Month: September 2018

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Science Advisor to President Trump

The Man

I’ve been interested in who would fill the position of Science Advisor to Donald Trump since I posted this article (on LinkedIn) a year ago. Kelvin K. Droegemeier (pictured [1]) was confirmed by the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee to be the Head of the OSTP. However, he still has one final hurdle of approval by the full Senate to overcome later in the year. I’ve been reading about him, his scientific background, his career, and religious convictions. He reminds me a lot of my late father-in-law, both in the resemblance of his photograph and in aspects of his character. I’m hopeful that he just might be the voice of reason in that America needs in the White House right now. I’ll tell you why later in this article. Continue reading “Science Advisor to President Trump”

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Reading and Reflecting, Again

Back on Coyote

Coyote Frontier by Allen Steele from Goodreads

I blogged, previously, about reading the Scifi novel Coyote by Allen Steele (2002). I’ve now finished reading the full trilogy: Coyote, Coyote Rising, and Coyote Frontier, of which I enjoyed Coyote Frontier the most, the characters came to life most in that volume, and it presents an intriguing dilemma which had me avidly reading to find out how it would be resolved.  The spacecraft EASS Columbus arrives at Coyote with stargate technology that allows traveling through a wormhole to a similar stargate at a Lagrange-point in the Luna orbit of the Earth. The colonists of Coyote now have access to Earth in the several hours that it takes to travel to and from the stargates, rather than several decades, at sublight speeds through normal space. Of course, Earthers have the same rapid access to Coyote.

Dilemma

The dilemma can be framed this way: if Earth had access to another unspoiled planet, that could sustain humans and had plentiful natural resources, what would we do? Would we allow all those that who could afford to migrate to do so? Potentially millions of people. Would we consume all the natural resources from the new planet and export our polluting industries away from earth to there? This dilemma reminded me of the parable of the bacteria in the test-tube that appears to have originated with David Suzuki in his Canadian TV shows in the 1970’s. It has become embodied in much of his life and work ever since (see the YouTube video next).
Continue reading “Reading and Reflecting, Again”

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