Organisms and Agency

by | Jun 1, 2021 | Uncategorized

Responding to an article in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/01/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak-covid-virus-origins-china the medical ethnobotanist and philosopher Stephen Buhner had the following astute observations (posted in Facebook):...

Review of The Good Hand excerpt

by | Feb 6, 2021 | Uncategorized

I just read the New York Times excerpt of Michael Patrick F. Smith’s (names don’t get more American, or Irish–his middle, middle name is Flanigan) book The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown. What...

Reviews for Plants in Science Fiction

by | Feb 4, 2021 | Uncategorized

Last year an edited volume on speculative vegetation that I contributed a chapter to on Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume came out with the University of Wales press in the New Dimensions in Science Fiction series (with a beautiful cover, I might add). Since then,...

Decolonization Matters

by | Oct 10, 2020 | Uncategorized

An short article I wrote zooming out on the Black Lives Matter movement – “Decolonization Matters” – has just appeared in the journal Kosmos: Journal for Global Transformation. There I write The “white fragility” fear that the oppressed will...

Bee-washing

by | Aug 14, 2020 | Uncategorized

It’s a thing. Like greenwashing, whitewashing, or astroturfing. Bee-washing is big business. It’s how companies fool us into consuming more: by appeasing our sense of guilt beforehand. It’s almost like they tried to reverse engineer our resistant...

Bread and Roses

by | Jul 5, 2020 | Decolonization, exploitation, Music

I’m a jazz fan and player, and during the corona quarantine I started reaching beyond my normal playlist, and found the amazing work of Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah after stumbling across his stunning NPR Tiny Desk Concert. (If you don’t know this...

International Federation of Medical Students Association – Netherlands webinar

by | May 6, 2020 | Climate Change, Communication, Industrial Epidemics, Industry Documents, Normal is Over, philosophy of science, Public Health, Syndemics, Talks

I’ll be giving a webinar lecture Friday May 8th for the International Federation of Medical Students’ Association – the Netherlands as part of their Youth Delegate Programme masterclass series in collaboration with the Dutch ministry of Health, Welfare and...

Not getting the message of coronavirus

by | May 5, 2020 | Uncategorized

We’re sheltering in place. We’re not going out. In some places in the world, like India, Italy, and China, their quarantines were so effective that for the first time in remembrance, one could see the Himalayas from 200 kilometers away, the canals of Venice were...

Interspecies Prosperity: What it is and why it matters

by | Feb 21, 2020 | agroecology, beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Biomimicry, Climate Change, Decolonization, deep ecology, Environmental Justice, Fake Freedoms, Industrial Epidemics, Normal is Over, permaculture, Priorities, Public Health, Syndemics

I have a new blog post over at the Erasmus University Rotterdam initiative I’m a part of, the Dynamics of Inclusive Prosperity. This interdisciplinary research team from law, business, and philosophy brings together mavericks who work across disciplines, and are...

BMJ article on conflicts of interest in the tanning industry just published

by | Feb 8, 2020 | Conflicts of Interest, Discursive Gap, Fake Freedoms, Industrial Epidemics, philosophy of science, Publications, Side-effects

Working at the CTCRE at UCSF allowed me to meet all sorts of medical practitioners aware of the influence of industry on the health of their patients. One of those people I happened to meet, was Eleni Linos (now at Stanford), a dermatologist who had noticed throughout...

Designing cities for silence

by | Jan 7, 2020 | beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Biophilia, Communication, conservation, Decolonization, Environmental Political Theory, Fake Freedoms, Harm Reduction, Naturverlassenheit, Normal is Over, permaculture, silence, Systems thinking

As an academic, I crave silence. In fact, without silence, I can’t think. And since thinking is my job, in our current media blitz steal-your-attention economy, I’m often miserable. When I don’t wish to work from home or my office, or am on the road,...

The Failure of COP25

by | Dec 15, 2019 | beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Biophilia, Climate Change, Communication, Dante Alighieri — 'The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.', death, Decolonization, deep ecology, Discursive Gap, duh, Energy, Environmental Justice, Environmental Political Theory, Fake Freedoms, folly, Greenwashing, Industrial Epidemics, Normal is Over, Oil Barons, parasitism, Perverse Incentives, pollution, Priorities, Syndemics, Systems thinking

I recently read – from afar – the sorry state of the UNFCCC #COP25 in Madrid. According to 350.org, instead of barring fossil fuel companies from engineering the COP, the security guards at the UNFCCC forcibly removed hundred of activists and scientists...