I’m a citizen disappointed by the shallowness of our media and lack of honest examination of today’s deeper challenges. Such as coming to grips with what society has done to our Earth’s biosphere (life support system). I realize no one likes bad news, but faith-based denial isn’t going to do our children any good either.
~ ~ ~ Thus I’ve taken to writing what I'd like to see more of and to sharing selected writings of others.
~ ~ ~ feel free to copy and pass along any of the following.
During today's Impeachment Hearing, Day Two, it was nuts listening to Jordan and Stefanik's dialogue, what's with all that melodramatic dripping contempt for our democratic government and it's rules? So now the GOP tells us it's a "performance" to expect the rule of law to be respected and obeyed? It's "performance" that we're appalled at witnessing our President playing political extortion with an ally's self-defense needs. What is going on here? Actually, I do know, the GOP questioners are playing to their bubble and steadfastly ignoring the reality of the facts. What about simple FAIR PLAY. What about Honest Constructive Debate? Where both sides are bound by an expectation to be truthful? Doesn't a sane government require a standard of honesty that applies to all sides? But all I hear from the GOP is malicious slanderous innuendo, fabricated conspiracy theories, misdirection, and wasting time with ridiculous side stories, oh an the bullying - all justified because of their most grotesque partisan blindspots. I wish someone would ask the GOP what they think of the other half of this country who believe in science and constructive debates, debates where honesty is expected from all sides? Where learning and improving is the goal. What about us? Where do we go from here?
I’ve been watching that amoral Roger Stone damage American politics all my life. With his love of dirty tricks and hurting people, his prideful contempt for humanity and civility, ethics, dignity, honor, respect, empathy and then the self-worship and his own gluttony - he epitomizes the "Ugly American" as much as Trump does. Winning is all that mattered.
Future of humanity?
Stone's response,Who the fuk cares!?I got mine and fuk you and yours!Too much is never going to be enough for me and it doesn't matter how much carnage I leave in my wake.
He had a hell of run. Roger Stone was tough enough, bullying enough, that Democrats wiltedtime after time, time after time, and today in many ways our political mess is Roger Stone's legacy as much as anyone’s.
The Republican’s selective acceptance and their normalization of such criminality makes me more fearful for our short term future than ever before. I think Democrats in general simply have no conception of the 'war footing' going on in their god-fearing minds. But, I digress, here I wanted to share a selection of articles to introduce the uninitiated to why Roger Stone is a big deal.
Roger Stone found guilty on all 7 counts | ABC News
Full video of Trump Impeachment Hearings (Day 1) | NBC News
The House Intelligence Committee holds its first public hearing in President Trump's impeachment inquiry. Witnesses include Bill Taylor, Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.
I graduated high school in 1973. By then I’d already had enough science classes to understand the fundamental facts of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Not that it’s tough to do, since though the details get impossibly complex, the fundamentals are quite straightforward and accessible to any intelligent person engaged in a good-faith learning effort.
In the decades since observed changes on Earth have proven the scientists correct in their concerns and their science. (I’m happy to debate that point, if anyone wants to question it.)
In these decades I have watched Republican leaders get ever more unhinged from physical realities, facts and well understood scientific truths - as they strayed further and further into self-certain self-delusion. Today we see where that has lead our GOP leaders.
I'll keep this short. We had two local rural libraries facing closure because of shrinking County financial support, so local citizens took the matter in hand. Long story short, we gained 400 signatures to qualify for a special tax district ballot measure #6D. The County Clerk has now declared it a victory. Truth be told the victory margin of 4% is rather disappointing, but not near as disappointing as losing, so I'll take it.
When looking up Cambrian Period information you'll get flooded with Creationist Intelligent Design propaganda. Stuff that freely misrepresents the facts and their "opponents," instead coming up with disconnected just so stories in complete disregard of the full spectrum of available understanding - so beware.
That is why I'm sharing this comment that I originally penned for a discussion over at Center For Inquiry's Forum. It belongs here since a better understanding of the difference between religious thinking and serious scientific thinking is worth trying to push into the public consciousness! (edited 9/19/19 evening)
The challenge is clarifying the key difference between Religious Thinking and Scientific Thinking. Both of which are products of our Human Mindscape.
