Filed under: American politics, fantasy, fiction, science fiction, Worldbuilding, writing | Tags: writing
Not that I’m a fan of Trump, but the move to establish a US Space Force caught my attention. There are two points of interest. The lesser one is what apparently happened. Of greater interest to me is how someone could use it in military science fiction, and what it might say about the future of space warfare. And space cadets. Continue reading
Filed under: American politics, book, economics, Legacy Systems, Speculation, Uncategorized
Time to use the blog to take a break from real life. With our overheating hot local economy, there are numerous and problematic developments going through. Since I work on conservation issues for an NGO, I’ve my energy the last three months dealing with all these projects, writing letters and testifying. It’s basically something new every week. I won’t get a serious break until the next recession, looks like. Or until I write a blog entry.
Anyway, I haven’t been completely busy, and I have had time to read. This isn’t a book review, more of an impressionistic rant based on some of the stuff I’ve been reading. In part as opposition research, in part as research for how to write a wealthy villain, in part because it sounded cool in a radio interview, a few months ago I read (and recommend) Brooke Harrington’s Capital without Borders. It’s a sociological study of wealth managers, the profession that helps the super-rich hide their money through offshore financial centers. Prof. Harrington did a really neat study: she embedded herself in the community by taking (and passing) the wealth management training and certification course, interviewing as she went. She was quite open about what she was doing, but because she has exquisite people skills and put in her time in the trenches studying with the rest of the students, passing the tests and getting credentialed, she got wealth managers to open up to her and to talk about their world and the clients they serve. Her book is a very lucid exploration of an industry that prides itself on discretion and secrecy. This book necessarily is about the nuts and bolts of how things work. Anecdotes are used to illustrate more than titillate, and all of the identifying details are stripped off. Continue reading
Filed under: American politics, economics, Uncategorized | Tags: economics, US Government
I saw this last night and decided it was too big, literally, to ignore.
The US Army currently reported that in FY 2015 it had $6,500,000,000,000 (that’s $6.5 trillion) in spending on an annual budget of $122,000,000,000 ($122 billion), or spending 54 times more than its budget. Worse, between 1998 and 2015, the Army and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) somehow racked up $21,000,000,000,000 in spendings. Here’s a link to the press release about Michigan State Professor (Mark Skidmore), who broke the news (although it had been mentioned by the government), here’s the article on it in Forbes. Here’s the documents. As noted in both articles, when Prof. Skidmore started probing these expenditures, documents on them, which had been publicly posted at the Office of Inspector General at the DoD, for some reason all the links started disappearing. It’s a good thing Skidmore had already copied the documents and is now posting them online. Oh, and this might potentially be why the DoD is undergoing its first agency-wide independent financial audit ever (press release). I haven’t looked at what HUD is doing, if anything. Continue reading
Filed under: 2016, American politics, climate change, economics, livable future, Speculation, sustainability, Uncategorized
More avoidance. I was going to write about the IEA’s 2017 World Energy Outlook (Vox article). Or I could write about The Grauniad’s “seven megatrends that could beat global warming” article. Or I could write about the bright and shiny, 100% electrified future that seems to be the major global bankwagon that people like the IEA are now jumping on. But that would be avoiding the real work. Continue reading
Filed under: alt-future, American politics, Speculation | Tags: Alternate history, Civil War, Lincoln
This is inspired by my disgust with HBO for wanting to create a series where the South won the Civil War.
Like we need that right now.
So I’m going to pose the counter: what would the US (and the world) look like if Booth missed, Lincoln was not assassinated, and Andrew Johnson, the second or third worst president we’ve had, never came to power and didn’t totally screw up the Reconstruction?
It’s kinda shocking that this doesn’t get asked more often. Here’s a few places I found it on Google:
Filed under: alt-future, American politics, disasters, Legacy Systems | Tags: Continuity of Government, Raven Rock, US Government
I wish I could say that I was busy writing a new book, and that’s why I haven’t posted in a month, but really it’s more about life getting in the way of art, or something. One note is that between last April and this April, I wrote 21 responses to environmental documents for the California Native Plant Society and attended way more meetings than that. This isn’t due to the current administration in Washington, but rather more that we’re in (or just past) the height of the current business cycle, so every bad idea for a development has lumbered out of its crypt, demanding a new life. Or, less, poetically, projects are on their second or third go round after having been rejected the last time, because the land was available for cheap, and some developer suckered some investor into buying it on the promise that the land was so cheap they could afford to deal with all the legal hassles this time. And if it doesn’t work this time, there will be a next time as long as the land remains in private hands. But I’m getting side tracked.
I’ve also had some time to do a bit of reading, and I’d recommend Garret Graff’s Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself–While the Rest of Us Die. It’s a history of the US government’s attempts since Truman to figure out how to save the presidency from a nuclear war, secret undisclosed underground bunkers and all. It’s fun reading if you’re into this kind of thing, and I suspect it does play into modern politics in some ways that the book itself doesn’t go into. Continue reading
Filed under: American politics, California, climate change, Syria, Water | Tags: California water, climate change, Syria, Syrian civil war, water politics, water war
Confession time: I can’t stand to watch the videos of Syrian people suffering and dying from the latest Sarin attack. Since I have asthma, I may very well die gasping for breath, and this particular horror strikes too close to home for me to watch. Here’s Charity Navigator listing their best charities for the Syrian conflict. Or you can give to the UNHCR for Syria.
Anyway, I decided to look back at my 2013 post on the Syrian Water War, to see where we are 3 1/2 years later. Has anything changed? Is there anything we can learn, especially with the current regime in the White House? Continue reading
Filed under: 2016, American politics, Uncategorized | Tags: El Cheeto Grande
I know, I know, everybody’s getting stressed out about acting thankful tomorrow, and I’m supposed to put out a message about what I’m thankful for (which is a lot, actually. I’m still breathing. That counts for something).
Unfortunately, I’m just providing ammo for that Thanksgiving political argument you don’t want to get into. So if you’re not interested in that, have a wonderful Thanksgiving and read the rest of this on Friday.
Putting the life back in science fiction 