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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

How did U.S. politics become so insane?  What exactly happened here?

I suspect it was a combination of things:

• The media discovered that it could transition news from a public service into an extremely lucrative industry, if it could only sensationalize the content to the point that people would have a 24-hour-a-day appetite for it.

• The education level of the common American sank to a point that many people lost the ability to think critically and examine what they were being told.

• Information and communications technology ushered in a tsunami of wealth to our country, but it went almost entirely to the top 1%, leaving the working class angry, and looking for a scapegoat.

• A criminal conman came along and capitalized on all this ignorance and frustration.

• The news media created entire cable channels dedicated to fanning the flames of white, middle-class anger, without any regard for telling the truth.

So here we are, with tens of millions of extremely hostile and heavily armed people believing that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, and that Donald Trump is their only source of truth.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

If you believe that America is weakened by abandoning Ukraine, letting its people get barbecued by Putin, and emboldening an authoritarian regime to take over Europe, you’ve been listening to too much Fox News (or worse).

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

We commonly run across memes like the one here, whose point is that government and other people owe us nothing.

I know there are people who believe that, but I don’t think they’re very smart.

When human beings formed organized societies about 10,000 years ago, they wisely decided to make and enforce rules that restricted behavior.  That’s because it was obvious that, left unchecked, people would enslave, torture, murder, steal from one another, etc. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

That last paragraph might be a tad aggressive in a conversation with what you now know to be an omnipotent being.

I agree with its content, but I would have kept those thoughts to myself.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

What Aristotle said here is vitally important to a successful life.

There is a problem, however, in that some things are objectively true and others objectively false.   If you try to “be critical and evaluate what you believe in,” and not understand that you might be sitting on a ton of cognitive biases, you may wind up accepting the Big Lie or wanting to prosecute Anthony Fauci.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

From the late 19th Century until Einstein published his work on special relativity in 1905, a great number of scientists believed that physics had gotten to the point of a near complete understanding of the universe.

This was probably due to a form of conceit, i.e., that all forces, particles, fields, etc., conform to human intuition.  What we’ve learned since, of course, is that phenomena that are either very small or very large contain huge paradoxes.

I took one semester of quantum mechanics.  I got a C+, for which I was grateful.  It never entered my mind to take a second semester.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

What Bertolt Brecht said here is interesting, but it’s untrue, at least in the United States under most circumstances.

The First Amendment does not protect certain types of speech, but generally, deliberate lying is fine, as long as it’s not an overtly criminal act, e.g., perjury, inciting to violence, or defamation.

This is an important distinction in today’s America because we have an entire political party, a former president and 2024 candidate, and several “news” organizations whose only characteristic making them viable is nonstop lying.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Wow, that’s one powerful photograph.

It makes one think: 100 years from now, who will have had the better life?

Presuming they’re Americans, the old lady lived through the Great Depression and numerous wars, and doubtlessly had to deal with many personal hardships and losses.

The baby will benefit from all manner of technology: IT, communications, and especially healthcare; he’ll likely live a longer and healthier life.

Exactly what he’s going to have to deal with in terms of everything else, however, is anyone’s guess.  Nuclear war? World fascism? The demise of U.S. democracy? Environmental devastation?

On a less dramatic basis, what about a loss of job opportunities as automation and AI replace human labor?

We can only wish him luck.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

My father left college temporarily to drop bombs on the fascists’ oil refineries, completing 29 successful missions before being shot down, and, with his men, spending the last six months of the war in a POW camp.

My role as an anti-fascist is far less exciting, though, with joining protest marches and my daily writing, I’d like to think I’ve made a difference.

Miss you, Dad.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Trump tried to overthrow the U.S. government, and some bozo wants to charge him with parking in a handicapped space?

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