Randi lays it all out.

Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Ministry For The Future' is a brilliant, moving vision of where we can go.

The one thing about this author -- every book of his that I read, I learn a great deal from.

This NYT bestselling author lives in my town. I've managed to have dinner with him a few times, courtesy of a friend of mine that hangs with the Mars Society. KSR is a down-to-earth human, but he's also overly intelligent and too well-informed to just 'hang out' with. I consider myself intelligent, but I found the dinners sort of like sitting down across a table from a high-powered searchlight. Engaging and exhausting. Just wow.

He's -- a serious mind. He spends his time around working scientists from all over the world, and he's married to a famous UC Davis geneticist. His speculative fiction rings with research and hard fact. I love his style. 'Galileo's Dream' is always with me. It's just beautiful writing. True art. An important part of my life.

'Ministry For The Future' is the newest and best of his climate-change thrillers, full of international political/financial intrigue and desperate science bound up in the incredible drama of climate change that's going to push humanity to the edge of extinction. It's dark, deep, and hopeful. Visionary. No one else could pull something like this off. Hard to explain this novel properly without spoiling it. Uplifting. I so want us to find ourselves on the path he creates. I loved it.

I feel uplifted. Educated. Entertained. Read it. Steal it if you have to. So good. This artist is peaking.

I noticed something when I went for my first shot.

It was a well-run drive-through operation. Volunteers in orange vests holding clipboards guiding a long line of cars through a series of stops that ended in a quick innoculation and a fifteen-minute pause in a monitored parking lot. On the way out they handed me my card and a slip for my second shot three weeks from now.

I live in California. Maybe it's not the same everywhere. But the whole thing was professional from end to end. Seamless. The volunteers were dedicated and courteous. I felt part of -- a national endeavour. A World War II response to a public health crisis.

This kind of serious organization -- a group of Americans helping other Americans get beyond what's been a very bad year -- filled me with pride. We're back. America is real again, if that makes sense.

I was at the still-socially-distant Easter in-law grouping this morning. About half have been vaccinated, the others have appointments. We were talking to the kids about all of it, about the difficulty they've faced this past year.

One of them -- my fifteen year old nephew -- said that it wasn't this past year that he was traumatized by. It was the last four years. His anger at having to survive a presidency clearly designed to degrade the nation -- that's what he felt traumatized by. COVID was just a symptom.

It's been a good two days; a tangible effect of having an actual Federal government at work. Joe and Kamala are doing a better job than I imagined anyone could do given the circumstances.

I'm proud. Proud of my state and proud of the Better Part of my nation.

I'm watching an excellent Antifa Manifesto on Netflix right now.

‘Saving Private Ryan’. Stars that cannibal guy, what’s his name — Tom Hanks.

It’s all about the cost of letting conservative bullshit grow roots.