Non-Conformity Among the Conformists

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Tuesday October 18, 2011 · 7:54 AM PDT

2011/10/18 · 07:54

There was a very interesting piece posted on the New York Times site yesterday from Karl Giberson and Randall Stephens called "The Evangelical Rejection of Reason". They fairly accurately describe what I've observed in U.S. politics and culture over the past decade or so, a gradual ascendancy of a kind of Christian movement that is completely against any form of intellectualism. The interesting part about this piece is that it is written by two self-avowed evangelicals.

tergenev

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Tuesday June 29, 2010 · 9:23 AM PDT

2010/06/29 · 09:23

I'm not a wind industry financier, as is Jerome a Paris . .I'm just a fan of sustainable energy. I have been for 30 years. I tend to follow the news on these things. And while I like the way things are going in terms of the adoption of new energy generation technologies, particularly wind, I see a story such as the one reported today in WindPower Monthly, and I find it quite irritating. The city of Yumen in the northwest Chinese Gansu Province, has announced that they will be constructing a 500MW wind farm next month, and they will use nothing but Chinese built turbines. Why are the Chinese able to do that, but something so straightforward, so direct, to spur the U.S. industry is seemingly impossible?

Poll

92 votes Show Results

How well do you think the human species will manage to survive the transition to new forms of energy?

92 votes Vote Now!

How well do you think the human species will manage to survive the transition to new forms of energy?

The future will be brighter than ever

8 votes

With some bumps and some bruises, but it will come out well

18 votes

With a huge bruising battle, but eventual success

33 votes

With terrible losses of life and liberty

12 votes

We're gonna end up in a post collapse agrarian economy. Which is nice, except for all those who didn't survive.

13 votes

Did you ever read The Road by Cormac McCarthy? Sorta like that, only depressing.

8 votes

Voting Machines are Still Suspect - Sarasota

tergenev

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Thursday November 09, 2006 · 6:09 AM PST

2006/11/09 · 06:09

I'm mostly happy at the results from two days ago, at least nationally. But I just wanted to add a story about my voting experience this time. I'm voting in Sarasota, Florida, where, as most of you remember, Democrat Christine Jennings battled Republican auto dealer extraordinaire Vern Buchanan for Katherine Harris' old Congressional seat. Well I was happy to vote in the FL-13 race, because Jennings was polling ahead as little as a week before the election.

But I guess it wasn't to be. As the count now stands, Jennings lost to Buchanan by 368 votes. That's not the interesing number, though, The interesting number is 18,000, or the number of people who voted on everything else in this race, but strangely chose no one in the Buchanan-Jennings race.

I do know what happened... Read More

Several Rants About Non-contiguous and Inconsequential Things

tergenev

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Wednesday April 26, 2006 · 10:55 AM PDT

2006/04/26 · 10:55

I've written things on Kos in the past, but that's been tapering off lately. Frankly, the writing here is getting too damned good and substantive. How is a no-talent hack supposed to compete with that?! Sheesh. I'm starting to get too intimidated to even comment on the Cheers and Jeers thread, just in case some International Olympiad of Grammar gold medalist is lurking, because you know there is one. People like that seem to come out of the woodwork around this place lately. (I'm just gettin' started.)
Read More

You're right, it is all your fault

tergenev

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Wednesday February 22, 2006 · 2:02 PM PST

2006/02/22 · 14:02

I enjoyed the mea culpa recently published by Dale McFeatters, the conservative Scripps Howard columnist. He admitted in his February 15th column that global warming and the hatred of the Arab world for America and Americans is his fault. I appreciate his honesty and his humility.

Well I would. If it were real.

You see, it's all snark. It's all written with a giant sarcastic smirk on his smug-ass face. I wish that the conservatives would own up to their responsibility. But we all know these days, what the neo-cons mean by 'taking responsibility' and an 'ownership society' is to let everyone else take responsibility for our screw-ups, and let everyone else own up to having monumentally stupid judgement. (More below the fold.) Read More

Listening to Liars

tergenev

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Thursday February 09, 2006 · 1:22 PM PST

2006/02/09 · 13:22

Do you remember back in the days of innocence that were the time before George W. Bush became the president of the United States? Back when, although we were often cynical about politicians and statements coming out of Washington, we still basically believed that they weren't lying to us? Or at least, that they were only being slightly shifty about the truth? If you say 'No, I don't remember that,' then just join me in the way-back machine and think back to how much of a news stinger it was when the Republicans in Congress managed to nail Bill Clinton with the semen stain on the blue dress? What was that, exactly? That was proof, in black and white and ectoplasm that our President had (gasp!) lied to the American people? It was a shocking time. Do you remember that? Come on now, I know its getting lost in the mists of myth and glorious days-gone-bye, but you know you do.

