I originally wrote The Return of the Golden Age of Air Travel in April of this year and published it on May 1st. It was a visceral response to the early days of COVID-19. As the summer wore on, I felt that maybe the piece was a reflection of a relatively short period which was, for the most part, behind us. Sadly, that's turned out not to be the case. Things might already be worse than they have ever been. So I dusted off this stream-of-conciousness jumble of reminiscenses of travel gone by mixed with an argument that the nature of travel in the future is forever changed. Furthermore, future travel might well more closely resemble travel of the past. I hope you enjoy the essay and that it gives you pause to think about your own relationship with travel. Thank you so much for listening.

Listen to the essay with the play button, above. The text can be found on Medium where it was published on May 1st, 2020. They key image for this episode shows passengers on a Trans-Canada Airlines DC-8 have pre-dinner drinks in the lounge. (image/caption: AirlineRatings.com)

Links:

• Transcript: The Return of the Golden Age of Air Travel — The complete text of the episode which was originally published on May 1st, 2020 on Medium.

Although it has been many years since I last wrote computer code ‘to save my life’ I still vividly remember the five basic phases of the Cost of Change Curve associated with software development projects. While the fine details are now dim and distant the basic idea is this: the cost of making a given change rises exponentially as we work our way from the first phase, Requirements, through the intermediate Analysis, Coding and Testing phases and then finally to the Production phase. Plot the costs on a graph and the main characteristic is the skyward-to-infinity spike as we get to the latter phases of the project...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. They key image for this episode is of Pacific Electric Railway cars awaiting destruction on Terminal Island, California in 1956. (image credit: UCLA Library Digital Collections)

The late arrival of the inbound flight she had piloted from Hatfield, in Hertfordshire, prevented Amy Johnson from departing Prestwick, Scotland any earlier than 4.00 pm on that afternoon in early January of 1941. Darkness was already beginning to fall. The most direct route from Prestwick to her eventual destination of Royal Air Force base Kidlington, near Oxford, took Amy Johnson right over Blackpool where Amy’s sister Molly and her husband Trevor lived in nearby Stanley Park. The thought of a meal, spending time with family and a decent night’s sleep must have had a lot of appeal rather than slogging further southeastwards in thoroughly awful conditions and at night. She landed the Airspeed Oxford twin-engine trainer at RAF Squires Gate just south of Blackpool proper, and secured the plane for the night. It was just another ordinary day in her life as a ferry pilot working in the dark midst of World War II...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. They key image for this episode is Amy Johnson at the controls of ‘Jason’ in Australia in 1930 at the conclusion of her record setting flight. (image credit: Ted Hood via State Library of New South Wales)

On a whim in the summer of 1976—no doubt in part because he wanted to drive his shiny silver Alfa Romeo on the twisty and dangerous road through the mountains—my father suggested I have a stab at the Model Aeronautics Association of Canada National Championships held that year in Calgary, Alberta. This was on the strength of some spotty success at similar local model airplane competitions. Dad did his fair share of dreaming big. Particularly when it came to his kids.

For my part, I thought it was a perfectly fine idea, and duly registered to compete in the ‘Standard Sailplane’ category. These were models of around eight foot wingspan, without any sort of motor, controlled by the pilots located safely on the ground and connected to their plane by radio link. The gliders were towed aloft by a winch which spooled up the towline and the small, graceful aircraft rose into the sky like a kite...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. They key image for this episode Barron Shurn preparing to launch his model sailplane at a Seattle Area Soaring Society contest in June of 2008. This would have been very similar to the competition described in the essay. (photo credit: Bill Kuhlman / RC Soaring Digest)

