It was a rough night.  Nightmare became reality.  Not only will Donald Trump again become president, but the U.S. Senate will be Republican controlled.  Probably the House too.  Said   Time : Trump campaigned on an authoritarian agenda that would   upend America’s democratic norms , and he is already preparing to deliver on it: mass detention and deportations of migrants; revenge against political enemies via the justice system; deploying the military against his own civilians. How far he chooses to go with the power the public has handed him is a question that will shape the fate of the country. A good look at  Project 2025  provides you the Trump agenda.   Global warming?  While it might not be a hoax anymore, the U.S. will not be cooperative, citing the actual recalcitrance of China and India as reasons.  Trump is also beholden to fossil fuel interests.  The world will suffer. Freedom?   Abortion rights will b...

For the past couple of days I've been keeping you up to date on our two stranded NASA astronauts on the International Space Station.    Today, NASA shared one more scary bit of news : Their assessment is that if Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were to soon return on the semi-crippled Starliner spacecraft, the odds of not making it back alive would only be 1 in 270. Sure, if a horse had those same odds, it would almost never win. However, two human lives are worth a lot more than a losing horse. Consider this: According to a 2017   Harvard University   study, the odds that your plane will crash are one in 1.2 million, and the odds of dying from a crash are one in 11 million. Your chances of dying in a car accident, meanwhile, are one in 5,000 . In other words, you would have a 40,740 times better chance on a successful commercial flight than what is facing those astronauts. Another study found that more than 95% of aircraft occupants survived the crash. Two other ways...

But first, a news flash:   DONALD TRUMP FOUND GUILTY.  E. JEAN CARROL IS AWARDED $5 MILLION .  What will this mean to his presidential candidacy?  Well, the worst is yet to come.  Democrats will try to delay any further prosecution of this heel, for they want him to screw up the Republican Party. My very  first posting occurred on 29 April 2008 .  It was entitled SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth and Humanity, the title of this blog.  I said: Some relative costs per gallon: Gasoline in USA $ 3.50 Gasoline in Hong Kong $ 7.50 (similar to Europe) Scope Mouthwash $ 15.00 Gallon of Beer in Restaurant $ 20.00 Evian (naïve backwards) $ 21.00 Brake Fluid (mostly oil) $ 34.00 Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch $ 160.00 Vick’s Nyquil $ 180.00 Channel #5 Perfume $4000.00 Computer printer ink $5000.00 I further said the price of petroleum just shot past $110/barrel, but that is only $2.62/gallon.  Energy is expensive, but cheap.   If you sc...