{"id":35,"date":"2009-03-25T02:36:59","date_gmt":"2009-03-25T02:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.wordpress.com\/?p=35"},"modified":"2009-03-25T02:36:59","modified_gmt":"2009-03-25T02:36:59","slug":"on-eugene-lindens-the-future-in-plain-sight-and-other-looming-disasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/25\/on-eugene-lindens-the-future-in-plain-sight-and-other-looming-disasters\/","title":{"rendered":"On Eugene Linden's "The Future in Plain Sight" and Other Looming Disasters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2006 I stumbled upon a book by Eugene Linden titled The Future in Plain Sight<\/em>, which is a little gem of foresight. Published in 1998, it predicted our present financial collapse, the rise of religious extremism and terrorism, and a host of other ills, most of which have already come true. (One of which is looming: global pandemic. I’m not at all convinced of the certainty of a bird flu epidemic, which is sometimes put forward in popular magazine articles, but there are a host of other viruses that could break out. Richard Preston’s\u00a0Hot Zone<\/em> is the scariest book in this category, nonfiction, too, about an airbone ebola epidemic that surfaced near Washington, D.C.) Linden also wrote The Winds of Change<\/em>, about global warming. He’s had an influence on my new novel, The Bird Savior<\/em>, with his clear-eyed focus on the troubles ahead. Both books are excellent reads, and make a good campion to, say, E.O. Wilson’s The Future of Life<\/em>. In this category the best of all, I think, is still Jared Diamond’s Collapse<\/em>. (I like his especially because the first chapter, set in a valley in Montana, south of Missoula, is much like my home in Westcliffe, Colorado.) Ultimately his perhaps is the most hopeful, as well, from a logical sense: We should be smarter than the Easter Island culture. Even if it seems sometimes we’re not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2006 I stumbled upon a book by Eugene Linden titled The Future in Plain Sight, which is a little gem of foresight. Published in 1998, it predicted our present financial collapse, the rise of religious extremism and terrorism, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}