Tips

This week I finished: Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl: one of my favorite books since I first read it, probably in the early 2000s. I hadn't read it in maybe ten years, which means since starting working on sustainability leadership. I find it more valuable than ever. It's perfectly relevant to our situation today. The book led me to develop the approach to difficult times: "However difficult my current situation, it's not as bad as Auschwitz and Frankl, in Auschwitz, wrote about bliss and love. He was no more or less human than I am. If he could find bliss and love there, I can find meaning and reward here." While I lose sight of this view at times, for the most part,…

I think I can safely describe myself as a power user of portable solar panels. I: Use them almost daily Set them up and break them down again sometimes multiple times per day Carry them up and down eleven flights of stairs a couple times a day when I have roof access Carry them a few blocks to the park and back through Manhattan streets when I don't have roof access Carrying and using wears out anything, new technology even more. I chanced into EcoFlow when I bought a used power station of theirs from someone on Craigslist. I wasn't looking to become a tester or influencer. I didn't even know if I could use their equipment, let alone rely on it for all the…

This week I finished: Version 1.0.0 Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, by Carlo Rovelli: I didn't know when I borrowed this book that it was an international bestseller with over 13,000 online reviews. I only knew it was short and on a topic I loved. I was indulging in an old passion I haven't indulged in for decades. The early stuff about relativity and quantum I had studied. Some later theoretical stuff I had gotten close to learning in school, but didn't reach. I had pursued mind-bending things that were consistent with experiment no matter how crazy they seemed. Still, just descriptions don't do justice to solving the problems and learning about the experiments. Part of me missed doing physics, as opposed to reading about…

This week I finished Apocalypse Never, by Michael Shellenberger: He seems sincere in his beliefs, but I kept thinking, "he's close, but keeps not getting the issue." For most of the book, I made mental notes of what to write about here that he missed, but I lost track after too many of them. Sorry, I'm not a professional book reviewer, so I'm not going to cover how much this book misses and misleads, but I see it as way off. It seems like the book was designed 1) to paint environmentalists as shrill and acting on religious fervor, not reason and 2) to call nuclear clean. It's so easy to paint your opponents as unreasonable and overzealous, everyone does it. I mean, he seems…

This week I finished: The Denial of Death, by Ernest Becker: A friend I considered insightful recommended this book over a decade ago. At last I got a copy from the library. Reading it made me glad to have the PhD in physics. Otherwise, I'd feel stupid. It read to me like a salad of hard words strung together, maybe more like spaghetti. It seems like Freud created a bunch of models for people based not on experiment, but just making things up and writing about it. Then a bunch of intellectuals took up his ideas and started expanding on them, with complex language. I quote below one of the craziest passages, surrounding one of the most implausible and eyebrow-raising sentences, "Why is it that…

This week I finished: Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, by Adam Alter: Another fascinating, intriguing book on how much we are creating a culture of addiction and isolation, and tolerating it. Alter discusses chemical addiction, but focuses on behavioral addiction, which he clarifies is not like addiction. Behavioral addiction is addiction. Industry is learning ever more effective ways to manipulate our motivational and reward circuitry and addict us. He mostly looks at addiction delivered through cell phones and video games, though also TV designed for bingeing, online shopping, gambling, pornography, and a few others. He also focuses on the effects on children as well as their relative helplessness, not that adults aren't immune. He also treats the…

This week I finished: Repo Man: I remember watching this movie in the 1980s, loving it, and feeling like it was an underground movie. I rewatched it again for the first time in decades and enjoyed it as much as ever. It was different than most movies. It took chances. It has many quotable lines. The life of a repo man is always intense. I don't remember why I chose to watch it this time. I think because someone was talking about a plate of shrimp or I used that line and it made me curious. Learning to Love Midlife, by Chip Conley: I heard Chip on Alisa Cohn's podcast From Startup to Grownup (Alisa also appeared on my podcast). Then I saw him scheduled…

This week I finished: The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Elliot, by Russel Kirk: I learned of this book from the Conservatism 101 course I wrote about in last week's selective media post. I read the book partly to learn, partly to see what of conservative values, history, and philosophy might resonate with sustainability. It turns out plenty. I read some online but mostly listened to twenty hours of its recording. It was hard to read. Kirk's writing is erudite, not simple. At first I read and reread, listened and re-listened, but after a while I had to get the overall gist since I'd never finish at that pace. I got annoyed at the complexity of the writing, but figure I'll reread or re-listen to…

This week I finished: You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, by Jen Sincero: You'll hear in an upcoming podcast conversation with a Nobel Peace Prize holder, Erika Frank, that she and I riffed on our complementary ways of living more joyfully sustainable. I commented that she reminded me of a book I see in bookstores a lot but haven't read, You Are a Badass. You'll hear when I post the recording how badass she is. I read that she enjoyed the comment. How could I not then read the book? Not many books over a decade old still get prominent placement in bookstores. It covers a lot of major lessons I've learned in exiting a…

