Longer Step: Ideas for Justice and Sustainability

  A suburb in The Netherlands requires that every homeowner grow food on at least half of their property! There are so many reasons why this is brilliant: 1. While a lawn has good uses--cut grass is the best plant for resisting heavy foot traffic, and it's pleasant to sit on. But lawn is a monoculture. Not very good for the environment, especially when we pour gallons of synthetic chemicals into it, which kill beneficial soil organisms. Therefore, anything that replaces some lawn with other plants is good. 2. You save money when you grow your own food. Yes, there are $40 tomatoes, but those gardeners are doing it wrong ;) That $20 semi-dwarf apple tree that you planted with $7 of chicken manure and $5 worth of mulch will turn into $100s of dollars of good fruit. That $3 6-pack of kale will feed you greens, which would cost maybe $50 in the store, for an entire year. 3. You get fresher, riper produce if you grow it yourself. 4. Your food supply is more sustainable if there is a mas...

  My fellow writers in the Speculative Fiction Writers Group are so thoughtful. Right now, many of us are upset, thinking about the news that Harper Collins will start giving its human authors' work product to AI, in order to develop the ability of AI to write its own fiction. There are so many ways to think about this: On the 'pro' side, Th ere are so many examples of tech replacing humans : In farming we have tractors and huge combines now , not rows of serfs . In weaving we have automated looms , not teams of weavers . In the kitchen we have food processors , not six sous chefs . Y et this 'let 's replace writers ' push is so worrying . Is that because we writers want to write and don't want to be replaced ? Should the rule be "use AI only where humans want the AI ? ' In which case , who gets to decide ? I think the main arguments against using AI to write creative fiction is this: A I should be a tool that assists humans , not a replacement fo...

  Several thoughts about 3000 North Korean soldiers headed to Ukraine: a. Countries in a war always seek allied soldiers to help them. The US does it all the time. There is nothing immoral about it (except war itself is immoral of course). b. A retired US general said these are inexperienced N.Korean kids who may know how to goosestep but they will get mowed down in short order by the Ukrainians, the most-experienced, hardest-edged soldiers in the world right now. c. North Korea's entry is spurring S.Korea to give much more aid to Ukraine, and S.Korea's high-tech military arsenal has the best electronics in the world. So it's likely N.Korea's entry will turn out embarrassing for both Russia and N.Korea. Meanwhile, as the war drags on, it will become, in hindsight, a monumental diplomatic and military tragedy for the Biden administration, which gave just enough aid to prevent Ukraine from losing, but not enough for winning, and at some point the steady dying of Ukrainian...

  From an 'environmental stability' perspective, we'd like to see fossil fuel usage declining, while renewable energy use increases. Well, we have the 2nd part, but not the first one: Fossil fuel use continues to grow, as overall energy demand keeps increasing worldwide. Buckle up, everybody--the world will keep getting warmer and the storms worse. (Photo credit: The Guardian.com)

  HW Bush (the father) had honorable military and CIA service, and was the last Republican who was intelligent, honorable, and competent, though I disagreed with many of his positions. Romney comes to mind as an intelligent, honorable man, though he lost. Then there were a pair of unsatisfactory Republicans: one an idiot and the other both an idiot and dishonest: younger Bush (who tormented us when we lived in TX; his greatest failure was starting unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which cost trillions and permanent brain injuries in thousands of American soldiers), and Trump, a narcissistic Facist who understands almost nothing except how to berate and antagonize others for personal gain. Most of the less-educated citizens now follow that party. The Democrats fare a little better. Clinton was a moral scuz but most of his positions were good for the country (except his excessive support of Big Business), and Clinton has the distinction of being the last President who oversaw...

  I try to think like a Futurist. (That isn't to say that I ever do it well.) But the question churning in my mind is: At what point do we need to de-populate the coastal areas of Florida? I could imagine giving everything below, say, 50' elevation in Florida back to nature, and people would simply be moved to higher ground. Let Nature take over the coasts. People could go there for the day to play on the beach or marvel at the crumbling post-modern buildings as they rusted back to ground. That's short term thinking, however, as yet another hurricane forms to slam into Florida's west coast. Long-term thinking would be to anticipate 50' sea level rise, or even 200', when/if all the land ice melts. Might as well get started now in our preparations, instead of just rebuilding over and over in places where the new construction will only be destroyed again. That feels futile and misguided. And if Governor Desantis finds himself king of a smaller and smaller land, th...