Tag Archive | "extinction"
Arts and minds
The overdeveloped left hemisphere of my brain tells me one thing. My emerging artistic side tells me another. But before we get to the core of the issue, a little personal history is warranted. During my final decade in the classroom, I pushed an integrative agenda. Attempting to bridge C. P. Snow’s eponymous “Two Cultures” [...]
Continue reading...Channeling Kurt Vonnegut
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
I presented at SUNY-Fredonia on 2 April 2012. The standing-room-only audience, in a room with 200 chairs, included about 30 students from a class on Kurt Vonnegut and similar number from a class on environmental chemistry. I was informed the Vonnegut students would be attending the day before the event, so I asked their instructor [...]
Continue reading...Media alert and new video clips
Friday, April 13, 2012
I’ll be interviewed by Michael C. Ruppert for The Lifeboat Hour Sunday, 15 April at 9:00 p.m. Eastern (6:00 p.m. on the Left Coast). Tune in here. My recent trip to the northeastern United States included 13 presentations. At least one was recorded. I presented on the topic of three paths to near-term human extinction [...]
Continue reading...The cost of affluence
Friday, March 30, 2012
In a letter to Ernest de Chabrol dated 9 June 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: “As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring it?” Nearly [...]
Continue reading...TEDx talks in Tempe, Arizona
Friday, March 2, 2012
I presented a TEDx talk on the campus of Arizona State University on Wednesday, 25 January 2012. The Barrett Honors College hosted, and Ashley Irvin was the facilitator. Michael Sliwa spoke before me and, as is customary for TED talks, a couple short video clips were included. All clips are presented below in the same [...]
Continue reading...Taking a hike
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
I’ve long accepted the words of Hunter S. Thompson in The Proud Highway: “We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of True Romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do [...]
Continue reading...Mixed media
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
I delivered two TED-style talks at the 2011 International Conference on Sustainability, Transition and Culture Change in Bellaire, Michigan. The presentations embedded below were delivered to the few dozen people remaining at the conference on its fourth day, Sunday, 13 November. The first video clip describes my personal journey in the usual, self-indulgent manner, and [...]
Continue reading...Couchsurfing with my soapbox
Thursday, September 29, 2011
My recent foray to Wisconsin and Michigan had me staying five different homes, hence sleeping in five different beds and eating at many different tables. It was quite an exciting adventure, spent with wide-awake people, and I hope to repeat the experience as many times as the industrial economy allows. I’ve embedded one of the [...]
Continue reading...Three paths to near-term human extinction
Saturday, August 20, 2011
About a decade ago I realized we were putting the finishing touches on our own extinction party, with the party probably over by 2030. During the intervening period I’ve seen nothing to sway this belief, and much evidence to reinforce it. Yet the protests, ridicule, and hate mail reach a fervent pitch when I speak [...]
Continue reading...Partial understanding on planet Easter Island
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
The recent S&P downgrade of U.S. debt is yet another example of a circus sideshow in a nation filled with clowns sleepwalking off a cliff. Ben Bernanke, the master of ceremonies in the most ridiculous show on Earth, has come up with a new scheme to print money, hence plunge a financially bankrupt nation further [...]
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Thursday, May 3, 2012
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