Tag: Economics

Nassim Taleb on the Financial Crisis

From EconTalk.org (Includes full transcript).
Direct link to mp3 interview
Nassim Taleb talks about the financial crisis, how we misunderstand rare events, the fragility of the banking system, the moral hazard of government bailouts, the unprecedented nature of really, really bad events, the contribution of human psychology to misinterpreting probability and the dangers of hubris. The conversation closes with a discussion of religion and probability.

Keep tabs on what Nassim Taleb is up to over at BlackSwanReport.com

.

The San Francisco EcoCity Declaration see Paolo Soleri honored too!

The San Francisco Ecocity Declaration

An ecocity is an ecologically healthy city. Into the deep future, the cities in which we live must enable people to thrive in harmony with nature and achieve sustainable development. People oriented, ecocity development requires the comprehensive understanding of complex interactions between environmental, economic, political and socio-cultural factors based on ecological principles. Cities, towns and villages should be designed to enhance the health and quality of life of their inhabitants and maintain the ecosystems on which they depend.http://ecocity.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/san-francisco-ecocity-declaration/

Said a friend recently, "We hear about Paolo Soleri so infrequently these days, why do you keep mentioning him as a key person in your career, anyway?"  "My career?  Should be everybody's survival, not just one individual's career."

By Richard Register

Paolo SoleriPaolo Soleri is one of the three most important people of the 20th century, and leading into the 21st century now.    xxxxX Says  Soleri, though developing the theory in a language that most people couldn't read – or didn't want to think about – said it most succinctly in the title of one of his books: "The Bridge Between Matter and Spirit is Matter Becoming Spirit."  This sounds puzzling to most people but simply means that evolution delivers changes in a particular pattern in which people now play a crucial role giving rise to higher levels of integration, physically and thereby spiritually, if spirit means higher levels of consciousness and conscience in us humans and heading toward whatever may come in moving in that direction into the unknown reaches of future evolution.  http://ecocity.wordpress.com/tag/paolo-soleri/

 

 http://www.weeklysignals.com/audioarchives.html  

Peak water developments….Our water footprints; see old Water Shed idea

How much Virtual Water is in your shirt?

Virtual Water  is a measure of all the water it takes to make the products you use.  Waterfootprint.orgcalculates that a new cotton shirt uses 2,700 liters. That's a tally of the water evaporated in irrigating and growing the cotton, and the water needed to wash away the fertilizers and dilute the chemicals used in the manufacturing process. With worldwide water shortages  set to become a major humanitarian crisis  this century, water waste is a serious new sin.  Read More"¦

http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/

Keep the InterNETS Free! Stanford FCC event for Net Neutrality

online liveJoin the conversation at the Free Press Action Network where we'll be live blogging during the hearing. We'll be discussing the hearing, current Internet policies, and what we can do to protect Internet freedom for the future.Live Chat During the FCC HearingDATE: Thursday, April 17TIME: 3- 10 p.m. ET / 12-7 p.m. PTLOCATION:  www.freepress.net/actionIn recent months, Comcast, AT&T and Verizon have been caught blocking, filtering and spying on your Internet activities. This event is one of our best chances to tell Washington policymakers that the Internet must remain open.  http://www.smartmobs.com/2008/04/16/tune-in-online-to-fcc-hearing-on-future-of-the-internet/

 

       okAn  FCC hearing  schedule for Thursday at Stanford University will focus on whether ISPs can shape, filter and even block content that travels over their networks. (The public –more than 1.5 million  of whom have spoken out against such violations – has a rare opportunity to testify before the commission during the hearing.)http://savetheinternet.com/=stanford  

Intensive crop culture for high population is unsustainable by Peter Salonius

from Culture Change.org


Intensive crop culture for high population is unsustainable Print
Written by Peter Salonius
Editor's note: The following essay by soil scientist Peter Salonius is Part One of his two-part series for Culture Change that bursts the delusion of agriculture's providing for a large human population long-term. If after reading it you have doubt, read the scientific basis for it: the second part in the series, "Unsustainable soil mining, past, present and future." (A version of the second part was published in the May/June,2007 issue of The Forestry Chronicle.) The author lives in New Brunswick, and he published in Culture Change in 2003 "Energy tax made easy: Modifying human excess with international non-renewable energy taxation" (see link at bottom). – JL

I am convinced that we begin unsustainable resource depletion (overshoot) as soon as we use (and become dependent upon) the first unit of any non-renewable resource or renewable resource used unsustainably whose further use becomes essential to the functioning of society, such as:

THE FIRST TONNE OF COAL
THE FIRST LITRE OF OIL
THE FIRST KILOGRAM OF FISSIONABLE URANIUM
THE FIRST BARREL OF FOSSIL WATER FOR IRRIGATION — and
THE FIRST HECTARE OF FORMERLY NUTRIENT CONSERVATIVE NATIVE FOREST or GRASSLAND/PRAIRIE PLOWED

This last category of unsustainable renewable resource depletion (excessive leaching/export of plant nutrients from arable soils associated with most agricultural practice, and more recently also with harvesting of nutrient-rich forest biomass) has been looming over us, unseen, for 10,000 years. We can expect that it will catch up with us shortly because most of us are dependent on foodstuffs produced by unsustainable farming, and fiber produced by unsustainable forestry.

