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We're (still) here because we're queer

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One of the very, very few bright spots in this dumpster fire of an election was the approval by about 62% of California voters of a ballot proposition to legalize the right of everyone to marry the person of their choice, thus rescinding Proposition 8.   Prop 8, passed in 2008, amended the California constitution to make same-sex marriage illegal.  It was made moot by later state and federal court decisions, and the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples, finally made  marriage equality the law of the land .  After Trump was elected in 2016, I talked to several activists about the need to rescind Prop 8, but at that time very few people seemed to think there was any real threat.  Now, of course, things are different, so earlier this year the California legislature voted to re-amend the state constitution, which requires a vote, placing Proposition 3 on the ballot...
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Pro-life or pro-choice?

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I am pro-choice, but I can understand and agree with some of the sentiment of the pro-life movement.  Abortion is creepy and I don't like that it kills fetuses, those beautiful about-to-be babies, cute, snuggly babies that we all love so much. But I don’t think that’s unusual; I doubt anyone actually likes the idea of abortion.  No one ever wakes up in the morning and says, “Oh, goody, I get to have an abortion today.” I’m even willing to concede that abortion may be evil. However, if it is, it’s a necessary evil, just like guns and wars and cops and everything else that frequently results in death and injury.  But I don’t see the pro-life movement out there protesting war, or killer cops, or even the death penalty, so I find it hard to believe that they really hold all human life to be sacred. That’s the pro-life movement’s basic argument – human life is sacred, so because abortion is intentionally killing human life, it must be wrong – in fact it must be murder....
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The broken promise of solar energy

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I first became interested in energy when I was in college in the mid-1980s. I took a class called “solar energy” where we spent most of the semester discussing things like the best angle for maximum heat transfer in parabolic solar thermal devices (which was about as exciting as it sounds).  Towards the end of the semester the professor introduced us to a solar technology that I had never heard of – photovoltaics. Photovoltaics captured my imagination, and a lot of my academic and working life since. The idea of a high-tech device that converts sunlight to electricity with no moving parts and no fuel combustion struck me as amazing and wonderful – something out of a science fiction novel. Clean and safe electricity generation!  My fascination with photovoltaics led me to decide, after getting a B.S. in physics, to attend a graduate engineering program that focused on energy and atmospheric studies.  That work was fascinating – I got involved in projects like figuring ou...
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