Kepler's 2020 Project in the News:
Follow us on Facebook
Events
| Thu | ||
|---|---|---|
Start: 7:00 pm
Thursday, October 15, 7:00 p.m.
Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto BUY NOW
Cubberley Theatre, 4000 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto
According to Stewart Brand, a lifelong environmentalist who sees everything in terms of solvable design problems, three profound transformations are under way on Earth right now. Climate change is real and is pushing us toward managing the planet as a whole. Urbanization--half the world's population now lives in cities, and eighty percent will by midcentury--is altering humanity's land impact and wealth. And biotechnology is becoming the world's dominant engineering tool. In light of these changes, Brand suggests that environmentalists are going to have to reverse some longheld opinions and embrace tools that they have traditionally distrusted. Only a radical rethinking of traditional green pieties will allow us to forestall the cataclysmic deterioration of the earth's resources.
In the end, says Brand, the environmental movement must become newly responsive to fast-moving science and take up the tools and discipline of engineering. We have to learn how to manage the planet's global-scale natural infrastructure with as light a touch as possible and as much intervention as necessary.
Stewart Brand trained originally as an ecologist. His legendary Whole Earth Catalog (1968-1985) won the National Book Award in 1972. Brand, whose previous books include The Media Lab, How Buildings Learn, and The Clock of the Long Now, is president and cofounder of The Long Now Foundation and cofounder of Global Business Network.
For reservations, call 1-800-847-7730 or register online at CommonwealthClub.org/sv
Start: 7:30 pm
Thursday, October 15, 7:30 p.m.
Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness BUY NOW
Tracy Kidder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the enduring classic Mountains Beyond Mountains, has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the “master of the non-fiction narrative.” In this new book, Kidder gives us the superb story of a hero for our time. Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man’s remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him–a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances.
Deo arrives in America from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, plagued by horrific dreams, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life in search of meaning and forgiveness.
Tracy Kidder has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. The author of Mountains Beyond Mountains, My Detachment, Home Town, Old Friends, Among Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New Machine, he lives in Massachusetts and Maine.
Photo Credit: Gabriel Amadeus Cooney
Against the Odds By RON SUSKIND
Published: August 27, 2009
New York Times – Editor’s Choice
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/review/Suskind-t.html
| ||
