A reader asks: When you say “He’s not as happy as ______” do you say “me” or “I?” Because the verb “to be” never takes an object, the correct answer is “I”; this is called a “predicate nominative.” The problem …
Category: Sustainability
The Word “Very”
A reader asks: We seem to overuse the word “very.” Can you comment on that? Sure. Excellent point. It’s because most people’s vocabularies are limited and they’re too lazy to look for the proper word. For most adjectives, say “large,” …
Tagged with: vocabulary
Religion: Hundreds of Paths Up the Mountain
It would be interesting to know what percentage of religious people think according to the Hindu proverb at left. To take a guess: Of the Eastern religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, and Jainism, it’s probably fairly high, possibly close to …
Young People and the Environment
A couple of comments: Fortunately, “thousands” is off by several (probably five) orders of magnitude. There are approximately 2.3 billion people on this planet between the ages of 15 and 30. If 10% of them are “stepping up” in any …
Tagged with: drill baby drill, in half a century at the rate we're going this planet will be a hellish place to live, it's hard to know what fraction of young people are concerned about and getting involved in environmental stewardship, propaganda of Big Oil and the far right, the significant levels of support we see for Trump among young people, Young People and the Environment
No Intelligent Species Would …..
Several people commented on the meme here to the effect that perhaps we’re not really intelligent. I offer this: Humankind is plenty intelligent, but we have other characteristics that impede our capacity to use this intelligence to our benefit. Greed, …
Finland Has a Different Approach to Forming a Society, But Is It Worth Considering?
The United States is on an absolute frenzy to widen the wealth gap, and all the data suggests that the super-rich are being extremely successful in this endeavor. Today’s CEOs are making 287 times more than their typical worker, where …
Finland Has a Different Approach to Forming a Society, But Is It Worth Considering? Read More »
Tagged with: Wealth Gap
Thought: The Chief Glory of Man
What philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell said here is entirely correct, but sadly, the quality of our thinking seems to have taken a turn for the worse in recent years. What was life like here in the U.S. in 1970, …
Tagged with: establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency
Consume!
The message here, obviously, is that the blind consumption of resources leads to the death of the planet. While this is true, we need the developing world to consume more. More food, more of the energy required for things like …
Hoping for the Best, Fearing the Worst
The retired actress to whom I referred in my earlier post Republican Moderates Stand No Chance Against Trump said something that resonated with me, “I guess we’re all trying to convince ourselves that the next four years aren’t going to …
Tagged with: a federal ban on abortion, cabinet positions filled by Trump megadonors who are ridiculously unqualified for their positions, corporate greed making the lives of working Americans miserable, Cuts to Social Security, institutionalized racism, people kicked off healthcare and dying of treatable diseases, presidential lawlessness, tax cuts for billionaires, the demolition of our public education systems, the end of our nation's meager commitment to climate change mitigation
A Search for Clarity and Meaning
Albert Camus lamented that the world of his time, the mid-20th Century, failed to provide “clarity and meaning.” It’s hard to imagine what he’d make of the changes that have taken place over the last few years, in particular, the …
