By now we were supposed to have flying cars, starships and space stations full of people, outposts on the moon and Mars, thinking robots living among us, renewable and fusion energy sources powering our lives, unlimited low-cost resources from a 100% recycling-based economy, equality, coexistence, and freedom for everyone and all creatures.
WTF happened?
A small number of greedy, wealth and power-mad, crusty old white men who fear change – choose to focus on outdated ancient dogma and toxically-tribal, control-focused, anti-progress, knuckle-dragging fear, and warmongering tactics – are hell-bent on stopping anything and anyone who wants evidence-supported progress, positivity, and coexistence.
These twisted, small-minded, hateful, heavy-handed, charlatans, are plotting and scheming to destroy any chance the majority of us have at a better future by undermining anything that works to better our lives.
The question is why?
Why are they so focused on destroying the future?
I am not targeting one specific political or religious “team” – I despise the competitive “team” approach because it was designed from the get-go to divide us from each other. I am calling out all of those – whomever they are – who constantly and consciously choose to ignore the evidence, ignore reality, ignore the voices of the people and instead choose to do all in their power to – out of greed, control, and possibly even out of spite – choose to do exactly the opposite of what should be done. It is as if they are choosing to intentionally screw things up for future generations.
Maybe I am giving them too much credit. Maybe they are just idiots who do not have the capacity to think ahead and see the consequences of their decisions. Maybe their minds are dumb from breathing leaded gasoline most of their lives, and/or numb and blinded by so many years of conditioning and programming from whatever cult of personality they choose to worship telling them their way is the only way no matter what the evidence, common sense, science, or their rotten, putrid little shriveled stone of a heart my try to say to them – if they even have a heart.
It seems that these toxic individuals may be working to infiltrate the very framework of our society and are trying to divide all of us from each other.
Why? What is their goal?
Why would anyone willingly choose to put their own greedy self-interests over any chance at a healthy, happy, future for all…hmmm…I wonder why?
I suppose the answer comes down to the fact that genetically we are still so very young in the evolution of our species.
It was not that long ago that we were living in caves eking out our existence with only rock, stick, and fire as tools. We were terrified of anything outside of our very limited frame of reference. Anything different than what we or our tribe knew in our daily existence would be labeled a threat and destroyed – out of fear and self-protection.
Therefore, since not enough time has passed to rid us of these ancient ways of thinking it seems that even though we have technologically evolved to turn our rocks, sticks, and fire into cement, steel, electricity, and rockets – some of us still have strong genetic traces of our ancient tribal tendencies and for some it seems that these fear-based tendencies are absolutely impossible to overcome.
We still often fear differences in others.
We still often attack that which is unknown to us.
We still often deny reality in favor of myth and legend.
We still often harm those we love for false feelings of power.
We still often seek comfort in what we know – not in what could be.
Even with all our amazing accomplishments – many of us still will often choose the path of fear, hate, greed, ancient comfortable dogma, and today, over the much better options of acceptance, love, generosity, peer-reviewed evidence, and tomorrow.
The big question is this: will we ever evolve past our infantile, child-like, me-first, bully-like, natures – before we kill ourselves off?
Maybe, maybe not.
Maybe one day we will overcome the natural odds and evolve to transcend our short-lived primate bodies and the physical world to become one with the energy flow of the universe.
Or maybe we are just a failed evolutionary experiment destined to become only a plasticized blip in the rock-recorded fossil record of deep time.
Only time will tell.
Strive to rise above the status quo.
Strive to find only the positive in life each day and to extinct the negative.
Photo Hubble Ultra Deep Field. An estimated 10,000 galaxies are shown in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Photo Source: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30946
Space is stupendously massive with countless galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars and trillions of planets and moons. Statistically, there must be life elsewhere in the cosmos and IMHO most of it is probably microscopic and/or not intelligent/spacefaring.
However, if there are intelligent, spacefaring species out there, and if they have visited us – then the massive scale of the cosmos and the incredible technology, knowledge, and ability needed to traverse it would suggest these beings would possess technology and intelligence as far “above” ours/us as we are “above” the chimpanzee…or the ant…or the bacterium…or the virus…and lately and with each passing day, evidence reveals that some humans seem to be de-evolving and acting more and more like a virus.
Therefore, as we mostly naked, multi-colored, bipedal, primates will often camouflage ourselves with our technology and technique in order to study other life forms upon our planet without revealing ourselves to them…
…it is very possible the extraterrestrials have similar technologies (yet vastly superior to ours) that would easily hide them from our detection. Yes, that would then suggest that all the blurry photographs, videos, books, and eyewitness accounts/interviews over all the years by all the people claiming to have seen/encountered/been abducted by aliens are in fact – 100% pure and total bunk manufactured by charlatans wanting attention and fortune.