The news landed with an apocalyptic shudder on an otherwise beautiful Saturday morning. Just 23 days after the Raptors handily dispatched the Golden State Warriors in six games, the enigmatic Kawhi Leonard announced he had signed a four year, $142 million deal with the Los Angeles Clippers. Predictably, the interstitial period became #KawhiWatch for fans of NBA basketball around the world. Nowhere more so than in Canada. Over the course of a single season, for Canadians, Leonard went from ‘say who?’ to being the leading candidate for pope if the position suddenly came available. We just couldn’t get enough of Kawhi which included, embarrassingly, chasing a lookalike in a black SUV through the streets of Toronto with a news helicopter. We were collectively transformed from diffident admirer to deranged stalker over the course of a little more than a week...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. They key image for this episode is Pascal Siakam and Kyle Lowry double team Tim Frazier, then of the Washington Wizards, on March 2, 2018. (image: Keith Allison via Wikimedia)

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Mark Twain’s life did not overlap Twitter’s by nearly a century, but he still managed to provide the single best commentary of what Twitter is, and should continue to be. Brevity is Twitter’s essence and that should never change. Any idea which takes more than 280 characters clearly needs more work, a modern day Twain might have said. Twitter’s enforced brevity is not a constraint. It’s liberation. Forcing my verbose, disorganized thoughts into 50 words or less makes them better, not worse.

Apart from that one thing, however, almost everything else about Twitter needs to change...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. They key image for this episode is Twitter Headquarters on Market Steet in San Francisco, California. (credit: Shutterstock)

Three cars were most likely to adorn an adolescent boy’s room in the early 1980s. The first was the brutish Porsche Turbo Carrera with its outlandish fender flairs and whale tail. The second was the Lamborghini Countach which, in its original and purest form, was a single, hard-chined arc from nose to tail. The third was the DeLorean. It might have had a model name but nobody knew what it was. With its unique stainless steel body and gull-wing doors, the car was unmistakable. It was the Potemkin-esque ‘concept car’ you glimpsed at the auto show, but made real and available soon on a lot near you. For a time, the public couldn’t get enough of it...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. Alec Baldwin as John DeLorean in _Framing John DeLorean (credit: XYZ Films)_

I was furious. Not only had Masai Ujiri fired Coach of the Year Dwane Casey in May, now he had traded away DeMar DeRozan for some guy from the San Antonio Spurs whose name I didn’t even recognize. Along with some other guy whose name I didn’t recognize either. My fury was based, in part, on a very weird, very Canadian reason. DeRozan actually liked playing in Toronto and we liked him back for almost that reason alone. Surprisingly, that’s really important to us. Canadians have this unhealthy need to be liked. Particularly by Americans. DeRozan’s remarkable skills as a player didn’t hurt, of course, but we found it endearing that he did not appear to simply be putting in time until he headed south again...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. The key image for this episode is Kawhi Leonard in the game against the Charlotte Hornets at ScotiaBank Arena on March 24th, 2019. (credit: Chensiyuan via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Jack Northrop dreamt of aircraft where everything not absolutely essential for flight was eliminated. Leonardo da Vinci’s theoretical flying machines from the 15th century, Sir George Cayley’s Governable Parachute of 1852, the Wright Brothers’ Flyer of 1903 and virtually ever other flying machine all have one thing in common: they all have tails of one sort of another which are used to stabilize and control their flight. Northrop, contrarily, didn’t believe a tail was necessary. In fact, he believed anything other than the wing actively worked against the elusive goal of all aircraft designers: to find the most efficient means of getting an aircraft aloft and then keeping it there.

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. The key image for this episode is of the first flight of the all-jet powered YB-49 on October 21, 1947. (credit: AFFTC History Office)

“The baby is on the roof with an umbrella and he looks like he is about to jump.” My mother tells this story — undoubtedly embellished over the years — about a chillingly calm call she took from a neighbour to warn of the seemingly imminent, tragic death of her younger son. I don’t remember the event myself but if it worked for Mary Poppins, I must have reasoned, surely it would work for me. Besides, I had a backup plan: my satin-edged security blanket tied, Superman-style, around my neck. If Poppins didn’t come through then surely Superman wouldn’t let me down, would he?

