Heat Wave I am starting to read that we should expect a very hot summer. They are already posting record-breaking temperatures in some unusual places like northern Norway (Mr. Trump’s favorite go-to country of white, pale people), reaching up into the arctic circle in unprecedented manner. When I hear about temperatures that are in the 120oF+ I think about how uncomfortable I get at 80oF if the humidity gets over 40% I think…
Standing Strong in China We are all familiar with the iconic picture of the unknown “Tank Man” standing in Tiananmen Square, blocking a column of tanks in a student-led protest for more civil liberties in China. The result was thousands of deaths and arrests of Chinese citizens in the ensuing days of protests. It was a threshold for the world, but less so for China, itself. I saw a BBC piece where a reporter…
Getting Out of Voting The biggest problem faced by liberal democracy is disaffection. It is a pernicious problem because the vicious cycle it breeds is obvious. If you feel your vote doesn’t count or that it won’t change anything, then perhaps you get apathetic and choose not to bother voting. The forces of darkness prevail, and they not only push policies that further disadvantage those disaffected non-voters, but they put in place voting restriction…
There’s No Accounting for Taste Do you remember that scene from the original Ghostbusters movie when The EPA nerd lets loose the ghosts that the team has trapped and kept in a special Ecto-Containment Unit in the wall of the converted firehouse (actually located in Tribeca just off West Broadway)? The team is forced to describe to the mayor what will happen if the ghosts get out. Venkman says, “This city is headed for…
Sicko I am blessed with a good healthy constitution, which I attribute mostly to my upbringing of eating a lot of emerging markets dirt. I spent six hears of my youth in the less than hermetically sealed areas of Latin America. The tropical valley in Costa Rica for two years seems somewhat self-explanatory. Things were always on the edge there. The edge of the jungle. The edge of civilization. The edge of tropical dampness. …
The World Can Use a Guy Like You Yesterday, I was getting my hair cut at my favorite $17 Albanian/Uzbeki barbershop on Broadway. I was in a spaced-out frame-of-mind, given my long day of transatlantic travel, followed immediately by a movie birthday party for my granddaughter and her dad. They were showing that 1985 classic, Back to the Future. I got to see the flux capacitor go from needing plutonium to generate 1.21 Gigawatts of…
The Guy Behind Me I don’t really use Twitter or Instagram because I never feel that my whereabouts and my thoughts as expressed in short, clipped tweets or a selfie should be that interesting to anyone but my dearest closest relationships. Let’s put it this way, my wife might feel forced to keep up with all that, but I doubt even my kids would want that much information about me on a streaming basis. Therefore,…
Alone in New York I just watched an obscure independent film called Alone in Berlin. It starred Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson, so maybe it shouldn’t be so obscure. It’s message was somber and serious, but it rings loudly in my ears. It is the story of Otto and Elise Hampel, who in 1940, during the invasion of France, lost their only son in battle for the Third Reich. His death, in a lonely forrest…
Courtesy Counts Yesterday I finished up a two-day conference in Rotterdam. It’s 7am at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam and I’m sitting at a lonely Delta gate waiting for the onslaught of passengers, ticket agents and duty-free agents to descend on this place for the 9am JFK flight. There is a large African man sitting ten feet away and he has not learned the basics of cellphone courtesy. He has taken several calls with an absurdly…
Huawei Hoo-hah I rarely come up against a problem I cannot conclude on if not have a preferred solution for. As the expression goes, not always right, but never in doubt. I have just found one that completely confounds me. I know its a big deal, but I cannot for the life of me see an easy answer that doesn’t sound totally crazy. The problem is the building and recently ripened problem of what to…