Another possibility exists: they have been here in the past and yet may still be here (maybe not them personally but their technology – think: cellular/internet-connected wildlife/trail camera traps/webcams etc that would allow them to remotely study us from the comfort of their home planet) studying us as we study other lifeforms on earth – such as looking at chimps and deer in the forest, ants under a magnifying glass, bacteria under a microscope, or African wildlife visiting a waterhole…
It is also possible that many randomly selected and/or “of importance” or “special interest” humans have been “tagged” with 100% undetectable with our current technologies tracking devices (no, not injected via anal probes or vaccinations – oh lord people please grow up and just stop it with the TV/hollywood inspired stories and lame conspiracy “theories”) so as to be observed by these extraterrestrial observers in the attempt to study the mundane and unique among our species and learn more about us as we wildlife researchers work to learn more about the natural life movements of wild creatures currently existing with us on our home planet.
Or, they may, in fact, be so far evolutionarily, emotionally, and technologically advanced “above” us that we are only mere curiosities to them…or of no interest at all…
Maybe, due to the destructive, hateful, selfish, natures, and our viral reproduction and expansion without any concern for future generations – maybe our solar system has been put in a physically distanced quarantine zone far from the rest of the galaxy and its populated worlds until we children grow up out of our dangerous malignant infancy, start taking care of our planetary life support system, and coexisting with each other and with all species on this strange water-soaked living rock we call earth.
Another view of our home. Can you find the earth in this image? Yes, we are there, the tiny pale blue dot hanging in space under Saturn’s rings on the lower right.
“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” —Neil Armstrong
Yes, whatever the cause may be, gas prices are getting higher and higher.
Along with this fact many people are now hating on and bashing electric vehicles and renewable energy.
Wait – what?
Yes. In the last two weeks, I have seen many posts and comments by many people about renewable energy sources and electric vehicles that try to paint them in a negative light.
It is all the same old cherry-picking FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) and nay-sayer arguments and then some.
Why?
IMHO I think it is because the bullies and bashers do not want to acknowledge that it is time to change from an outdated, toxic, war-supporting, finite, politically polarized, planetary-sourced, energy/fuel system to an up to date, much cleaner, renewable, energy secure, distributed, energy/fuel system powered by locally-sourced energy from solar panels on your own rooftop or wind turbines silently turning on a windy hillside or west Texas ranch. With our current technology, it no longer makes good science-supported common sense to power our society primarily on hydrocarbon-based energy products sourced on the other side of the planet – be it from the Persian Gulf or Russia – when we have the technology, engineering, and knowledge to get things done with clean, secure, home-grown energy sourced close to home – where it is needed and used.
Some will say the environmental impacts of renewable energy and electric vehicles are actually greater than that of fossil fuel sourced energy systems. This is a total falsehood manufactured by fossil fuel mongers using the same playbook used by the people who tried to tell us that smoking was not bad for your health or that lead in gasoline was safe and, more recently, that Volkswagen had developed a “clean diesel” engine – we now see where all those arguments lie – deep in a steaming pile of festering worm-ridden filth in the bottom of a long-forgotten moldering outhouse.
Yes, it is true that everything, even EVs and renewable energy systems has an impact – and the greater our population – the greater our need for resources so the greater our impacts. Our survival as a species is no longer about growing – it is becoming more about balance, it is about reducing our impact on our planetary life-support system so we can reach equilibrium and continue without harming the very life support system that gives us all life. So why do we keep accepting and using the worst possible energy/transportation sources with the biggest most harmful impacts when far better options with far less of an impact are readily available?
Many will often simply say it is too expensive – but my answer to this is have you actually done the math to support your opinion?
Driving electric and going renewable does in fact cost more upfront – but over the life of the product – the solar panels or the EV – you make up for that initial higher cost and the lifetime savings far offset the initial costs. As an example: I power my daily driver EV primarily with solar-produced electricity. Therefore, my fuel costs to drive the vehicle are less than 1 cent/mile. I drive around 200 miles/week – so therefore I spend less than $2/week to drive the car everywhere I need to drive it.
I do still have a legacy vehicle (Honda Pilot 4×4 SUV) for towing/hauling and short trips to town and getting to work in bad weather. It costs an average of 15 cents per mile (at today’s gas prices) to drive. So, to drive the Honda the same distance as I drive my EV I will pay ~$30 (200 miles x .15 = $30)!! Yikes!
How far do you drive and what are your costs per mile? (and don’t forget to figure in the costs of maintenance on your vehicle – all those tune-ups/filters/exhaust pipes/catalytic converters/oil/fluid/filter changes etc)
Now, imagine if you have a few solar panels on your roof and an EV in your driveway – how much money would you save now that you are not paying for electricity for your home and fuel for your car?
