Covid-19: re-learning risk tolerance

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Does FDR’s famous Depression Era pep talk apply to our present situation? Well not entirely of course. We have the virus itself to fear. The curve may have peaked in some places, but the numbers of cases and of deaths are still rising. It still feels like […]

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May 7, 2020 – 2:23 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Getting Biden’s Appeal

So (if one may take a moment out from the nonstop conversation about the virus) it’s come down for Democrats to Biden, our lowest-common- denominator candidate. A lot of us are having to deal with our disappointment. Really? From that attractive, smart, gender and racially diverse field of candidates? This sameold, white male is to […]

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April 24, 2020 – 4:40 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

Finding out what we can’t (or don’t want) to live without

Buddhists say that all suffering in life comes from attachment—to whatever it is you’re attached to . The remedy is non-attachment. Hard to argue with that: get dependent on something and you could lose it and suffer withdrawal. The way we are discouraging the spread of COVID-19 deprives us of many things that we are […]

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April 9, 2020 – 6:55 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Life vs. quality of life and other considerations

Like everybody else I know I have for several days been doing what we’ve been told to do : social distancing, washing our hands, doing our bit to “flatten the curve,” as we’ve learned to think of it. Every surface you come in contact with (of which it turns out the world has a lot) […]

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March 28, 2020 – 6:29 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

The coronavirus vs. flu-as-usual

 [Note: this was written on Sunday, March 8th, four days before it appeared in the paper. It was of course–the tone and substance–immediately out-of-date.] If the world has had a hard time getting sufficiently exercised about imminent climate disaster to do much of anything about it, not so about coronavirus. As I write, panic seems […]

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March 13, 2020 – 8:32 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns, Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (0)

Democrats’ winning issue is defeating the danger of Trump

“Dems in disarray” is the theme since the Iowa debacle. (If they cant run their own nominating process, how can they run the country?) And now the puzzling NH results: The most progressive candidate wins but the more centrist candidates taken together get twice as many votes. How are we supposed to read that? And […]

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March 2, 2020 – 8:05 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Burgers are not the cause of climate change

Impossible Burger’s CEO says cows are the cause of climate change and is aiming to reverse it by getting rid of all cows by 2035. His plan is to satisfy the world’s considerable appetite for cooked cow with a fake version of the same thing. But he’s wrong about the cause of climate change. The […]

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February 26, 2020 – 3:41 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

We should see affordable housing as an opportunity for architecture

Affordable housing is more talked about than actually accomplished in Wellfleet. With under two percent of our housing stock affordable, we lag far behind most towns on the Cape in meeting the state mandated ten percent. The possibility of making a big improvement in this situation was the subject of a Community Forum on a […]

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February 7, 2020 – 2:30 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , | Comments (0)

We need a Manifesto.for a Human Future

The End of the Human Era is nigh. Or so we are told by what seems like a consensus of those who have done the most thinking about where the trajectory of AI is headed. We should know the story by now: as soon as only a generation away AI, that product of human intelligence, […]

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January 2, 2020 – 1:10 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Comments (0)

Artificial Christmas trees unclear on the concept

I read a newspaper story a some months back about the movement to boost the sales of real Christmas trees. I hadn’t known real trees were in need of boosting. I was shocked to learn that almost everybody but us (and everyone we know) has a fake one. 75-80 per cent is what the AP […]

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December 19, 2019 – 3:03 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)