Engaging Life with Courage and Intelligence
Are you rich, but hit rush hour traffic? No problem. Soon, you will be able to turn into George Jetson and fly over the hoi polloi. A start-up in San Mateo County, California, has produced a prototype flying car. Alef Aeronautics recently received FAA approval to test its flying electric vehicle. It is more like…
An update on a post from May 17, 2025 The ninth launch of SpaceX’s Starship ended with two explosions, or, in Musk’s lingo, “rapid unscheduled disassemblies.” Not only did the booster explode after sending the second stage into low Earth orbit, but the second stage also disassembled over the Indian Ocean after going into an…
The week of May 19th could be redemption or yet another embarrassment for Trump’s sugar daddy. America’s favorite African-American recently said, “Just before the Starship flight next week, I will give a company talk explaining the Mars game plan in Starbase, Texas, that will also be live-streamed on X.“ Until Tesla’s value began to fall…
There can no longer be any doubt. The Trump Administration is hellbent on destroying American higher education. Trump is attacking higher education, as Mussolini did in 1931, Mao in 1968, and Viktor Orban in 2019. All dictators want to neuter and control the intellectual gold mines of their societies. This impulse is fueled by the…
As a history student, I have seen patterns in which normal social relationships break down. Government changes, unaddressed social inequities, wars, and famines often cause these pattern changes. In one example, from 1979 to 2015, the Communist Party declared that most Chinese couples could not have more than one child. Aside from the inevitable decline…
The word truthiness crept into the English language in 2005. It was coined by the satirical comedian Stephen Colbert. Truthiness denotes something to be true without any supporting facts or evidence. It was accepted as “truth” because it felt true or desired to be true. Truthiness is based on a person’s quick-firing gut instinct. Unlike…
It is too bad Carl Sagan is not around today. He was an outstanding scientist and a great communicator. In 1980, Sagan developed and narrated a 13-part PBS television series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Sagan was not only a television personality and scientist but also an outstanding educator and author. One of his lasting contributions…
I cut my teeth on mainframe computers, the behemoths of the early days of automation. In 1972, central processing units required huge air conditioners that circulated under raised flooring. Disk drives that stored 200 megabytes were larger than commercial refrigerators and cost $37,000 or $185 per megabyte. Today’s computers and disk drives are infinitely smaller…
This day might not be the best day to ask how humans became so smart. Americans, in particular, seem to be going in the opposite direction, regressing into a bottomless pit of ignorance and idiocy. However, the human race, as a whole, has become the intellectual masters of Earth. Other animals and even plants have…
There are many reasons why Tesla’s market value has dropped like a rock in a lake. Many believe that Musk’s childlike techno-libertarianism and the predictable reaction of people around the world are the primary causes of Tesla’s sudden decline. However, I think that is just one factor. The Tesla truck has become the laughingstock of…