Ken Christenson
Author's posts
Mar 06
About Pipelines, Again: The Video
Terry and Ken “interview” number 4. Terry gets to speak this time. PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT THIS CONVERSATION TOOK PLACE BEFORE CLIMATE SCIENTISTS ANNOUNCED WE ONLY HAD 12 YEARS TO BRING CARBON EMISSIONS DOWN TO A SAFE LEVEL. An administrator in a bureaucratic world is a man who can feel big by merging his …
Mar 01
Indigi-Futurism, the Video
“[McLuhan’s maelstrom story] is a marvelous metaphor for the way to keep one’s head above water in a changing world. Rather than be sucked into a yawning, gaping mess, be nimble and analyze the broader scope of what’s going on. Don’t hang on to something that’s going to drag you down. You may not like …
Feb 19
Science, Philosophy, and the Media: Why the Extremophile Choice is such a hard sell
“A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.” — Marshal McLuhan “Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced” — Alfred North Whitehead God, I love to talk about ‘Natural Philosophy’! Terry hardly gets a word in edgewise. But you’ll be …
Feb 11
Terry and I Discuss Rewilding for a small (500 acre) property bordered on three sides by crown land
The end of this clip has been cut off (Camera timed out). But you can assume that, following the very last comment, “SO MY ONLY PROPOSAL IS THAT WE LIMIT THOSE THINGS [referring to humanized ecosystems]” I finished the sentence by saying: “AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY AND AS FAR AS PRESENT TECHNOLOGIES ALLOW”. Or you can …
Dec 11
A Little Hope
Oh solemn-beating heart of Nature! I have knowledge that thou art bound unto man’s by cords he cannot sever; and, what time they are slackened by him ever, so to attest his own supernal part, still runneth thy vibration fast and strong the slackened cord along. —Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The following is an excerpt from …
May 26
The Problem with Confusing Environmentalism and Conservation
www.knowswhy.com /difference-between-ecology-and-ecosystem/ : Ecology is the study of the interaction between organisms and their environment. The word ecology comes from the Greek words “oikos” meaning house and “logos” meaning word or study. Ecology today can be divided into two broad domains. The author Christian Lévêque uses the terms population ecology and systemic ecology to refer …
Mar 19
Extremophile Choice View of KM Pipeline
J. B. MacKinnon: The rewilding of the tortoise in its ancient habitat represents not only the species’ slow drift away from extinction, but an overall movement toward a more plentiful world. What the bolson tortoise reminds us is that it is ultimately less important to choose a baseline than it is to choose a direction. …
Mar 16
The Importance of a Body for Artificial Intelligence
Diana Kwon (Scientific American, March 2018, p 29): … recently, roboticist Angelo Cangelosi of the University of Plymouth in England and Linda B. Smith, a developmental psychologist at Indiana University Bloomington, have demonstrated how crucial the body is for procuring knowledge. “The shape of the [robot’s] body, and the kinds of things it can do, …
Feb 10
Indigi-Futurism
Marvel has just released a movie called Black Panther [This was written in 2018 of course], and this has got a lot of people, myself included, very excited because it introduces a whole new genre that invites us to imagine far futures for cultures and races that, at present, appear only as tokens of ‘diversity’ …
May 20
First, Let’s be Pragmatic. And Then…
“If we do what it seems we must, in my opinion, it will be in direct violation of the non-interference directive.” — Mr. Spock (on Kirk’s plan to destroy Vaal) My wife just pointed out (Jan. 2024) that the Extremophile Choice message sounds a lot like Star Trek’s “prime directive”, and that this futurist ideal …
