I wrote recently in When changing fast is easier than slow about the growth in number of slaves in the United States based on a peer-reviewed paper From ‘20 and odd’ to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States, by J. David Hacker in the journal Slavery & Abolition. That paper also reported the cumulative number of slaves in the United States. Before looking at[…] Keep reading →

You can’t stop the global heroin trade if you’re worried about your own supply. This post is about people who are addicted, perhaps without realizing it or in denial, to behavior causing others to suffer and die finding themselves impotent to change others. They haven’t tried to change themselves so they don’t know what change takes. Would you take piano lessons from someone who read a lot of books on[…] Keep reading →

Several bestselling authors on the environment suggest that people solve problems, so more people solve more problems. They conclude that we should keep growing the population. A century and a half ago people believed “rain follows the plow.” They created what looked like science proving that settlers moving west across North America creating farms would cause rain to fall more. To me, “more people solve more problems” looks like a[…] Keep reading →

I write in my book about how imperialism arose from people needing more resources than where they lived provided—that is, from living unsustainably—and that others wouldn’t trade for. Scroll down for videos that illustrate the pattern happening in history. There are many more videos like them, but I like these. I’ll give some context from my book first. I quote a book from a professor where I went to business[…] Keep reading →

I was talking to a solar expert on installing solar panels to my roof, now that my coop board has approved my looking into a pilot program. He brought up a satellite view of my roof. Check out this image from satellite view: If you didn’t know what to look for, you wouldn’t see it, but you can see my solar panels! All those black squares are tiling to walk[…] Keep reading →

I recently watched Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi movie. I often pass the Gandhi statue around the corner from my home in Union Square. The other day I saw that someone honored Gandhi’s legacy with an empty beer can at his feet. I’m sure Gandhi would have loved the tribute. Or maybe our culture could use reminding of its lost values of stewardship and personal responsibility that might restore meaning and purpose[…] Keep reading →

I don’t use Instagram so even though I took only a few pictures, I’m posting them here. I’m not claiming they’re great pictures. I just snapped them in the morning. First, on a Friday at 6:45am, the sky was red. The camera seems to have adjusted it to less red, but you can mostly tell. It was redder a few minutes before. I noticed it while I was doing calisthenics.[…] Keep reading →

I joke that my favorite phone app is airplane mode, but I like it. Still, my phone’s hot spot is my only internet connection at home, so I’m using it now, but I’ll put it on airplane mode after posting. I looked up how to take a screen shot and took shots of my battery and time use for the past ten days. I think they were usual days so[…] Keep reading →

Cleaning out my father’s basement, I found my junior high school yearbook. Not really a yearbook, but a book with pictures of each class. Here’s my class: Can you tell which one is me? Is it hard to tell? I can’t tell you how often people have told me I don’t know what it’s like to live as a minority. This year wasn’t my only such year. Here is the[…] Keep reading →