This week I finished: The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things Are Written on the Sky, by Russell Kirk: Before diving into the twenty hours of Kirk's The Conservative Mind, the library had this shorter book. I've since started The Conservative Mind, learning his views about Edmund Burke, John Adams, and the development of conservatism in America. This book is a collection of essays with a conservative view of education, character, hierarchy, and more. Following on Hayek, Friedman, and other conservative luminaries, I'm learning more depth about a view I haven't studied much but have seen around me my whole life. Many pieces and videos by and about Bruce K. Alexander: I linked to all the pieces and videos in yesterday's post, Read about and…

Looking at their behavior, I think most Americans know how to help Vladimir Putin because they look like they're doing everything they can to help him. How help Putin: Fly Buy gas and oil Buy stuff shipped from far away Heat your home so you can wear shorts in the winter Cool your home so you can wear sweaters in the summer How many of these things have you done since Putin invaded Ukraine? I'm sure he's grateful for the financial support so many of us have given him.

I finished this week: Carmaggeddon, by Daniel Knowles: I bought a cheap used car after getting my first license at 15 years old. The experience led me to never own a car again. I knew that choice would force many later life decisions The summer after high school, when I was 16, a friend and I rode our bikes from Philadelphia to Bar Harbor, Maine and back. A couple years later I started volunteering for bike advocacy. I think I know a fair amount about cars and how designing cities, nations, and cultures prioritizing them (and planes) over other forms of transportation undermines community, health, resilience, and so on. I could have sworn I've read this book before. It comprehensively covers what I've learned over…

This week I finished: Life, by Keith Richards: I'd meant to read this book since seeing it on shelves a few years ago. Bruce Springsteen's memoir prompted me. As with Springsteen, Richards' experience after connecting with the guitar resonated with me most---discovering the art, the craft, self-expression, awareness, connecting with other musicians listening to their recordings, meeting other musicians in person, and so on. I don't think I'm flattering myself to say I'm connecting with them as artists developing something nobody has seen before but knowing that the world will love it, that they crave it. My book Leadership Step by Step identifies leadership as a performance art where we express ourselves to evoke emotion in our audiences and to change them in ways they…

This week I finished: Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen: Growing up in Philadelphia, across the river from New Jersey, Bruce was always big. I loved this book, which I listened to, Bruce himself reading it. The first third recounted his doing what it took. He struggled to buy his first guitar for $18. He slept on floors, figured out how to play. He played what gigs he could. He had a vision of greatness. He didn't need other people's permission. I doubt anyone else imagined anything he envisioned. He didn't just work blindly. He looked inside himself. He wouldn't accept halfway. Given my situation of nearly everyone othering me ("a phenomenon in which some individuals or groups are defined and labeled as not fitting…

This week I couldn't use the computer much so read more than usual, including two long books and one hard-to-read one. I finished: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein: I confess I recorded my podcast episode with Richard before reading the book, initially motivated by my mom's sharing (on her and my podcast episodes) about growing up in a mostly black ghetto that had been a working class neighborhood before we moved there. She talked about redlining and how government policy grew and sometimes created racial differences in wealth and income. Richard's book comprehensively and definitively covers the issue. It's infuriating in many ways: How does American culture and our educational system not make this…

This week was overcast and rainy nearly every day. I barely caught rays so had to ration electric power, meaning a lot of reading and listening to books on my phone, which uses less power. I'm writing this post fast since it's raining again and barely have power left. I finished this week: Superabundance by Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley for the Cato Institute: I knew the premise of the book from all the interviews with the authors I watched. I enjoyed reading it, despite its shortcomings. It tried to prove a hypothesis but never considered alternative hypotheses that it didn't disprove. I hope to bring the authors to the podcast to learn more about them and their intent. I enjoyed their research in history…

This week I finished: The Social Life of Forests, by Ferris Jabr, about Suzanne Simard: This six-thousand-word New York Times article asks: "Trees appear to communicate and cooperate through subterranean networks of fungi. What are they sharing with one another?" and profiles a scientist at the forefront of studying forests. I came to it following up reading The Overstory, since one of its characters is based on Simard. Here's an interesting, tragic finding: "Although forests now cover 80 percent of the Northeast, for example, less than 1 percent of its old-growth forest remains intact." The article is like a primer on some recent research and on the super-organisms of forests that include trees and fungus. I've watched a couple videos of her, listened to her…

This week I finished: Take the Lead, by Sasha DiGiulian: The author is one of the premier climbers today. The book describes her journey from childhood to winning too many competitions to count and being the first to climb many faces around the world, along with the fame that comes with it. My nephew loves climbing and she went to college where I did (Columbia), so when her team sent me a copy of the book, I was interested. She shares what it takes to find what you're made of. You know me, though. During college, she flew around the world nearly every weekend and didn't slow down after. The book's dedication included, "And to Mother Nature for her inspiration. May we protect her for…