Trying to find a sustainable sweet spot in a community that depends upon visitors. — If you want to see how the act of observation changes the character of the object being observed on a macro scale, Moab, Utah is a good place to start. For both the long-time locals and people like me who visited for decades before moving here, the changes the community…

Machines are a means to an end. We are end unto ourselves. — Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have been getting a lot of press. A software program designed to produce art using a few prompts from the user won a digital art competition in Colorado last year, creating quite a buzz. Then the latest version of ChatGTP came along with its…

Another example of either/or thinking gone wrong. — There are few people as vocal and committed to the argument against free will as Sam Harris. He frequently revisits the topic on his podcast, and he has published a short book outlining the case against it as he sees it. Harris and others are strong determinists. In his 2012…

Same debate, different decade. — A slightly edited excerpt from the Travels With Zeus blog originally published by the author in July of 2011, during an earlier debt ceiling debate. Zeus and I followed our usual routine this morning. After making myself a cup of coffee, I took him out for his morning pee and…

If the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) is any indication, not much. — The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently fined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormon Church) one million dollars for using shell companies set up by its wholly owned investment firm, Ensign Peak Advisers, to hide nearly $40 billion in assets. Ensign Peak was fined an…

When we rely solely on the quantifiable, we often miss what’s truly important. — In the excellent PBS docuseries Vietnam, a veteran of the war interviewed for the program bemoaned the American government’s focus on the body count as an indicator of military success. Paraphrasing from memory the former soldier’s lament, he stated something to the effect of “When we fail to measure what’s…

Technology has given us more free time and choice than at any point in history, but we don’t seem to know what to do with it. — The writer Michael Easter is under the impression that boredom went the way of the dodo with the advent of the smartphone. “Finally, on June 29, 2007, boredom was pronounced dead, thanks to the iPhone,” Easter writes in his 2021 book, The Comfort Crisis. He also laments that “our imaginations…

From the desert to the forest and back again: a lifetime learning that the Southwest will always be a landscape with much to offer but little to spare. — I have lived most of my life in a desert, though civilization invested a great deal of effort and money in keeping this fact from me. It was not until I moved to Moab, Utah after spending the better part of twelve years on Vancouver Island that I began to…

Allegations of past and present wrongdoing, whether true or not, are not a valid response to current misconduct, stupidity, or cruelty. — Possibly the most glaring symptom of the current intellectual laziness and cynicism infecting our body politic is whataboutism. If one person states their opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it won’t be long before they hear a Russia apologist point to America’s past involvement in Vietnam or invasion of Iraq…