Thoughts and Thinkers
magnetism!
I don’t post about science nearly enough, especially since I’m training to be a scientist. Art and physics meet in this awesome video of the space science laboratory in Berkley,
Kenneth Boulding’s Three Laws of the Dismal Science
I consider myself a highly optimistic person, so I like to temper my optimism by reading through economist Kenneth Boulding’s three laws from time to time. Boulding once said, “Anyone who thinks that steady growth can continue indefinitely, is either a madman or an economist.”
why we consume alcohol
This is definitely the most brilliant economics paper I’ve read in a while.
First the abstract,
It is argued that drug consumption, most commonly alcohol drinking, can be a technology to give up some control over one’s actions and words. It can be employed by
trustworthy players to reveal their type. Similarly alcohol can function as a “social [...]
entering the Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight
As of September 2008 we’ve officially entered the end of the oil age. Our economic system based on infinite growth has run into the limits of the physical world. Now that our social systems must rapidly adapt to a new reality of energy scarcity, we must pay special attention to the humans within those [...]
Renewable Energy Won’t Save Us
Renewable energy is often touted as the future because it has lower CO2 emissions or “can solve our energy scarcity problems because it will replace oil”. Unfortunately, renewable energy is far from solving those massive problems. Solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, etc… all require tremendous amounts of oil to get their infrastructure up and running, emitting [...]
subtracting 85% from your life over the next decade
Imagine slashing the your income across the board by 85%. That’s the comparison John Michale Greer draws to the coming age of energy scarcity in his latest post,
the vanishing of a species?
While I’ve read many books on the problems facing humanity, Geologist Dr. Peter Greetner’s The Vanishing of a Species? was a unique experience. Published posthumously by his son Nick, The Vanishing of a Species? is a look at the problems of the mid to late 1970s that ironically we still face almost forty years later. [...]
models for transformation
Self-transformation is the most important challenge we face as humans. The growing complexity of modern crises require a new breed of human thinking that few are willing to embrace. Because of these challenges, I was intrigued by the idea of Dr. Robin Robertson’s Indra’s Net, combining the mathematics of chaos theory and the mythological language [...]
is technology the biggest ponzi scheme of all?
I’ve been prevented from sharing on the blog recently because of my regimen of finals at University of British Columbia but I had to pass on this talk from Archeologist Sander van Leeuw. Stewart Brand’s The Long Now Foundation is always posting great talks but this one was my favorite on the podcast feed thus far. (Michael [...]
quote of the day: on technology and learning with C.P. Snow
C.P. Snow’s lecture on the Two Cultures is a classic. Here is another great quotation from C.P. Snow,
