Alexander Stuart

The future - at least, one potential solution to our energy and climate problems - is here now.  As reported by Gizmodo ,  the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System -  the world's largest solar plant, comprising 300,000 computer-controlled mirrors and 450-foot centralized solar power towers powering turbines with steam - started generating electricity today in the Mojave Desert on the California-Nevada border.  Dedicated today by  Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz , and j ointly owned by US-based  NRG Energy , US-Israeli  BrightSource Energy  and Google (which put up $168 million to help build it), Ivanpah is the world's biggest solar power plant.  The remarkable photographs tell some of the story, but essentially - according to the  official  news release  - Ivanpah (located on the site of a silver mining ghost town from the mid-1880s ) is capable of generating sufficient electricity to power 140,000 California homes with clean ene

A week or so back, our five year old daughter and I were searching through Netflix for a nature documentary to watch when we chanced upon The Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos.  We started watching and were quickly entranced not just by the flamingos themselves, but by the extraordinary nature of the cinematography and the astonishingly vivid colors of these curious pink birds (scientists still do not know for sure why they often stand on one leg: perhaps to conserve heat in cold water, although they do it in warm water, too) set against the deep pure blues of the water and sky of Tanzania's Lake Natron.   When the film ended - after a beautiful and moving time spent getting to know these birds' lives, much as you do in the widely acclaimed, Oscar-nominated French documentary Winged Migration (a must-see, as is The Crimson Wing ) - I noticed that one of the producers was an old friend, Paul Webster , with whom I worked on The War Zone an

These NASA photos from space of snow - or the lack of it - in the Sierras, comparing January 2013 and January 2014, are one of the most dramatic images of the California drought that I've seen.  Read more about the drought at The National Journal.

Not quite the 40 foot waves at Mavericks yesterday, but fabulous to watch.  Photograph Copyright 2014 Alexander Chow-Stuart. 

Really lucid words from British writer and philosopher Alan Watts - who features in an intriguing way in Spike Jonze's wonderful movie, Her: The “primary consciousness,” the basic mind which knows reality rather than ideas about it, does not know the future. It lives completely in the present, and perceives nothing more than what is at this moment. The ingenious brain, however, looks at that part of present experience called memory, and by studying it is able to make predictions. These predictions are, relatively, so accurate and reliable (e.g., “everyone will die”) that the future assumes a high degree of reality – so high that the present loses its value. But the future is still not here, and cannot become a part of experienced reality until it is present. Since what we know of the future is made up of purely abstract and logical elements – inferences, guesses, deductions – it cannot be eaten, felt, smelled, seen, heard, or otherwise enjoyed. To pursue it is to pursue a const