Yesterday, late afternoon, we visited our neighbors some 600 m from our house. My wife and I made our first contact with other humans in 8 days. We kept social distance, sitting outside and listening to the birds twirling around in spring love and to the crescendos of insects, and watching two wild turkeys silently pecking their way through the lush green grass right behind us. Other than our four voices, the silence was deafening, no cars, no planes, and no human voices afar. When we returned home, walking up our wooded hill in complete darkness, the bright stars were not dimmed by the usual halo of Austin lights a few miles away. The Silent Earth was trying to tell us something. Again. This time around, the nature's silence is caused by the little virus that is undoing the global civilization so many take for granted. Why did a tiny creature less that one-thousandth the width of a human hair bring the mighty, seemingly invincible human steam roller to a h...
In this blog, I continue to write about the environment, ecology, energy, complexity, and humans. Of particular interest to me are human self-delusions and mad stampedes to nowhere.