Some will say it takes forever to charge an EV. Earlier EVs – yes. They charged far slower than today’s EVs but today’s EVs charge far faster – some add hundreds of miles of range in mere minutes and the speed is getting faster every day.
Fact: Most EV owners charge overnight while they are sleeping or while at work and the car is ready to go when they are. If you can use a smartphone, you can drive an EV.
Some will say “charging an EV at home will raise your power bill unimaginably high.” Nope. In my experience charging at home* only raises my power bill by about $10/week – how much do you spend on gas per week? *back when I most often charged at home – now I rarely do since I most often charge at work so I can take advantage of solar-produced electricity.
Obviously, if you have an EV with a larger battery it will cost more to fill it up – but even a Tesla Model S Plaid with its massive 95 kWh battery would cost less to fill up than almost any fossil-powered vehicle in today’s gas market.
Some will also say “the energy for your electric car comes from dirty coal – so it is a coal-powered electric car.”
Nope.
Fact: even if an EV is charged with the dirtiest coal-fired energy – it is still far cleaner to operate than any petroleum-powered vehicle. Why you may ask?
Answer: because the entire fossil fuel mining/transport/refining and supply chain (and let us not forget the human costs from war/terrorism and the environmental costs from emissions and pollution from the final use of the product) is now out of the picture for the EV…AND the US power grid is getting cleaner every day as more and more legacy energy power plants retire and more and more renewable energy power plants come online – so every day your EV gets cleaner and cleaner to drive – that is an impossibility with any vehicle powered by fossil fuels.
Let’s face the facts: using fossil fuel-powered anything is simply a subscription to dependency. We are hopelessly addicted to fossil fuels…well, some of us anyway.
Some will say “at the end of their life solar panels and EV batteries cannot be recycled and are just tossed into landfills.” Really. You are really going there? Sad. Ok. Here are the facts.
In reality – solar panels are made mostly of glass and aluminum and these things can be recycled – into more solar panels.
EV batteries, when they are not able to push a car down the road, are repurposed into stationary energy storage such as storage batteries for homes and businesses (think backup generator – but with batteries.) Then, after another decade or so of life as a stationary storage battery – they are recycled – into more batteries. In other words, we can mine the battery for its resources and do not need to dig more holes for more raw materials to make more batteries – we already have them. It’s a win-win for everyone.
In fact, it is just stupid (and illegal in some places) to throw away a used battery due to the high value of the raw materials contained inside. This is why when you need a new 12-volt car starter battery the auto parts store will pay you money (the core charge) for your old one and it is then recycled into a new battery. It is no different with used Lithium-ion batteries.
There are countless erroneous and outright ignorant “memes” circulating on the internet that have been created to spread FUD around electric vehicles and renewable energy sources. One of the most recent I have seen involves the following:
From Diego Loredan on Facebook: “This is a used car dump near Paris, France with hundreds of electric cars. Please note, these are only used cars of the city of Paris and not personal vehicles. Everyone has the same problem …. the battery storage cells are dead and need to be replaced. Why not replace them, you ask yourself? Well, there are two reasons. One, battery storage cells cost almost twice what a new vehicle costs, and two, no landfill or landfill will allow you to dump batteries there. So these green fairy electric cars are dumping toxins from the battery right into the ground. Still think we need to think green ???” Very interesting!!??
I did a quick and simple Google fact check and discovered the following about these cars:
“The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
News reports from France say the cars are part of a fleet from a failed car-sharing service, and the vehicles shown in the field are being resold or sold for parts.
A French television news report in April, with photos like those appearing with the Facebook post, said more than 1,000 vehicles used in the Autolib program are being stored on a lot in Romorantin-Lanthenay, an area about 130 miles southwest of Paris.
The Bolloré company had a contract with local authorities in and around Paris to provide the vehicles, which people could borrow for a fee. That ended in 2018 when the service was in debt and failing.
Some 4,000 of the vehicles were sold, mainly to two companies that have been reselling them, according to the report. That includes the ones shown in the Facebook post.
The TV stories and a French newspaper article noted the claims on social media. “Unlike what buzzes on social media, this is not a cemetery,” the newspaper report said.
We rate the post False.” – From Politifact
Another thing to note is the following from Reuters:
“French media reports here , here and here which show pictures of the cars lined up in a field like those in the social media posts, explain that the termination of the contract meant that Bollore had to remove its 4,000 vehicles from the Paris region to Romorantin-Lanthenay, 200 kms (124 miles) south of Paris. Bollore sold the cars, most of them going to two companies, Autopuzz, which resells the cars throughout France, and Atis Production.
On claims about soil pollution risk posed by the cars, Paul Aouizerate, head of Atis Production, told France Info here “Our vehicles are properly stored. The firefighters are aware, the construction site is well organized. All the batteries have been removed and the connectors are isolated.”
He added that the cars were not going to a junkyard. Autopuzz told France TV Info it is reselling the cars to buyers across France at a rate of 50 per month (here).
