Author Archives: William Hooke

In the year 2000, Andrew Delbanco, a Harvard professor, published The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope. An excerpt from a New York Times book review of the time: …The three lectures in ”The Real American Dream” are titled … Continue reading →

To be a physical scientist is to operate in a very confined world, treating only a small class of variables susceptible to easy measurement and contributing to a narrow range of processes amenable to mathematical treatment and laboratory experiment or … Continue reading →

“Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar…” ― William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury “Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for … Continue reading →

The story is heartbreakingly familiar. Once again[1], weather and water have hammered Louisianans. Figures put the recent death toll at 11, and the number of families displaced from their homes at 40,000. The cause? Two feet of rain falling over … Continue reading →

“Dreams are never concerned with trivia” – Sigmund Freud “Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.” – Virginia Woolf My dream last night featured EarthOracle, an entirely hypothetical e-business … Continue reading →

An alert reader of the previous LOTRW post suggested I link it to the extensive body of material available on National Weather Service and other web sites warning against driving on flooded roadways. Their content falls under the heading Turn … Continue reading →

The previous LOTRW post touched on the idea that public schools teach kids important life skills in addition to the formal disciplines such as reading, writing, history, mathematics, and branches of science. In the past such life skills included wood- … Continue reading →

Really, Bill? Bear with me. It’s the weekend. In the later years of grade school in New Jersey and then in what was called junior high in Pennsylvania, I was introduced to wood shop. Today’s generation needs to understand that … Continue reading →

“Understanding how the Earth system works and transforming this knowledge into action will allow our nation and the global community to effectively respond and adapt to changing weather, water, and climate conditions. National investment and leadership combined with enhanced partnerships … Continue reading →