I just met a very bright young chemical engineer who’s working on plastic containers that biodegrade at the optimum rate. Obviously, you can’t store milk in a bottle that disintegrates in a few days; it needs to last, say, at …
Category: Sustainability
Bill Gates and His Amazing Accomplishments in Philanthropy
Upon giving away almost all his fortune, here is Bill Gates: ‘I don’t want people to say, ‘He died rich.’” Good going, sir. The world thanks you. At least most of the world does. If there is a funny part …
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Tagged with: Bill Gates and His Amazing Philanthropy
Where Did Our Hatred of Foreigners Come From?
Here’s an excerpt from Ronald Reagan’s last speech as president which should serve as a reminder of how far the United States has fallen in the last few decades.
Tagged with: Where Did Our Hatred of Foreigners Come From?
Beef Prices: Ouch!
Sometimes, rising prices are sufficient to change our behavior. Boomers can recall the 1970s, when a pack of cigarettes cost $0.75, or, if you lived close to the tobacco-growing regions in and near North Carolina, it could be a quarter. …
Tagged with: Beef Prices
How Little Regard We Have for the Truth
She was imprisoned for praying? How about a little honesty? From the United States Attorney’s Office: Bevelyn Williams was sentenced to 41 months in prison for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (the “FACE Act”) in June 2020 …
What Lies Beneath Humankind’s Atrocities
Aldous Huxley put this thought by Marcus Aurelius a bit differently: ‘The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.’
Tagged with: Humankind's Atrocities
Social Progress in the United States
As shown in the graphic here, the U.S. was making decent progress until fairly recently. Some speculate that the emergence of Donald Trump on the political scene released a great deal of pent-up hatred, allowing, in fact encouraging, white people …
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Finland and Homelessness
Finland’s tackling homelessness is a far easier challenge than one might think, insofar as they actually care about stuff like this. Everyone gets free education and healthcare in exchange for the taxes they pay, so their healthy and gainfully employed. …
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A World Without War
The concept presented at left is important, but one whose only answer is that this civilization is far more likely to go extinct than it is to survive via the cessation of war. I base this on the way our …
Teaching Sustainability
On social media we see lots of ideas like the one expressed at left. I reject most of them on the grounds that, for everything we add to high school curricula, we need to take something away, because there are …
Tagged with: Teaching Sustainability