VERDICT
Along with all that nonsense: many renewable energy haters/doubters/FUD spreaders will often say “wind turbines kill countless numbers of birds and bats” – another falsehood. While it is true that some of the earliest wind turbines were smaller, lower (closer to wildlife habitats), spun faster, and did impact wildlife – today’s turbines are designed from the get-go to lesson wildlife impacts and it is rare for birds and bats to die via modern wind turbines. In fact, do you know what kills the most birds, bats, and small animals in this country: pet/feral house cats and impacts with glass windows. The numbers of wildlife deaths from these two top killers are in the billions per year. Wind turbines do have an impact but it is minuscule when compared to bird/bat deaths from cats/windows and ahem: fossil fuel-related pollution from mining, shipping, spills, refining, use, and incorrect disposal of used oil, etc.
Partly false. These are genuine photos of electric cars in France, but they were taken off the road due to financial difficulties, not problems with the battery storage cells. More than 2,500 of the cars have been resold.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.”
If you remain unconvinced – do your own simple research.
This erroneous meme and many like it have been manufactured/miscaptioned in the attempt to illicit FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) about electric vehicles. More than likely the FUD generators that made this meme have money tied up in fossil fuels/fossil fuel infrastructure and are terrified at the prospect of losing their nest eggs.
Some people are even saying that when someone drives an electric vehicle they do not pay gas taxes so the roads will suffer. This is simply a falsehood. I have been driving an EV since 2013 and I pay a yearly EV tax which makes up for the gas taxes I would have paid if I drove a legacy vehicle. This tax then goes to support highway maintenance and infrastructure. I have absolutely zero issues paying this tax because I enjoy driving on nice roads as much as the next bipedal naked ape.
I believe that many of these erroneous myths have and are being spread by the fossil fuel producers themselves and the “think tanks” they have hired to sow doubt in technologies that are their competition, as well as those with loads of money invested in fossil fuels – at home and abroad…possibly even in part by Russian government hackers since we all know that Russia’s main export products are soaked in hydrocarbons and they will do anything to keep the oil flowing out and the money flowing in.
Just stop it, people – stop it.
Stop falling for and spreading the clickbait and lies being spread by those who do not want to change – it is not helping anyone or anything except the old fossils running the petroleum companies, their politician puppets, and the tiny dictators who do not want to accept that the future of our species is renewable energy powered and electrically driven.
Change is the way of nature.
The time for change is now.
Change is often scary and it is often hard but remember this: very often the life that exists on the other side of change is far superior in every way to the one you are living in right now.
Someone once said everything worth doing in life exists on the other side of fear. It is time to push through the fear and adapt – because if we do not adapt, we die.
Some of us will get through this thing with science and common sense leading the way and sadly, some will not.
As I learned in the Boy Scouts: be prepared.
1. Listen to the experts – they know more than you – that is why they are the experts.
2. Keep your distance – especially from strangers.
3. Wash up well.
4. Keep wearing that mask.
5. Get that shot and then get the booster.
6. Ignore/report/block/delete the ignorant anti-science and anti-common sense conspiracy “theories” and “natural cures” being fabricated/spread/sold by the covidiots, crazy meme trolls, greedy charlatans, and religiopolitical fanatics crapping their steaming fresh clickbait turds all over the internet.
There are only two options in this thing we call life on planet earth: adapt or die. Science, technology, and good old common sense are the ways we humans improvise, adapt, overcome, evolve, survive, and thrive.
Yes, I am posting this one twice – it is that important.
In the early summer of 2020, as the world went into lockdown during the early days of the SARS CoV-2 (Corovavirus/COVID-19) global pandemic – I noticed many individuals declining to wear masks stating personal reasons and evidence-lacking “reasoning” as to why they would not comply with the recommendations of infectious disease experts all over the planet.
I also noticed several stories of different scientists testing masks to show how they were effective in reducing the spread of respiratory droplets/aerosols between people therby reducing the spread of the potentially deadly virus (as well as far less deadly but yet still annoying viruses such as the common cold).
I decided to perform a similar mask test for my students in my science education classes.
To do this I acquired some Petri dishes (from an Amazon supplier), then – with the mask off and a petri dish held at arm’s length – I coughed, sneezed, sang, and yelled at the open dishes. I then put on a two-layer cotton face mask and repeated the demonstration using a new petri dish. I labeled the dishes and let them incubate for a few days in a warm area – I did not have an incubator at the time but it was June so it was warm in the classroom, therefore – growth happened…LOTS of growth, far more than I expected…it was really gross and it smelled really funky.
The odd thing was that, while the dish that was exposed to my respiratory droplets/aerosols without a mask did in fact have more colonies of growth – so did the plate I had coughed on while wearing a mask. At first, it appeared that the mask did little to stop the spread of respiratory droplets.
