in the White House refuse to support him for re-election, including our top military officers, but that the typical Republican voter does not seem to care a whit.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Humankind domesticated the dog approximately 20K years ago, and since that time, most of us “dog people” have struggled with the issue:  What is it like to be a dog? At what level do they think?

Obviously, they’re beholden to us, but beyond that, it sure would be interesting to have some insight here, wouldn’t it?

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Alexander Vindman entered the American consciousness when he blew the whistle on Trump for extorting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskye; Trump sought to offer military assistance in fighting the Russian invaders in exchange for Zelenskye’s willingness to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden.

At left we see Vindman’s summary of the difference between the two U.S. presidential candidates.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Here’s a short video that a reader sent me in which Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the importance of pure research, i.e., theoretical scientific research, normally in physics, performed without an eye towards the development of anything of purpose.

He pointed out that one of Einstein’s equations laid the groundwork for the laser, which eventually became the technology by which we scan our UPC codes when we buy our consumer products, although Einstein (obviously) wasn’t contemplating that at the time.

It’s an interesting topic, to be sure. In 2011, I interviewed Dr. Martin Perl, an aging genius who, at the time, was running the Stanford Linear Accelerator, after having won the Nobel Prize in physics for discovering an elementary particle, the tau lepton.

I happened to ask him about the practical application of his life’s work, and he told me flatly, “There is none.”

I was stunned, and I immediately began to stammer to correct my mistake, ” Oh, let me ask this a different way.  Isn’t there a chance that something you and your graduate students are doing could eventually have some sort of practical implication?” He replied, again to my astonishment, “Not one in a million.”

Hey, I’m not a particle physicist, so I’m not in a position to argue, but it does seem a bit weird that what we’re learning about the core components of the universe couldn’t possibly have some future application in our lives.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Every American should be terrified of what’s happening within the U.S. Supreme Court–in particular with the presidential immunity case, in which our nation has been refashioned into a monarchy.

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