I. The Philosophical Argument I find the concept of the Anthropocene to be the most philosophically compelling notion of the current age. Technically, the Anthropocene is not a philosophy, it’s a physical manifestation, but one that has critical implications for how we think about the world, relate to one another, and to nature. I grew up in a time when wild places, unexplored places, no longer really existed, the Poles conquered, Everest climbed, and then a Man on the Moon.

This is a poem I wrote in 2013. This month the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 426.5 ppm. I still have not stood next to, or near, a 'famous person of eminence' so far as I am aware (not very :-). It matters not, as we continue unabated to experience rarity in a form the majority of us, especially those without eminence, will likely regret. 400 ppm   In 1958 Charles Keeling Began measuring the concentration Of carbon dioxide in the troposphere On the Hawa

There’s far more causality between paying attention to the news, or worse social media, these days and becoming deranged, than there is between using Tylenol and either 'getting autism', or if you are a pregnant woman, using Tylenol, causing your child to 'get autism'. The joint announcement by the current President and HHS Secretary RF Kennedy that Tylenol, or its primary functional ingredient, acetaminophen, causes autism is another example of the erosion of trust and perh

Recently there was some hullabaloo in the small corner of the scientific world that I inhabit with the decision by Science Magazine to retract an article published in 2010 that claimed to have discovered arsenic-based life. Or at least those were the headlines at the time, the reality was that these researchers had claimed to discover a microorganism, a bacterium named Halomonas  to be more specific, that could use arsenic in place of phosphorus as a building block of life.

Prologue A few years ago my daughter gave me a ride into the campus of MIT where I had been i nvited to do a podcast and share my...

It takes a bit of courage and self-reflection for me to write this title, since conceptual ideas around evolution are foundational to my...

This is another post I did as part of my BDN blog around 2018. In the meantime, the rate we are adding carbon dioxide to the...

The first stanza and half the 2nd stanza of this poem were recorded on my phone while mountain biking in 2020. Through quick reflexes but...

This is a now quaint sounding thing I wrote six years ago, originally titled 'Is the Climate Singularity Now'. Ask yourself if the...

It’s reasonable to argue that ‘modern science’ is an American creation. By ‘modern science’ I really mean the rise of science as a...

Here’s my rant on the rabbit hole of internet-based algorithmic faith.    I’ve been a long-time reader of the economist Paul Krugman who...

I’m putting this blog up together with a BDN blog I did on evolution and synthetic biology in 2010, I could have sworn it was 2015 or...

This was a reflection on evolution that I wrote 15 years ago and posted on my BDN blog. It's the basis for a new blog reflecting on how...

This is a topic I’ve increasingly become involved with over the past few years. Geoengineering as popularly defined are attempts to do...

This is an earlier BDN post from 2016. I believe it still applies, perhaps more so than ever as TMFCICMF and the 'Musk'o'vites' seem to...

This is a topic I’ve increasingly become involved with over the past few years. I’ve taught a couple of Geoengineering courses at Colby...

Magnum Opus Novel Essay Elegy Chapter Verse Paragraph Sentence Words Syllables (Sleigh bells!) Letters Punctuation Parentheses...

Exciting, I get to introduce a new partner: I was fooling around on my Dad’s old Ham Radio set, and not knowing a capacitor from a split...

Despite the fact that the planet just recorded it’s hottest January since human civilization developed the capacity to measure such...

With this title I hereby immunize myself against any criticism while I go on a political rant. After all, how many times has a politician...