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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s an interesting article that begins:

Gone are the days of the unyielding God-fearing mother as the archetype of good parenting, suggests a recent article from the Los Angeles Times. According to multiple reports, research has shown that a secular upbringing may be healthier for children. According to a 2010 Duke University study, kids raised this way display less susceptibility to racism and peer pressure, and are “less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian, and more tolerant, on average, than religious adults.” But the list of benefits doesn’t stop there.

Insofar as my wife and I are non-religious, we thought it was simply wrong to impose the notion of an omniscient, omnipotent, and potentially vengeful God on our kids, if only because doing so would be hypocritical in the extreme.

Children face an entire array of challenges as they try to make sense of the world around them; they don’t need a whole new layer of complication, contradiction, and the rejection of science.

We knew our kids would be exposed to religion at some point early in their lives–from their cousins, friends, and so forth–and they would be able to make their own choices in this regard.

Moreover, I reasoned that if they want to know what my wife and I believe on the subject, they can ask.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Here’s a great article in The Economist that covers what China is (and isn’t) doing to put an end to the world’s consumption of coal, by far the most toxic source of energy. 

From the piece: China has good reason to prioritise the climate. Some of its biggest cities, including Shanghai, lie on the coast and could be swallowed by rising seas. The arid north lacks drinking water. And extreme weather is already taking a toll. Last year deaths associated with heatwaves in China increased by 343% compared with the historical average, according to a study published by the Lancet, a medical journal.  This summer floods damaged much of China’s wheat crop.

This calls to mind the reason we have this problem in the first place: money, and the fact that each of the world’s 200+ sovereign nations is essentially on its own to prioritize, fund, and implement its own climate change mitigation strategies.

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It’s pretty clear that the only thing preventing senate Republicans from making their revulsion of Trump public is their well-founded fear that, via severe reprisals by the former president, they’ll lose their seats.

These people may be (OK, are) scum, but they would love to be in a position in which they could admit to their constituencies that Trump a) is a garden variety criminal, b) is terrible for the common American, and c) makes a mockery of the United States on the world stage.

Hell, even Ron DeSantis, whom Trump loved to bully by peppering him with unkind nicknames, endorsed Trump after withdrawing his candidacy.  It’s hard to imagine anything more cowardly.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Here’s a short video worth checking out. The speaker notes that there is a universal phenomenon that occurs to people who leave the Earth and have the opportunity to see our home from space.

To a person, they report wondering how it’s possible that people treat one another with such hatred and violence, when we’re all going to live and die on a tiny speck of rock, floating through space.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

One thing to notice about protest marches is the number of participants over 60 years old.

It’s impolite to get too precise in estimating a woman’s age, but let’s just say the one carrying the sign at left has been out of school for at least a few years.

Great to see people of all ages standing up for their beliefs, even those who understand that the changes they’re demanding are very unlikely to happen in their lifetimes.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I’m not a lawyer, but it’s hard for me to imagine any circumstances in which a criminal defendant’s understanding of the legal nature of the crimes he’s alleged to have committed has any bearing on his guilt or innocence.

If I rob a bank, go to trial, and claim “I’ve done nothing wrong,” I would expect the justice system to be completely indifferent to that statement.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

If you want to subscribe to the “This Week in Science” podcast, as I do, the link is above. The graphic here is from this week’s show.

I remain hopeful that an entry in the near future will read: “Scientists develop advanced nuclear, via both fusion of hydrogen and fission of thorium, to the point that it is now commercially available.  Fossil fuels to be gone in a few years max.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics
From former U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke:
It might be hard to believe, but the governor of the state of Texas (Greg Abbott) just said he’d shoot migrants and asylum seekers if it weren’t for the fact that he’d be charged with murder by the Biden administration.
It’s the same kind of rhetoric he used on the eve of the 2019 El Paso shooting, which inspired a man to massacre 23 of my neighbors just for looking Hispanic. And it’s the same rhetoric that will encourage other white supremacist terrorists if we don’t stand up to those inciting this kind of hate and violence.
The core ethos of most of the American south is white nationalism and the violence required to defend it.
The only good thing to be said about it is that doesn’t exist in any great quantity elsewhere in the country.  Yes, there are neo-Nazis in Oregon and Vermont, but they’re not governing their states.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s someone who believes that those who show kindness to intelligent animals like pigs are morons.

Speaking strictly for myself,  that’s not the type of person I aspire to be.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Re: the meme here, a reader opines: Brandon has nothing to do with it. No politician had anything to do with it.

I agree that, generally, U.S. presidents tend to get too much credit when things go right, and too much blame when they head south.

Yet in this case it’s unclear, to me at least, how much credit Biden actually deserves for what appears an extremely robust economy, as measured by job growth, stock market valuations, inflation control, etc.

One can identify a great number of public sector investments that are aimed at rebuilding/expanding infrastructure, bringing manufacturing jobs (especially cleantech) back from overseas, expanding energy security, and post-COVID recovery.  One can add, on top of that, that these investments are simply paying off precisely as they were intended.

Many economists are surprised that so much growth was possible without, for instance, huge rates of inflation causing rising interest rates that in turn sent us into recession.  It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of a “soft landing” was something of a pipe dream.

Granted, all this is not an easy pill to swallow if you’re a Republican, praying for a meltdown going into election season, but it does seem to be the case.

 

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