The Conversation

Am I actually running for president? Not now. I am reasonable enough to know that an idea borne of frustration at lacking a candidate that represents me and my family is not going to change the world. But an idea can change the world, and these generations are the ones most capable of doing so. I am going to dream of a world where no one is hungry, thirsty, or at the mercy of the elements. If I was running for president, I would need to explain my platform, get feedback, and adapt it to the needs of each community. The problem is most people focus on one or two issues and try to solve them independently. What I have learned as a science teacher and a student of the social sciences is that many issues are intertwined and need to be addressed as a whole, instead of in parts, if they are going to be any good for the average American.               For example, I want to tackle homelessness. That is a doozy and requires so...

       It is hot. It is too hot. It is unbearably hot in California this week, especially if you don't have an air conditioner. Even if we all had AC to make this heat wave bearable, there isn't enough energy in the grid to provide it. What do we do about this? What CAN we do about this? I don't want to live through another heat wave when someone has to die because they can't cool off.      AP reported this week that the heat was so bad that California, standard-bearer of clean and green energy for the nation, used natural gas to cope with the 52,000-megawatt demand of Tuesday (the hottest day of the wave). Natual gas is the (haha) natural backup supply for wind and solar. In a couple decades, in part because of the statewide push for moving to electric vehicles and appliances, we will use far more energy in a normal day, let alone extreme heat. How are we going to have the infrastructure to provide for these needs?     Any realistic sol...

Article Title : US Schools Need an Infrastructure Upgrade Source: California Educator (CTA monthly magazine) Date: 2021, month unknown (I tore it out of the magazine months ago)      Okay, both an obvious and boring opening topic, I know. This is also not really breaking news, and I wanted the stories I wrote about to be more recent than last year. This is news because I have only just left the teaching profession in part because of this issue, and the infrastructure issues featured in a graph in this article clearly demonstrate how critical this issue is to the future (of everyone, not just the kids who have to learn in these conditions). When I say school infrastructure, I mean the basics that include running water and roofs that don't leak, let alone mental health services and internet access.             The article itself is only a few paragraphs, but it is the graph that tells the real story. The key takeaway is that at leas...

              A declared war seems more plausible now than in any point in my life, aside from the days after September 11, 2001. You may disagree with me, but you’re reading this, so you get my opinion. In my more negative musings on this fear, I wonder what could spark this war and what would characterize the two sides. After today’s research, mostly accidental, I have a bleak fiction to share with everyone, in the hopes that this doesn’t happen.               The Federalist Papers discuss many predictions about the fate of the nation. One of the fates they discuss is a civil war as the only way to reconcile dissent among the states. In order for a faction to form, a strong state will act as a primary aggressor who will pull neighbors into their fold by philosophical or economic means. In the Civil War, this character was played by South Carolina, an...