A Commentary on an Age of Contradictions

My web site was previously 'The Ramblings of a Bush Philosopher', ramblingsdc.net.
I changed it to comagecontra.net in April 2021. (Why I changed it)

Pages in 'A Commentary'

Politics...
From an ethical point of view...

A word on China
Criminal leaders
Democracy and Secession
The world's betrayal of East Timor
Limiting the excesses of our leaders
Government
The Iraq war
The real USA
Science denial goes beyond religion
Russia, some original thoughts
Terrorism, cause and cure?
Terrorism and coal: two killers
Truth: fundamentally important
World government
Trump, Donald
The futility of war
Environment...


Battery or hydrogen vehicles?
Biocrust
Bushfire/turbine/lightning research
Capitalism or Environmentalism?
Change: if it's inevitable, embrace it
Climate Change
Climate change and COVID-19
Climate change and natural disasters
Cleanup; walking for CC
CO2 levels and blood
Coal seam gas: environmental disaster
Threatened disasters compared
Do something, don't just walk by
Dog shit happens; what to do with it?
End of coal
End of gas
End of global civilisation?
Environment
Environment and renewables
Emissions, per-capita or total?
Electrical generating methods
End of Oil
Evaporative air cooling
EV or solar power?
Fire hazard can be reduced by trees
Firewood: as a fuel
Floating forest: a curiosity
Global dimming
Greener coal
Greenhouse impact calculator
Heroes-criminals in climate change
Home heating efficiencies
Humanity and Fossil Fuels
Implications of renewable options
Lower speed limits cause...
Killer coal
Little Green Lies, a short review
Old King Coal is dying
Opposing wind is supporting coal
Overpopulation
Passive temperature control
Payload ratio
Pumped storage using mines
Plastic coated cardboard
School strike for climate
Science denial goes beyond religion
Toward a sustainable world
Sustainable Electricity
Sustainable energy and environment
Transport after fossil fuels
Trees; I love them, some photos
The war on renewable energy
Wealth and environment
Weight-to-power ratio
What should be done?
Which governments accept ACC?
Where did we go wrong?
Who cares?
Why accept climate science?
Why support wind power
Wind power in Australia
Wind opposition/science denial
Wind turbines and health
Wind turbine noise
Information...

These pages aim at informing; there is little opinion.

Calculate your energy costs
Download costs
Drones: personal experiences
Drones, in general
My main sources of information
Electrical generating methods
Some energy units and conversions
Home heating efficiencies
Misinformation: climate and vaccination
Reliable sources of information
Science; our most valuable tool
My groundwater programs...

(Well and truly outdated now)

CG Programs
CG Notes
Download page

Travel pages
Photos and observations...

India; visit 1989; modified 2009
Indonesia; visit 1994; modified 2009
Japan, 2017
New Zealand, 2019
Vietnam, visits 2004-08; modified 2017
Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, 2011
Singapore and Malaysia, 2015

My photos on Flickr


Recommended external sites

Just Have a Think: The climate and sustainable energy (youtube) channel

Other Internet authors with similar views to mine

Miriam English; I can feel close to her in her writings on religion and the imperatives of looking after our environment.

Richard Parncutt, The Human Cost of Poverty and Climate Change

Peter Gardner; writer on climate change and sustainability.

Peter Gardener was from Gippsland where a friend of mine, the late Blair Donaldson lived. Blaire was a champion of renewable energy.

Julie May; Using renewable energy and living sustainably at home and beyond

Anthony C. Grayling; a philosopher who writes on subjects that should concern us all rather than on the obscure subjects that so many philosophers indulge in. I feel particularly close to his writings on humanity's delusions.

Emeritus Professor Simon Chapman was very strong in debunking the nonsensical delusion that wind turbines cause health problems (he was far more effective than me on this subject). He has long opposed the very real health impacts of tobacco smoking and more recently has written about vaping.

 
There is also an Australian section of A Commentary.
 
