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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

What went through the minds of our distant ancestors?  How much have we lost as a civilization due to the fact that they were unable to write down their thoughts?

Interesting questions, to be sure.  The meme here suggests that these two men, sitting around a campfire, were talking about things like virtue, mathematics, and the proper role of government, tens of thousands of years before Socrates and Plato.

I doubt it, especially considering that very few of us today spend even a few minutes each year grappling with these ideas.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Let’s not forget uneducated, uncivilized, and, unwelcome (outside of the orbit of hateful idiots).

We live in a pathetic society.  What went so wrong?

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It really is a tragedy the only one of the four felony indictments against Trump that will be prosecuted before the 2024 election are the 34 counts of fraud, for which he’ll be sentenced in July.

Think for a moment how nice it would be if the election were to come after the former president was sent away for inciting an insurrection or conspiring to overthrow the U.S. federal government.

He’s going to get huge prison time, and he’ll deserve every minute of it, but it sure would have been wonderful if voters had the opportunity to see all this.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

This from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

Progressives  are so fixated on beating Trump in November due to his lies and criminality that we sometimes forget how horrible he is on environmental issues.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

The video below calls for folks to invest their hard-earned money in a company that offers a novel concept in retailing: using a robot to pull product from the shelves.

I very much doubt that one of these will ever be built, however, largely because of siting.  Where are you going to put one of these and run power to it? Keep in mind that it requires enough room for customers to pull their cars up in front of it and conduct their business.

True, it eliminates the need for a cashier, but a human being still needs to restock it.

I’m not holding my breath.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

When it was originally founded, the NRA’s purpose was to promote gun safety, not to foster the selling of weapons of war to individuals who may suffer from mental illness or have a history of violence.

It’s true that our children are scared of guns, but why?  Could it be that they’re constantly hearing about other little kids getting blown to bits by machine guns in the hands of psychopaths?

Hell, I’m scared of guns, and I don’t even have to participate in “active shooter drills.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

In a recent post, Mourning Lots of Unvaccinated Texans, I wrote about the people who died from COVID-19 because they refused vaccinations: maybe taking (one’s) medical advice from Fox News wasn’t such a great idea after all.

But we live a country in which free enterprise is the law of the land.  Does Fox have the right to disseminate whatever disinformation it chooses, if by so doing it makes money? What does “free speech” mean as we find it in the First Amendment to our constitution?

Well, this “law of the land” is not absolute.  After all, Fox did have to shell out $778 million to Dominion Voting Systems following an agreement to settle the defamation case; Fox had repeatedly broadcasted what they knew for a fact to be false, that the plaintiff had rigged its election machines to “flip votes” from Trump to Biden.

Maybe the take-away is this: if you have no integrity and you’ll do whatever it takes to come out on top financially, roll the dice and take your chance.  It cost Fox close to a billion dollars.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

My hope is that this Cadillac Escalade (16 combined MPG) driver in Texas a) will stay close to home, thus protecting the rest of us from his ignorance, and b) that he’ll eventually have an experience that wipes that arrogant, smug smile off of his face.

He wouldn’t be the first.  Imagine the masses of proud anti-science, anti-vaxxers who “did their own research” and went into a hospital and ultimately died in agony, drowning in the their own blood and pus whose last thought was: maybe taking my medical advice from Fox News wasn’t such a great idea after all.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I like this, though I would submit that there are many different activities that can bring meaning to our lives.  Chief among these is leaving this world a better place than it was when we found it.

When my wife and I used to take our kids and their little friends to the beach, we made a big deal out of cleaning up all our trash, and then–drum roll please–one piece of someone else’s.  We called it the “ceremonial piece of litter.”  “Time to go home,” I’d say. “Who wants to be the hero of the day and pick up one extra piece of trash?”

Hands shot up.  I do!

Do any of these kids remember these moments, specifically, as adults?

Does it matter?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

What Voltaire wrote here seems completely true.

Moreover, “our times” are marked by existential threats: environmental collapse in general and climate change in particular, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the trend towards world fascism, as the United States teeters on the edge of losing its democracy.

At this point, perhaps it’s a good thing that our focus is on solving the problems that loom so close and pose such horrific threats.

 

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