I've lived a life where I have been able to professionally dabble in pure fantasies. Three years with the U.S. Senate working on energy and the environmental legislation.  I drafted the bill that created the national hydrogen program in 1979.  Worked on laser fusion at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ( SETI ) at the NASA Ames Research Center.   I had a full career in renewable energy, directing the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii and co-founding the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research. Here is a  nine-year old posting providing some details on my experience with fusion .  in the mid-1970's I remember having an apartment adjacent to Wente Brothers, and watching the Watergate hearings.  That was almost half a century ago.  At the  end of 2022 : Lawrence Livermore first achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment using lasers. That experiment briefly achieved what’s

First, from the   Sunday New York Times :  The Sunday Question:  How long will McCarthy last as speaker?  McCarthy's concession to win the job made it easier for hard-right lawmakers   to oust him,   so his tenure could be short.  But Democrats looking to cut deals with McCarthy could  supply votes to save him   if conservatives revolt. Also, tomorrow night, TCU vs Georgia for the NCAA football championship, and on Tuesday, the release of Prince Harry's memoir,  Spare . I yesterday watched on my local PBS channel,  First Contact:  An Alien Encounter , a British program dramatizing what would happen if we encountered an incoming alien signal and/or artifact.  While this  Guardian  review  did not take the effort too seriously, I did agree that it was mostly boring.  Yet, triggered was my posting of today on this subject, and the subject of the day...imagination.  Oh, here is a  list of 655 films featuring extraterrestrials , so my wild dabblings are sometimes popular. Sunday is

Bad and good news from The New York Time this morning: The country passed 12 million cases,   adding one million new cases in the past week alone . New daily cases are approaching 200,000: On Friday, the country recorded more than 198,500, a record. Pfizer’s vaccine is now being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use and Moderna’s may not be far behind.   The first Americans could get a vaccine by the middle of December . Separately,   the F.D.A. granted   emergency authorization for the Regeneron antibody treatment   given to Mr. Trump after he was diagnosed with Covid-19. Finally, about President Donald Trump and the rest of the World: Heads of state of the world’s richest countries and the European Union   spoke about the battle against the coronavirus   and potential debt relief for poor countries hit hard by the pandemic. President Trump briefly participated in the summit   from the White House, but skipped the event on pandemic preparedness and instead he