In retirement I use the experience and connections accumulated at AT&T to help universities convene the annual non-profit International Hydrail Conferences. We've held conferences in the US, Denmark, Spain, Turkey, the UK, Canada, Austria, Germany and Italy.Specialties: (1) hydrail, the strategic application of hydrogen fuel cell/battery hybrids as a zero-carbon alternative to diesel railways and a far less costly wireless form of electric railway propulsion.Alstom Transport's Coradia iLint intercity hydrail train entered revenue service on 10 September, 2018, as a consequence of the Mooresville Hydrail Initiative introducing Alstom to Hydrogenics at the 2013 8th International Hydrail Conference—Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The iLint is the first "main line" hydrail train ever built, though some H2 trams predate it. In 2005 Mooresville proposed hydrail to China. Now CRRC has two hydrail tram plants in production in Qingdao and Tangshan and is also manufacturing hydrail locomotives.Specialties (2): media/public reconciliation.Divisive production dynamics, chosen to maximize TV ad revenue, erode the quality and comity of democratic self-governance. The remedy is forthright: direct critical feedback from the public onto media operations, equivalent to the feedback they direct onto government operations. Much of this criticism should be on TV—onscreen, not just online.Public feedback should include metrics: regular opinion polling, closely comparable to what's conducted about political figures, and archived in order that trends can readily be tabulated, searched and graphed. Without feedback, choosing content to optimize viewership creates a financial incentive to pit Americans against one other and to dumb-down governance, preferring the manipulation of feeling over informing.NGOs, collaborating with libraries, can create workable feedback instruments, although organizing feedback while circumventing media censorship is difficult. Yet it's essential if liberal democracy is to survive, globally, the resurgent trend towards “strong-man” governments.