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=154&Itemid=1

Unsustainable soil mining: past, present and future Print
Written by Peter Salonius
[This is Part Two of Peter Salonius's two-part series. The first part, "Intensive crop culture for high population is unsustainable", can be viewed by using the link at bottom.] ABSTRACTHuman settlement has increased food production by progressively converting complex, self-managing natural ecosystems with tight nutrient cycles into simplified, intensively managed agricultural ecosystems that are subject to nutrient leaching. (Most agriculture is unsustainable in the long term.)

Conventional stem wood forest harvesting is now poised to be replaced by intensive harvesting of biomass to substitute for increasingly scarce non-renewable fossil fuels. Removal of nutrient-rich forest biomass (harvesting of slash) can not be sustained in the long term.

[Key Words: soil nutrient depletion, biomass harvesting, site productivity]

Introduction

A general discussion of the concept of sustainability was presented by Gatto (1995), who suggested that notions of sustainability "reflect different priorities and optimization criteria, which are notoriously subjective"; however, the goal of maintaining soil-productive capacity is not a subjective notion. In this paper I will show that long term sustainable terrestrial carrying capacity depends on the maintenance of self-managing, nutrient-conservative plant communities.

The dynamic cyclical stability of complex ecosystems has been shown, for most animal populations, to depend on the ability of predators to dampen overshoot and runaway consumption dynamics of prey species (Rooney et al, 2006).

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=155&Itemid=1

Culture Change mailing address: P.O. Box 4347, Arcata , California 95518 USA, Telephone 1-215-243-3144 (and fax).

Culture Change was founded by Sustainable Energy Institute (formerly Fossil Fuels Policy Action), a nonprofit organization.

 

Six Degrees of Separation/Connection may be in trouble. Why can't 6/degrees find Osama bin laden?

Six Degrees has problems

ScienceFriday.com's version

Chances are you've heard of the 'small world' idea of six degrees of separation. But is it correct?

The idea traces back to an experiment begun in 1967 by Stanley Milgram, in which he tried to trace how many acquaintances it would take to pass a letter between two randomly selected people. The result that entered the public consciousness was that in general it took six steps or fewer to bridge the gap between any two people. But is that result accurate? Judith Kleinfeld,

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200801256

tags, 6 degrees, Kevin Bacon Effect, six degrees, Milgram,

"your papers, please!", Air travelers to need permission to travel TSA

from

—
Edward Hasbrouck
<edward@hasbrouck.org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>


The deadline for public comments on the USA Transportation Security
Administration's proposed rules to make would-be travellers obtain
individualized prior permission for all journeys by air to, from,
overflying, or even *within* the USA is this Monday, 22 October 2007.

If you have a chance before 5 p.m. Washington time on Monday, I urge
you to go to http://www.regulations.gov and tell the TSA what you
think of their scheme. You don't have to be a citizen of the USA to
submit comments, and you can even do so anonymously. The docket
number is TSA-2007-28572, and there are more details at:

http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001286.html

latest " 'Net Neutrality" outrage by Tel-Co's: How Comcast blocks your Internet traffic

from http://machinist.salon.com/

How Comcast blocks your Internet traffic

The broadband company's audacious scheme to interrupt your data proves why network neutrality rules are crucial.

By Farhad Manjoo

Oct. 19, 2007 |

Bless the Associated Press for unearthing, through careful and diligent investigation, Comcast's shameful, hidden Internet traffic-management scheme.

Comcast, the AP determined, actively manages data on its network by using software to essentially masquerade as its subscribers' machines. When non-Comcast Internet subscribers request files from your Comcast-connected machine — as happens in peer-to-peer file-sharing applications — Comcast's technology steps in and tells the non-Comcast subscriber you're not available.

This is a difficult story to explain, but it's quite important. For years, consumer advocates have been demanding that Congress and/or the Federal Communications Commission impose "network neutrality" regulations that would force broadband providers (like Comcast) to treat all data on a network equally. Lawmakers have so far failed to do so.

Broadband providers, meanwhile, insist that they do treat all traffic equally, but they reserve the right to use certain technologies to "manage" data on their network. The Comcast plan suggests that broadband providers mean something very broad by "traffic management" — including, it appears, purposefully stepping into your network sessions to shut them down.

To understand why this whole process is so egregious, let's look at it in FAQ format.

What is Comcast doing, and why?

Turning Ahmadinejad into public enemy No. 17 by Juan Cole on Salon.com

from Salon.com

Turning Ahmadinejad into public enemy No. 1

Demonizing the Iranian president and making his visit to New York seem controversial are all part of the neoconservative push for yet another war.

By Juan Cole

Sep. 24, 2007 | Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly has become a media circus. But the controversy does not stem from the reasons usually cited.

no evidence for any US Media/govt. Lies

Washington is also unhappy with Mohammad ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He has been unable to find credible evidence that Iran has a weapons program, and he told Italian television this week, "Iran does not constitute a certain and immediate threat for the international community." He stressed that no evidence had been found for underground production sites or hidden radioactive substances, and he urged a three-month waiting period before the U.N. Security Council drew negative conclusions.

