Road Writer Blogs

Road Writer Blog: Musings from the Travels of a retired scientist, teacher, writer, gardener, and philosopher

  • Education, Science Fiction, McCarthyism and AI

    Of what value is the smart, creative thinker in the modern world?  Are we needed about as much as hostlers and fountain pen repair technicians?  After my prior comments on AI (A Creative’s Capitulation to Generative AI, or How I Became Darth Vader), I feel compelled to write about it once more, especially since Mary and I are on the road again and so it’s time for a new blog post! Education and AI After wonderful visits with our grown children in Wisconsin and Florida, we are now heading for Knoxville to visit grad-school friends and perhaps walk around the…

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  • Life Adventures:  Personal or Political? (with pictures!)

    Mary and I have had a delightful season of campervanning this year, with me writing as we travel and her learning to play the violin (see pictures!).  We’ve made trips to see family in Pennsylvania and Utah, a 40th anniversary excursion to explore geology and attend the WorldCon in WA, and now we are on the road to Kansas for perhaps our last excursion of the season to attend the funeral of a dear friend’s mom.  This last excursion has gotten me to thinking about what is most important in the adventure of life and how that importance should be…

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  • A Creative’s Capitulation to Generative AI, or How I Became Darth Vader

    Generative AI has exploded into our world, and, as a writer and philosopher, I have significant concern about how it will impact my creative contributions. 

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  • 40th Anniversary Adventures in the Campervan!

    Mary and I are off on another adventure, this one for our 40th anniversary together!  Our primary objective is to explore the Channeled Scablands, a spectacular geology feature of Washington State formed when a glacial ice dam broke in Montana and spilled a million billion gallons of water across the landscape of Washington toward the Pacific Ocean.  After that, we plan to head on to the World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle.  However, while enroute, we’ve also stumbled upon a few other wonders, like the wind-formed loess hills of the Palouse, gold with wheat ready for harvest! Mary and I…

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  • Wishing for Something to Give Away

    There is always some impetus that drives or beckons a person to do what they do.  For some people, that might be hunger, literal or metaphorical.  For others it might be attention, or influence, or power.  For some, perhaps wealth or comfort of living. Me?  I have always hoped to give something away that others truly want.  Sadly, I am quite awful at giving gifts.  However, I’ve tried to give other things.  I spent my life as a professor trying to give away understanding of the nature of our world (some of my students might have wanted it!).  I wrote…

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  • Time in Minnesota

    Isn’t time interesting?  We don’t really know what time is or where it comes from, but, as we grow older, we start to feel its irreversibility.  What’s more, we humans love to write and read stories that play with time, perhaps more commonly than any other science-fictiony idea. Mary and I encountered time on our maiden 2025 campervan voyage over Memorial weekend.  We first traveled south to the Cleveland area to visit with dear friends of some decades back.  They were perhaps our first close friends when we moved to Minnesota over thirty years ago.  We were all young together…

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  • Even More on Finding Truth in a Post-Truth World:  Spiritual Truth

    In reading my series on finding Truth in a post-truth world, you might think, Wait!  What about spiritual truth?  All your essays seem to address scientific evidence and reasoning, but isn’t spiritual truth more about revelation and faith than evidence? Well, some might think so, but I am not convinced.  I can’t speak to the evidential foundation for other faiths, but for my own Christian faith, scripture is full of the ideas of testing and reasoning.  I argue that blind belief is not faith at all, and, in fact, has been the source of much darkness and evil in the…

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  • Evolution, Social Media, and the Fruit of the Spirit

    Fruit of the spirit includes behaviors like patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control.  That sure makes one think about social media and politics, right? Not. The survival-of-the-fittest search for attention and influence on social media, or in politics, is a microcosm of evolution.  Those who rise above a certain threshold win the day, winner take all.  Quite like the survival of the fittest in biological evolution—those who can secure the resources and overcome their adversaries win.  The rest, well, we can still dig up their fossils. In social media, and the political world, we like to attach ourselves to powerful people,…

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  • Science Fiction and the RoadWriter Life, Part 2:  Abandoned barge canals and lost civilizations

    What stirs reader imagination or exploratory longings more than a good adventure story about a lost civilization?!  Your starship lands on a primitive world where you discover mysterious structures half buried in the jungle that hint at forgotten technological prowess. (Star Trek, anyone?).  Floating down the river on your noble quest, your fellowship of travelers passes through a portal guarded by towering statues of forgotten beings —what lies beyond? (Lord of the Rings, anyone)?  As you pursue your doctorate in geology, your excavations uncover what looks like a giant spaceship imbedded for untold years in solid rock—what does it mean?…

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  • More Thoughts on Finding Truth:  You have to actually want to find it!

    Honestly looking for truth is nothing at all like honestly wanting to be right.  Wanting to be right encourages people to shout loudly and try to undermine the credibility of others.  It discourages reconsidering your thinking because that might mean that you were wrong.  In contrast, looking for truth involves lots of watching and listening.  And changing your mind. A few years back I encountered a survey in the news that addressed a question for which there could be no supporting evidence, yet lots of people had opinions on it!  Sadly, although I tucked this into my mind at the…

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