This post is a lightly-edited version of one that went out in my newsletter. If you like it, please consider signing up. I send out about ten newsletters a year. They include posts like this, reading recommendations, and sometimes some of my writing. My son just came home from fighting wildfires in Washington State. The …
Fire and Water…Musings on Climate and Governance Read More »
Jane Mayer’s Dark Money uses our recent political past to illuminate the off-kilter present. Reading it made made me very angry.  While our country has never been perfect, fair, or completely free of the influence of the rich, the events described in this book chronicle a slow, insidious, and nearly complete take-over the Republican Party by …
Reading Recommendation: Dark Money, by Jane Mayer Read More »
I am writing this from a coffee shop in DC.  One of the reasons I came here at this time was to participate in the March for Science right here in the capital. The March I ran into three friends, fellow writer Brenda Clough and her husband Larry Clough, and another fellow writer, Chris Cevasco. What a …
E. O. Wilson’s Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life is one of the best books I’ve read on the future of Earth. He states the problem clearly….after beginning with an apt description of what we (mankind) are like and then stating that we have little time to spend on the wrong trajectory, he says: “Meanwhile, we thrash about, …
Reading Recommendation: Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life Read More »
I’m currently at the 100 Year Starship Symposium.  This symposium was started by DARPA and is now run by Mae Jemison, who was the first black female astronaut to go into space. At the moment, I’m hearing about the 1400 planets that have been found.  That’s only in the last twenty years – it was roughly …
I’m currently at the the World Future Society meeting in San Francisco, and one of the highlights will be getting to ask science fiction author Ramez Naam some questions tomorrow afternoon.  I just finished the last book in his trilogy (Nexus, Crux, and Apex) on the plane on the way down. I was really just blown …
I spent the last week vacationing in the Mexican Riviera Maya, which runs from Cancun west along the Caribbean sea. The first time I came here, in 1998, a long somewhat sleepy highway ran along the coast and hand-made signs led to beach locations. We stayed in a small hotel, the Blue Parrot Inn in Playa …
Although the game design hackathon took place at the Center for Science and the Imagination at the Arizona State University, the Hieroglyph anthology is the brainchild of Seattle writer Neal Stephenson, who spoke on the topic of the intersection between creativity and innovation, and the power of science fiction to produce bold visions.
I’ve been off discussing the future at the World Future Society this month.  It’s a topic I engage in fairly regularly online and other places.  This is the most important conversation we can have a society.  Perhaps telling your family that you love them or walking your dog and chatting with neighbors is more important on some …
Somewhere around a dozen years ago, I was sitting in a bar in Eastern Washington. It could have been Lake Chelan or Yakima. I really don’t remember. But I do remember meeting two cowboys. Real cowboys (we still have them in the west). They weren’t talking about herds of cows over their beers.  They were talking …
