November 2018

Science Fair: Next Generation Scientists

*National Geographic’s Science Fair, directed by Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster, is an uplifting and inspirational film on the world’s future scientists.

Today, science is everywhere and within everything in our Man-made culture. In fact each month, the average child in the industrialized developed world sends 3,000 texts.

Who amongst us (that are old enough) wasn’t intrigued by the science that enabled Man’s first step on the moon?”

When you enter a dark room and flip the light switch, or flush the toilet many times each day, that’s science and engineering at a rudimentary level. Yet, most of us could not exist without these old technologies. Never mind how inextricably attached everyone is to the internet.
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A Throwback to Greatness

*It’s easy to see why and how Donald Trump is the most hated US President in decades, detested by Democrats and any left leaning party, some Republicans, world leaders and their adjuncts and scores of children who’re being roboticalized (read: brainwashed), and probably their pets, too.  Hell, odds are that there are liberal households whose dog actually does bark and/or growl at the mere sound of the man’s name.

The people who hate Trump see him as overbearing, pernicious, noxious, egocentric, boorish, flippant.  To them, he is glib, smug, deceitful, mendacious, and any other synonymous adjectives that can be thought of, is a man who lies at will and has a horrid track record of bankruptcies and ripping people off left and right.  Trump’s hate-filled critics foolishly see his flaws as his totality, as all he was, is or ever will be.  And to them he is, in short, evil.

It is also easy to see that Donald Trump is one of a kind, and is as needed right now as he is custom fit for the American Presidency.  Keep Reading

Best Friends Forever Animals, Camp Fire

*With 150,000 acres scorched and almost 12,000 homes in ruins, the touching animal stories from the Camp Fire in northern California, remind us of gratitude especially for the many intrepid animal rescuers.

Our pets are remarkable friends. Their unconditional love is indeed a treasure trove. Animals are unstinting companions. For some people, pets are their closest family members.

Hundreds of animal rescuers in both the north and the south of the state (which simultaneously experienced the Woolsey Fire) worked ceaselessly to help both domesticated and wild animals affected by the hellacious firestorms.

There are many heartwarming stories arising from California’s most devastating conflagration, the Camp Fire. Allow me to share just a few of them with you.

The incredible rescue of a masterpiece horse. Image credit: Facebook

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Every Minute 138 Acres Looted

*Nature is irrefutably exhibiting the unavoidable effects from extracting and combusting fossil fuels: Death. The latest shocking reminder is the record number of fatalities from last week’s northern California firestorms.

Extinction - California's Camp Fire
California’s Camp Fire was the deadliest firestorm in state history. As of November 16, 2018, there are 63 fatalities and 631 unaccounted people. Image credit: The Weather Channel

In the meantime, the Paris-based International Energy Agency recently projected that by 2025 the U.S. will produce half the global oil and gas from its water-poisoning fracking bonanza.

Here’s what we know: Burning fossil fuels has caused atmospheric oxygen to plummet. Keep Reading

Climate Crisis: California Burning Again

*250,000 Californians from the north and the south are currently evacuated from their communities. At least 48 people are dead with more than 7,000 structures in ruins. It’s five weeks before Christmas and once again firestorms are raging across the Golden State.

Six years of unrelenting drought in tandem with elevated (ocean and air) temperatures are most certainly a deadly combination.

Climate Crisis - California Tree Graveyards
Massive California tree graveyards are spread across 9 million acres. Image credit: readyforwildfire.org

Since 2010, more than 130 million mature trees have perished across the state. Water-starved coniferous trees communicate their plight to bark beetles. The insects deliver the coup de grâce.

In fact, across western North America this is a pattern that’s all too familiar: 30 billion mature dead trees. Instead of removing CO2 and giving off oxygen, gigantic tree graveyards are decomposing and contributing to the overburdened and overheated atmosphere.

No trees. No life.

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Ransacking Russia’s Ancient Forests

*Each year, Man steals $400 billion of wild animals and ancient forests from Nature. In fact, 15 percent, or, 1.14 billion people, rise each morning to kill the planet. Much of this rapacious looting is controlled by organized crime.

Since 1970, 60% of wildlife on land is gone and it’s far worse under the sea, according to the 2018 Living Planet Report from the World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF). Insect populations, too, have crashed. 250 billion metric tons annually of deadly Man-made chemicals along with the accelerated ocean heat from combustion of fossil fuels have taken a hideous toll on all earth-bound life.

Beyond toxic chemicals and unrelenting heat, destruction of habitat is also accelerating globally. For example, 104 football fields a minute of ancient forests are razed, 24/7/365.

The most perfect flying rivers and CO2 warehouses, the planet’s terrestrial climate stabilizers, are under siege like never before.

No ancient forests. No animals. No insects. No freshwater. No life.

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The Cracks in the Cogency of Corporate Culture

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*Describe the culture here” is a question I like to ask in interviews. Like it or not, most of the places you work will have a culture. I was told once that I should try to fit into the culture where I worked, and my unstated response was that if nepotism and pilfering were the corporate culture, I would just as soon go elsewhere. Looking back upon it, I think that I was supposed to give credit to the solutions I devised to the group. The only problem with that scenario from my perspective was that when it came to the application of any solution, I was the one who would be working overtime, or coming in on my day off. It was strongly in my interest to solve the problems before they arose, if simply to keep from spending my life working overtime addressing problems created by other managers. Keep Reading

America’s Immigration Conundrum – 13 Million is Enough

*We need some major fake news at this point in time. We need to announce that there is a crowd of immigrants marching through the U.S. towards Mexico, and we’re not going to do anything to stop them. In fact, we will feed them and offer them assistance as long as they don’t stay in the U.S. This mob consists of people dissatisfied with their economic prospects, and they have learned that life in Mexico is free from gangs, murderers, and corrupt governments. (We are under no obligation to disabuse them of this belief.) No matter what the Mexican laws are, we, the U.S., do not care, because as long as the crowd doesn’t stay in the U.S., as long as they leave, everything is great. They can march through the U.S. to Mexico unencumbered. In fact, if they want to pick up some U.S. gangsters along the way, that’s good too.

Just what would Mexico do if the situation was reversed? One of the tools of critical thinking (I’m not going to get too Hegelian on you here) is to reverse the situation and see how it looks. Taking the perspective of a different person can expand one’s viewpoint and help understand where someone is coming from, so let’s look at the folks coming north to the (Democrat promised) promised land. Keep Reading

Left Wing Violence

*Johnny Depp, the actor, asked a raucous audience one day “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?“.  He immediately asserted that he, himself, is not really an actor, but that he’s just a guy who “lies for a living”, adding “however, it’s been a while, maybe it’s time”.  No, Mr. Depp, you do not lie for a living, you are, in fact, an actor, although you certainly do lie through your teeth about politics and life in general outside of your chosen profession.

Johnny Depp is a terrible liar day to day, yes, like much of the left wing is, and he’s very clearly got missing pieces, damn dumb, actually.  He incited violence that day, or, certainly, violent thought processes.  Perhaps he steeped his own persona too deeply in a pirate’s life, and he is barely any better than one, if better at all.  Talk of it being time for an actor to assassinate a sitting US President ought to have had him arrested by the time he got off that stage surrounded by his lowlife fans (anyone who whoops it up, laughs, cheers and claps at the notion of killing anyone, including President Trump, are lowlifes).

Those who accuse President Trump today of fomenting violence didn’t bat a lash at Depp’s rant.
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