Pietro

Today the Chronicle Vitae listserve sent a link to Nina Handler’s article, “Facing My Own Extinction.” In the article she described the dim prospects for English as an academic discipline, and questions the ability (and utility) of her and her colleagues adapting to a changing world in which English disappears as a scholarly discipline. I

Over the past several days I have been researching National Urban Policies very intensively, as I work with a team of Afghan planners to develop the National Urban Policy for Afghanistan. During that research I came across documentation of the national urban policy of the United States. If you are American, you might even be

Okay planners, here is a ethical practice question that I have been asked. I have written this as a planning-practice exam essay. Instructions for submitting your responses are at the end of this page. Suppose you have been appointed as planning director for a city. You care about the people of the city, and you

1. Journalists as superheroes The staff at Shamshad TV deserve the 2017 Global Prize for Courageousness from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Please look up CPJ and donate if you can, especially if you care about freedom of the press. American journalists are belittled and disparaged by the Trump administration for not selecting the facts

Yesterday a bomb went off near where I work in Kabul. For security reasons, I need to be vague on the details of my relationship to events here; that is one reason I have not posted in the last two months. However one colleague’s reaction to the bombing made me think about something we should

These days I work in China, so in winter I only have 4 weeks to spend with my family in California. These four weeks are overshadowed by the transition to a disastrous new American presidency. The first policies being imposed don’t even seem to favor conservatives; they seem primarily intended to aggrieve Americans who believe

Liberals never collectively said ‘I told you so’ about the invasion of Iraq in 2003. We should have. As it turns out, that story is not over. The post-occupancy analysis made it very clear that Hussein was bluffing, And that George W. Bush’s pressure to find some excuse to invade Iraq caused intelligence analysts to

Many Republicans have tried to disassociate themselves from the election of Donald Trump. This is consistent with a Republican pattern of seeking to avoid taking responsibility, perhaps best encapsulated in Mitt Romney’s book title No Apologies. Trump has promoted an atmosphere of racism and intolerance that the Republican party finds embarrassing. This may have also

“California is – and must always be – a refuge of justice and opportunity for people of all walks, talks, ages and aspirations – regardless of how you look, where you live, what language you speak, or who you love.” Joint Statement from California Legislative Leaders on Result of Presidential Election, November 9, 2016 In

Eleven years ago on this blog, I posted the idea of the gravitat. The concept was first envisioned by Herman Poto?nik, a.k.a. Hermann Noordung (1928), and popularized by Werner von Braun in 1952. Here I discuss some refinements and wider uses of the gravitat. Using this system, humans could live under Earth-normal gravity conditions on