It's a challenge to hang tough with the Peak Oil narrative these days. The general (and false) conception of Peak Oil theory was that it predicted that industrial society would run out of oil and that everything would grind to a halt. The perception today is that we are awash in oil from hydro-fracking and horizontal drilling and that this will be ( Read more... )

I recently had Keith Preston on the C-Realm Radio show where he made the point that Milo Yiannopoulis promotes a pretty mainstream Republican agenda. According to Keith, Milo's views are not particularly extreme and don't push the rightward boundary or mainstream political opinion on the contemporary American scene at all. His main distinguishing ( Read more... )

"Is that still a thing?"

I love that expression. I was wondering if the idea that California might secede from the United States was still a popular topic or if its day had come and gone. I opened a new browser tab and started to type my query. I had typed "Cali" when Google offered a list of potential completions. At the top of the list was " ( Read more... )

I remember reading about the I Ching in the alternate-history SF novel, The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick. In that novel, the character who consulted the oracle used the yarrow stalk method to determine which entry in the book to apply to the matter at hand. One can also use coins or even dice to speak on behalf of fate and guide the ( Read more... )

I asked the oracle, "How should I focus my efforts?"

The answer I got was hexagram 41, Decreasing, changing to hexagram 19, Nearing. I didn't specify a career focus when I started, but that's my primary concern.


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A few weeks ago, the topic of virtual reality came up in conversation on my weekly radio show. I explained that I have been anticipating the advent of virtual reality since the early 90s and that in my early 20s I would have given nearly anything to strap on the VR goggles (the vision was GLOVES and goggles back then) and step into a 3D computer ( Read more... )

The guys in the studio with me talked me through the opening screens of the new Star Wars Battlefront game. I had to direct my gaze at objects and then push the X button on the game controller to select the thing I was looking at. But since I was wearing a VR headset, I couldn't look down at the controller, so I didn't know which button was marked ( Read more... )

Today I got my first taste of virtual reality since I first experienced it back in 1996. My first VR experience took place at the SIGGRAPH conference in New Orleans in the summer of 1996.
I took part in three VR demonstrations. One was touted as a therapeutic aid for people who are afraid of heights. I stood on a small wooden platform that had a ( Read more... )

Eric Toensmeier told me that humans are not poisonous to the planet by nature. It's the system we live in that makes us toxic to the planet. He didn't say what aspect of the system is the noxious part, and so I wondered if he meant capitalism. The Soviet Union created loads of pollution and waste, and they were ideologically opposed to capitalism.
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Last summer, Olga and I drove down to Holyoke, Massachusetts to record a conversation with Eric Toensmeier, author of  The Carbon Farming Solution: A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food Security. We had a sit-down chat, and then we took a tour of his garden. The last ( Read more... )