Then, in my pre-teen years, there was the control surface from a full-sized aircraft — it was an aileron, I think — which somehow came into my brother’s and my possession. After evaluating a few alternatives, we ended up duct taping it to the crossbar of my mustang bike...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. The key image for this episode the RV-6 which is the star of the episode, when it was at Delta Heritage Air Park, in September of 2018. (image: author)

What caught my attention, and that of a few others, was a small article about an amateur golf phenom out of Cypress, California with the improbable name of Tiger Woods. He had just quit the economics program at Stanford University and was turning pro at just 20 years of age. I think I recall somebody saying “he’s going to regret quitting Stanford!” Now I think about it, that could easily have been me. At that time, however, Stanford was already known for churning out soon-to-be Silicon Valley millionaires. It seemed folly that even if Tiger was there a golf scholarship, he had still managed to get himself into one of the most prestigious schools in the United States. “He should stick it out for another couple of years just in case the golf thing doesn’t work out,” I remember thinking, enviously. I also remember somebody else, not me, remarked “do you suppose that he’s going to have a line of clubs called Tiger’s Woods?”

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. The key image for this episode is by PeetlesNumber1 via Wikimedia under CC BY-SA 4.0. The image has been slightly cropped to fit the Fireside format.

I have not bought a hometown newspaper for a decade. I haven’t read a whole one in years. I do occasionally read the article which just happens to be facing up on The Globe and Mail abandoned at Starbucks while I’m waiting for my four shot American Misto. I rarely touch the paper itself. That’s not because I’m a germaphobe — although I do have tendencies in that regard — it’s a subconscious holdover from the days when the ink used to come off on my fingers as I hungrily turned the pages of the The Vancouver Sun on Saturday mornings when I was a kid. I am also struck by how small the pages have become — sub-tabloid size and not much larger than an 11 by 17 sheet of paper. More of a news flyer as opposed to a broadsheet of old. More colour, perhaps, but less colourful.

When you think about them in the context of the all-digital, all-the-time 21st century, the mere notion of a newspaper is utterly absurd...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. The exquisite key image for this episode is by Photo Kozyr / Shutterstock. The image has been slightly cropped to fit the Fireside format.

It was a time when daring—or simply dangerous—aviation events were concocted for the slightest of excuses. In the case of the 1934 MacRobertson Air Race it was nominally to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the city of Melbourne, Australia. The sponsor for whom the race was named was provided this honour simply by putting up the £15,000 in prize money. Sir Macpherson Robertson—he preferred the more catchy ‘MacRobertson’—was an Australian confectionary baron who likely saw the unparalleled promotional opportunity for what it was: a means of getting his name, and subsequently his candy, on the lips of everybody from England to Australia and everywhere in between.

MacRobertson would accomplish this purely commercial objective simply by being the title sponsor for a race where entrants would depart Mildenhall, England and, as fast as they dared, make their way to Melbourne, Australia some 11,300 miles away...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. The exquisite key image for this episode is by Kev Gregory and is available on Shutterstock. The image has been slightly cropped to fit the Fireside format.

"Eye-witnesses to the crash told how F-for-Freddie's rubber dinghy dropped out, inflated automatically and landed, as neatly and naturally as though something had gone wrong over the North Sea" so the local newspapers reported. Except it wasn't over the North Sea. It was in the middle of a cattle pasture and not far from a poultry farm on the prairie near Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It was certainly nowhere near anywhere a rubber dinghy would have been of any conceivable use. It was also thousands of miles away from the hostile skies of Europe where this particular aircraft had flown a record 213 missions before the war there had officially ended just two days before.

A few hundred yards away, what was left of the battle weary de Havilland Mosquito, nicknamed 'F' for Freddie, was still burning while the unimpeded prairie wind scattered the black smoke to nothingness...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously.)

I had to reread the headline at least a couple of times:

Podcast Platform Himalaya Raises $100 Million, Launches Apps With Tipping Function

$100 million? What on earth is Himalaya going to do with all that money? Besides, of course, the oddly headline-worthy 'tipping function'? Then it occurred to me: The Oprah and LeBron Show. The two stars would richly deserve that money just so long as their deal includes three important words: Only on Himalaya. At that point, Himalaya is only two tweets away from over 80 million high engagement Twitter impressions. And that's the whole game, of course. Content really is king. If there is any doubt about that just ask Netflix.

