Law and Baseball. On February 9, 2025, I was the guest (starting 18 minutes in) on the Last Call Baseball podcast #175, discussing John Updike, the origins of the Infield Fly Rule, and my blog post on the Beige Rainbow.

Clean Technology Outlook for 2025. On February 13, 2025, I spoke on “Cleantech That Will Thrive in 2025” at the 14th Annual Energy Law Symposium at the Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth. Thanks to my colleague Clarence Tolliver for research assistance.

Law and the New Logistics. On March 5, 2025, I spoke to students in the International Business Transactions course at the University of Hawai’i William S. Richardson School of Law on changes in transportation and shipping, concentrating on the pandemic and its aftermath and the looming trade disputes. (Speaking in Hawai’i, by zoom alas. Thanks to my colleagues Dayo Ajanaku and Andrew Jacobs for research assistance and to Dayo, Andrew and Polly Gomez for joining me!)

Critical Materials for Energy Innovation. On March 19, 2025, I will be the guest on the Energy Evolution podcast of Standard & Poors (S&P) Global Commodity Insights, discussing the roles of rare earths and other vital elements in industrial, commercial, and national security sectors.

Data Crunching in the International Geophysical Year (1957-1958).

Everyone is calling DeepSeek a “Sputnik moment”! What was Sputnik, anyway? (After the 1957 Soviet launch, embarrassed American educators doubled math and science homework. One student recalled, “it was then and there that I began to hate communism.”)

In October 2025, I will be speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on how the scientific cooperation to launch the Space Age depended on retrieving, preserving, and calculating with big data under unprecedented and remote conditions—outer space (yes, Sputnik), the ionosphere, and the deadly climate of the unexplored Antarctic.

Events