LongTomH

LongTomH's Journal

March 29, 2014

The only "progress" we are allowed

Most Americans want real clean energy (solar, wind, renewables); some Americans are dreaming of the stars. This is what we get!

From the Conservatives Are Destroying Our Future webpage.

March 21, 2014

Yeats "The Second Coming" --- More relevant today than ever!

W.B. Yeats The Second Coming was first published in 1920. Yeats intended it as a commentary on post-WWI Europe; but, it seems frighteningly apropos for today's political climate.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I was reminded of Yeats' poem while reading Phil Plait's recent post: What We Know: AAAS: "What We Know About Global Warming. 97% of climate scientists are convinced that global warming is real and due to human activities; Phil complains that:

Facts don’t speak for themselves; they need advocates. And these advocates need to be passionate. You can put the facts up on a blackboard and lecture at folks, but that will be almost totally ineffective. That’s what many scientists have been doing for years and, well, here we are. The conversation is dominated by louder voices that are grossly and totally wrong, but they’re passionate. That’s what connects with people, and that’s a big part of why a tiny minority of “climate skeptics” have way more leverage than they should (well, that, plus huge coffers thanks to the fossil fuel industry).

Meanwhile, the right whips up 'passionate intensity' among its members, convincing them that "global warming is a hoax designed to impose socialism on the world."

It's the same with evolution. It's been accepted as scientific fact for over a century and half; but, we still get stuff like this.

And, why are we unable to rouse our base for off-year elections, while the rightwingers turn out in droves?

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