Fossil fuel companies are scared to death renewables will make them irrelevant yet they continue with business as usual, modifying their behavior just enough to get by with layoffs, cutting back on exploration, and emphasizing natural gas as the transition fuel. Their day is gone, having been a mere blip on the timeline of civilization.

The need for energy marches on. The future is hazy about ways to make money on the energy horizon. Yes, there will be solar panels by the millions, but they only have a life span of 25 to 30 years and are notoriously hard to…

I was on my daily two-mile walk per the instructions of my cardiologist, but it’s really a pretty good habit to get into. It’s good for the ticker and a useful indicator for changes in ones health. I am a vintage Caucasian and live in a predominantly white, middle class neighborhood transitioning to an upscale neighborhood. Four hundred thousand dollar houses are being torn down to build nine hundred thousand dollar homes. That sort of thing. I live in the former I picked up for much less than four hundred grand back in ’93. …

Although I’m sure it has turned out badly at some point somewhere, I’m not talking about the bright orange-wrapped maniac in the middle of the road looking vaguely like the Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics waving a leaf blower barrel as if he’s a symphony conductor and just daring you to run him down. This is just a minor irritation, not a public hazard.

If it hasn’t rained in a while, the road is covered with dust of dubious and various lineage. It comes from oil and grease dripping from cars and carrying metals, salt for deicing, car exhaust carrying…

By now anyone that hasn’t ingested what nearly half of the nation obviously has to make them … less analytical, knows that Fox News broadcasts a dizzying array of right wing propaganda. A panoply of radio networks has been plying the airwaves with similar sludge for even longer with a decade head start. Anyone that has been exposed to this toxic quagmire of unreason without being infected should be given the Medal of Freedom instead of one of its most efficient super-spreaders, Rush Limbaugh. Now they’ve latched on to yet another method, much sneakier than television or radio.

You’ve read…

It’s very easy to point at billionaires and say, “There! There is the cause of our pain, suffering, and poverty; our lack of a sweet ride, a swank crib, and steak instead of beans for supper.” It’s also hard to really prove that’s the case, and so it comes off as kind of whiny and sour grapes-ish because of that. Maybe that’s why Occupy Wall Street sort of petered out.

But in the back of your mind is that feeling, that gut-induced intuition telling you it makes sense. If that gut feeling comes from having missed a meal or two…

One of my first jobs when I came to Houston as a young adult was rebuilding pneumatic industrial control valves. These ranged from small to very large, controlling fluids and gasses in 1” to 12” pipes or larger and weighing up to hundreds of pounds. In order to rebuild them, I had to tear them down to their component parts, clean, refinish, and build them back up, replacing or fixing the broken stuff. That gave me an intimate knowledge of how they worked.

Later, I would get a job at a place that built oil production equipment like heaters and…

Things may be going swimmingly; just got promoted, making rent, stashing a few bucks in a 401k, but remember that blockbuster idea you had for a startup? You couldn’t risk quitting your job and working on it because you would lose your health insurance, and your four year old has diabetes. Can’t take the risk.

It wouldn’t be a problem in almost any other developed country because they have universal insurance. In the U.S., however, health care hangs over your head like the sword of Damocles. This is just one example of how the owners of capital in America have…

I love Bernie Sander’s political ideas, and I hate that he did not win the nomination and go on to win the presidency. He is a caring, intelligent guy. He wants to serve. He eschews power. …