Web search engines
Don't Google?
 
On St Mary's Peak, Flinders Ranges, S. Australia

During my lifetime (1945-2024...) I have seen great brilliance and abysmal stupidity, great devotion to doing good and great devotion to gaining and holding onto wealth and power at any cost, great advances in science and determined following of religious and other superstitions and delusions, great love and care for our shared environment and far more environmental damage than in any other age. This is an age in which humanity has produced wonderful scientific advances and brilliant art and at the same time has been guilty of dreadful crimes, abysmal stupidity, remarkable blindness and despicable neglect. (Then there's The Great Contradiction in both Christianity and Islam.)

It is humanity's intelligence that sets the species apart from the other animals and gives us the power to change the environment; yet many of humanity's actions are prompted by short-term desires, selfishness, superstition or emotion rather than clear-thinking and intelligence; sadly, this is greatly to the detriment of the planet.

On this page...

Some thoughts
Some concepts

 
About the author of these pages: aims, motivations, background...

Why I changed the URL of my web site

This world could be a good world, a sane world, fair, just, moral. Why is it not? Apathy, selfishness, delusion, ignorance and simple stupidity. The drive to get ever more power and money are forms of selfishness. The failure to deal with climate change, ocean acidification, sea level rise, ocean warming and the air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels that kills millions of people world-wide each year is due to stupidity, selfishness and apathy in the vast majority of humanity.

 
A wind turbine in SE South Australia
Wind power generates electricity sustainably. It can help to make polluting fossil fuels redundant.
Science has allowed us to learn a huge amount about our world and universe, yet many people still cling to religion in the complete absence of any supporting evidence. Many of the milestones in the development of human society were steps toward a scientific understanding and away from delusion and religion. Science has been a superlative tool in discovering the truth, yet there are probably more lies being told publicly than in any other time in history. There are more tools available to us all that allow us to think critically at the present than at any time in the past, yet many people believe as much nonsense as in any other age.

The belief that one is absolutely right or has access to infallible knowledge – whether it be in the Bible, Koran, Mein Kampf, or anywhere else – is a very dangerous thing; people with such beliefs can do, and have done, great harm. Doubt and scepticism are crucial. I have developed many ideas and opinions on these pages since I started writing them in 2001, but all are open to change. I'm very nearly sure that the Earth is round, about equally sure that there is no God and that we do not have immortal souls, but I admit that I may be wrong.

Most of us hold delusions, I continually try to check that my opinions and beliefs are based on evidence. The important thing is to not believe anything without sufficient justifying evidence, and the converse, to not fail to believe whatever the evidence indicates to be fact. I try to live by that.

Truth, ethics, ethical government, and care for our environment are fundamental needs. The alternative to developing an entirely sustainable way of interacting with our environment is a collapse such as those that history has recorded in civilisations that have disappeared – because their peoples didn't live sustainably.

If you want justice – not just for yourself, but big justice – you have to fight for it continuously. If you choose the alternative, apathy, don't complain about injustice; and remember that it is often those who govern, whether legally and constitutionally, or by default, through the power they wield over the governors, who are the greatest enemies of the common man. Those who govern like to cast outsiders as the enemy, this is often a smoke-screen, xenophobia diverts the attention of the plebs from the real problems, which are often much closer to home.


In these pages I have gone to a lot of effort to write truth, facts; where I've written opinion I've tried to make that obvious. I've written a page on how to find reliable information. The reliability (or otherwise) of particular sources can be checked through fact-checking sites. Two that I have used are Source Watch and Snopes. Others are Politifact and FactCheck.org.
The photos on these page are the property of the author, unless otherwise indicated. In many cases permission to use the photos in their low-definition form will be given free of charge, so long as attribution is given; higher definition versions will often be charged for. The photos should not be used without permission or for unethical or dishonest purposes.
This page and site was started, in a much smaller way on or about September 2001; it has been added to and edited many times since. This page was last edited on 2024/11/02
Contact: David K. Clarke – ©

These pages have allowed me to organise my ideas; in particular they have forced me to make my ideas and opinions consistent. In the opinions expressed on this site I have tried, above all, to be rational. If an opinion is irrational then it is without any value. If any reader believes that some of my opinions are irrational – or simply wrong – I would appreciate being provided with arguments to that effect.

