I've decided that when heading off on odd reporting or other projects, as I've done in the past two weeks and will again through this summer, I will try to do periodic brief check-ins, rather than just going dark. So here is the thought-drop for the day:
1) I did my two final Aspen Ideas Festival events today, and there is one I hope will be available very soon in video. It was an exchange with Hal Harvey, of Energy Innovation, in a session called "Fear and Hope: Climate Change and Policy Solutions." I don't fully understand the pace at which Aspen videos go up on its site, but please look for this one when it's ready (and I will flag it when I find it). It is as clear and useful an assessment of the problems, and the options, in the climate realm as I've come across in a long while.
2) I also went to a session on the PAL-V Flying Car, straight from the Netherlands. This was too delicious to miss.
More here.
3) Later this evening, I spent four hours on the road in a non-flying car, on the twisty and pass-and-tunnel-filled Aspen-to-Boulder drive. Much of the time, in these mountains, I couldn't find any radio signal at all. But after coming through the Idaho Springs tunnel toward Denver and Boulder, I could finally get Colorado Public Radio, which was running the TED Radio Hour, with my comrade Guy Raz. This segment was called "Turning Points," and had four segments on lives with distinct before-and-after demarcations. It was all interesting, and a brief segment on an airline mishap that actually happened (the USAir "Miracle on the Hudson" river landing four years ago) is an intriguing counterpart to the infamous NYT Magazine story on an airline "disaster" that didn't occur. But I promise that you will not regret listening to the final segment, about a writer named Joshua Prager who had an unusually distinct before-and-after moment. I was listening to this while going down a very twisty mountain highway, in the dark, which increased my attention to what I was hearing\. But in any circumstance you will find it compelling.
Tomorrow, flying cross country at low altitude, about which more anon.
     |