What Teachers Actually Do
I’ve posted things like this before, because it’s a point worth making.
Americans get led around by the nose by politicians who take advantage of our ignorance and our insatiable thirst for hateful bullshit. It’s pathetic.
Tagged with: insatiable thirst for hateful bullshit
America Actually IS Exceptional–Exceptionally Stupid
The core problem in the United States is that there are tens of millions of people, as much as 40% of the voter base, who believe the meme here.
Suppose all this had happened somewhere else. Imagine that some European country elected a president who told more than 30K lies in four years, blocked treatment for COVID-19, obstructed justice, committed extortion and fraud, and then topped it all off with an attempted coup.
To take an example, how many French voters would have stood by the side of such a person? 17?
Satire Communicates One More Time
In Georgia, Republican gubernatorial hopeful Kandiss Taylor really is running on the platform: Jesus, Guns, and Babies. As show at left, some jokester thought he’d have a little fun at Taylor’s expense.
As I’ve been explaining to my associates outside the country, times are bad here, as if they don’t know. Americans are living in a country in which almost half the voters believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, and that the coup attempt was a legitimate political act–one that should result in Trump’s reinstatement.
Having said that, things aren’t bad to the point that the voters in a state with half-decent education (#30 / 50) want to be governed by Ms. Jesus, Guns, and Babies. Won’t work.
Tagged with: Trump's reinstatement
Sea-Level Rise Inundating Florida
Here’s an article that adds new insight into Southern Florida’s plight when it comes to flooding.
Sea-level rise accounts for a great deal of this, to be sure, almost a foot to date, far more than the coastal average. But as the water table rises, the wet stuff pushes up through the porous limestone and creates even greater flooding.
Building sea-walls sounds like a potential remedy, but they may wind up trapping water that otherwise would have drained back into the Atlantic.
Is it ironic, or is it karma, that Florida, a state known for its climate deniers, is slowing going away?
Tagged with: sea level rise
Conservatives Are Shockingly Effective at Blocking Climate Change Mitigation
Here’s a New York Times article that describes the efforts of Republicans to mount legal blockades against climate change mitigation. It begins:
Within days, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that could severely limit the federal government’s authority to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants — pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.
But it’s only a start.
This begets the question we’ve considered here before: What is it, specifically, that conservatives want to conserve?
After careful thought and as much creativity as one can possibly muster, there is only one valid answer: the right of rich white people to make as much money as possible, regardless of the damage they’re doing to everyone and everything around them.
Whenever I come across stories like this, I marvel at the capacity of human beings to do evil. You’re profiting by ensuring this planet will be a terrible place to live when your grandchildren are in their retirement years. And you think that’s acceptable behavior. That’s evil at a level that’s hard to imagine.
Tagged with: climate change mitigation
Cadillacs and What They Mean
If you want to tell me there was something cool about the Cadillacs of the past, I won’t argue with you. At left is a 1939. Breathtaking.
And actually, if you have 10 or 11 kids whom you take skiing a few times every winter, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with the boat shown below.
But otherwise, please. All you’re doing is making a statement that you have terrible taste, and you really couldn’t care less about the quality of the environment you’re leaving to our descendants.
Tagged with: quality of the environment
Open-Carry Assault Weapons
Business owners have the right to refuse service to anyone, so why isn’t this guy at the very top of everyone’s list to dispose of?
Who’s going to repel more customers: some raggedy homeless person, or this hateful moron?
If I were a patron, especially if I had come in there with one of my kids, I’d ask to see the manager, and explain: “If you don’t expel this piece of garbage right now, your business will lose the support of every decent person in this town, starting with my own.”
Tagged with: assault weapons
Nixon and Trump
There are people who seem sincere in wondering whether Nixon or Trump was the greater criminal.
Nixon lied to cover up a burglary.
Trump tried to overthrow the government of the United States.
Seems like a strange thing for an intelligent human being to be on the fence about.
Environmental and Social Justice
The other day I mentioned to a friend that there are more than 200,000 groups on this planet in “environmental and social justice,” which sent the conversation down the rabbit hole about controversies surrounding social justice. I’ve had this happen before, and so I’m going to stop using this phrase.
Obviously, there is a social component to environmental justice, as the impact of environmental catastrophe falls disproportionately on poorer people. But “social justice” connotes being “woke,” which isn’t a direction I want to take most of my conversations.
Ocean Wave Energy
A friend asked for my views on ocean wave energy, which I sent along (see link above).
I wrote, “Some of them are more pessimistic than others. In essence, there are still several different basic concepts, but none has any real chance of providing even a tiny fraction of the world’s energy.”
He mentions that a huge percentage of the Earth’s population lives within 100 miles of an ocean or sea, which is true, but the relevant factor (as always) is cost. This puts such a low limit on the possible integration of ocean wave.
If you live in a community on an island in the Hebrides, you probably have a case to be made, because of the enormous costs of competitive solutions. But if you live in Miami or Rome, there is no chance whatsoever that ocean wave will be competitive with any conceivable grid mix, regardless of how large a tax we put on carbon.