This site was written in Australia from an Australian perspective. (For US citizens – Australia is not to be confused with Austria; it is a predominantly English speaking [well, a form of English anyway] large island nation [almost as big as your own country!] on the bottom side of the world. I am not an admirer of the USA.)



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Some of my favourite quotes; that are also pertinent to these pages

There are several quotes on the right to die and several others from each of Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell below.
"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness"
William L. Watkinson, 1907.
It has been used by Peter Benenson, founder of Amnesty International (hence AI's emblem).

This is so fundamentally important a concept, and one that a great many people apparently fail to grasp, that I should explain what it means. It is this: if you don't like the way something is, don't just complain about it, do what you can to make it better.

"If ever there were a cause which should unite us all, old or young, rich or poor, climate change must be it."
Kofi Annan Secretary General of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006

"Between 1945 and 2005 the United States has attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes. In the process, the U.S. caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair."
William Blum, third edition of Rogue State. See Real USA, on this site, for more of the crimes of this rogue state.

"The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it."
Robert Swan, OBE, Explorer and Environmentalist

"Life has no remote. Get up and change it yourself."
Sukhraj Dhillon

"Do to others what you would have them do to you."
anonymous, often called The Golden Rule, in one form or another it is common to most major religions.
This – and the question, "What if everybody behaved that way?" – could practically be called the basis of all ethics.

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
William Butler Yeats, 1865 to 1939

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
George Bernard Shaw, 1856 to 1950
I remember once being advised to not worry about that which I cannot change; it seemed good advice at the time. But one must be very sure that one cannot change it; if something needs to be changed and is not being changed, then why should anyone else change it if I am unwilling to try?

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
Richard Dawkins on Militant Atheism, 2002

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
Christopher Hitchens, Hitchins's Razor

"Since the dawn of our species, an unquenchable curiosity has driven us to ask and re-ask the same questions: Who are we? Where do we come from ? Are we alone? Myths offered the first answers: myths of creation and of spirit worlds. From here, one trail led to religion and to answers grounded in faith. But another trail led to philosophy–to reasoning. Pure reasoning at first, then reasoning aided by observation and experiment–what we now call science."
David Koerner and Simon LeVay from Here be Dragons: The Scientific Quest for Extraterrestrial Life

"Every nation has the government that it deserves."
Joseph de Maistre [Letter on the subject of Russia, Aug. 1811]
Very applicable in the modern world where apathetic, selfish and short-sighted voters have allowed democracies to become plutocracies.

"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely"
Lord Acton, a British historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

 
Aldo Leopold
"I am a citizen, not of Athens or Greece, but of the World."
Socrates [Plutarch, De Exilio, v]
A remarkably applicable, even essential, attitude for the modern world. What Socrates could see in c. 300BC the G.W. Bush administration of the USA and the Howard Government of Australia were incapable of seeing in the early 21st century

"An unexamined life is not worth living."
Socrates, Plato's Apology.

"Magna est veritas et praevalebit": Truth is great and shall prevail.
Book of Edras (Ezra), Latin Vulgate Bible
(Unfortunately, in regard to climate change, by the time the truth prevails it will be too late for thousands or millions of species and billions of people.)

"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle I no longer despair for the future of the human race."
H. G. Wells, Born 1866/09/21, died 1946/08/13. How much more relevant is this now, when we must greatly reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn!

"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nattiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.
John Maynard Keynes

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead, American Anthropologist (1901 – 1978)

"It is foolish to wait until you reach the summit before enjoying the view."
Author unknown, Chinese proverb.

