I have over 20 years of experience specializing in health care, retirement issues, and the nexus between business and public policy. I am a former editor and/writer at Fortune, Business Week, the Bergen Record, Crain’s New York Business, and Institutional Investor.

Dreaming of Earth and the Moon

from The New York Times,  January 28, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/science/space/for-a-moon-colony-technology-is-the-easy-part.html?scp=2&sq=lunar%20colony&st=cse

It’s easy to make fun of Newt Gingrich’s vision of statehood for Moon colonies, especially in a time of such dire financial pressure on Earth. And yet: What is life without big visions and dreams? Is it so impossible to have real housing, health care, and education, and also outer-space dreams? If Gingrich were  willing to raise his millionaire buddies’ taxes a bit to pay for his dreams, I’d have a lot more respect for him. On a personal note: Tonight, go take a look at the Moon. On the side facing Earth, near the Sea of Tranquility, there’s a tiny dot — a spacecraft called Surveyor, whose successful trajectory in the 1960s was designed by my father, Dr. Edward Hawthorne. This dot paved the way for Neil Armstrong, because of course  the U.S. wouldn’t risk sending people to the Moon until it had safely tested the unmanned Surveyor. So my dad, and Neil Armstrong, carried out some mighty big dreams.

.

**********************************

My third book, “Pension Dumping: The Reasons, the Wreckage, the Stakes for Wall Street” (Bloomberg Press, 2008) won top awards from ForeWord magazine and the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants.

I now write regularly for The New York Times, Newsday, The Scientist, the Websites portfolio.com and scientificamerican.com, Institutional Investor, and more. I also do book reviews for The New York Journal of Books at

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/