Everyone loves their New Year’s resolutions until the first contact with the enemy which, in the case of a resolution to blog at a minimum of once a week, is pushing ‘publish’ at least once a week. But! But! Here we are. We are bold. We will take action.
Since there were so many events to weigh in on during this last week and I don’t want to step on that scale today, I’m going to kick the new blog year off with a list of topics and ideas I’d like to tango with in the next year.
On my dance card, these ideas, topics, and questions are in no particular order, are not complete thoughts or ideas, and may include but are not limited to:
- Autonomous self-driving cars
Where are we at, where are we going, pros, cons, and unintended consequences
- Main Street versus Wall Street
If we see the death of shopping malls, what takes their place? Where will our autonomous self-driving cars take us? What entertainment, market, and social organizations and activities will take their place? What about vacant buildings, leftover real-estate?
- Viva’s Prescription or RIP for the Democrat Party
- Viva’s Prescription or RIP for the Media
- Constitutional Convention
What would be addressed in a Constitutional Convention if the founders were meeting in 2018? In addition to all the constitutional amendments, what about advances in technology — communication & electronic devices? medicine? transportation? energy? production and distribution? and on and on and on …
- Treatise on money, goods & services.
Trickle-down, gush up, the role of money as a medium for exchange in a healthy society …
- Voter Suppression
- Book Reports — these are books I’d like to read or reread — looking at you A Confederacy of Dunces …
- Hunger by Roxane Gay
- Janesville by Amy Goldstein
- Mao’s Last Revolution by Roderick Macfarquhar & Michael Schoenhals
- The Sellout by Paul Beatty
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
- A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution by Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg
- Hurricane Evicted
- Elon Musk, energy, battery storage, etc.
- Democratic Socialism
- Paul Ryan: Howard Roark wannabe?
- Healthcare is 1/6th of the US economy. What is the economic impact of cutting Medicare and Medicaid? When do gains on Wall Street diminish due to potholes on Main Street?
- Education, meritocracy and ‘Stop Stealing Dreams‘ by Seth Godin.
- Gush up economics.
- Truth: Is it the old New Frontier?
- Distance and walkability comparison of old cities — Paris & Rome — to urban and suburban cities in the United States.
- Notes on aging — thinking, memory, the joy of learning new things.
- Dakota Access Pipeline update.
- Where is Puerto Rico? And geographically. Track the progress or lack thereof in restoration.
- Technology: too much, too fast? Have we been overcome by “magic”?
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
– Arthur C. Clarke
- Thoughts on why the traditional concept of hell is hot.
- Sundry Assortments of flotsam and jetsam discovered while surfing on the web
- Word mash-ups for when Merriam & Webster and all the rest, fail us
- Etcetera. Etcetera and oh dear. Too much, too much. But what are resolutions for if not to be broken? <insert Gallic shrug here>
I am a people watcher reporting from the bleacher seats. This blog is my whimper, my bullhorn standing on my orange crate to make sense of, and organize my thoughts on what I observe, to toss current events and developments against history as I understand it and to imagine potential outcomes.
And with each push of ‘publish’, this is an invitation to you, dear reader, to join me.
Thank you & Happy New Year!