Will contributing time and money to the Obama campaign, or just voting for Obama make any meaningful difference to how the future unfolds? Conversely, does time and energy spent working for an Obama victory simply detract from applying these assets towards working for real societal transformation? I believe that evaluating these questions from a systems theoretical perspective provides insight on their resolution. << MORE >>

History is the story of past civilizations that flourished by successfully organizing to meet the challenges of their time. History is also the story of the complete collapse of maladaptive societies. But our powerful and world-spanning civilization would surely be immune from these laws and lessons of history—right? << MORE >>

This is just a quick announcement:

My new book The Path Through Infinity's Rainbow has been published. 

Complete details, as well as how to order it, can be found on my website at: http://www.MichaelPByron.com.

Mike Byron

Going into the Tuesday, January 8, 2008 New Hampshire Primary, all polls showed a commanding lead in favor of Democratic Presidential candidate Barak Obama over his rival candidate Hillary Clinton. Even the exit polls showed that Obama had won the state. (See http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5535). Note:Satire Alert<< MORE >>

2012 is significant in the popular imagination mainly because of the Mayan prediction that the world as we’ve know it will come to an end on December 21st of that year. Beyond this it appears for the perspective of the present as being a year in which “things which can’t go on forever” such as ever increasing consumerism, agricultural expansion, ever increasing consumption of energy resources, and so on, abruptly stop going on forever. It appears to be about the right time for the effects of global warming and planetary climate change to become universally undeniable. Alas by this year it will also be too late to stop the accelerating positive feedback loops which will intensify the changes to our biosphere. Put succinctly, 2012 appears to be a pretty good candidate for being the year that the shit hits the fan, the year that everything changed and so on. My friend Marie D. Jones recently asked me to contribute a short essay for her forthcoming book (June 2008) entitled 2013:The End of Days or a New Beginning: Envisioning the World After the Events of 2012. << MORE >>

Greetings,

As usual I've been extremely busy lately.

I finished my academic work days before Christmas. In the past several days my wife Ramona and I have intensively scrutinized the galley proofs for my new book "The Path Through Infinity's Rainbow: Your Guide to Personal Survival and Spiritual Transformation in a World Gone Mad". We have now returned these to the publisher with several corrections.

I estimate that the book will go to the printer in early January 2008. it should be available about the beginning of February. I will provide more specific information as it becomes available.

I'll post a new blog later today.

Happy holidays to all,

Mike Byron

About the Southern California fires that are going on right now, my question is: “What the devil were the developers and city councils thinking?” << MORE >>

As I write the sky outside is an eerie brown-gray. Although it’s around noontime, the sun is barely visible through the shroud of smoke hanging above. A light rain of ash falls steadily. Southern California in general and San Diego County in particular are at the center of a firestorm. Here in San Diego County between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people have been evacuated from their homes. I’ve lived in Southern California since arriving here at age 12. That was thirty-eight years ago, back in 1969. So I know that autumn in Southern California is often a time of firestorms driven by Santa Ana winds. That is not unusual. However the intensity of these firestorms and in particular the number of separate fires burning at once has increased. So has the destructiveness of these fires, measured in terms of property damage. How to account for this? I believe that three related factors are combining to produce this dire result: << MORE >>

<< MORE >>

I wrote this essay after reading (and commenting upon) John Michael Greer’s essay on the Fermi Paradox (“Solving Fermi’s paradox”) on his website at: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ . Readers might want to check it out. He reaches a conclusion which overlaps substantially with mine, but which also differs significantly as well. Peak Oil and the Fermi Paradox Talking about the likelihood of other civilizations existing in our galaxy, physicist Enrico Fermi reportedly asked in 1950: “Where is everybody?” This question became known as the Fermi Paradox. The Paradox arises because there should be at least a few other civilizations in our galaxy of 400 billion suns. In 1960, Dr. Frank Drake, created the Drake equation (see discussion at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation ), which indicated that there ought to be at least 10 other civilizations in our galaxy right now. Yet we can find no evidence for thier existence. Which takes us back to Fermi’s question: “Where is everybody?” If other civilizations exist, then it would seem reasonable that at least some would be more advanced than ours, and would presumably be able to travel to nearby star systems. After a few millions of years they ought to have colonized the entire Milky Way Galaxy. Radio astronomers have been searching ever since Frank Drake undertook the first scientific search for extraterrestrial civilizations with Project Ozma back in 1960. Yet there is no sign of extraterrestrial civilization anywhere in our galaxy. The silence across the galaxy has been deafening. So where are they?! << MORE >>