October 2019 – Living Universe Foundation

Green energy investing in an unlikely place

This recommendation is probably going to be a little controversial. I’ve found an oil company that sees the writing on the wall and is committing to tapering off its upstream oil exploration and production activities in order to fund green energy projects and transition to a green future. Purists will dislike that the company will remain a net emitter of carbon for decades. I see a pathway forward to a near term future where billions are spent by industry per year on green projects instead of the few hundred million we see now.

I intend to show that this transition essentially guarantees the company will earn a low risk 12.5% in share holder return per year for decades while deleveraging their balance sheet and reducing litigation and regulation risk. I suspect when the competition sees what this move does for their bottom line, there will be a rush to replicate the model. This is how we get trillions of dollars in investment capital redirected from fossil fuels to renewables.

Daily Calendar On Mars

The planet Mars is progressing around the Sun in its annual orbit.

Humans have arbitrarily chosen a moment in time to mark the beginning of a calendar for Mars, and members of the NewMars forum are tracking the progress of the planet in its current year. There have been many suggestions for a calendar suitable for Earth humans living on Mars. The one in use for the daily report is chosen to most nearly approximate the calendar in use on Earth in 2019. The proposed calendar has 24 months of 28 days each, with one day removed each quarter to achieve equilibrium with the actual physical orbit. A final adjustment is made at the end of the year, when whatever difference exists between the calendar and the physical orbit is allocated to a long New Year’s Day.

Open Source Is Everywhere in Space Exploration

The use of Open Source technology has been growing in space exploration and advocacy movements. The reasons and benefits are manifold. It lowers cost. It gives companies or organizations direct access to the internals of the hardware and software. It allows you to leverage the power of a very large community of participants to help develop solutions. Space organizations, from big to small, are embracing this path forward.

The first instance I am aware of where this is explicitly true was in 2013, but that may have simply been the first one brought to the public’s attention. The reason for the change came from a security breach at the International Space Station.

Lizard King Discusses the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement

I want to talk about lifestyle choices and how it relates to ecology and building a better future on this planet and others. This talk is going to take a detour and I hope you will stay with me.

I retired early from the corporate world on 5OCT2012. I was 40 years old. I set a plan to retire early in 10 years in the summer of 1998. I was finishing up an undergrad and just discovered the Living Universe Foundation. I knew intuitively that my academic choice to study Business, Economics, and Accounting was not going to lead to my best life, even if it paid the bills. I like to say I “failed well” because my 10 year plan took 14 years.