I wrongly assumed the error was in the growth media of the Petri dishes so I acquired some new dishes (Amazon) with the same growth media used by many of the other researchers – 5% sheep’s blood – and I repeated the demonstration. This time I also added a table and placed several dishes out at .3, .9, and 1.5M (1′, 3′, and 6′) in an attempt to show how droplets travel outward from the body.
Again, the results were the same – not much difference between masked and unmasked.
I was perplexed.
I compared my results to the others and came to the only possible conclusion: my samples had been contaminated by the classroom environment. The natural dust and dirt on our feet, bodies, and hair that the students and I bring inside with us from the nearby forest and garden, our sloughed off human skin cells and hair, animal/bird dander (we have several free-range chickens), the fact that the building is an old log cabin. Along with all this fun with particulates – the classroom is host to many different species of reptile, amphibian, fish, arachnid, and sometimes even an Opossum. Then there are the billions of free-floating fungal spores and pollen grains from the forest all around us as well as the occasional wandering house fly or gnat – and all the fun little friends that hitchhike on their feet and faces. All these contaminants and contaminant vectors were, well – everywhere. So, my first two experiments were contaminated by the nature of nature.
What to do? How could I reduce the natural contamination factor of my classroom environment to produce a more un-contaminated result? A room air filter you say? Yes, I already had one of those – a big one. Obviously, it could only do so much.
Since it would be next to impossible to make my classroom free of natural contaminants – the only option was to build a Cleanroom to rule out some of the contamination in the hopes of obtaining a better result – so, that is what I did.
The video below shows the results of my efforts and I hope it serves to demonstrate the how and the why of why masks work and why it is important to wear them during a global pandemic. Watch to the end if you are interested in learning how I built the Cleanroom.
This video is long because I choose to be thorough and transparent. To demonstrate this requires procedure and patience. If you are in a hurry and want to bypass all the “meat” of the video and go directly to my findings – then feel free to do so by skipping ahead to the time index of 39:17
What does a mask do? Blocks respiratory droplets coming from your mouth and throat.
Two simple demos:
First, I sneezed, sang, talked & coughed toward an agar culture plate with or without a mask. Bacteria colonies show where droplets landed. A mask blocks virtually all of them. pic.twitter.com/ETUD9DFmgU
— Rich Davis, PhD, D(ABMM), MLS🧫🦠 (@richdavisphd) June 26, 2020
This weekend, in Sweetwater, Texas – thousands of Western Diamondback Rattlesnakes and other rattlesnake species will be ripped from their home habitats – often using gasoline pumped into their hiding places which causes the snake to vacate the safety of the hide allowing it to be captured. The dozens of other animals that share the hole with the snake are then overwhelmed by the fumes and die. The toxic nature of the gasoline then goes on to poison the environment – and possibly even the local groundwater supply – the captured snakes are then put on display/parade then publicly slaughtered and eaten without hesitation.
This is the largest wildlife massacre happening on any single day.
The weekend starts with a “Sweetwater” beauty pageant where the winner gets to kill the first snake of the season. Then it’s followed up with two days of non-stop torture and death as snakes have their mouths sewn shut for grotesque “selfies,” and are then decapitated by people and yes, even children – who are told the snakes are “overpopulated,” “evil,” “bad,” “demonic,” “the devil” etc. – then the snakes are skinned, chopped up, deep fried, and eaten for public dollars.
Something also tells me that this being Texas, and this being 2021 – I would also predict that many of those who visit the roundup will be mask-less, in close proximity, drinking, cheering, preaching, and unvaccinated – making this another COVID-19 super spreader event…
Please do not support these disturbingly sick, destructive, events in any way, they are the last vestiges of a brutal practice that needs to end immediately.
Evidence follows – some of it is very hard to watch if you are sensitive to blood and/or animals being slaughtered. Some of the videos are age restricted and viewable only on YouTube via the embedded links.
This last link has a map showing all the locations where rattlesnake roundups are held. Some of these events – such as the Whigham, GA Rattlesnake Roundup and the San Antonio, Florida Rattlesnake Festival – have stopped the collection and killing of wild snakes and instead, use their public platform to educate attendees on the unique biology, beauty, and environmental value of rattlesnakes. If those in Sweetwater and the others would just convert to this format…
I do not have any issues with hunting as long as it managed scientifically to support the health of the wildlife and the ecosystem, and it is carried out legally and ethically. The Sweetwater Texas rattlesnake roundup is none of these things. It is time we end this type of Rattlesnake Roundup as fast as possible. Just imagine if this were a roundup, slaughter, and feast of dogs, cats, dolphins, manatees, Bald eagles, horses, rabbits, goats, turtles, – whatever – the public outcry would be unbelievable and the perpetrators of those acts would be arrested and heavily fined under animal abuse/cruelty charges and obviously wildlife protection laws. However, because it is rattlesnakes and because it brings so much precious money into the community of Sweetwater – so many people just look away, sit on their hands, and stay quiet ignoring the heinous animal cruelty and abuse that happens in this horrible mass murder of wildlife. On top of all this madness the perpetrators of this insanity, the Sweetwater Jaycees and all others who support them with their support of this mass murder event or through their inaction to stop it, are using this horrible program to teach children that this is an accepted way to treat wildlife.
