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In 1881, Professor Silvanus Thompson, a physics lecturer at the University of Bristol applauded the development of accumulators (secondary batteries) and suggested that they offered a gateway to the future of railway transportation, demolition, telephony, wind/water power utilization, and lighting.[1] For Thompson, batteries were the obvious “next step,” or energy transition, in the expansion of…
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President Trump’s June 2017 decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord has once again placed oil and fossil fuels in the political crosshairs.[1] A recent article in MIT’s Technology Review describes oil companies as a hindrance – representatives of a dinosaur industry that perpetuates dependence and encourages monopoly.[2] The UK think tank Chatham House…
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Take U.S. Highway 377 South from Ft. Worth, drive across the Brazos River, through Tolar and Bluff Dale, and past Stephenville. By the time you pass the field of rusting farm equipment near Proctor, you’ll be in Comanche County, Texas. The first white settlers put down roots here during the 1850s, naming the county (and…
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Editor’s Note: This article was written before Hurricane Harvey. Last summer’s critically-acclaimed “modern Western,” Hell or High Water, has a happy ending, of sorts. In the final scene of the film, the main character is building an extension onto his West Texas childhood home as his teenage sons come home from school. It’s a sunny…
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Introduction Arctic indigenous peoples are widely recognized as living examples of successful adaptation to severe environmental conditions. However, ethnographic and anthropological studies tend to focus mainly on immaterial “traditional knowledge,” while tangible artifacts and practices, related skills and technologies that still constitute the very existence of these communities remain largely unexplored. In this essay we…
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