On Further Reflection is a space for essays that start with an intriguing question and explore where it leads — often somewhere unexpected. Topics span science, technology, mathematics, politics, the arts, baseball, and whatever else seems worth thinking twice about.
In practice that means I pick something — a piece of technology, a moment in history, a law on the books, a street in my neighborhood — and go find out what’s actually true about it. That usually means primary sources: the statute rather than the summary, the crash database rather than the press release, the records request rather than the assumption. Sometimes the received account holds up. Often it doesn’t, and the reason why is the better story.
Recent essays have covered where batting helmets came from and why they took fifty years to arrive, how GPS accidentally became the world’s most important clock, what Polynesian navigators knew about the Pacific before anyone had instruments, and why Houston’s safe-passing ordinance doesn’t do what its supporters believe it does.
Who I am: A writer in Houston, a mile or two from downtown. I studied political science, mathematics, and music at the University of Houston. I co-founded BikeHouston in 2002 and served as its first board chair. I teach traffic cycling as a League Cycling Instructor and a CyclingSavvy Instructor. And I have a family connection to cycling advocacy: my late mother chaired the committee that produced Houston’s 1993 Comprehensive Bikeway Plan.
So a fair amount of what I write concerns streets, traffic law, and how cities decide what to build and whether it worked. The rest is whatever I’ve gotten curious about — which has lately included spacecraft, the Fermi paradox, and the history of protective equipment in baseball.
New essays most Tuesdays. Free, and it’ll stay that way.
On AI: I write with assistance from Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. I direct the research and editorial process; it does a lot of the grunt work — searching, drafting, fact-checking. The ideas, the arguments, and the responsibility for what’s published are mine.