I was bitten by a wild rattlesnake and yes, I still support their conservation.
If you do not see a problem with this sickness then my friend, you have a serious problem.
This needs to stop now.
Do all in your power to fight this madness.
DO NOT support rattlesnake roundups, coordinated animal cruelty/poaching/ wildlife/ecosystem destruction, and trafficking in threatened and endangered wildlife.
Recently I read this article in The Guardian that really hit home with me how urgent the need is to stop burning things for energy.
Sadly, until our species stops burning long-dead life-forms – fossil fuels – as our primary sources of energy for our homes, businesses, and transportation systems, this trend will only continue. More people will sicken and die due to atmospheric, land, and water pollution directly and indirectly due to burning fossil fuels for energy. Then there are the anthropogenic climate change implications – but that is another can of worms for another day.
If you do not understand the issues and the connections between burning fossil fuels, pollution, climate change and the health and continuation for humans and wildlife then it is possible that:
– you may not understand the problem.
– you may understand the problem but feel that it is hopeless and that nothing you do will change anything.
– you may have the desire to make a change, but do not believe you have the ability or the means to start the change.
or
– you may not want to understand the problem.
– you may for some bizarre reason actually believe the rhetoric of the corrupt politicians who are in bed with fossil fuel corporations.
– you may be listening to and trusting those with agendas.
– while choosing to ignore those with the peer-reviewed evidence.
– you may have money invested in fossil fuels that you do not want to loose.
– you might be comfortable in the way things are – or were – and you do not want to change – even if that change would make you more comfortable, happy, wealthy, and provide your children and grandchildren with a better world.
– you may actually believe the ancient scribblings in a dusty old story book that tells you the earth and its resources are somehow “imperfect” “corrupt” or “evil” and are here for us to dominate and squander without any consideration for future people, wildlife, or the balance of nature.
– you may even somehow believe all of the above.
This is all really very sad.
These limiting, restrictive, erroneous, and destructive beliefs will only serve to make problems such as this far more malignant and deadly.
The cold, hard, inconvenient truth is this: our species must stop burning things for energy and transition as fast as possible to local, energy secure, clean, renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, gravity, tidal and wave energy, and eventually – fusion. We must keep the majority of fossil fuels in the ground and use them only as fuel for systems and projects that do not play well with renewables such as rocketry – as well as keeping them in reserve as backups for when emergencies happen and as feedstocks for reusable, recyclable products that are made from them – such as plastics.
If we want our species to continue much longer into the future – we must listen to those with the evidence.
I just learned of another “event” that is predicted by many “woke” “thinkers” and “researchers” to happen on Feb 21st. 2021.
A zombie apocalypse.
Yep, you read that right.
A friggin zombie apocalypse.
I am not ready for this.
(LOLROTFL)
If you go to Wikipedia and search for “end of the world predictions” you will find a treasure trove of hundreds of terrible, horrible, violent, “evil” civilization-ending disasters that were certain to occur.
You know what?
They didn’t happen. None of them.
The prophets (profits), doomsayers, soothsayers, and end times gurus were wrong every single time.
No, zombies aren’t real. They are fiction. They are, in fact, biologically impossible.
No, there won’t be a zombie apocalypse this year – or any year…well, except on TV, at the movies, and in the brains of some people who have never opened their mind to reality…oh wait, I forgot about that small cadre of walking dead brainless zombies who followed the insane dictates of their idiocy-tweeting führer and stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 in a lame attempt to start a “civil war” or some other such nonsense.
If there had been “real” zombies (who are far more intelligent than any of the Capitol rioters or their führer) they would not have promoted their “civil war” on many social media outlets and taken selfies and videos of themselves and their friends in “action” – then post them all over the internet as an invitations to identify, locate, and arrest they and their comrades – then toss them in the jailhouse to rot like the gray matter lacking, putrid, slimy, worm-ridden filth that they are.
As the gang from Scooby-Doo found out – the real monsters are always us.
Nope, zombies are not real so there will be no zombie apocalypse this year…or any year.* However, I’m pretty sure it won’t be the only apocalypse and/or other bizarre conspiratorial evidence-lacking fabrications predicted this year (“Jewish space lasers” anyone) and, like this one, all the others have been or will be revealed to be total fabrications and/or non-events as well. (Except for all the book-writing and DVD/movie “documentary” producing, prepper product selling, soothsayers, doomsayers, and end times preaching pontiffs, charlatans, swindlers, and conmen – for them, it’s all just more of your money in their pockets.)