On the other hand if all that's delivered for the $100 million is exclusive distribution deals with those who need no further introduction other than their first name, that will be a crying shame indeed...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. The key image for this episode is "On The Air" by Alan Levine (Via Wikimedia under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic. Image slightly cropped to fit Fireside format.)

"How is corporate storytelling different from other kinds of storytelling?"

I was stumped by the question. I have to thank the interviewer who found the bullet point in my LinkedIn profile and called me out on it. I hope his audio editor eventually eliminates 90% of the pause that followed so I sound a whole lot sharper than I guess I must be. I eventually replied with the only thing which came into my head at the time:

"It isn't," I offered, with a hopefully inaudible rising inflection. As the interviewer seemed to approve of my initial answer, I began to gain confidence in it: "yes," I thought, "corporate storytelling is just like any other kind of storytelling, right?" That is, in the sense its ultimate effectiveness is related to its ability to transport us, the audience, to some other place or time - to have us willingly suspend our disbelief, as Aristotle put it. After that, anything is possible. We'll go wherever the storyteller wants us to go.

It just has to be a great story...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. The key image for this episode is a screen capture from the 2013 edition of the 'World of Red Bull' series of short promotional films. (credit: Red Bull)

On February 19th, 1959, Władysław ‘Spud’ Potocki was test flying the sparkling white Avro Arrow RL-201 in the fair but chilly skies near Malton, Ontario. On that particular flight, the World War II veteran fighter pilot was testing the Arrow’s roll rates at Mach 1.7. While fast, it was still well below the nearly twice the speed of sound the sharp, delta-wing aircraft had already achieved on previous test flights. As aeronautical engineers like to say, the Arrow had ‘flown off the drawing board’. The celestial expectations for the all-new, Canadian-designed and built supersonic interceptor were being met or exceeded with each passing day …

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on BluFly 🛩️.

The autobiography you won't read is the one I won't write because nothing short of Mitty-esque imaginings could make it interesting. I am vain enough, however, to know what the title of that pathetically thin volume would be: Fat Kid with a Cello.

In the fall of 1966, when I was just five years old, my parents enrolled me in what I just recently learned was an experiment in teaching five year olds how to play the violin. Noted professional violinist of the time, Elsie Persson, published an academic paper in 1968 describing how she "undertook to organize a pilot group of ten children at Macdonald College of McGill University" in Montréal. Turns out I was one of those ten children...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (photo: The indefatigable Mrs. Elsie Persson conducts three members of the Macdonald College Mini Strings in 1966.)

When travelling, and the answer "Calgary" to the question "so where do you call home?" draws the fairly common blank stare, there are two things which can usually be relied upon to locate my home town on Planet Earth. My first recourse is usually "ever heard of the Calgary Stampede?" If that doesn't work, which it usually does, then the next thing to try is "remember the 1988 Winter Olympics?" Still nothing? "From Montana, drive north. It's just colder and has lower speed limits but otherwise it's more-or-less the same." Depending on how far south I am in the continental US, that's usually a good bet for finally getting the location pin to drop on the map in my travelling acquaintance's head.

I'm expecting, however, that pretty soon all that is going to change...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (photo: author)

In the annotated screenplay for First Man, author Josh Singer was asked “why start with the X-15?” for the gripping opening scene in the movie. His answer was simple: “we fell in love with the aircraft. The fastest and highest flying…ever built…[it] flew well over Mach 6 (4,520 miles per hour) and more than 50 miles high, well outside the sensible atmosphere.” Singer’s collaborator and Neil Armstrong’s official biographer, James R. Hansen, adds a fascinating historical footnote: the eponymous first man “really didn’t enjoy talking about the Moon landing, probably because that was all anyone ever asked him about. But ask him about the…X-15 and he’d talk a blue streak.”

