May 2018

IF I HAD JEFF BEZOS’ MONEY
IF I HAD JEFF BEZOS’ MONEY
May 24, 2018 In Big Ideas Economics Environment Opinion Perspective Planetary Citizen Politics No Comment

Just had this piece published this morning on the Stanford University MAHB website. MAHB stands for Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere.

If I had Jeff Bezos’ Money

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MURMURATIONS
MURMURATIONS
May 15, 2018 In Big Ideas Biology Nature Video No Comment

A flock of birds…thousands of small starlings in flight…exhibits behavior that can only be attributed to some kind of collective consciousness.    Murmurations are reflections of nature dancing, with thousands of participants moving together, rippling and rolling over the landscape, without bumping into each other.  We find this kind of collective consciousness in other species.  Bees, and ants, and other social insect species work together tirelessly, bound by something unseen, to survive and thrive through cooperation and shared responsibilities.  Schools of fish exhibit the same behavior, ganging up on predators to confuse and defeat the common threat.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if humans could learn to murmurate, at least occasionally, to serve a greater, common good.  Actually, we humans do exhibit this kind of selfless,  altruistic behavior on a small scale. An example would be Habitat for Humanity’s voluntary cooperation to provide homes for people in need.  Our common interests would benefit if we behaved this way a lot more often.

 

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CHASING NEW HORIZONS
CHASING NEW HORIZONS
May 9, 2018 In Big Ideas Book Reviews Science No Comment

New Horizons is the name of the NASA unmanned space mission that did a flyby, within 8,000 miles of the furthest planet in our solar system, Pluto.  To put that in perspective ,  to get to Pluto, New Horizons, after launch from Cape Canaveral in 2006 had to travel 3 billion miles. It took nine years at a speed of 31,000 mph to reach Pluto.  It is so far from Earth, that radio signals from the spacecraft take 4.5 hours, traveling at the speed of light [186,000 miles per second] to make the trip home.

New Horizons is an absolutely remarkable human achievement.  So much could have gone wrong. Virtually nothing did go wrong.  There were perilous moments, but the NASA New Horizons team made it work, almost flawlessly.

Chasing New Horizons, the new book chronicling the mission to Pluto was written by planetary scientist, David Grinspoon. who co-authored the book with New Horizons Mission Director, Alan Stern. Credit Grinspoon with a wonderfully engaging read.  I found it hard to put down.  Grinspoon’s writing style is breezy, with wonderful insight into the political and technical challenges, and the dedication required to  successfully navigate to a place  three billion miles distant.

In fact, what this book revealed was that the constant political challenges that jeopardized the mission were far more frustrating than the many technical issues that had to be overcome in going to a daunting place like the planet, Pluto.

Great story. Great read.

This is the planet Pluto, taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, during its flyby in July, 2015

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