See you on the 22nd for just another day on this water-soaked rock we multi-colored primates call planet earth.
*There is one sure way we could create an apocalyptic situation for the population of our planet: not listening to the findings of the world’s experts and scientists, putting myth, magic, mysticism, and money above common sense and reality. I believe Carl Sagan said it best:
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
I test several common protective face masks in a cleanroom of my own design.
This video is long because I choose to be thorough and transparent. To demonstrate this requires procedure and patience. If you are in a hurry and want to bypass all the “meat” of the video and go directly to my findings – then feel free to do so by skipping ahead to the time index of 39:17
The back story: in the early summer of 2020 I noticed many mask tests being conducted by different scientists to demonstrate the effectiveness of wearing masks to protect us from COVID-19 (and other nasty infectious diseases such as Influenza). Below is an example of one of these mask demonstrations from Dr. Rich Davis -the regional director of microbiology at Providence Health Care in Spokane, Washington.
What does a mask do? Blocks respiratory droplets coming from your mouth and throat.
Two simple demos:
First, I sneezed, sang, talked & coughed toward an agar culture plate with or without a mask. Bacteria colonies show where droplets landed. A mask blocks virtually all of them. pic.twitter.com/ETUD9DFmgU
— Rich Davis, PhD, D(ABMM), MLS🧫🦠 (@richdavisphd) June 26, 2020
Dr. Davis’s example along with others (listed below) inspired me to attempt a similar mask test in my classroom for my students in the attempt to show the effectiveness – and the necessity – of wearing a mask during a global pandemic.
To do this I acquired some Petri dishes (from an Amazon supplier), then – with a mask off and a petri dish held at arm’s length – I coughed, sneezed, sang, and yelled at the open dishes. I then put on a two layer cotton face mask and repeated the demonstration exactly as the first time.
I labeled the dishes and let them incubate for a few days in a warm area – I did not have an incubator at the time but it was June so it was warm in the classroom, therefore – growth happened…LOTS of growth, far more than I expected…it was really gross actually and it smelled really funky.
The odd thing was that, while the dish that was exposed to my respiratory droplets/aerosols without a mask did in fact have more colonies of growth – so did the plate I had coughed on while wearing a mask. At first it appeared that the mask did little to stop the spread of respiratory droplets.
I wrongly assumed my error was in the growth media of the petri dishes so I acquired some new dishes with the same growth media used by many of the other researchers – 5% sheep’s blood – and I repeated the demonstration. This time I also added a table and placed several dishes out at 1′, 3′ and 6′ in an attempt to show how droplets travel outward from the body.
Again, the results were the same – not much difference between masked and unmasked.
I was perplexed.
I compared my results to the others and came to the only possible conclusion: my samples had been contaminated by the classroom environment. The natural dust and dirt on our feet, bodies, and hair that the students and I bring inside with us from the nearby forest and garden, our sloughed off human skin cells and hair, animal/bird dander (we have several free-range chickens), the fact that the building is an old log cabin. Along with all this fun with particulates – the classroom is host to many different species of reptile, amphibian, fish, arachnid, and sometimes even an Opossum. Then there are the billions of free-floating fungal spores and pollen grains from the forest all around us as well as the occasional wandering house fly or gnat – and all the fun little friends that hitchhike on their feet and faces. All these contaminants and contaminant vectors were, well – everywhere.
So, my samples were contaminated by the nature of nature.
What to do? How could I reduce the natural contamination factor of my classroom environment to produce a more un-contaminated result?
A room air filter you say? Yes, I already had one of those – a big one. Obviously, it could only do so much.
Since it would be next to impossible to make my classroom free of natural environmental contaminants – the only option I could see was to build a Cleanroom myself in the hopes of ruling out some of the environmental contamination in the hopes of obtaining a better result – so, that is what I did.
The embedded video shows the results of my efforts and I hope it serves to demonstrate the how and the why of why masks work and why it is important to wear them during a global pandemic.
Watch to the end if you are interested in learning how I built the Cleanroom.
No, actually – it is not…I was just trying to get your attention 😉
I am sharing this link not because I was one of these people, I am sharing because many people have found themselves in this position and have been able to recognize the trap they were in and then get themselves out of it before it was too late. The link is a story of great advice from one of these individuals who recognized the danger and got out – others, however, are not so lucky and will need help from friends and family in finding their way out of the deep, dark, pit of conspiratorial thinking they have fallen into. Without a ladder or a rope of loving support from their loved ones – and sometimes the long arm of the law – they will dig themselves in even deeper and the ever-increasing depth of the pit will increasingly prevent them from escaping the gravity well they have fallen into – a gravity well that is crushing the life out of them and often, everyone around them.
