Progress and Regress

Progress for me recently was buying a used 2012 Mitsubishi MiEV. Regress is the miserable direction our world is headed politically. I'll address both here. Regular readers here know I am a proponent of appropriate technologies such as electric vehicles. They are unquestionably better for our environment - simpler, peppier, and less expensive to operate. They are environmentally, economically, and ethically better for us. That's why I used my electric bike for three years around town instead of my big Taurus V-6. I like my…

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Rebels without a Cause

Remember the 1955 movie “Rebel Without a Cause”?  James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo played three distraught teens, alienated from their families, caught up in teenage toughness, resulting in a tragic accident.  Those were the days when a switchblade knife at school was considered dangerously wrong.  “Blackboard Jungle” that year also showed the disturbing trend, amplified much later in 1972 by “Clockwork Orange,” which portended purposeless violence. The Rebel Without a Cause movie was titled after the psychiatrist Robert Lindner’s 1944 book of the…

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Good ‘n Gettin’ Better

Don't let the devil sell you what you already have. Good and getting better is a tag line for an impending song extolling our condition. What? Wait! Aren't we weary of Covid, worried about armed crazies, tired of Texas and taxes? Yes, and we're stuck in a dangerously warming planet that the fossil fuel media and lobbyists would have us "don't look up." I would counter that we should look up, not just at the comet of planetary fever increasingly upon us, but at all…

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Good ‘n Gettin’ Better

Here's my tag line for an emerging song: "Good 'n Gettin' Better" Beyond the ample evidence of how bad things are and are becoming, let's go beyond our brain's inherent typical frightened, hurt, wary view of the world. Our amygdala remembers hurt and stays leery of the world. It creates an automatic chatter that can prevent us from seeing how good we have it - personally and culturally. We're better than that. Our prefrontal neocortex brain can remind and orient us that we're good and…

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My Forum Input this Month

At home, sheltering in place, I've got some work done. Garden, new roof over firewood, new roof shunting rain water onto garden, new floor in the bath - that kind of stuff. Best of all was a five hour hike into the mountains behind town where son Tobias and I saw lots of pretty views and trees, and we came on a big black mother bear and two chubby black cubs. While out, I accidentally snapped the photo with this blog entry. At the last…

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Byron Says . . . (August, 2018)

Here's some of what I've posted online during August.  (Climate Comments, The Raccoon Saga, Stop-if you-must) all the while also painting my house with three colors, all purchased inexpensively because they were returns.  Here's my front door: Same day to Cleantechnica forum on EPA potential overrule of California standards, specifically a photo of a big pick-up belching out black smoke, saying “Fuck you, earth” and a second photo of a huge hurricane, saying, “Well, fuck you, too.”   Laurence Jenner  IMPOed • 6 days ago That whole Mad…

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Tesla Factory a Shrine?

Because I’m a minister long-concerned for the ethics of how we get and use energy, my recent trip to tour the Tesla factory to the San Francisco bay area (Fremont) had an inspiring feel to it, like going on a pilgrimage to a shrine. Tesla doesn’t advertise or use dealerships, yet it is rapidly transforming the car world.  This isn’t just for money.  CEO and early investor Elon Musk’s life-intention has a “massively transformative purpose.”  Above the doorway to the factory it reads, “Our Mission:…

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Love Trump?

Despite my many criticisms of Donald Trump, I haven't given up all hope. Between the few good things he's done and the Women's March, I've come to a place of potential loving welcome for this rascal. He's a rascal, but he thinks for himself and can go his own way. He's bold enough to skillfully hide his ordinary bald head with a crown of golden fleece.  He has a better hair-do than most women!  This shows a can-do spirit of someone who masters his personal…

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