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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I’m happy to hear this, but I would make this prediction: Go 40 miles in any direction from downtown Dallas and repeat the experiment.  Don’t be surprised if the bartender is cheered.

This is the same phenomenon that we see played out all over the country, and probably, at a certain level, all over the world.

In addition, it’s apparently been the case throughout human history.  I once asked a tour guide at a museum of ancient Greek artifacts how it was possible that the same people who established democracy, geometry, and Western philosophy believed that Mercury with his chariot pulled the sun across the sky.

He laughed, and then explained that the educated people of Athens, while they didn’t have Newtonian physics, didn’t believe the theology of the day.  He went on to explain that the farmers out in the fields, a day’s ride on horseback, who had little or no education, weren’t strong in critical thinking and simply believed whatever they were told.

To me, this explains why we find the Bible Belt (and the QAnoners and the core support base for Donald Trump) in places that are home to by-and-large uneducated people.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Yes, the meme here represents a profound contrast between the character of two different U.S. presidents, separated by 50 years.

But let’s keep this in mind: being a vulgar slob, even the greatest among the 46 U.S. presidents, is not a crime. Were Andrew Jackson, Warren Harding, or Richard Nixon decent human beings?  Of course not.

What makes Trump stand alone is his attempt to overthrow the U.S. federal government.  That he was a terrible person does not make him unique.  That he committed treason certainly does.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change
Reader Charlie Heller notes: Hydrocarbons are not nearly the problem climate change hysteria peddlers claim. They are making money off of fear mongering.
I had no idea. Please provide some evidence in support of the claim you make here.
I’d also be interested to know why are there just short of 2500 lobbyists from Big Oil, more than twice as many as any previous year, at the COP (climate change) meeting in Dubai.
Someone has a profit motive, to be sure. Not sure it’s the climate scientists and the other advocates of clean energy and environmental sustainability, but I remain interested in your assertion.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Below is a performance of Frederik Chopin’s waltz in G flat.

I bring it up because a dear old friend who grew up in the Netherlands used to play it, and when I asked him how he could get through such a difficult piece, he told me that every kid he went to school with learned to play the piano at that level, at the very least.

High schoolers also read Plato and Descartes, and speak fluent English (as well as Dutch) and get by in both French and German.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Re: the meme here, a reader notes: If you don’t think Nikki Haley and Joe Biden would split the non-MAGA vote, you’re not paying attention.

Personally I think it would be more likely that Nikki Haley and Trump would split the Republican vote.  The conservatives I have in my life would never vote for a criminal sociopath, but neither would they vote for a Democrat.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Michael Fanone worked for the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia from 2001 until his retirement following the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021. What he says here I find interesting.

Two points:

MAGA congresspeople appear to be “triggered” by the word “insurrection,” but that’s an act.  These people all graduated from good colleges, and are anything but stupid.  What they are, however, is a collection of a) liars and b) actors. They have all seen the video footage of the wreckage, but they know how to appear outraged to their constituents who are desperate to believe that the incident was simply an unplanned tour of the building, and/or that it was set in motion by Antifa, BLM, the Deep State, the Hollywood elite, the woke mob of radical thugs, etc.

By the time the justice system finishes up with Trump and his top brass, Americans will have been exposed to dozens, perhaps hundreds of times more evidence on this subject than what we’re sitting on today.  When all this is over, only the world-is-flat QAnoners will reject the word “insurrection.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

The Democracy Now! article begins:

This year, there are at least 2,456 lobbyists at COP28, the U.N. climate summit in Dubai — nearly four times as many as last year — from companies like Shell, Total and ExxonMobil. The lobbyists outnumber the delegations of every country other than Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, which is hosting the summit, presided over by the CEO of the UAE’s national oil company, Sultan Al Jaber. “It’s definitely impossible to ignore how front and center the fossil fuel influence is at this particular COP,” says Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy at Corporate Accountability, who says the climate summit must kick out big polluters and “reset the system so that it can finally end fossil fuels and advance real solutions and save millions of lives that don’t need to be lost.”

What can be done to “reset the system” and prevent the fossil fuel industry from baking the planet?

I’m not sure, but the effort to shame these people as “morally bankrupt” seems to have limited effect, insofar as Big Oil completely understands that they are despised, but don’t appear the least bit chagrined–or even embarrassed.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s a reminder that we can have both a working Second Amendment and a ban on weapons of war.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Obviously, there are reasons that we’re still talking about Marcus Aurelius 2000 years after his death–and here’s one of them.

He seems to have possessed an ability to think rationally and without prejudice.  He would have made a very bad acolyte of modern-day right-wing “news,” which depends so heavily on its viewers’ unflagging loyalty to certain tenets, e.g., that progressives are always bad or wrong.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s David Letterman’s suggestion to this effect.

I would simply add that the “home” needs to have bars on its windows and doors.

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