It’s not surprising the famously taciturn pilot-first-astronaut-later Neil Armstrong was a chatterbox when it came to this remarkable aircraft...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (photo: Air Force Flight Test Center History Office)

Thoughts of my father on the occasion of his passing.

Some say you spend your entire life preparing for the inevitable moment when you have to speak at your father’s memorial service. Today is that day and now is that time. Given that lifetime of preparation, I hope you’ll indulge me — grant me the luxury of a little of your time — as I take you on a ride through Dad’s life as seen from the perspective of his younger son.

The first really concrete, vivid, fully-articulated memory of my father was in 1969 when he came home and announced that instead of doing the sensible thing, and flying to a conference to present some of his medical research findings, we were going to drive there. He pitched it as a fun, family adventure. The catch? It wasn’t going to be a few hours to Ottawa or Toronto, and even an international junket to New York or Boston. No, all those destinations were strictly for dilettantes. The five of us, Mum and Dad and the three kids, were going to shoehorn ourselves into our brand new Dodge Dart — thankfully equipped with the relatively rare luxury, for the time, of air conditioning — and we were going to drive to...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (photo: author)

Notes from a life well underway but nowhere near over.

I had breakfast with a friend of mine not too long ago and our conversation turned to, as it often does with those hovering around the 60 year mark, to the subject of retirement. That started with a passing comment about my father who had recently entered his 90th year, as he fondly and often tells us. “I sometimes wonder,” I said, “if my parents had known they were going to live this long if they would have organized their lives any differently.”

My grandparents were...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (photo: “On The Beach at Newport, Looking West” by Michelle Klement)

Building an off-world colony a few feet above the street.

The science fiction staple of abandoning a less desirable place for another, more desirable one has been around almost since the beginning of science fiction itself. After all, who can deny the appeal of a fresh start in a brighter, better place? It’s often a cautionary tale, the result of not having entirely thought through the consequences of environmental neglect or outright abuse. Lacking the ability, or will, to put that right it’s just easier to start over again in low earth orbit or better yet, another planet either real or imagined. This notion of the future was truly brought to life in Ridley Scott’s original Bladerunner in 1982...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (photo: The CORE of the Plus 15 in Calgary, Canada, taken by the author.)

Observations from the arrival of the Information Age.

I had a part time job at the ComputerLand store on West Broadway in Vancouver, British Columbia in the early 1980s. Mostly it was to teach an introductory programming course in the BASIC computer language on Saturday mornings. Ironically, it was one of the few things for which you bought a computer back then — to learn how to program them. The store manager didn’t see any point in sending me home after the morning class ended and had me stooge around on the sales floor instead. I was typically assigned the enthusiasts who would, without fail, walk in and want to bend the ear of a so-called expert. Lacking any real experts, I was provided in their stead...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on TerenceCGannon.com where it was published contemporaneously. (image: IBM Canada’s King Street Datacentre circa 1964. Photograph by George Dunbar, courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation, ©International Business Machines Corporation.)

It’s surprising what connects you to home.

“Why don’t you just go there and see for yourself?” my boss asked me, back in the Spring of 1998. I was working for an international petroleum well service company at the time.

“What…go there?” I asked, first thinking it sounded like an incredible adventure. Then, I was filled almost instantly with an empty, black dread. “Sure, that sounds great,” I said bravely, “I’ll get right on that.” The IT guy isn’t offered that kind of trip very often. The branch office in Orange County to pull network cabling or training courses in Seattle, maybe. Lightweight stuff with predictable food, accommodation and television. Western Siberia to help decode the turbid electronic missives of the company’s staff over there? Nearly never....

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (image: Nizhnevartovsk, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Western Siberia in December of 2007. credit: Evgeny Fedorov under CC BY 3.0)

The airship hangars at Tillamook trigger a cascade of memories.

