Today I gave up “giving up”

For months, or is it years, or maybe decades of seeing the moronic knee-jerk responses of the American public (and somewhat also many people in the world outside our borders) I have responded “I GIVE up!!” Today I said it again, as usual over some political crap, and though “Giving up doesn’t work Woody. It takes too much energy to give up. You have to do something to change this attitude.” So I decided to give up giving up. No more will I turn with disgust from the pages of the NY Times, the Washington Post, The Sydney Daily Telegraph, Reuters and NPR. Not worth the effort. So I will just say “Hmmmm, more morons doing moronic things. Let’s see what Science News has going on today.’ I grant to the rest of the world the right and privilege of “giving up”. As for me: count me out.

Image: http://www.themillionairesecrets.net/images/2008/07/never-give-up.jpg

Right Now I'll Settle for a Good Rain

An old friend of ours from Australia has a song on her album “From the Heart” that has a line “All we need is a good rain”. Today, here in good old Havana we finally got a good rain. Still raining in fact. The soil is very thirsty. As it started to rain, the refrain from the song played once again in my mind (we play the album often, and still blub through most of the songs). And I thought, no, we need more than a good rain. We need civility and trust, and we need time to sort out all the problems facing us as a nation and world. We need solutions that curb populations and help to reduce poverty. We need to empower women all over the world, yes, even here. We need so very very much just to survive.
But I’ll settle right now for a good rain. Thanks Dianna. You and yours are a constant with Sal and me.
Image: Dianna Hammond at http://www.australiaday.com.au/ambassadors/ambassadors.aspx?AmbassadorID=175

Science is better than Politics

“The more carbon that gets released into the atmosphere, the higher the average temperature rises.
That's a scientific fact.
Human activities, such as driving, flying, building and even turning on the lights, are the biggest contributor to the release of carbon.
That too, is a fact.
And yet the majority of Republicans running for House and Senate seats this year disagree” (1).

I know some of you agree with the ignorant and science-hating people mentioned in the article quoted above. And if the national action to curb greenhouse gasses is stalled by a recalcitrant congress we will all suffer, including the morons that deny the science. I am sorry for those of us that know the truth yet will probably suffer for the stupidity of the deniers. I am not sorry at all for the deniers. They will suffer along with the rest of us, and it will be their fault. Unfortunately the entire world is watching us make utter asses of ourselves while they take the problem seriously. Even China and India are preceding with carbon reduction programs. While we screw around with politics.
A student told me the other day in response to a discussion on this: “Well, we are all in God’s hands.” If that is true, then God just washed them. We are on our own. No Deus Ex Machina on the horizon for us. Just a lot of suffering. Thanks guys for ignoring the science. I hope you lose your elections, because if you don’t, we all lose.

1. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130776747&sc=nl&cc=nh-20101024
Image from same source as above citation.