IMHO, intentionally denying verifiable, peer-reviewed evidence and instead choosing to support conspiracy “theorist” “thinking” and belief systems – is one of the most dangerous threats we face in working toward a prosperous future for us all.
Have you unfortunately found yourself stuck in that bizarre world of conspiracies where you actually fully believe everything is a lie, a cover-up, a hoax?
You know what I’m talking about – but just in case you need a refresher – here are a few of the more common examples:
Area 51 is hoarding and hiding alien bodies/artifacts
The Apollo moon landings were staged/produced by Stanley Kubrick…
The earth is flat…or hollow…
Australia does not exist…
Lizard people are controlling our government…
Giants once existed…
Dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time…or dinosaurs never existed and their bones are a manufactured to give scientists a job…
Chem-trails are real…
Pizzagate…
911 was staged…
The “deep state”…
Climate change is a hoax…
Covid 19 is a bioweapon and was manufactured in a lab by Bill Gates and friends, and/or Bill Gates is putting tracking devices in vaccines to track/follow/control you…
Vaccines cause autism…
The democrats/republicans/greenies are plotting to take your freedoms…
The virus is not real and mask mandates are about control…
College brainwashes people to become liberals…
All that Qanon nonsense…
…yada, yada, yada…
If you believe any of these and/or similar bizarre claims and beliefs – without seriously analyzing and questioning the authenticity of those claims and beliefs…the what and the why of what and why you believe what you believe – and especially if you believe these things without any verifiable evidence to support your claims and beliefs – then you may have inadvertently become stuck/trapped in a cultish following that has hijacked your brain.
Ask yourself some serious questions:
Is this belief system taking up a large portion of my time?
Have I ended friendships or am I fighting with family members over it?
Have I dropped out of school or lost jobs because of it?
Am I living in constant fear of friends/family/neighbors/strangers that I once respected?
Am I afraid – terrified – of what may happen next?
Am I stockpiling food and weapons?
Am I always online “learning” and “researching” the latest claim, “theory” or “truth”?
Am I worshiping an ideal or a person in power/politics/prestige as a “savior” of humanity or our “tribe” or way of life?
Am I worried that friends who listen to and support the recommendations of science are the ones who have been duped?
Am I concerned and/or do I believe that education and knowledge are work of “the left,” “evil” or “the devil?”
Do I believe that I am 100% right about my beliefs because simply my belief system, my friends online, and/or that loudmouthed “woke” guy on YouTube, or my favorite end of the world/prepper/echo chamber website (that interestingly is always asking for money to support their cause) – tells me so?
If any of this sounds like you then please, get professional help now before it is too late.
The fact is this: if no evidence exists to support their/your claim, “theory,” or belief system – then in all the probability that exists – that claim, “theory” or belief system is – most likely – simply wrong/erroneous and/or manufactured – probably to make some slimy, smelly, troll in a dim, dank basement somewhere – loads of money – your money.
Sadly, you may have already lost your freedom to whatever the belief system it is that is controlling you and you will see everything and everyone as a lie, a hoax, a threat to you and your freedom.
Again, if any of this sounds like you then please, get help now before it is too late – before the gravitational pull of the lunatic fringe pulls you past the point of no return and you disappear over the event horizon into the black hole of darkness never to return to the land of the living.
If you can find the inner strength to realize you made a mistake – as the brave woman in this story did – then you can rescue yourself from the toxic world of conspiracy theorists and lies. Next is a story of a man who realized he was conned by the Qanon crazy and got out before it totally controlled his life.
Personal freedom comes when you find the inner strength to break the molds imposed upon you by the conspiratorial, religious, and political conditioning that ended your childhood trust in others and destroyed the insatiable curiosity all children have in the natural, real, observable, measurable, and so very fragile connections between all things in the cosmos.
Until you are able to shed the toxic skin of your past – or the mind predators of your present – you will run the risk of remaining easily controlled, divided, fearful, and under the thumb of the charlatans who want to own your life for their own personal gain.
True freedom does not come from without, it comes from within. It comes from letting go of all the things that have a hold on you, that control your thought process – and replacing them with only reality – even if the reality is that no one is really in control and we are all working, fighting, clawing to exist on a tiny, inconspicuous, remote, wet rocky speck of a rather ordinary planet orbiting just another ordinary star in just another ordinary galaxy in this vast ocean we call the cosmos.
We may not be all that special when it comes to the vastness of the cosmos, but each and every one of us are unique, special, one of a kind individuals and we each have wonderful gifts, talents, generosity, compassion, and love to offer to those around us. Let go of the imaginary things that control you and open your eyes and see reality as it really is – and then you will truly be free to live, share, and enjoy the life and time you have.
Life is not about the ending, it is about the living.
Stevo's Personal Blog 