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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 […]
If you can’t stand the heat…get off of the planet!
If you can’t stand the heat…get off of the planet! As I sit in 90-degree heat typical of Washington, D.C. in midsummer and a so-called “heat dome” hovers over much of the United States, I am reading the following: At 11 or 12 degrees [Fahrenheit] of [global] warming, more than half the world’s population, as distributed today, would […]
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 […]
Ben Bernanke: Contrary Indicator
Ben Bernanke: Contrary Indicator On May 17, 2007 Ben Bernanke, then chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, spoke at a conference sponsored by the bank’s Chicago branch and told his audience the following: [W]e believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will likely be limited, and we […]
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 […]
Epistemological divide: How we live in two different worlds of understanding
Epistemological divide: How we live in two different worlds of understanding Epistemology is the study of how we know things. All of us cycle between two main ways of knowing in our modern culture: 1) the rational, reductionist way and 2) the holistic, relational, intuitive way. By far the most dominant way is the rational, […]
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 […]
