Thoughts and Thinkers
Douglas Rushkoff: program or be programmed
I’ve begun practicing with my imagination every day. I’ve been doing this for a while but now I’m making it a requirement. The more I do this, the more present I feel and the more free my thoughts become. Our imagination is dictated to us by movies, television and pop culture. Most of us are [...]
beware journalism, peak advertising is like peak oil
In his latest post on Reality Sandwich, Charles Eisenstein draws a connection between advertising and oil that is clever and timely, Don’t get me wrong — I am not proclaiming the demise of advertising (I am an optimistic person, but even my optimism knows limits!). I am suggesting, rather, the advent of Peak Advertising, and [...]
Anya Kamenetz on rapidly morphing landscape of higher education
A great interview with Anya Kamenetz outlines some of the ways that higher education is rapidly changing drawing on the concepts in her book, DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. I recommend reading the whole interview but one of my main concerns is the cost of higher ed. While the [...]
change everything you think in two hours
This is the one track of audio to rule them all. In it, bard and sage and storyteller and author Terence McKenna speaks on the origin of human consciousness in a talk titled, Evolving Times. Terence McKenna has had a tremendous influence on the way I’ve developed since I first discovered him back in 2004. [...]
end of the coal age
Regardless of the consequences of peaking oil extraction rates, coal is the often overlooked driver of global economic growth. Coal provides the majority of the electricity responsible for our way of life and for consistent industrial production, around 49% of the electricity generated in the US comes from coal. When I worked for a coal-based [...]
wind power generation connected via transmission spanning the atlantic
A recent study proposes a solution for one of the biggest problems facing large scale wind power generation, the intermittence of wind leading to a generation profile that’s difficult for utilities to manage. The authors propose wind turbines all along the Atlantic coast of the US connected via transmission to mitigate this problem.
confronting collapse
I first learned of Mike Ruppert through a chilling trailer for his then upcoming movie, Collapse. Ruppert has a long history as an investigative journalist that began when he broke away from the mainstream after his excellence in the LA police led him to be actively recruited by the CIA for running cocaine through South-Central [...]
the physics of the impossible inspire a sense of wonder
It is not a stretch to say that Michio Kaku is singularly responsible for my undergraduate major in Physics. Back in 2004, the shiny cover on the front of Parallel Worlds led me to promptly purchase the book as I walked into a bookstore in Concord, NC. Inside those pages were a rich description of [...]
can an experimenter determine his or her reality?
Unfortunately the claims of quantum mechanics get overblown by new age philosophers in the vein of “What the Bleep do we Know” and other such meaningless extrapolations of quantum physics, e.g. just because an electron takes every possible path to travel from point A to point B that doesn’t me we can. However, this doesn’t [...]
how Cuba survived peak oil, a model for the US and Canada?
On Tuesday night I attended a screening of How Cuba Survived Peak Oil at the Simon KY Lee Global Lounge at UBC. I’ve had this video on my computer for a while but haven’t had a chance to actually watch through it so having the opportunity to do so with a group was great. The [...]
