Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

According to Wikipedia, critical race theory isn’t a theory at all, in the sense that the Drake equation isn’t a real equation. It’s more of a belief that race, and the racist history and structure of society, should be examined, and should be taught. I agree with that 100%
The genocide of the native people of the Americas should be taught, the evils of the slave trade should be taught, the Tulsa massacre should be taught, the disappearance of children at all the Indian schools should be examined in depth, and never forgotten.
But it’s got the right-wingers wound up to a frenzy. I haven’t seen them this outraged since everybody told them they couldn’t use that word which is an anagram of ginger any more. They’re more angry about kids learning critical things about race than they are about people not liking guns.
Still, it’s important to teach these things. They happened and anybody who actually objects to them being taught is saying they don’t want people to know the truth.
The truth is that history is not Hollywood, and the bad guys very often win. There were a whole hell of a lot of people throughout history, people we’ve held up as heroes, who were really kind of shit.
It’s time we faced that.

(this story is from August, 2020, but I just discovered it this morning)

An international team of marine scientists has discovered 30 new species of invertebrates in deep water surrounding the Galapagos, the Ecuadorian archipelago’s national park .The deep-sea experts discovered fragile coral and sponges including 10 bamboo corals, four octocorals, one brittle star and 11 sponges – as well as four new species of crustacean known as squat-lobsters – the Galapagos National Park (GNP) said in a statement.

It’s an amazing world we live in, no doubt about that and it is reassuring, amid all the talk of extinction, that new species are being discovered, but we still have more questions than answers. First, are these really new species or just species previously undiscovered by humans? Is there even any way to know that?
If they are brand new species, a more frightening question is raised. Are they arising because the toxicity levels in the ocean, whatever it is that’s killing the other species, is their natural environment, similar to what happened during the Great Oxidation Event of the paleoproterozoic era, approximately two and a half billion years ago? Perhaps they’ve evolved to exist in an atmosphere that’s toxic to life as we know it. Perhaps new species are also evolving on land. We are seeing evolution on the microbial level, which is why we’ve had to live the past year as characters in a dystopian sci-fi movie.
It is some scary shit, indeed.

Derek Chauvin was sentenced today to 22 1/2 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd. I’m not sure whether to count that as a win or a loss.
On the one hand, I think he should have been sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole, and I think that should be standard for any police officer who takes advantage of their position to kill somebody. Although I’m against capital punishment, because I don’t think the state should ever have the authority to kill anybody, that is a slippery slope with jagged rocks and broken glass at the bottom, I do believe that anybody who has murdered somebody should be removed from society permanently. I’m not talking about manslaughter, or self-defense, or even situation just got out of control, but if the killer intended to kill, I’m talking about life without parole, and I don’t know at what point our justice system started to see 30 years as the maximum sentence for a murder.
That’s what the state was asking for. His lawyers were hoping for a much lower number, and maybe even probation which, I must admit, I feared might happen.
I’ve heard some people say that the number was the least the judge felt he could get away with without causing another wave of riots. On the one hand, I’m sure the judge would deny that and there’s no way to prove it. On the other hand, the thought must have crossed his mind.
I guess I should be happy that he got 22 1/2 years. It’s a long time, and at least we have the appearance that justice has been served.
But, I’m not. He’ll be eligible for parole after about 15 years, and that is too soon.

A little bit about a lot of things tonight. Just got back from Sam’s graduation from Gymnasium ceremony, which was held outdoors in Grebovka, possibly my favorite park in Prague, and it was lovely but kind of dull, and my suit is too tight because I’m too fat, so dull and uncomfortable, but on the other hand there was pride. I’m very pleased he graduated, he has not always been an exemplary student. Also on the good side, I finally got to meet his girlfriend. Cute girl, pleasant girl. He’s done well.

Rudy Giuliani just had his legal license suspended in New York. I would think that was hysterical except that I thought it had happened months ago, and I kind of wonder what the hold up was.

This thing with the unmarked graves at the residential Indian schools in Canada is getting insane. One more school just discovered with over 700 dead bodies of Indian children. First, Canada should search at every single one of those schools. Second, the U.S. should do the same because we had schools like that, too.

Watched a movie earlier today, just scrolling through to see what Netflix had that I hadn’t seen yet, and came across “Welcome to Marwen,” which I assumed was going to be a comedy because it had Steve Carrell in it, and the first 10 minutes or so, the set-up, makes it seem like a comedy, but it is not a comedy. It is also not a romance. It is a deep, and sensitive, and somewhat tragic film with an uplifting ending, that I absolutely recommend to everybody

I’ve often heard politics described as a pendulum, one side is in, then the other side rises, and back and forth it goes. It doesn’t feel like that today, and I mean literally today, not today in the sense of these days. It feels more like an ever widening chasm, growing bigger from the inside out.
On the good side, on the left side (which is the right side if right is used in the sense of “That’s right,” i.e. correct) a woman named India Walton won the Democratic primary and thus is almost guaranteed to be the next mayor of Buffalo, New York, the first socialist mayor of a major city since Bernie Sanders, and Buffalo is about 5 times the size of Burlington. She does not back away from the socialist label, not even a little bit. In her ideas and a bit in her attitude (O.K., I’d never heard of her before today, but I do get this impression) she reminds me a lot of AOC. AOC was a bartender. India Walton was a nurse, and an officer in the nurse’s union, before she turned to politics. Both ran against entrenched, complacent candidates who underestimated them. And both are very clear on where they stand. I’m very excited about this.
On the bad side, The Intercept has revealed that a U.S. Navy training manual identifies ‘socialists’ as a terrorist group. Seriously. That’s how much they hate us.