Cynicism aside, there was a time when getting caught in a genuine, impeachable lie was a big deal for the President of the United States. But we are all five years of Hell gone from that reality. Read More

The irresponsibility of GM's leaders

tergenev

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Tuesday November 22, 2005 · 12:46 PM PST

2005/11/22 · 12:46

The corporate leadership of General Motors needs to be reintroduced to the concept of 'personal responsibility'. . . not the Republican version of that phrase, but ours. You know . . .the American people's definition.

It's becoming common knowledge that the Republican push for 'personal responsibility' is an odd duck. It may look like one, and act like one, but it ain't no duck. No, the 'personal responsibility' of the modern Republican Party is a far more specialized creature. What they mean by that phrase is that people should be punished for any form of uppity behavior. See, the reality is actually the inverse of what they advertise. By using the old-fashioned phrase 'personal responsibility', they encourage us to picture images of The Andy Griffith Show and heroic soldiers signing up for military service right after the attack on Pearl Harbor. You know . . . personal responsibility, the kind our grandparents would have recognized. Standing up and paying for your crime, or for the privilege of living in this culture, by openly admitting the situation and doing the time, or the service, whatever it takes. Read More

Harold Evans on the state of US television news

tergenev

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Tuesday October 18, 2005 · 12:17 PM PDT

2005/10/18 · 12:17

The BBC World Edition has a commentary from former Sunday Times editor Harold Evans that begins ostensibly as a review of the new film about Edward R. Murrow called "Good night, and good luck". But it quickly evolves into a brilliantly insightful commentary on the state of the U.S. media, particular in the medium where Murrow worked when he took on Senator McCarthy, television news.

He puts this event into historical perspective, particularly given where American TV news now finds itself, when after the Murrow broadcast was aired, it met with:

a chorus of critical acclaim, yet a few years later, in the spirit of Monty Python, Paley and his CBS Network opted for something completely different: the $64,000 quiz . Its immediate success produced a tectonic shift in America's TV culture as commercial rivals copied. Paley first shunted See It Now to an unfavourable time slot, and then killed it altogether. The golden era of documentary television was over.

tergenev

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Tuesday October 11, 2005 · 12:37 PM PDT

2005/10/11 · 12:37

"It's going to snow soon."

I had a nice visit this past Saturday with my favorite Aunt. My Mom's sister is named Ann, but I always knew her as Keresthmama, which is 'Godmother' in Slovak. It was always nice to have a chat with her. What was odd about this conversation, however, was that Keresthmama died three years ago.

Now, I'm not one to believe in ghosts or to even have much faith in an afterlife. But this conversation hit me hard. Yeah, I was asleep on Saturday morning when the conversation occurred. I knew I was dreaming, and I know a bit about how the mind works. But I was curious, so I asked her why she had come. We sat in the kitchen of my mother's farmhouse in Ohio, and she looked at least 10 years younger than the 84 she was when she died. In the dream she was still old, but hale and smiling. She spoke as she had in life, with good syntax and a clarity she worked hard at, since she wanted to make herself understood through the strong Eastern European accent she had retained from her youth back in Czechoslovakia. Read More

All those American mpg Poseurs

tergenev

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Friday September 30, 2005 · 1:37 PM PDT

2005/09/30 · 13:37

I recently saw an article in the USA Today about the rising tendency of American car buyers to consider gas mileage as an important factor when choosing a new car. (The article is a couple weeks old, but its just a typical example of numerous articles I've seen in that paper recently.) I like to see evidence of Americans finally growing up and starting to consider the real costs of their purchasing choices, but reading the article was appalling in a couple of ways. First, I should know better, as the USA Today has more and more over the last couple of years become just another right wing rag, but still, sometimes I hope even the right-wing apologists will occasionally face reality.
Read More

CA Million Solar Roof initiative dies on last day

tergenev

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Friday September 09, 2005 · 1:35 PM PDT

2005/09/09 · 13:35

At the risk of not writing about the Hurricane Katrina fiasco, I'd just like to mention that another fiasco has just occurred in California. Undoubtedly most of us here recognize that there is at least the possibility that the increase in intensity of the hurricane season is caused by global warming. And now, when we have a real chance to do something tangible to help the situation, we allowed it to fall apart . . . for no good reason. The Million Solar Roofs initiative is dead. Read More

Bush asks for $51.8 Billion more

tergenev

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Wednesday September 07, 2005 · 1:10 PM PDT

2005/09/07 · 13:10

OK, let me get this straight. Our government is going to spend $51.8 billion MORE of our money helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina, ostensibly to make themselves look like they're doing something to help, this after they screwed up royally by misusing the assets they already had.

I'm really starting to worry about all of this free spending. Yes, the need is great in this case, but how much more spending can this government take before they take us all into insolvency??

Every single thing this administration does seems to make the country weaker. I am seriously beginning to doubt that we will all survive this government. They're all insane.

I know it's political suicide, but can't we make the extra money contingent on something? Like, say, permanently killing the idea of a permanent tax break for millionaires? Or killing the idea of phasing out the estate tax? Something? Read More

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