Home » Posts tagged 'kurt cobb' (Page 5)
Tag Archives: kurt cobb
Is the pandemic causing an exodus from big cities?
Is the pandemic causing an exodus from big cities? Thomas Homer-Dixon, the Canadian student of complex systems and author of The Upside of Down, wrote in his 2006 book that “September 11 and Katrina won’t be the last time we walk out of our cities.” Today, many big-city dwellers appear to be seeking refuge in less […]
Wireless charging: A colossal waste of energy
Wireless charging: A colossal waste of energy It turns out the cellphone industry believes its customers just can’t be bothered with setting their phones in charging cradles or worse yet, actually plugging a charging cord into a phone. Users can now simply place a phone on top of a wireless charging pad to get their […]
Evictions, tenants and the fragility of a “correlated” world
Evictions, tenants and the fragility of a “correlated” world As eviction moratoriums around the United States come to an end, it is expected that landlords will begin evicting nonpaying tenants en masse. Eviction by itself is an unremarkable phenomenon in America. Some 900,000 per year have been occurring routinely in the last several years affecting about […]
Cracks in the supply chain: Is metastable turning into unstable?
Cracks in the supply chain: Is metastable turning into unstable? You who are reading this sentence are metastable systems. So, is the biosphere, and so is all of human society. A metastable system is one that remains stable so long as the inputs necessary to maintain its stability are available. For humans this includes food […]
Our conversation with a coronavirus
Our conversation with a coronavirus We have all been flummoxed by the way in which the coronavirus called COVID-19 has behaved as if it has agency in the world. We say it “moves,” “adapts,” “evades,” and “tricks us.” We attribute an intelligence to it. We marvel at its ability to manifest itself in so many ways. […]
The financialization of the end of the world
The financialization of the end of the world For those who are fans of cartoons from The New Yorker magazine and consistent readers of this blog, you might be able to guess my two favorite cartoons. In the first one, a man in a coat and tie stands at a podium and tells his unseen audience the following: “And […]
Insanity? Markets continue disconnect from economy and society
Insanity? Markets continue disconnect from economy and society It’s hard to ignore the protests on the streets of the world’s cities of late. Those protests are coming from a populace who knows that the system they live under long ago stopped benefiting them. While the focus has been the senseless killing by police of an […]
Insuring against catastrophe: The coronavirus predicament
Insuring against catastrophe: The coronavirus predicament People insure themselves against many types of potential catastrophes: a house fire, a car accident, the untimely death of a spouse, a serious health problem. For other unexpected expenses, prudent people, as we say, save money “for a rainy day.” For some reason people and governments have chosen not […]
The Saudi-Russian oil price war tag team: Are things what they seem?
The Saudi-Russian oil price war tag team: Are things what they seem? To the casual observer Saudi Arabia and Russia, two of the top three producers of oil in the world, have been having a spat about what to do about low oil prices. (See here and here.) Each has accused the other of bad faith and counterproductive […]
Overreacting to coronavirus? The perverse logic of panic during a potential pandemic
Overreacting to coronavirus? The perverse logic of panic during a potential pandemic The best time to panic, that is, overreact to a potential pandemic is shortly after a novel pathogen has been detected. So say famed student of risk, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, and his colleagues. Of course, at that point, by definition few […]
Note to EIA: Major shale operator sending cash elsewhere
Note to EIA: Major shale operator sending cash elsewhere John Hess, CEO of Hess Corporation, a large U.S.-based independent oil producer, recently told a Houston audience where he’s putting the company’s money these days: Offshore drilling. That should strike those who know of Hess Corporation’s heavy involvement in the Bakken shale play (in North Dakota) as […]
Code blue: Pandemics and hospital surge capacity in a just-in-time world
Code blue: Pandemics and hospital surge capacity in a just-in-time world We may be about to see the sad fruits of so-called just-in-time (JIT) inventory systems applied to hospitals in the United States and elsewhere. Fourteen years ago I first wrote about the vulnerabilities of such systems across society including health care systems. (Other observers have more recently noted this […]
Iran, energy and war
Iran, energy and war The American obsession with Iran is about oil and natural gas. If these two resources had been absent, it is hard to imagine such an intense American focus on the country from the time of a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-backed coup of Iran’s elected government in 1953 to today. The Foreign Policy magazine piece linked […]
Ocean floor mining: What could possibly go wrong?
Ocean floor mining: What could possibly go wrong? A recent article on undersea mining in The Atlantic brought back a detailed childhood memory. When I was in fifth grade, my class put on a sort of mini science fair and performance art program for parents. My project focused on the prospect of mining the oceans. I drew a […]
Economists and climate change: Building castles in the sky
Economists and climate change: Building castles in the sky Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said that “the only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” Unfortunately, when some economists turn their sights on the economics of climate change, their unreliable methods imperil not just the economic life of humankind but its very existence. I […]
