Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

What do Sha’Carri Richardson and Global Warming have in common? They both prove that the people in charge, the people who make the important decisions, are in complete denial of science.

Most scientists agree, and by most I mean enough that it can be called a consensus, that climate change is real and it is caused by mankind. Pretty much anybody who was in the Pacific Northwest these past view days can attest that something is going on. And yet, there is no massive support in the world’s governments for planting billions of trees, building enough windmills and solar panels to generate all of the electricity needed, laying enough rail that we can dispense with automobiles, recycling everything, banning pesticides and herbicides, and doing all the other things we need to start doing right now to avoid extinction.
Because the people at the top…well, it’s not that they can’t see that far ahead, they are not ALL stupid people… it’s that they refuse to look that far ahead. They are in complete denial about science.

Sha’Carri Richardson might well be the fastest woman alive today. She qualified for the U.S. Olympic track team with a record breaking time in the 100 meters. Then she tested positive for marijuana, and she was suspended for a month. She will not be running the 100 meters at the Olympics. Now, even the most ardent proponents of marijuana don’t claim it is a performance enhancing drug. It’s not steroids. It’s not an amphetamine.
Why was marijuana ever made illegal in the first place? Well, the excuses they gave were that it was more addictive than heroin, would turn you into a crazy person, and lead to deformed babies, all of which has been scientifically proven to be complete horseshit.
Yet, tons of people are still in prison for it, and the powers that be are not ready to let go of that. Because they just don’t want to accept the science. They do not want to accept the truth.
And this puts our entire civilization in danger.

This happened a few days ago and I should have written about it then, but I decided to write about something else that day, and the next day, and so it goes, but I flat out missed on writing a blog yesterday because I smoked too much pot, which is a thing that happens, frequently, and I don’t really have a good blog topic this morning, so…
Bill Cosby is out of jail. I am a bit ticked off about that, because he did rape a whole hell of a lot of women, and it truly seems like just yesterday he was convicted and sentenced. Actually, he served three years, which I guess is at least something.
He walked on a technicality. Apparently, because he wasn’t warned that anything he said could and would be used against him in a court of law, and he went ahead and talked about raping all those women, and they used that against him at trial, he gets to go free. By that logic, no confession is ever admissible, and the best way to get away with any crime is to stand on a street corner and shout “I just killed that guy, I just robbed that bank, I just stole that car and drove it through a shop window” and, since nobody told you of your rights, you are in the clear.
I can’t help thinking, though, that if somebody less famous, and less wealthy than Cosby would have tried the same argument, they’d still be sitting in jail.

In my opinion, there is no writer, no pundit who is more insightful on the subject of American politics than Caitlyn Johnstone, although sometimes she does come across as a bit strident, and permanently outraged. Understandable. The world is in the hands of greedy, short sighted bastards, who are being cheered on by hordes of people whose ignorance is far too complete to have been acquired casually, and we may be the last generation to enjoy a full lifetime of breathable air. Anyone who doesn’t sound a bit outraged is not to be trusted.
Still, when she pointed out in a blog yesterday that no mainstream media outlet had reported the story out of Iceland that Sigurdur Thordarsen, the FBI informant, embezzler, and pedophile who testified against Julian Assange back somewhere in the early two thousand teens, and was the foundation of the FBI’s case against him, has admitted that the whole thing was a made up crock of shit and he just said the things he said to stay out of prison, I was skeptical.
I mean, this is a huge fucking story. The entire case was fabricated from the start? Surely, even if the major newspapers and networks buried it on an inside page, they must have at least mentioned it, right?
Well, I just googled Sigurdur Thordarsen. I found a Wikipedia page, and a whole bunch of articles from 2013. So, I added the time filter to check only stories from the past week. Nothing on ABC, BBC, NBC, CBC, ABC, CBS, Fox or CNN. Nothing in the New York Times, the Washington Post or even, which disappointed me greatly, the Guardian. There were a lot of webpages, and one newspaper in Turkey mentioned it, but the overall picture was clear. There is a news blackout on this story.
Julian Assange should be freed immediately.

Well, I had planned to write my blog this morning about the Drake Equation, particularly the L factor, or average length of time a communicative species (that is, one capable of communicating with species from other planets) can exist, because I read somewhere that 10,000 years was the figure they were using, and I feel that’s overly arbitrary for reasons I’ll get into in a moment, but I checked Wikipedia first, in order not to make a damn fool of myself, and found out the current, most scientific estimate for L is ‘somewhere between 1,000 years and 100 million years,’ which is the equivalent of looking for a needle in a desert.
For a bit of context, human beings have been a communicative species for a bit under a hundred years, if you count from the invention of television, or a bit over a hundred years if you count from the invention of radio. We might not even make it to 1,000, which would make a mockery of the whole equation, but since we’d no longer exist, it would not matter.
My own personal feeling on this is that it’s probably 50/50 on which communicative species survive, it depends on one factor, and those who make it to 1,000 years (which we will do in about the year 2900) will probably last until the end of the galaxy and maybe longer, billions and billions of years into the future.
The factor is whether a given civilization accepts science or not. We have the science needed to save ourselves from global warming, but a huge percentage of our species just won’t accept it, and that is dangerous. We have the science to build a distant early warning and defense system to protect us from random asteroids, we are close to being able to predict and mitigate the effects of earthquakes and volcanoes, and we’re getting better at dealing with plagues.
Pretty much anything that could wipe us out as a species, we have the science needed to protect us, but we also have a huge percentage of our population which not only doesn’t understand, but refuses to accept, that science.
But, my guess is if we make it to the Drake minimum of 1,000 years, we will exist virtually (old meaning, meaning close as no matter) forever.

Love her or hate her, and despite my agreeing with Jimmy Dore’s criticism of her I still love AOC, but either way you have to admit she is the master of social media.
Today Marjorie Taylor Greene (who I often get confused with Lauren Bobert and Kyrsten Sinema, as they are all three raving right wing lunatics vying to be the next Sarah Palin) said at a Trump rally (for some reason there are still Trump rallies) “that little communist from New York, AOC, she’s not even American, she doesn’t share our values, yeah, lock her up, too,” AOC left this comment on the video: “First of all, I’m taller than her.” Fucking brilliant. She doesn’t even need to deal with all the other lies.
So, let’s talk about them here. Communist? Well, Democratic Socialist, like Bernie. You know, saving the planet, giving everybody health care, raising the minimum wage, stuff like that. From New York, well that is true, of course. Strange how they conveniently forget (at a Trump rally) that Trump is also from New York. But New York, to the Trump crowd, the people who drive pickup trucks with gun racks , is code for ‘people who think they are better than we are’ which is most people. Then comes the zinger, though: not American. Provably false, of course, and as ridiculous as the charges that Obama was not American, but as ridiculous as the charges were, they got a lot of mileage out of them, and they’ve obviously decided it’s a tactic that will work again.
She doesn’t share our values. Well, I should hope the hell not. Greene’s values include racism, and guns, and not much else, really.
But AOC kept it low key. It seems she has learned the all important political maxim, when you wrestle with a pig, you both get muddy but the pig enjoys it.
So, just “I’m taller than her.” So cool.