U.S. Justice Department Will Not Tolerate Voter Suppression
Isn’t this what we’ve all been waiting to see?
Voter suppression laws that target specific groups violate the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
It’s about time.
Tagged with: voter suppression
Plant-Based Meat
Here’s a little jab at plant-based meat, e.g., Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.
The problem, of course, is that raising the number of cows in this serene environment would require far more deforestation than what we’re experiencing today.
McDonalds alone kills one cow every six seconds.
To make all this happen, we are destroying the area the size of one championship golf course of the Amazon rainforest every 29 minutes.
Tagged with: plant-based meat
The Strange Transformation of American Medical Professionals
In an alternative universe, the doctors in the United States have transformed themselves from health practitioners to foot-soldiers for the political left.
This is another good example of how anything is possible once you’ve taken an immovable stand on something, corroborate it with YouTube videos, and force everything you observe around you to cohere to that data point.
Tagged with: alternative universe
The First Amendment, Tucker Carlson, and COVID-19
Here’s an excerpt from a piece that I hope readers will find to be an informative summary of our rights to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
On Friday night, Carlson was back on Fox News to welcome COVID-19-”truther” Alex Barenson to his program. Together, the two said that “masks are useless” and nothing more than a symbol that someone is obedient to the government, and claimed that mask mandates have no intention other than to make people scared, and are doing “psychological damage.” They then moved on to say that the vaccines are “declining in effectiveness very quickly,” and that the truth about vaccines was being blocked by “tremendous financial pressure.” (more…)
Florida Missing Big Picture
The president of a large university in Texas told me recently that the only person in the country who makes (Texas governor) Greg Abbott look good is (Florida governor) Ron DeSantis.
The meme speaks volumes to the right-wing extremism that lives in the State of Florida.
Tagged with: right-wing extremism
Sustainable Shopping
This shopping mall in Sweden has a unique characteristic: everything in it is second hand.
Yes, this sounds like a huge thrift store, but that’s only part of the story. Most of the items are upcycled by the employees, e.g., a lamp made of used leather jackets, shown in the video linked above.
The people who work there claim that their jobs require more creativity that any other profession on Earth, and it’s hard to argue against that.
How well this concept would do in the United States is uncertain. I’m afraid that we take ourselves too seriously; at a certain level, this is an exercise in whimsy.
More importantly. our interest in sustainability lags behind most of the rest of the developed world. Sad.
Tagged with: Sustainable Shopping
Take a Cool Guess—The Fun Quiz on Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability. Today’s Topic: Adapting To Climate Change
Question: We all have a sense that climate disasters with devastating effects are on the rise. Between 1980 and 2019, the United States experienced an average of 6.5 disasters per year that cost at least $1 billion. What has been the average since 2015?
Answer: Can be found at Clean Energy Answers.
Relevance: Climate change mitigation and adaptation sound expensive, and they are. But the price is going up exponentially with each passing year.
It’s heartening to see that the new presidential administration is taking this matter seriously, but success can only derive from a concerted effort on the part of all public and private sector actors.
Describing Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in a Word
Calling Tucker Carlson a “coward” is not incorrect, but it’s kind of missing the point.
He’s knowingly sending thousands of people to agonizing deaths while prolonging a pandemic that is ravaging human civilization in every conceivable way: medically, of course, but also educationally, economically, developmentally, and emotionally.
That’s more criminal than cowardly, IMO.
Tagged with: pandemic that is ravaging human civilization
China and the World’s Largest Climate Migration Program
As discussed in this article, China is in the process of carrying out an “eco-migration” in which millions of people are being removed from rural parts of the country where avalanches have ruined rice paddies, the soil has become degraded from over-farming, the cost of providing infrastructure has become too high, or the land is needed for pipelines and dams. But in addition, each year the most pressing issue is that the people in these villages are experiencing the brunt of global warming in the form of drought and desertification. (more…)
Tagged with: Climate Migration Program
As Loathsome As It May Be, Donald Trump Is Riding High in Republican Politics
The popular Christian/humanist pastor John Pavlovitz writes: It’s simply demoralizing sharing a country with people who think Donald Trump is someone worth emulating: to be surrounded by that kind of moral inversion every single day, to be continually encountering such cruelty. It’s a source of profound and sustained grieving to believe that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and afforded opportunity—and to know how many simply do not share that belief.
Tagged with: GOP is unifying around Donald Trump