"When the wind of change blows some build walls while others build windmills"
Author unknown, Chinese proverb.

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
Groucho Marx

"Opinions are like arseholes in that everyone has one. There is great wisdom in this... But I would add that opinions differ significantly from arseholes in that your opinion should be constantly and thoroughly examined."
A slight variation on Tim Minchin in his book, You don't have to have a dream.

"If you think you are too small to make a difference, you've never been in a room with a mosquito."
Annita Roddick (of The Body Shop), from "Business as Unusual"
Consider this before you say that your country (or the world) is a mess but you cannot do anything about it.

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"Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things – that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate.

(The above saying would be more accurate if the word 'religion' was replaced with the word 'delusion'. Religion certainly will serve as the needed delusion, but it is not the only delusion that will cause good people to do bad things; for example there have been several people, at least one of whom was well-meaning, who did great harm spreading a deluded belief that wind turbines caused illnesses. Fortunately this particular delusion seems to have died a natural death.)

"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."
Napoleon Bonapart

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
Seneca the younger

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
Voltaire, French author, humanist, rationalist, and satirist (1694 - 1778)

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."
Eleanor Roosevelt, US politician, diplomat and activist (1884 – 1962)

"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
A summation of Voltair's beliefs on freedom of thought and expression, actually written by Evelyn Beatric Hall
Contrary to that, I would doubt that anyone has the right to knowingly lie.

"We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality."
Ayn Rand
Very pertinent in an age in which we can see what must be done (eg. in regard to climate change) but are not doing it.

"The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse?...the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?..."
Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832
On discussing whether animals should have rights as people have rights.

"In reality one could say that never have so many stayed in school so long to learn so little."
Stanislav Andreski, Social Sciences as Sorcery, 1972

"The lesson of history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government will try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies. My hope is that you will not be content to be successful in the way our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you."
Howard Zinn – Address to Spelman College, 2005. (Also see a Howard Zinn quote on civil disobedience on another page.)

"Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse."
African proverb

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime"
The origin is contested, it seems that the saying may have evolved

"The essence of science is skepticism. The essence of religion is faith."
"Science is not a set of beliefs, it is a method."
Author unknown

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Edmund Burke
The alternative is to leave running the world to politicians and the various business lobbies. The executives in charge of multinational companies that employ many of the lobbyists have enormous power and very little morality.


The quotes below are from Bertrand Russell who lived from 1872 to 1970

"The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction."
Bertrand Russell (1872 to 1970), from Let the People Think, 1941
Religion comes to mind.

"Hitherto species of mankind have survived because however foolish their purposes might be they had not the knowledge required to achieve them. Now that this knowledge is being acquired, a greater degree of wisdom than heretofore as regards the ends of life is becoming imperative. But where is such wisdom to be found in our distracted age?"
Bertrand Russell, from his introduction to the book The New Generation, written in 1930. In 2022 we are obviously a long way from achieving the needed wisdom.

"It seems to me that science has a much greater likelihood of being true in the main than any philosophy hitherto advanced (I do not, of course, except my own). In science there are many matters about which people are agreed; in philosophy there are none. Therefore, although each proposition in science may be false, yet we shall be wise to build our philosophy upon science, because the risk of error in philosophy is sure to be greater than in science. If we could hope for certainty in philosophy the matter would be otherwise, but so far as I can see such a hope would be chimerical."
Bertrand Russell, Logical Atomism
Russell was in my opinion possibly the pre-eminent philosopher of the twentieth century. I don't think this should be thought of as diminishing the importance of philosophy; if we are to truly understand science we must understand some philosophy, and how could we make any sense of life without philosophy?
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"I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must, of course, admit that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform our social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless, this must weigh against it."
Bertrand Russell
Skeptical Essays, I (1928)
There are obvious implications to religion. The claim that wind turbines make people sick also comes to mind.

