Why? Please, tell me why you’d vote for these people

“But I actually think the GOP is doing us a favor. Instead of posturing and sending mixed message about caring for the people while passing laws that say otherwise, they are coming right out and wearing the fucking t-shirt. If you’re poor, female, care about your health or that of the land, or are in any way uninterested in making rich white dudes more rich, you can go to hell.”

http://scientopia.org/blogs/proflikesubstance/2011/02/20/the-gop-comes-out-of-the-closet/

It is Good To Be Angry (repeat as needed)

I am a timid soul I learned early on in life that the safest way to avoid trouble was to keep my head down, to always avoid confrontation. But I am angry – so blazingly angry with the hate, the intolerance, the criminal stupidity of allowing religious beliefs to control education, to dictate life choices of others: we are creating a nation under a god of stupidity, violence, and hate. Is that what we truly want?

Apparently tea party leaders – insert many names here – and religious tv millionaire preachers and pundits – also insert many names here –  are actively striving to create a nation of ignorant, arrogant, bigoted puppets. The tragedy is that the puppets go willingly, eagerly to their doom, and drag the rest of the world in their wake. We *can* save Earth from the worst of global warming – we can create the life we want *if* we stop insisting that science doesn’t work, that other ideas are wrong, that other people don’t matter.

We have the science, and the emerging technology to create a world so wonderful – the blind truly can see, the lame truly can walk, we can go to the planets, we can understand mysteries and marvels. There is so much to explore, to enjoy, and to create, and yet religious bigots want to destroy everything humans can do to make these things happen. Why? Because they feel it threatens their hold on people? Because they don’t understand the maths and science so they fear it, rather than try to learn it? I don’t know.

An opportunity to learn something new is a glorious gift. I can’t forgive denying that gift to children; forcing them into ignorance; terrorizing them with religion, and training them to terrorize anyone who thinks differently from them.

Scandinavia – leading the world in caring about their people and their world, and not much inclined to religion. Corvallis, Oregon – recycle champions. Also one of the highest population percentages of college degrees and of atheists. Interesting correlation: social responsibility, life style changes  that actively work to save the earth. Not because of religion, not out of ignorance, but through education and humanism.

I am angry. I care too much for humanity and the Earth to watch it being destroyed. I am angry, and I need to learn how to use that anger wisely.

The blog that inspired this post:  http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/10/atheists-and-an.html

 

P.S.  I have been informed that Finland, the country I was in large part referring to when I mentioned Scandinavia, is not, technically, Scandinavian. It is Nordic. Apologies offered if needed. Finland is awesome – their education system should be the model for the world.

Plastic Philosophy

What would life be like without plastic? Plastic sandwich bags, plastic wrap, plastic storage containers. I don’t know why, but I often think about this.

I read another article today regarding how plastic waste hits poor countries hardest. Not surprising. I can’t find the link for the report I read this morning, but here’s a start: http://www.waste-management-world.com/index/display/article-display/8267238380/articles/waste-management-world/volume-11/issue-2/features/waste-management_2030.html

Plastics have made life incredibly better for us. Their use in medicine and industry, as well as common household products – they’re ubiquitous. Living in Hong Kong I could sometimes see shards of pottery in the rivers. Archaeology loves pottery. Amphorae in shipwrecks or buried sites, tracing origins of the clay, the contents, the artistic qualities are an incredible window onto the trade and culture of the past.

What does plastic say? Certainly it reveals global trade. It tells of our understanding of chemistry, production, habits of living. It’s not personal, though. I see no artistic merit in the plastic bags I was washing this morning. But I would find life very difficult without it.

Post-apocalyptic novels like to have their characters treasuring, or puzzling over the jetsam of our times. As I use plastic, teflon, silicon in domestic tasks, I often speculate how I’d feel if I were part of a primitive culture, and discovered such a thing. What would I think of it? Would I use it, set it up as an idol?

That reminds me of the movie ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’ and the coke bottle.

Once again, I am reminded how even my ‘original’ ideas are shared by thousands and thousands. I rather like that thought. It also makes me even more in awe of a truly original idea pulled out of the Adjacent Possibles.