My family first visited the Oregon Coast in the early 1970s. My mother picked Rockaway, seemingly at random, from the motor club guide and we stayed at the Silver Sands, an old-fashioned drive-up motel on the beach. All five of us squeezed into a single suite, the most memorable thing about which was the mysterious Magic Fingers Relaxation Service. This was a box on the night table which if you put in a quarter made the bed vibrate in a way that made absolutely no sense to a 12 year old. “How on earth would you ever get to sleep?” I thought, obviously not yet fully able to understand that sleeping may not have been the point. Back then, it just seemed odd...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (image: "Naval Air Station Tillamook during World War II" credit: Tillamook Air Museum)

While there is still time, take your kids on a long road trip.

Memories are like roadside scenery glimpsed from a car hurtling down the freeway at 78 miles-an-hour. The driver sees the least, preoccupied by the task at hand. The passenger in the front seat sees a little more but not enough given she spends time looking at the driver, searching for signs of distraction or weariness. The passengers in the back have the opportunity to see the most because they are — literally — along for the ride, blissfully out of control and with nothing but time on their hands. The idle backseat passengers can best see what’s really close up, or really far off, and only then like freeze frame glimpses of washed out Kodacolor photos rescued from a dumpster bound shoebox...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (image: "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park" by Diego Rivera, 1947.)

The quirky charm of a British homebuilding show.

It seems to happen every time. The affable Kevin McCloud, host of British television’s Grand Designs, describes the house project he will cover in the upcoming episode, and fairly predictably I find myself thinking:

They have got to be out of their minds.

Whether it’s the extreme locale the owners have chosen, the seeming folly of restoring and subsequently inhabiting a derelict theatre, for example, or the absurd expectations of time, budget or a combination thereof, the viewer is always left with a sense that — this time — it’s all going to hell...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published in July of 2016. (photo: The Northern Echo)

It is time we realized there’s a little bit of each in all of us and in all that we do.

I have a smoky old eighties sports car which I drive, usually too fast, for a few weeks during the shoulder seasons. Any other time of year I park it lavishly, luxuriously in a heated and cooled garage. Yet, I also lust after a brand new Tesla Model S and the solar panels with which to charge it. Weird, eh?

We recycle everything we can in our household. I was annoyed, though, when our nanny state, local government rammed through blue bins city-wide at taxpayer cost. It was as if I was being forced to take money for a blood donation which I had, for years, happily given for free simply because it was the right thing to do. Except in reverse...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published in May of 2016. (photo: ©Stocksnapper via iStockphoto)

An ancient idea that is more relevant than ever.

The metaphorical rosetta stone is better known than the real Rosetta Stone. In any explanation of how one critical document deciphers and unlocks the meaning of all others, that document instantly becomes the rosetta stone of particle physics or computer code or kaizen or astronomy or golf. With the irreplaceable information the metaphorical rosetta stone provides, that which we seek to understand is enlightened and flourishes in our imagination. It’s the single match struck in the stygian void. The light it casts instantly defines the dimensions and nature of our new world...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published concurrently. (photo: ©Hans Hillewaert via Wikimedia under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Although I didn’t know it until now, how one great month in my early twenties pretty much ruined my career.

For one brief, shining moment when I was in my early twenties, the sun and stars and all the planets aligned and I was able to bill $5,000 in one month. In 2017, that’s the equivalent of over $15,000 or, if you prefer, $180,000 a year. Through what turned out to be a happy accident, I believed I had officially hit the big time.

It turned out to be a disaster...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was originally published on April 29th, 2017.

Could machine intelligence enable our darker impulses?

The judge, even in traffic court, sits on a raised platform that ensures that you look up at him and he looks down on you. It’s majestic and intimidating. This was my impression as I entered the courtroom to fight a speeding ticket I had received a few weeks previously. It’s not that I didn’t think I had been speeding when I had been caught doing exactly that, but rather I wanted to test the notion that the state still has to make its case. They have to provide evidence, the absence of which means the guilty get to go free.

And thus hung my entire defence...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was originally published on February 17th, 2017. (header photo, cover art and sound clips from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey)

A 75 year old true story of courage, atonement and forgiveness.

