Monthly Archives: November 2016

“Community”: a shallow premise for planning

A few days after the election, 80 or so of the most civic-minded Wellfleetians took time out from anguishing over the Future According to Trump to take up what seems a more manageable topic, the future of our own town. The idea was to crowdsource ideas to be incorporated in the latest update of our […]

November 29, 2016 – 6:27 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

AI : thinking about the end of the human era

Don’t look now, but while our attention is being distracted by all the media focus on climate change, there’s a much more ominous threat on the horizon: artificial intelligence ( AI). Unlike climate change, AI is not an unintended consequence of technology but something fellow humans are working hard to bring about. The goal the […]

November 26, 2016 – 2:48 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

7.4 MILLION DOLLAR POLICE STATION OUT OF PROPORTION

The 7.4 million dollar re-build of the Wellfleet police station that is about to be rubber-stamped at a Special Town Meeting Tuesday is a quantum leap in police station infrastructure in a town whose population has for 15 years or so plateaued. All indications are that, if anything, the population will not rise in the […]

November 13, 2016 – 2:42 pm | By Brent | Posted in Posts | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Capitalism: burning down the house to roast a pig.

Inequality, one of capitalism’s chief products, has become in recent years the elephant in the room. But capitalism is the room itself and tends to be invisible. Largely thanks to Bernie Sanders and the undemonizing of “democratic socialism,” that may be changing. Capitalism reminds me of Charles Lamb’s apocryphal story about the discovery of roast […]

November 11, 2016 – 12:28 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)