Recycling the Formerly Non-Recyclable
The ever-growing stream of plastics that is winding up in our oceans is cause for great concern among marine biologists and other people who care about the quality of life on our planet. (more…)
Tagged with: plastics
Brutal Men with Unlimited Power
You may have come across the conundrum: What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? The resolution is that there are no such things as either irresistible forces or immovable objects.
Similarly, there is no such thing as “unlimited power.” Both Trump and Putin are in the process of finding this out…the hard way.
Trump looked invincible until he failed in his attempted coup d’état over the United States government. Today, Putin looks like he may be the world’s ultimate strongman, but how strong will he look in a few years, when Russia is economically destitute, and the international justice system wants to send him away for a life prison term as a war criminal?
International Criminal Tribunal, Please Let Me Introduce You to Vladimir Putin
A few months before the end of his four-year long trial for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal, former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević died in his prison cell in The Hague of a heart attack, early in 2006. It’s too bad that he isn’t a living reminder to Vladimir Putin that the international justice system has real teeth.
The entire world, including 92% of Ukranians and most Russians, are outraged, and want to see justice at the end of this atrocity.
Running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican…Are You SURE About That?
Here’s Tiffany Smiley, an attractive, conservative woman, running for the U.S. Senate in Washington State as a Republican. She’s smart enough not to mention Trump in her platform, but it’s really indistinguishable from anything else coming out of the GOP, i.e., bashing Biden, etc.
She’s asking for your donation, on the basis that it will enable her to take on that abhorrent “big government.”
I would ask, “Why Washington?” It’s an entire state, where more than half of the population of 7.8 million lives and works within a short drive of the high-tech hub that contains Seattle and Tacoma. These people would no more elect a Republican to the Senate than they’d cut their arms off.
Here’s my advice if you’re going to stay in Washington: Do what Marjorie Taylor Greene did and run for the House, enabling you to cherry-pick a district. Greene chose one with some of the poorest and least educated people in the state (Georgia). Her voters are repairing tractors by day and going to KKK rallies by night. OK, that’s a cruel exaggeration, but they are not building computer apps and operating systems at Microsoft, nor do they have executive careers at Starbucks, Costco, Nordstrom, or T-Mobile.
This simply won’t work, but that’s not the real reason that I won’t be making a donation.
Tagged with: Marjorie Taylor Greene
What Does Ukraine Mean To Us?
About a week ago, a Republican reader asked me, “What does Ukraine mean to us Americans?” I responded: (more…)
U.S. Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Has Strong Environmental Record
As the Sierra Club notes,“Environmental laws are only as strong as the judges who uphold them. Right now, cases before the court include decisions that could affect our ability to fight climate change, and protect the public against deadly pollution in our air and water. For all these reasons and more, it is imperative that President Biden’s incredible nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, must be confirmed as swiftly as possible.”
If the United States is going to make a major contribution to climate change mitigation and environmental responsibility more generally, it will require that the Supreme Court come down on the right side of a great number of the cases that come before it. The confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson will be a huge step in that direction.
Karma Explained
The problem is that karma doesn’t work like this, unless we are somehow reincarnated. Otherwise, Donald Trump wouldn’t have seen his high school graduation.
Marketing Creates Demand, Not Resentment
Here’s an ad for a book for children, say 4-to-7-year-olds, called “Computer Engineering for Babies.”
As a marketing guy, I have to mention that the name “for babies” is a terrible idea. What child wants to be demeaned? What parent wants to demean his child?
When I’m introduced to a kid who looks like he could be five, I might ask him, “How old are you? Six? Or seven?” The kid goes away with a big smile.
That smile is called “marketing.”
Tagged with: Marketing Creates Demand
We Can Agree…..Oh, Wait, No We Can’t
In his book on operant conditioning, Walden Two, B. F. Skinner writes (and I paraphrase), “We can agree that love is better than hate, that peace is better than war, and that productive energy is better than neurotic sloth.”
Now, this was offered at the time to justify the “engineering” of society, a concept that was popular among the mid-20th Century intellectuals. It was especially interesting to the dystopian novelists of the time, like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, who pointed out that such an operation could produce some really adverse effects.
That notwithstanding, having agreement of top-level concepts among the peoples of the Earth sounds like a good idea.
There is a problem, however, i.e., it ain’t happening.
A good example is murderous dictator, and now war criminal, Vladimir Putin. There was a day that honorable people did not support the world’s lawless thugs. That day is no more.
Now, Donald Trump leads an entire array of Republicans who regard Putin very highly. The Russian autocrat is revered by the “America first” folks who express their admiration; many grassroots conservatives agree with Trump that Putin is “savvy.”
I could say that God is better than Satan, but I’m sure that if I wait a few years, that will be controversial too.
Brief Calculations on Small Wind
I just got off the phone with a gentleman who is representing a solution in small vertical axis wind turbines (HAWTs). He claims that they produce 310 watts per square foot. Using this handy wind calculator, we find that this would require a steady breeze of 54.1 mph, which exists nowhere on this planet.
Another claim: 11 MW per acre (compared with the big horizontal axis wind turbines that represent virtually 100% of the wind power today, which he says require 15 – 20 acres apiece and produce perhaps 3- 4 MW).
OK, imagine wind blowing across an acre of land, 207 feet on each side, running into a row of 8 foot tall HAWTs, so the cross-section is 1659 square feet. Once again pulling up our wind calculator, we find that producing 11 MW requires a wind speed of 149.2 mph. That sounds like a real problem to me.
