Americans feel they do not have the time to do everything that needs to be done. Sound true? James Gleick says so Continue reading
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Blog 40. Season’s greetings with hope
In the 39 previous blogs of this year 2013, you and I have dealt with some fundamental issues, but we haven’t yet talked about hope. There is hope. Continue reading
Blog 34. Ancient Greeks and Current Monetocracy
When life gets chaotic
I have suggested that, when daily living becomes sufficiently chaotic, people will look for simple solutions and welcome dictatorial control that promises simplicity. There’s some ancient Greek wisdom to support this view, although the Greeks didn’t have our mathematical notion of complexity that emerged during the last thirty years. Continue reading
Blog 33. A New Civil War or Only Old Chaos?
Tea Party Rebellion
This month, the federal government was deliberately shut down by the Tea Party, a minor faction in the House of Representatives that controls the larger Republican Party. The objective was to stop implementation of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA” or “ObamaCare”), which had already been passed by Congress and declared constitutional by the Supreme Court. That’s extreme—to hold everything hostage to a particular narrow objective. Continue reading
Blog 26. Communication and Connectedness
Life is a conversation.
Among other things, life is a conversation. The boundary of your community is the limit beyond which you have no conversation, no connection. We want to feel connected. That’s connectedness. Continue reading
Blog 25. Climate Extremes or Political Extremes?
A little history
In 1986 I was at a technical conference where an invited speaker was presenting data on a little-known project—measuring atmospheric CO2 concentrations, day after day, year after year. The terms “global warming” and “global climate change” weren’t used—they weren’t in the general vocabulary at that time. Nonetheless, I watched the data on the screen in growing horror. I suspect the other participants had the same feeling, but nobody said so. Continue reading
Blog 24. Sustainability and the NRC
On June 28, 2013, the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) issued a report saying the White House should establish a national policy on sustainability by executive order. Now how can an order on paper generate sustainability?
Blog 23. Looking Good and Being Right
Complex systems are collections of many actors interacting by nonlinear rules. In this post, we’ll examine Looking Good and Being Right as two of those rules of interaction among the persons and institutions in the complex system that is society.