“Let’s Go Brandon”
I can only imagine the look on her parents’ faces when their pretty, young, college-educated daughter brings this thing home to meet mom and dad for the first time.
Tagged with: Let's Go Brandon
“Defund the Police” — Terrible Choice of Words
Regarding the meme here, a reader notes:Cease calling it Defunding. It’s restructuring their purchasing choices. Using their available funds to streamline their efficiency to help, serve and protect their communities.
Defunding sounds like lawlessness, ignorance, and spitefulness towards first responders, while restructuring purchasing choices sounds like making them actually work for the betterment of all of society and communities.
Yes, “defund” was among the worst possible word choices.
My marketing services agency did, I would guess, 10 – 12 different projects in naming, positioning, and demand generation for Hewlett-Packard. When I interviewed my main client on camera, I asked him, “Why did you hire us?”
He replied, “Simple. It’s because H-P sucks at this. If we had to market sushi, we’d call it “cold, dead fish.'”
“Defund” is just as bad.
Strength of Character and Political Life
Let’s start by admitting the obvious: Thomas Paine was a great thinker, but he never held any high public office .
Having said that, consider how few of those who rise in American politics today think like this. The precise opposite could be argued, i.e., that making progress in political life absolutely requires one to pander for approval.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there actually are leaders of countries that are fairly inconsequential on the global scene, say New Zealand or Iceland, who live lives according to this principle. Voters in these countries are generally intelligent and kind people, and the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people leave them alone.
But where there’s a great deal of money at stake, self-interest can’t be far behind.
Tagged with: Strength of Character and Political Life
Food from Thin Air
From this:
It’s not like you can make food out of thin air. Well…it turns out you can. A company from Finland, Solar Foods, is planning to bring to market a new protein powder, Solein, made out of CO₂, water and electricity. It’s a high-protein, flour-like ingredient that contains 50 percent protein content, 5–10 percent fat, and 20–25 percent carbs. It reportedly looks and tastes like wheat flour, and could become an ingredient in a wide variety of food products after its initial launch in 2021.
There is no reason this can’t happen, but there is certainly a reason it won’t, and that is the cost of energy.
Just like all the various concepts for synthetic fuels, if you rearrange the atoms in CO2 and water, you have the potential to wind up with hydrocarbons and carbohydrates. Add in nitrogen, which composes 78% of our atmosphere, and it’s theoretically possible to build proteins.
The issue, again, is that all these processes are highly endothermic, meaning that huge amounts of energy are required to make them happen.
Concepts like lab-grown meat (aka “meat without slaughter”) are far more feasible, in that they start with actual animal proteins.
“Woke”
It’s funny, I had a premonition when I first heard the word “woke” that it was going to be co-opted by people who use the term “libtard,” i.e., hateful morons.
It has had the same fate as “fake news,” that originally referred to things like Fox News and other sources of “news” that have little or no basis in fact. Within a few weeks, Trump was calling the mainstream media “fake news,” and there was no way to recover the term.
Given the U.S. Constitution, There Is a Limit To Voter Suppression
Here’s some good news.
Many Americans are concerned about voter suppression in its various forms, but insofar as it’s so blatantly unconstitutional, I wonder if all this worry is unwarranted.
The 14th and 15th Amendments are crystal clear in their language; here’s section 1 from the latter: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Georgia thinks it’s going to remove drop-off ballot boxes from neighborhoods that are composed largely of people of color? Ah…no; that violates this concept about as obviously as anything possibly could.
Those Who Reject Science
The meme here is great, but most of the people who reject the findings of science do so because they are on the receiving end of false data they believe to be scientifically valid.
If you turn on Fox News and absorb what Sean Hannity is saying about COVID-19 vaccinations and/or remedies, for instance, note that he’s presenting a report that ostensibly comes from a respected scientific source. It may a) extol the virtue of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, or b) present evidence that Dr. Fauci is a fraud and/or crackpot, or c) suggest a vast criminal conspiracy that involves the CDC, FDA, mainstream news, or Hillary Clinton.
The point is: If you try hard enough, you can always find someone or something that sounds credible, and undermines the findings of the legitimate scientific community, and this is what Fox News does for a living.
My mom, who consumes a great deal of Fox News, is completely convinced that Dr. Fauci is a bad guy. I ask, “Well, what’s your theory behind his 50-year career in epidemiology, during which he served six different presidents without even raising an eyebrow? Why did he wait half a century before turning to the dark side?”
Rescuing the U.S. Post Office
Very happy to see this.
Republicans take a dim view of anything even vaguely associated with the government that actually helps people. It’s a struggle that’s sharply intensified since 2016, and it shows no sign of detente. (more…)
Tagged with: Post Office
Political Philosopher Discusses Putin, Ukraine
Here’s an interview with an expert on ethics and political philosophy Dr. Andrew Fiala, concerning Putin and what should be done to remove him.
A few points he made that I thought were excellent include: (more…)
Trump Is Still Shaking Down His Idiot Supporters
One can interpret the effect shown here as an example of the theory of evolution. Genes that confer traits like stupidity, gullibility, and hate are removed from the species, or at least weakened.
Of course, all that money that comes out of these morons’ pockets is flowing into the coffers of one of the worst people who ever walked the Earth.
Tagged with: Trump Is Still Shaking Down His Idiot Supporters