It starts with acknowledging that all we see and experience, is through our senses and then processed by our brains to the best of our individual learning and abilities.
The "Mindscape" is just that, our mind, the product of our body, nerves, brain and all we sense along with our emotions and thoughts.
Religions are all about our “Mindscape" itself, with it's constant dialogue and self-story telling and fears, emotions and needs. Its freedom to poetically tie together whatever it wants. It is the realm of the metaphysical thoughts and daydreaming and story telling.
I've been neglecting this blog too much and decided to step it up with little reflection upon my summer, followed by an excursion into Earth's Pageant of Evolution. Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans. This summer my blogging effort wound up being focused on trying to convey the pageant of Earth’s Evolution and offering a glimpse into the folds within folds of accumulating harmonic complexity flowing down the stream of time that is the evolutionary process.
July 1990
Personally it’s also been a summer of five solo road trips down to Phoenix via a route I hadn’t been on since the ‘80s. Driving out of Cortez, Colorado on Hwy 160 past the Four Corners Monument, then south on Hwy 191 along the western edge of the Defiance Uplift, including visits to Canyon DeChelly, then on to I-40 and scooting over to Hwy 87, which rises into the wonderfully surprising Coconino National Forest and then down the ancient Mogollon Rim.
The Mogollon Rim is the edge of the Colorado Plateau and its a two thousand foot drop into what’s called the “Transition Zone” with it’s jumble of one time islands caught between the ultimate rock and a hard place. Then out into the “Valley of the Sun” and the “Basin and Range” geologic province. Geologically it’s a fascinating drive and going solo allowed me a slower pace than our usual rush to reach our destination.
Though the drive south tended to be a bit more rushed than the drive home. You see, I had dates to keep with my infant grandson. Unlike with my first two grandkids who’s stay at home mother also had plenty of extended family around, this little guy’s parents have full-time professional careers. Being an old hand with babies I was drawn into helping out with the child care.
Then when it was discovered how well the little guy and I get along, I kept getting invited back when the unexpected forced mom, then dad, to take a couple trips and my no longer carpentering left me available.
If you know how much Life and Earth’s story fascinate me, you can imagine what interacting with and watching an infant evolving impacts my thoughts. Meaning my mind has become increasingly distracted and cluttered from the blogging task at hand.
The fossil record shows animals suddenly exploding upon the geologic scene around 530 million years ago, forever altering Earth. However, new research suggests that the origin of animals pre-dates the "Cambrian explosion" by almost 200 million years. Kevin Peterson will examine the issues surrounding the origin and rise of animals and address the "missing" Precambrian fossil record, culling data primarily from the molecular record of animal life.
Kevin J. Peterson is a professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth College. He received his undergraduate training in biology at Carroll College in Helena, Montana, and earned his Ph.D. in geological science from the University of California, Los Angeles. His work centers on using molecular tools to address the origin and early evolution of animals
Tiny molecules that seemed to provide a powerful way to construct the tree of life may not have such a strong capability after all. A team of scientists has exposed1 flaws in a previously celebrated method that uses molecules called microRNAs to deduce evolutionary relationships between animals.
…
Growing pains
Thomson and his co-authors also applied an alternative method of analysing trees, which accommodated nuances in microRNA evolution, instead of using a method that assumes microRNA conservation through the generations. Three of the five resulting trees, including the reptile tree, more closely matched those produced by other methods.
Peterson could not be reached by Nature for comment, but Erik Sperling, a palaeobiologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who was Peterson's co-author on some of the microRNA analyses2, 5, agrees with Thomson's conclusion that microRNAs cannot alone unveil species relationships. "MicroRNAs are not the panacea we perhaps originally hoped,” he says. …
But that doesn't mean they're a bust! Solid lessons were learned and study continues. ==================================================================
Woodbury Fire from Mesa, June 15, 2019
Woodbury Fire from Mesa, June 18, 2019
Woodbury Fire outside Phoenix metro area June 19, 2019
With hot spot blowing up, if you look closely, above post and distant farm buildings.