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
Bertrand Russell
Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt come to mind in the first group. Look up the Dunning-Kruger effect

This one is not a quote in the same sense as the others. Russell's Teapot; "an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others." Wikipedia gives a full explanation. It has particular reference to the god delusion.

A number of quotes from Russell about the importance of evidence can be read on AZ Quotes.
Bertrand Russell


"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
Isaac Newton

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"If a thousand people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
Chinese proverb
Very apposite to religion. A billion Christians believe that Jesus was the Son of God and that all the Muslims are wrong; a billion Muslims believe that all the Christians are wrong and Mohammed had all the answers. They all believe a foolish thing.

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind"
Mohandas Gandhi
Bombing a nation in return for a terrorist attack is only going to achieve more hatred.

"Live simply so others may simply live"
Mohandas Gandhi
Consume less so that you are responsible for less environmental damage.

"But I have not met anyone who seriously argues that the world could support 12 times the current [human] impact, although an increase of that factor would result from all [current] Third World inhabitants adopting First World living standards."
"In the long run, rich people do not secure their own interests and those of their children if they rule over a collapsing society and merely buy themselves the privilege of being the last to starve or die."
From Collapse by Jared Diamond, 2005

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away."
From Walden by Henry David Thoreau, 1854

"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty"
Author unknown: variously attributed to Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Jefferson.

"I believe that the proper utilisation of time is this, if you can, serve other people, other sentient beings. If not, at least refrain from harming them. I think that is the whole basis of my philosophy."
The Dalai Lama, From "The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living"
I would go further and say that we should try to serve the biosphere; that is, work for the welfare of all life on earth. The damage that Man is doing to the planet harms all living things. Compassion for all is the key.

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On the right to die

"The only part of the conduct of any one, for which [a citizen] is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty
Pertinent to the right to voluntary euthanasia, assisted dying and suicide as a rational decision

"Making someone die in a way that others approve, but the dying person believes to be a horrifying contradiction of his life, is a devastating, odious form of tyranny."
Ronald Dworkin; philosopher and scholar

"... suicide is the most basic right of all. If freedom is self-ownership—ownership over one's own life and body—then the right to end that life is the most basic of all. If others can force you to live, you do not own yourself and belong to them."
Thomas Szasz (the above quote is taken from Wikipedia.)

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."
John Philpot Curran, Lord Mayor of Dublin
The reference to God is a bit archaic, but the concept is very true.

"Causes shall not be multiplied beyond necessity."
William of Occam (alternatively spelled Ockham), 1285 to about 1343
Ockham's Razor: Why hypothesize a god when the hypothesis serves no useful purpose?

"What is morally wrong cannot be economically right."
Gordon Brown (PM of Britain), 8th December 2004. The Pope Paul VI memorial lecture, CAFOD, London.
Why can so few politicians see this?

"When you are trying to change people's ethical views, you accomplish nothing by clashing your views against theirs – all you get is a counterthrust. It is far better to show that the conclusion you wish them to draw is implicit in what they already believe, albeit unnoticed."
Bernard E Rollin; Science and Ethics

"A busy woman is a happy woman"
Zac Sibenaler; not entirely seriously

"Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."
Cæsar in Cæsar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw, 1898
Religion leads us to such barbaric ideas.

"There are perhaps 5% of the population that simply can't think. There are another 5% who can think, and do. The remaining 90% can think, but don't."
Robert Heinlein, 1907 to 1988



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Epicurus rejected the idea of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god. There are several interpretations of what is called the "Epicurean paradox" (or trilemma):
  • Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
  • Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
  • Is he both able and willing? Then where did evil come from?
  • Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
And below as summarised by David Hume:
  • If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful.
  • If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.
  • If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?
It is worth my mentioning here that Epicurus lived about 300 BC.


