Pen International: Creative Non-Fiction

Germany doesn't mind that its citizens have borne a disproportionate cost for developing the solar industry, a German energy official said Friday, because Germans benefit from developments in other countries, notably fracking in the United States.

Baseload power is not the answer to the variability of renewable energy, a German energy official said Friday, and energy storage isn't necessarily the answer either.

Most motorists will switch to electric vehicles because of their favorable economics, according to transportation experts, who therefore expect federal and state taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel to evaporate.

The direct effects of electric autonomous vehicles are known and celebrated. But we will see some equally startling side effects once the three trends of electric drive, connectivity and autonomy converge.

The United States continues to reduce its carbon emissions thanks to surprising increases in renewables and record drops in fossil-fuel use, according to a consortium of research organizations. But that doesn't mean it can reach its commitments without federal policy.

Scientists building a better battery typically strive for lower cost, lower weight or higher energy density, but Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning former Energy Secretary, just emphasized another metric:

The energy sector is poised to invest $1 trillion in natural-gas plants, pipelines and fuel to replace retiring coal plants, but many of those assets will become stranded as renewables get cheaper.

Oil and gas companies should begin the transition to clean energy now, while their coffers are still fat with fossil-fuel revenues, said the North American head of Ørsted, the Danish oil company that switched to offshore wind.

Both New Hampshire and now Maine have opposed transmission lines in their back yards that would bring Canadian hydroelectric power to Massachusetts, so power-thirsty New Englanders may have to look offshore.

More coal plants are now projected to retire more quickly than experts thought a year ago, according to energy-industry analysts who gathered in Chicago Tuesday.

A Self Made of Words by Carl H. Klaus Iowa, 2013 Recently a Buddhist acquaintance suggested I read Simone Weil because of her work on attention. She writes, for example, that “Absolute undivided attention is prayer,” which lends a Buddhist flavor to her Judeo-Christian theology. Attention can be aimed at anything, after all, not necessarily […]

Since Roger Ebert died I’ve been watching the tribute writers struggle to express his contribution. At The Atlantic, Christopher Orr rightly describes Ebert as a movie enthusiast, but here’s the analysis that follows: “The movies he loved, he truly loved. And the movies he hated, he truly hated.” That’s so truly true Orr can reuse it for […]

It wasn’t the great science fiction novels, “Fahrenheit 451” or “The Martian Chronicles,” that most reflected Ray Bradbury’s life, but a play he wrote—”Something Wicked This Way Comes”— “It’s a metaphor for all of life,” Bradbury said of his play, which you may know better as a 1983 movie starring Jonathan Pryce, Jason Robards and […]

[capti on id=”attachment_2694″ align=”alignright” width=”300″ caption=”By fox_kiyo via flickr”][/caption] When we published the summer issue of Contrary two days ago, we had less than $2 in the bank. We’ve been scraping by since the recession hit, but this marked the first time we had published an issue without knowing how we’d pay for it. Scary, […]

Lauren Berlant speaking on media sensationalism? I couldn’ t miss that. So I found my way to the University of Chicago’s Gleacher Center to have a listen. Only to find out I’d overlooked the comma between media and sensationalism. Lauren Berlant is an English professor at the University of Chicago, but that title can’t contain […]

Juliana Baggott wrote a smart and calm defense of the Osama bin Laden death celebration for NPR last week. Americans should be free to release their fear, she contends: their cheering shows they are paying attention, are emotionally invested, and are participating in an act of unity. She didn’t convince me, but she helped me […]

For a lifetime Mary Oliver has gently secluded herself, walked the woods, sent bottles out on the tide bearing simple messages that reconnect humanity to a beauty beyond us. Now we know why. In an interview with Maria Shriver Mary Oliver reveals she was sexually abused when very young, that with eroded trust she withdrew […]

I left the daily life of journalism at the turn of the Century, just before the daily life of journalism collapsed. That left me feeling a bit like Charlie Chaplin, who sold all his stocks in 1928. Since then I’ve maintained journalism as a practice more cyclically, and less cynically, focusing more on reporting and […]

The genius of James Fallows’ new piece in The Atlantic is that he takes some of the best values of traditional journalism—skepticism, research, fairness, eagerness to question authority and topple conventional wisdom—and he applies them to traditional journalism. He disputes the tediously common view that old journalism is better than new. Unless they are different from […]

Last week when my friend David Alm published his lament of digital publishing in these pages, I happened to be writing an introduction for a visiting writer. I recognized in my draft a soft rebuttal to David’s post, but I decided it had to complete its original mission before I could post it. This introduction […]