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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

The little girl here makes an important point.  Obviously all lives matter, but black lives didn’t matter for 350 years, and it’s time to turn that around.

That some people find this controversial is sickening.  When George Floyd was murdered, I joined people all around the world who were marching in protest.  To feel solidarity with many millions of people with a common objective was a wonderful thing; I highly recommend it.

We talk about a sustainable society.  It’s hard to imagine sustainability when entire races of people are treated as second-class citizens, based purely on the color of their skin.

There is no peace without justice.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

A great deal of what progressives believe vis-a-vis their conservative counterparts.  Do immigrants take away American jobs? Does the death penalty deter crime? Is late-term abortion “murder?”

Certain other items, however, are far more cut and dried.  When we look at the graph below, we see a clear correlation between gun ownership and gun-related deaths.  There is no wiggle-room here; more guns means more dead people.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Sometimes we progressives wonder if we have the wrong message to persuade others to come on board.  Are we coming on too strong with ideas like Black Lives Matter?  Should we back off a bit with some of our demands about environmentalism and social justice? It’s a hard call to make.

What isn’t a hard call to make, from a messaging point of view, is the ad here.  The recent college graduate is walking on train tracks in heels, in the direction of what looks like an oncoming train.

I invite whomever did this to call me for a free consultation on marketing basics.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Arkansas’ governor has signed into law a measure that would allow doctors to refuse to treat someone because of moral or religious objections.  From ABC News:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Friday signed into law legislation allowing doctors to refuse to treat someone because of religious or moral objections, a move opponents have said will give providers broad powers to turn away LGBTQ patients and others.

I’ll grant that this a distinctly anti-human rights law (remember this is Arkansas), but here’s my question: To whom does this apply?  How many people are sufficiently intelligent and diligent to become a practicing physician, but so small and petty to refuse to treat someone in need?

This seems like a symbolic gesture to all the hateful morons who live in the state.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Freedom House is a democracy watchdog group that, among its other functions, publishes an annual report, ranking the relative level of freedom in countries around the world.  I look forward to checking it out, though the United States has fallen further behind in the report each year.  From The Guardian:

The US has fallen to a new low in a global ranking of political rights and civil liberties, a drop fueled by unequal treatment of minority groups, damaging influence of money in politics, and increased polarization, according to a new report by Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

At left is a reference to the new voter suppression laws in Georgia making it a crime to bring water for people standing in line waiting to vote.  Gotta love this guy.

Here’s a discussion I’m having with a couple of old friends.  “David” was the dean of the Columbia Law School and is now the president of Rice University.  “Gregg” is a professor of law at Georgetown.

Craig: May I ask one of you Constitutional scholars to explain why what’s going on with the Georgia voting laws isn’t a clear violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments? (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Catching and releasing spiders is a policy that, IMO, all decent people have in common.

The author here, Rudy Francisco, puts it beautifully.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

This is from a year ago, at the start of the pandemic, but it still cuts like a knife.

How disgusting it is that the most prosperous nation in human history offers its citizens–those, that is, who can afford it–second- or third-rate healthcare.

If you’re rich and amoral, this is a great country to live in.  If you’re not rich, or you’re not indifferent to the suffering of others, that’s another matter.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Hydrokinetics

I’m happy, yet surprised to see this.  Interest in hydrokinetics has fizzled over the last 5 – 6 years, largely as a result of the plummeting price of solar and wind.  That said, in September 2021, interested parties will join in Plymouth, England to share ideas.

Ocean wave and tidal energy faces numerous intrinsic problems.  The generation is generally far from the load. Maintenance issues are huge; when an object is immersed in rapidly flowing salt water, the number of things that can go wrong is hard to calculate.  Though one thinks of tides or other ocean currents as being constant, in reality they’re not at all.

There hasn’t been an event like this in the U.S. since, I’m guessing, 2015, and I actually never expected to see another one on this subject.  Wrongo.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

A friend who despises Trump as much as I do once lamented, “But he always wins; he always finds a way out.”

I responded, “Undefeated people are always undefeated–until they’re defeated.”

I hope the contents of this article in Vanity Fair are exactly correct and unexaggerated.

The author begins: He’s also facing 29 lawsuits though it’s the investigations that could land him in prison he’s probably most worried about. 

Let’s hope this moves along quickly.

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