Now Also at The Atlantic Monthly!

For anyone interested in reading some more posts/thoughts/essays of mine, I’ve just started writing as a regular online correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. Look under the “Correspondents” tab for my blog: “The Uncommon Navigator.” Next week, I’m also going to be guest-posting for Andrew Sullivan while he’s on vacation. So check out his blog next week, too!
Excerpts from a couple of my recent posts:
“The Hubble Mission and the Future of NASA”

“… This July, it will be 40 years since Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon. The Space Shuttle, while anything but the mundane “Space Transportation System” (STS) it was originally envisioned to be, has been flying missions to Low Earth Orbit for more than a quarter century. But while the Shuttle remains an engineering marvel, and an incredibly exciting experience for the lucky and risk-tolerant few who have gotten to fly in it, I have long believed that the single, or at least the best, argument for keeping the Shuttle flying was its role in maintaining and improving the Hubble Telescope. 
“Why? Because, over the course of 13 years and hundreds of interviews with NASA researchers and managers, including at least half a dozen shuttle commanders, a pattern emerged.” (read more ….)

“Reality Check for New Graduates”

“I have a soft spot in my heart for Minnesota Public Radio, having spent four years living in Garrison Keillor country back in the early 1990s. If you have that much snow and sub-zero weather in your life, maybe you have to have both an enduring, and slightly wry, sense of humor about things. Or maybe you don’t. But … you betcha … it certainly helps. 
“In any event, this piece by Bob Collins of MPR—full of wry insight and humor—is well worth the reading. It came out of a research project MPR did on the optimism or pessimism of current college students, but it would make for a great commencement address, if any college out there is still looking for a speaker. 
“Collins’ point is that while college students may be terrified of the uncertainty they’re facing, heading out into the world right now … their predicament is hardly new …” (read more … )

“Searching for Control in a Risky World”

“Right after I’d returned to the U.S. from a month-long trip flying relief supplies into Chad, Sudan, and the tumultuous eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I overheard a woman in the locker room of my gym admonishing someone not to drink from a particular kind of plastic water bottle, because it might cause cancer. 
“Compared with lawless conflict zones populated with angry, AK-47-toting young men, the dangers presented by a plastic water bottle (and not a water bottle formed from an old kerosene container, mind you, but one manufactured specifically to live out its life as a water bottle) seemed rather low on the Richter scale of hazardous things to worry about. 
“While it’s not a fair fight to compare the risks of unstable African countries with a middle-class neighborhood in a wealthy, industrialized nation, the interchange certainly highlighted how amazingly safe we are, that we can obsess about the small risks posed by a plastic water bottle. But still, why do we worry about so many small-risk factors in our lives?  Having eliminated so many lethal threats in our lives, do we now indulge in the fantasy that we can have a risk-free society or life? Or is there something else at play?” (read more … )