Nobuo Fujita was determined to bring his family’s katana with him 5,000 miles across the Pacific. The samurai sword had been passed from one generation to the next for over 400 years and accompanied Fujita on every important journey of his life. If samurai tradition was to be respected, he would eventually pass it down to his son.

Fujita had a different plan, however. He had been invited by the Junior Chamber of Commerce—the Jaycees — to the 1962 Azalea Festival in their home town of Brookings, Oregon. This was an annual Memorial Day event for the town on the southern coast just north of the California border. Nobuo Fujita eventually accepted the invitation, and then whatever difficulties there would be transporting the katana. It was essential to his trip because he intended to present the sword to the people of Brookings as a gift of peace and friendship.

If that plan didn’t work out, however, he would need the katana for another, equally important purpose: to commit seppuku, the hideous ritual suicide reserved for samurai who had brought shame on themselves...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was originally published on September 26th, 2017.

The simple joy of slope soaring.

We had just about given up on a return to Rocky Knoll. Since our arrival on the Oregon Coast the wind had been blowing steadily from the southwest, which does not favour the slope which is about 10 minutes south of Yachats. But then, we were walking into the Green Salmon and looked up at their little wind turbine and — voilà — the wind had shifted to the northwest. After a short visit for their amazing coffee and baked goods, we packed ourselves and all the gear into the car and headed south. When we arrived, the wind was blowing in a perfect orientation to the cliff...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was originally published on November 11th, 2016. (header photo and cover art by Michelle Klement)

The burden of a name that has come to mean so much.

The word derives from the Spanish mesteño, which is defined as “wild; untamed; ownerless”. By letting the tongue dwell on the roof of the mouth you get to mestengo, a “stray beast”. From there it’s a small step to the word and an idea that has entered into our modern mythology.

Mustang.

Mustangs are wild horses which roam the North American southwest. These were initially descended from horses which escaped, were turned loose or stolen from...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was originally published on August 15th, 2016. (header photo and cover art: “Wild Horses in the Prairie” ©Giorgio Galano on iStock)

The answer to a casual question at lunch, 35 years ago, taught me everything I needed to know about choosing a career.

I knew my father’s cardiologist for a dozen years before my father needed him.

In the early 1980s the medical community was just starting to build applications for patient record keeping using the new personal computers coming on the market at the time. Through circumstances I am totally unable to recall I was introduced to an eminent cardiologist—I’ll call him Dr. Don—whose research work required him to collect data on his groundbreaking coronary angioplasty cases. I wrote a little code for him and it remained an entirely professional relationship except for the occasional lunch at the local tennis club. They were awkward discussions...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. This essay is the story which provided inspiration for The WorkNotWork Show, a podcast dedicated to finding and speaking with those, like Doctor Don, who are living their dream careers. A version of this essay also previously appeared on Medium on October 14th, 2016. (header photo: ©Jim DeLillo on iStock.)

An unsolicited prediction of what The Big A will do next. Well, even if they don’t, then they really should.

Despite what you might think, not one second of Apple’s podcasts are actually hosted by Apple. “But how can that be”, you may ask, “when they ‘host’ hundreds of thousands of them?” It’s simple. When you download a podcast ‘from Apple’ what you are really doing is using them as an index — a pointer, if you will — to a file located somewhere else. That’s why you might find some podcasts really sparkle on iTunes, downloading quickly and streaming promptly, while others really stink. I know because I’ve done it both ways. Incidentally, not stinking is a great way in increase download counts, as I eventually discovered.

But I‘m ahead of myself...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. A version of this essay previously appeared on Medium on April 24th, 2017. On June 10, 2017, Apple announced Podcast Analytics which will be launched later this year. This is very close to at least one aspect of what was predicted in this essay. (header photo: Shunichi Kouroki via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

I didn't realize what had been stolen from me.

I was stunned to hear, a couple of days ago, that Chris Froome had just won his third Tour de France riding for Team Sky, which has won four of the last five. Stunned not by the achievements so much — although they are pretty impressive — but rather the fact that another Tour had come and gone and I had hardly noticed.