"Men never do evil so completely as when they do it from religious conviction."
Blais Pascal

"I aimed to make the Earth a better place – and failed miserably"
Professor Harry Messel
(I'm sure that this was said tongue-in-cheek. The world was a better place for his having lived than it would have been had he not lived; that is the important thing.)

"A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguishable from the truth."
Daniel Kahneman
Relivant to climate science denial

"I don't understand why when we destroy something created by man we call it vandalism, but when we destroy something created by nature we call it progress."
Ed Begley, Jr.

"People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
    Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
    Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
    Succeed anyway.
The kindness you show today will be forgotten tomorrow.
    Be kind anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
    Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
    Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
    Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
    Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
    Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
    Give the world the best you have anyway."
Kent M. Keith The Paradoxical Commandments, 1968

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"I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again"
Generally credited to Stephen Grellet, but without proven attribution

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Herman Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall and commander of the Luftwaffe, at the Nuremberg trials.
Pertinent to the way President George W. Bush and Prime Minister John Howard treated their respective peoples just before the second Iraq War.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Joseph Goebels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945

"Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the Lord in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the Lord's people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."
Moses instructing the captains of Israel in the Bible, Numbers, Chapter 31, verses 15 to 18; and yet many people claim that we can learn ethics from the Bible!
Some of the above were from Pithy Sayings.


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The quotes below are from Albert Einstein who lived from 1879 to 1955

"One has to realise that the powerful industrial groups concerned in the manufacture of arms are doing their best in all countries to prevent the peaceful settlement of international disputes ..."

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

The only two things that are infinite in size are the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not completely sure about the universe." (He might have replaced 'human stupidity' with 'human selfishness'.)

It seems I agree with Einstein in most things other than religion. Unfortunately I have never learned to play a musical instrument.

The quotes below were extracted from https://www.rd.com/article/albert-einstein-quotes/, the advertising and other dross were left behind. I have underlined those I particularly like.

Albert Einstein quotes about life

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

“The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

I believe in one thing—that only a life lived for others is a life worth living.

"Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, observing, there we enter the realm of art and science.”

"Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.”

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”

“A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit, and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?”

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

"He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.”

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

"I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”

Albert Einstein imagination quotes

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.”

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.”
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Inspirational Albert Einstein quotes

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

“I believe in standardising automobiles. I do not believe in standardising human beings.”

“A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”

"I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.”

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am.”

“My passion for social justice has often brought me into conflict with people, as has my aversion to any obligation and dependence I did not regard as absolutely necessary.”

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

Albert Einstein famous quotes

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

“The greatest scientists are artists as well.”

“Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech.”

“It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”

“I would teach peace rather than war. I would inculcate love rather than hate.”

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music - I cannot tell if I would have done any creative work of importance in music, but I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin.”

One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.


"Whether in business, politics, science, or whatever, the best thing to do is find somebody who is smart and disagrees with you."
Worden, Simon P. (Pete)
Good advice, but to be useful to you, you must be able to respect those people. There are few people I've publicly disagreed with in whom I've found much to respect.
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Some thoughts

