Category Archives: Center for the New Northwest

Innovation and ideas on life, policy, and the arts.

Freeform Follies

When Kenny Weissberg arrived in Boulder Independence Day 1971, he got to know Jason Sherman, who was a deejay at KRNW-FM radio. With his help, Kenny got hired to do the morning show. The pay sucked but it wasn’t about the money. It was all about having a gig on a station in a very Read More

Handy

Is it true that the next iPhone will be a corneal implant? A device that can do everything your current one does and do it hands free. It can text your messages and comments, scan the Internet, even replicate your voice and make a call – does anyone actually call anymore except spammers? – all Read More

Get High, Get By, Deny, Decry, or Buy

What do you think about drugs? Good, bad, indifferent? Chooser, user, abuser? Never, seldom, often, every day like clockwork? Maybe you take medicine for your heart. Maybe you like wine. Smoke a little reefer. Coffee may be your fix each day, or meth may be your pick me up because after all it’s cheaper. Perhaps Read More

Big Questions

Here’s a fascinating study of human origins, migration, and the development of language that derives from new techniques for capturing DNA from our prehistoric relatives. The sweep of evolution from Olduvai Gorge, though the migrations that eventually populated the world, and all the languages that were developed to communicate the experience, are the stuff of great Read More

Art and Artifice

Ruminating over a collection of slightly related subjects as a theme for this article. Art and artisan are featured here, and artful living in an age of late stage capitalism with its lure of artifice.  Writing about a time in the past when creativity was rampant, life more carefree, aspirations communal, inevitably leads to contemplation Read More

Human Endeavor Writ (Very) Large

Once in a while, in the deluge of “information” washing over us every day, we encounter something that is immediately unforgettable, something so staggering, perplexing, or simply stunning to behold that we can’t let go of it. It demands contemplation. It happened to me when I was a young man riding a motorcycle in Western Read More

Space To Contemplate

My grandmother, Tina, was a young woman when she travelled with her family to California to visit relatives. It was her first trip to the West Coast. The second day there everybody hopped aboard the car to take in the ocean. When they arrived at the beach, Tina walked down the sand to the edge Read More

Prosperity Kills

Is your prosperity killing people? All the glorious benefits of making it in the free enterprise system, where there are no limits on what you can make nor what you spend it on, has become a blood sport. Making and spending are the crux of climate change, which is killing people by the thousands.  Too Read More

Monocropping Culture

You start with seeds of one type or another, maybe corn or wheat or whatever serves your market, and they are genetically modified. They are built to withstand the pesticides and herbicides you will apply to them at several stages of the crop’s development. You have water rights sufficient to spray copious amounts on even Read More

Medium As Message Maker

Wow! Does it seem to you it’s hard to get through a day without confronting tragedy? The morning mayhem, the afternoon upheaval, the evening disaster. The chaos keeps coming. What to make of it all? The well regulated militia continues to slaughter innocents, big business jacks up prices because it can, rents are unaffordable, homeless Read More