There was a time, not that long ago, when my years were marked by the annual rite of July which involved spending untold hours in front of the TV watching the rolling chess game play out over...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. A version of this essay previously appeared on Medium on this date in 2016. In 2017, Chris Froome and Team Sky won the Tour de France again, making the totals in the article a little out of date. Thanks so much for listening. (header photo: Arrivée de la 2e étape du Tour de France 1969. CC BY-SA 3.0 NL)

There will never be as much as we want to go around.

Take any population, large or small, and imagine creating a spreadsheet with one row for each woman, man and child. Now, imagine the first column in that spreadsheet for a given row contains the amount of healthcare spending that person — or others, on their behalf — will want over a given period of time. For the purposes of this exercise, this first column is cost-no-object. If there the smallest possibility a given medication or therapy will help that person, throw its cost into column A for that person’s row.

To help with this exercise if you are doing it on behalf of your child, wife, husband or parent, think about what medication or therapy you would be prepared to forego in order to make sure there is enough to go around for everybody. This is a trick question: the answer is very likely zero...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. Your comments about the podcast are welcome below and if you liked it, please share it with your social networks. A version of this essay previously appeared on Medium on May 8th, 2017. Thanks so much for listening. (header photo: Florence Nightingale in the hospital at Scutari in 1856. Used under Wikimedia CC 4.0.)

Eliminating the use of fossil fuels depends on kicking our addiction to just tooling around.

The absolute single best day—no, the single best moment—of my entire year is sitting in the parking lot waiting for the Starbucks® to open on the Friday before Labour Day. With a full tank of gas, a smooth open road ahead, decent weather and nothing but free time it simply doesn’t get any better. In a year defined by its constraints it is the instant when I feel...

Listen, above, or if you prefer you can read the essay instead. Your comments about the podcast are welcome below.

Musings on Residential Solar

As I consider residential solar...I’m wondering—maybe for the first time in my life—if my early adopter shields should be up and whether I should let others pave the solar highway. There is a significant difference in this case: in my earlier, early adopter escapades I could at least be shown up as a rube in the privacy of my own home. There was only my wife providing judgemental looks of disapproval. Or pity, I’m not sure which exactly.

With the consideration of residential solar, however, there is the potential of subjecting myself to a much harsher brand of judgement: that is—yes—that annual select committee enquiry that is the neighbourhood summer barbecue. Because solar panels are so prominent, I am pretty much guaranteed a non-stop string of engagements with the opening number always being the same: “So how is that solar thing working out for you...”

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Taking the bête out of urban cycling’s bête noire.

In a good month, I cycle 500 kilometres on city bike paths and roads. For that reason alone, you would think I would be thrilled the City has moved forward with an aggressive program of protected, green bike lanes adjacent to the curb. However, I have mixed feelings. Before them, I took the approach that as a cyclist amongst a lot of cars and trucks, I was like the kayaker in with the killer whales. While they may not intend to kill me, ‘killer’ is their first name after all...

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The prospects for the 1939 Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe air race did not look good. Suzanne Deutsch de la Meurthe, the widow of the “Oil King of France” Henri, had revived the competition in 1931 in memory of her late husband...

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After 23 hours and 57 minutes of the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans, Toyota Gazoo Racing had reason to feel good about their chances of winning the legendary car race. They had been a contender throughout and led it, decisively, for the final four hours. Then, with just a couple of laps to go, their leading No. 5 car inexplicably...

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Listen, above, or read the essay instead.

In the Eighties I had an inflection point in my career—clear only in retrospect—where I had a choice. I could have set out for Silicon Valley not all that long after it started to be called that. I had family in the area who I like to believe would have...

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The mines of Cornwall, England operated for over 4000 years. Then, after these four millenia of continuous human endeavour, the entire industry became extinct in little more than a single generation. When the end came, it was unexpected, swift and brutal...

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(read the essay instead)