One of the most important things that you can do is to consider the consequences of your actions. Perhaps the single most important thing that you can do is to examine all your beliefs and see if they are supported by the available evidence.
What right does anyone else have to tell you how and when you must die? More on this in my pages on some thoughts about euthanasia and death.
When considering whether something is worth doing, ask yourself, will it make the world a better place?
Two related ideas:
Try to see things through different eyes;
Instead of always doing something the same way, think, is there a better way?
People demand cheap energy, the environment demands the energy we use be clean; this is why we need to replace fossil fuels with renewable power.
When climate change is destroying the world as we know it, why is only about one person in a thousand making a serious effort to do anything about it?
Little good can be done by lying; little harm by telling the truth.
If you try you may fail, if you do not try you will certainly achieve nothing.
Normality is nothing to be proud of.
According to Wikipedia there are about 4,200 religions in the world. The great majority of the people involved believe that those accepting the truth of the 4,199 religions other than their own have got it wrong. Atheists just go one further.
(Not entirely original, I've read something very similar from someone.)
The only point in arguing with a close-minded person on social media is that an open-minded person might gain something out of following the argument.
Anything that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood. (variation on Murphy)
This is a wonderful world, if you can overlook the selfishness, greed, stupidity, naïvity and delusion in so many of its people. There is also amazing kindness, unselfishness, compassion and dedication to doing good in many people.
In this world increased artificial intelligence might be good, but decreased natural stupidity would be a whole lot better.
You can do a lot of good in this world, but it is best to not expect recognition for your efforts (if you do get recognition, so much the better).
Do-gooders get a lot of criticism. Surely the alternatives to being a do-gooder are being a do-badder or a do-nothinger.
While I would encourage everyone to try to do good, a great deal of harm has been done by people believing they were doing good while actually doing harm. They were deluded. Look carefully at the available evidence and at what the relevant scientists are saying.
An irony? At a time when we have cameras that allow us to far more easily record and display the world’s beauty than ever before we are destoying it at a greater pace than ever before.
The ideal power station would be available all the time, would produce low-cost emission-free electricity, and would be able to increase and decrease its generation quickly to follow the variation in demand. The ideal power station does not exist.
Put 3kW of solar panels on your roof and you save four of five tonnes of CO2 per year; help get a twenty turbine wind farm built by spreading the facts on wind power and you will have a part in saving 180,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. See why support wind power? and why I support the proposed local wind farm?

This and the two statements below apply to utility scale wind turbines (about 3MW) operating in mainland Australia around 2015. I wrote them when there was much naïve ignorance about, and opposition to, wind farm development in Australia.


Catchy, simplistic, but true

"For every hour that a wind turbine operates there will be about one tonne less CO2 going into the atmosphere."

"A wind turbine operating for three hours reduces CO2 emissions as much as taking one car off the roads for a year."

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Some concepts

There are a number of concepts that are used on these pages that not all readers will be familiar with. This index (created in April 2010) aims at pointing to places in these pages that best explain the concepts.

Australia – too small to make a difference to climate change?
Base load; relating to electricity supply;
What is climate change? What could we be doing about it?
Climate change denial, A; B; C; D; E; F; G
Contraction and convergence; equitable sharing of the atmosphere
Corporate greed: an unjust distribution of income;
Demand side management, or price-responsive-load, relating to electricity supply;
Dying languages
Embodied energy (and embodied CO2)
Energy
Energy units, definitions and conversions;
Energy density;
Energy return on investment (EROI);
Ethics: a hugely important subject that is little understood by most;
The Great Golden Age
Land ownership, or land stewardship?
Ocean acidification
Ockham's Razor
Payload ratio;
The Scientific method; many talk about science, who could say exactly what it is?
Science in practice;
Power
Sustainable energy;
Our civilisation is unsustainable;
Weight-to-power ratio;
Who is 'the enemy'?, whom should we fear?;
Wind power concepts.
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Why I changed the URL of my web site

 

Ventra IP

Ventra IP have provided me with an excellent hosting service. I would recomnend them to anyone. Their service was good when I gave my business to them, they have only improved since.
My web pages under my old URL, ramblingsdc.net, were hosted by Yahoo Small Business. They closed down their web hosting services about April 2021 forcing me to change to a different hosting service. I changed to VentraIP, a Sydney Australia based service.

I would have stayed with the same URL, but Yahoo Small Business would not release the name, in spite of it being my property and in spite of my numerous requests (that they simply did not respond to).

So, I registered a new URL. I believe that the name 'A commentary on an age of contradictions' is a more appropriate name than the old name, 'Ramblings of a bush philosopher'.

This, of course, has resulted in the many links to ramblingsdc becoming useless. Google Search seems to be largely ignoring my new web site, comagecontra.net, after previously giving many of my pages, on the old web site, a high ranking. Several other search engines have indexed my new web site, see my page on web search engines.


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