My grandfather was a big wig, first, in the OSS and then, through the 50s and 60s, in the CIA. In fact, my last book, Operation Jedburgh, told the story of secret World War II operation that my grandfather helped oversee. Now, I am not uncritical of the actions of the CIA through those years […]
Environment
Economic progress?
Day three in bed with the flu, so I’m just offering you this one-minute video from Adbusters. If you can’t watch in your email or newsreader, watch it here.
Visit your senator and representative and tell them what counts!
Talk about fun! 1Sky.org is giving us the chance to work together to show that each of us make a difference, and that we make even more of a difference if we work together. You see, in just a few weeks, from March 14 to March 31, our senators and representatives will be heading home […]
Creation
Isabella (who turned three today by the way) has done me the favor of bringing another flu bug home from school. So don’t expect much. As I’ve said before, I don’t adhere to any one religion, but I do enjoy the ancient wisdom contained within them all. And someone who calls herself Dura Matter in the comments […]
Our problem, you see, is insufficient materialism
On Saturday, I had coffee with Boston College Professor Juliet Schor, author of Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture and co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream. We were talking about throwaway products and the disposable culture which fuel our economy and trash our resources (and which I […]
Too cute to drown
I know, I know. It’s not about the polar bears. It’s about human health, happiness and security as it depends on the well-being of our planetary habitat. At least that’s the rather cumbersome phrase I coined in order to get away from the “environment,” which to so many connotes something alien, outside of ourselves and […]
Whoever has the most toys when he dies wins!
I’ve been working on my book and today I was just feeling irrelevant and down and thinking that I just didn’t have anything much to contribute to the whole discourse on human health, security and happiness as it depends on the well-being of our habitat. I just couldn’t get any writing done. So, for a […]
The bottom-line problem with sustainability?
According to Heather Rogers’ Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, 80 percent of products sold in the United States are designed to be used once and then thrown away. Now, this is a leap of logic, but for the sake of a thought experiment, let’s assume that 80 percent of the energy and raw […]