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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It would be nice if we could see that all this horrific behavior on Trump’s part was eroding his base, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s really happening.

Are innocent citizens being harassed by ICE goons? Yes. Is the U.S. committing war crimes by bombing boats off the Venezuelan coast? Of course.  But Trump’s approval rating seems to be holding fast at about 36%.

It appears that Trump is going down, but not because he doesn’t have a loyal fan base of voters; rather, because certain members of congress have “seen enough” and don’t want their legacies to read, “He supported a wanna-be dictator until the very end.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I like what the lawyer said here, though I would argue that the concept goes even further:

• All of Earth’s people need to be treated fairly and equally.  We have people worth hundreds of billions of dollars, living on the same planet as 1.5 billion people who can’t get a clean glass of water to drink. This is morally wrong.

• The United States has no more right to wage an aggressive war against Venezuela than Russia had a right to invade Ukraine.

• Public education should be supported, not destroyed.

• The death penalty is not a part of a civilized society.

• Science should form the underpinnings of government policy.

• Corporations should not be able to buy favorable lawmaking.

• Big Oil should be prohibited from using our atmosphere as its own private sewer.

One more thing: woke is a win-win proposition.  Woke countries, e.g., Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, most of the rest of Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Iceland, and the rest are perennially at the very top of the world happiness rankings. Their governments actually care about their people, and their people care about each other and the quality of our environment.

This is a recipe for happiness. Human beings did not evolve over the last 200K years to become selfish, greedy, uneducated, impoverished, racist slobs.

There is a good reason that the United States is mid-pack in terms of happiness, and that very few Americans care one way or the other.  We are almost completely indifferent to the wellbeing of others.

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

The problem facing traditional Western philosophy is that science has usurped so much of its turf over the past 100-or-so years, and this can only accelerate from here.

Why is the universe here? How did it begin? What are its ultimate building blocks? These questions are now the province of cosmologists and particle physicists.

How does the mind work?  What is consciousness?  Are we born with a “clean slate,” as John Locke posited?  How is it possible that, deep into the “information age,” there are still tens of millions of Americans who believe that Donald Trump is a good, honest person?  Now, we turn to neurologists for answers here.

I hope future generations will continue to be interested in Socrates, but there are no guarantees.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Someone told me the other day that he expects Trump to be impeached and convicted in the next few months. And it does appear that the president is losing the support of congressional Republicans, which stands to reason. Would you like to be remembered as a protector of a would-be dictator?  Wouldn’t you at least want to be able to say that, at a certain point, you’d seen enough and stood up on behalf of the American people and the U.S. Constitution?

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

A reader notes: They should put that cocaine-pedaling Honduran president on one of those drug-running speed boats and send him back to Honduras with a detour to the coastline of Venezuela.

Does all this undermine his “drug war?”

Obviously. But his supporters will always invent a new narrative, as bolstered by the “news” channels that work around the clock to invent stories that make Trump look like America’s hero. Not sure what this one is going to be, but his supporters have a perfect track record in explaining away their hero’s criminality.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Wind Energy

In preparation for my first book, “Renewable Energy – Facts and Fantasies,” I interviewed Ray Lane, then managing partner of Kleiner Perkins, one of the world’s great venture capital firms, who told me about his stance with his prospects, “You build the first one. I’ll invest in the next 20. Then we’ll take the thing public and use that cash to build the next 5000.”

I’m 99+% sure that the “first one” of these will never be built, i,e., installing these VAWTs at the base of functioning wind farms. The concept is asinine, as it defies the laws of fluid dynamics.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

This line from Kurt Vonnegut calls to mind what George Carlin said about the Earth’s expelling the human race. On two different occasions he used the following similes as to what the planet is doing:

Shaking us off, like a dog ridding itself of fleas, and

Evicting us, like a landlord getting rid of bad tenants.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainable Building

When I ask people from foreign countries about their nation’s feelings on Trump, they commonly say, “We just feel sorry for you.  We never thought this could happen in the United States.”

The words at left of the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes on the subject of demagoguery tell the story here: “ignoramus and rogue.”

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

The website A Word a Day features “A Thought for Today,” normally from a notable author born on this date.

Here’s one from writer Ann Patchett (pictured), born 2 Dec 1963: The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived.

Patchett uses the word “disturb” in the sense of interfering with the normal arrangement or functioning of something. And Lord knows there are plenty of things in the world around us that need to be disturbed.

To take the two most obvious examples:

If left to proceed in a business-as-usual manner, we’ll soon live on a planet that is greatly compromised in its ability to support life, and

we Americans will live in an authoritarian state.

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

I’d like to have a conversation with the product packaging guy who thought he needed to provide instructions as to the use of coffee stirrers.

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