Tag Archives: modernity

America’s shipbuilding challenge reveals a larger truth about industrial power: the ship is only the visible asset. Enduring capability depends on the shipyards, suppliers, workforce, infrastructure, institutional knowledge, and interconnected systems capable of building, maintaining, and replacing it.

A reflection on the increasingly curious business of valuing tomorrow today, where investors must decide how much to pay for technologies, industries, and ambitions that do not yet exist—and how much faith to place in those who have made the improbable real before.

A reflection on Socrates and the enduring value of questioning what appears settled. I explore how examining assumptions, moving upstream, and asking what we actually know can reveal the difference between activity and progress—and why that discipline sits at the heart of my work at GMJoe™ Consulting.

The most visible part of a problem is not always where its real leverage resides. A first-person examination of dependency, sovereignty, deployment, and the strategic value of looking upstream to discover what must remain true for a problem to continue.

The energy transition is not simply a contest between renewables and hydrocarbons. It is a systems challenge involving infrastructure, deployment, reliability, scale, and resilience—and understanding the difference may determine what actually works.

From Grand Forks to cockpits around the world, UND Aerospace is preparing more than pilots. It is developing aviation professionals whose judgment, discipline and leadership will carry passengers, companies and missions safely into the future.

NASA’s decision to test a lunar wastewater system at UND reveals a larger opportunity for Grand Forks: becoming a place where promising technologies move from demonstration toward dependable, real-world deployment.

A father-son memory from the 1991 World Series becomes a reflection on fatherhood, unexpected kindness, and the moments we create for our children without knowing what they will carry into their own lives.

Artificial intelligence is making intelligence abundant, but more information does not guarantee better decisions. The Intelligence Surplus explores why clarity, judgment, and the ability to distinguish activity from progress may become the real competitive advantages of the AI era.

Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way still speaks directly to the modern world. Through Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, I explore certainty, institutional blindness, human contradiction and satire—and why the ancient Greeks still understand the systems we inhabit today.