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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Let’s start from the beginning.  There is no such thing as a “vaccination exemption.” And even if there were, you don’t need one.  No one can wrestle you to the ground and stab you with a needle.

That said, in the United States, the Supreme Court has consistently stood behind this country’s right to mandate vaccinations in times of great trouble, so as to protect its citizens from the anti-vaxxer conspiracy-theory morons.

This goes back to the days of the flu pandemic more than 100 years ago, where every kid got inoculations, or were prohibited from entering the school system, where American society was hard at work in its attempt to eliminate cases of smallpox, cholera, rabies, typhoid fever,  tuberculosis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), yellow fever, typhus, influenza, polio, chicken pox, measles, mumps, and rubella. 

If you want to subject your kids to these diseases because you think Trump won the 2020 election, or you think the world is flat, that’s fine. Just stay far away from the rest of us.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

What to make of the meme here?

Re: the existence of God, it’s a proposition one either accepts or rejects.

Speaking strictly for myself, from my years as a small boy, I’ve always been impressed with Occam’s Razor, the idea that the simplest answer is probably correct.  To me, that means God doesn’t need to exist, and therefore probably doesn’t.

When I asked my mother how all this stuff came here, and she said, out of desperation, that God made it, I asked immediately, “Who made God,” to which she replied, “Nobody knows.”

That set me on my course towards atheism at age three or four.  We all have our own stories to tell about our religious journeys.  Mine is probably shorter–and simpler–than most.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here are a couple of my reactions to the meme here:

I really don’t think anyone, regardless of where he resides along the political spectrum, wants any aspect of our behavior to be required, even as benign as composting may be.  When I was a little boy in the early 1960s, all families in our township were offered “bottle day,” every other Wednesday, where left-over glass containers that were left out on our curbs would be swept off, melted, and reused.

Participation wasn’t compulsory.  If you hated the idea of being a team player, i.e., you were a hateful moron, you were completely at liberty to throw away your bottles in with the rest of your garbage, store them in your attic, or do whatever the rest of the sociopaths did. The idea of choosing to be a good citizen was as appealing then and it is today.

Similarly, I’m not sure I want fashion to go away.  Yes, I would say that fashion, generally, is frivolous, wasteful, and decadent.  But no one wants to see a path from our consumer world to one where fashion means nothing and no one is permitted to express himself with the way she dresses, wears make-up, etc.

The best we can rightfully expect to see is a world where living small is the new living large.

Most of us would love to see the world of 2038 as a time where values like justice, kindness, and peace supersede the thin veil of riches that mean so much to us today.  But they need to proceed naturally from where we are today, not forced upon us.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s an interesting interpretation of monotheism in general and Christianity in particular.

Not only are you “sinful and bad,” but you’re on your way to burn in hell for all eternity if,  for whatever reason, you fail to accept Christ as your savior.

The idea that everyone born before the incarnation of Christ 2000 years ago, or born later in countries whose religions are dominated by Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Judaism, and the dozens of other approaches to the supernatural is bound for hell is as morally reprehensible a concept as anything I can conceive of on my own.

This is the chief reason that I did not indoctrinate my kids into any form of religion (to the chagrin of some of my family members) but left them to their own devices as they made their way along in life.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s a clever reminder of the fact that “pro-life” means one, extremely narrowly defined thing, and it has very little to do with life in any real sense of the word: forcing pregnant women to carry their fetuses to term, regardless of how horrific the consequences for all concerned.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

The quote at left has been attributed to many of the world’s wisest people.  Certainly the concept of Socratic Wisdom, i.e., “if I’m wise in any sense it’s because I know nothing,” goes back 2300+ years.  This from ThoughtCo.com: Socratic wisdom is a sort of humility: it simply means being aware of how little one really knows; how uncertain one’s beliefs are; and how likely it is that many of them may turn out to be mistaken.

In any case, modern-day America has taken the ideas of the “fools and fanatics” and catapulted them to new heights of importance.  Anti-vaxxers and climate deniers couldn’t have existed, outside of an infinitesimal fringe, until just a few years ago.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s a sad truth.

Liz Cheney is totally out of sync, not only with the Republican party, but with nearly the entire population of her home state of Wyoming.

However, most Americans are extremely proud of her.  We’re grateful for her service to her country as a member of the January 6th Committee, and believe she has a bright future as a true patriot.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It would be interesting to know what percentage of U.S. citizens agree with this statement.

Keep in mind that there are still tens of millions of Americans who believe that we never really had an insurrection, but a legal and mainly peaceful protest against a rigged election.

These folks hold tightly to some version of the Big Lie, that Trump is the rightful president, and that the entirety of the media and justice system is persecuting him unfairly.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Plato wrote this, the longer form of which is “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly. While bad people will find a way around the laws.” 

I captured this from a prompt from an exam in a college class in philosophy or law, which read, Critically analyse this statement. (250 words)

If that’s your point, why have laws at all?  Why should a society make rules that, if broken, won’t result in the punishment of the criminals?

In today’s legal/political scene in the United States, we have a former president who clearly a) isn’t a “good person,” and b) is facing legal consequences for his attempt to overthrow American democracy.  Fortunately, we have laws that prohibit sedition and treason, and, we hope, effective enforcement of the same.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

From the New York Times:

Some of the most striking exchanges in the (January 6th’s) committee’s text messages were between Mr. Trump’s longtime adviser Hope Hicks and Julie Radford, the chief of staff to Mr. Trump’s oldest daughter, Ivanka. In them, both women lamented that Mr. Trump had caused irreparable harm to his own staff as the violence played out. “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local Proud Boys chapter,” Ms. Hicks fumed in a message. “All of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed.”

Sorry, but it’s impossible for any decent person to feel sympathy here.  Trump advisor Hope Hicks signed up to be a to-the-death supporter of a man she knew to be a criminal sociopath, and now she’s worried about being “perpetually unemployed?”

She’s afraid of “looking like a domestic terrorist?”  News flash: You are a domestic terrorist. Best case for you: no criminal charges.  Find yourself a sugar-daddy and stay away from TV cameras.

Good riddance to you in the American workplace.  I wouldn’t hire you to take out my trash, and it pleases me to know that most people feel the same.

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