The neoconservatives are even claiming that the United States has been at war with Iran since 1979. As Glenn Greenwald points out, this assertion is absurd. In the '80s, the Reagan administration sold substantial numbers of arms to Iran. Some of those beating the war drums most loudly now, like think-tank rat Michael Ledeen, were middlemen in the Reagan administration's unconstitutional weapons sales to Tehran. The sales would have been a form of treason if in fact the United States had been at war with Iran at that time, so Ledeen is apparently accusing himself of treason.

time lapse film compresses 35 years of skyscraper construction in Shinjuku district of Tokyo

 http://blog.longnow.org/2007/09/10/35-year-time-lapse-of-tokyo-skyline/

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/laPU0bS8JOc" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Jonathan Ott on Free/Cheap/Peak fossil fuels/minerals update/comments

from

Erowid Conference Report: Mind States Costa Rica by Lux, Erowid Staff Writer

v1 – Jul 18, 2007

sample from Jon Ott-

"The End of the Treasure in the Basement", by Jonathan Ott

Jonathan described himself as "not a prophet", but someone who has been interested in the question of energy and the petroleum-based political and economic infrastructure of the industrialized world since the 1970s. He's surprised that the infrastructure has held itself together as long as it has.

Most known organisms derive their energy from the sun, which was properly regarded by many religious cultures as the origin of life.

….

Since 1979 the amount of energy per capita has decreased, and more people have no access to energy and water every year. We're starting over the hill and soon it will be a cliff. This is important because energy equals life, in a literal and direct equation. What Hubbard pointed out was the disparity between the natural ecology of energy and the economic system of the world.

So we start looking to alternatives to oil, coal, natural gas, and wood. Take nuclear energy � it is highly efficient in generating electrical power, but it requires a huge investment of energy to operate. Nuclear power plants must have their own power plant to run, and it may be the case that nuclear power does not even generate net energy.

Fusion reactors are too little, too late. A best-case scenario is production of fusion power in 2050, and that's way too late.

There are currently four countries that have not yet reached their peak. Jonathan predicts that within 30 years the wheels will come off the global economy. Perhaps as soon as 20, but definitely by 30.

Jonathan's response to this situation has been to create a self-sufficient solar and water power supply that powers his lights, a short-range electric car, and his basic needs. He's beginning to generate all of his own food in a sustainable little farm as well, and his hope is to live to see the day when everything comes unglued so he can see what happens.

http://erowid.org/general/conferences/conference_mindstates7.shtml

Ott is one of my favourite writers and   theoreticians.

 

Author of (Books)

  • Ometochtzin: Las Muertes de Dos Conejo (2001)
  • Just Say Blow. Coca and Cocaine: A Scientific Blowjob (2001)
  • Shamanic Snuffs or Entheogenic Errhines (2001)
  • Pharmacophilia: The Natural Paradise (1997)

  • Ott book
    http://www.erowid.org/library/books/images/age_of_entheogens.jpg

    This is a mind-blowing book, especially the Angel's Dictionary!

  • Age of Entheogens & the Angels' Dictionary (1995)
  • Ayahuasca Analogues: Pangaean Entheogens (1995)
  • Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic drugs, their plant sources and history (1993)
  • Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion (1986)
  • The Cacahuatl Eater: Ruminations of an Unabashed Chocolate Addict (1985)
  • Teonanacatl: Hallucinogenic Mushrooms of North America (Co-edited by J. Bigwood, 1978)
  • Hallucinogenic Plants of North America (1976)
  • more on Ott here
  • http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/ott_jonathan/ott_jonathan.shtml

    • What resources are not Peaking? Now it's Phosphorus! Way important!

    From the Oil Drum site

    Peak Phosphorus

    Posted by Prof. Goose on August 17, 2007 – 10:00am
    Topic: Alternative energy
    Tags: agriculture, depletion, hubbert linearization, phosphorus, recycling

    Google Technorati del.icio.us StumbleUpon

    This is a guest post by Patrick Déry and Bart Anderson. Patrick Déry is a physicist, energy, agriculture and environment analyst and consultant in Quebec, Canada. Bart Anderson is a former reporter, teacher and technical writer; he currently is co-editor of Energy Bulletin. Peak oil has made us aware that many of the resources on which civilization depends are limited.
    But oil production is not the whole story. Nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus were also required for the "Green Revolution".

    Nitrogen is present in large quantity in the atmosphere (78% of its composition). The Haber-Bosch process for obtaining nitrogen uses one percent of all energy consumed by humans [5]. Nitrogen can also be fixed in the soil using micro-organisms such as rhizobium and azotobacters. If there is sufficient energy, nitrogen will be available.

    Phosphorus may be the real bottleneck of agriculture. [6]

    Population growth was only possible because we found phosphorus deposits and cheap energy to extract, transform and transport it to farms. When we plot data of world population versus world phosphate production, we find a significant correlation.

    What does this correlation mean? Even if we find a real substitute for fossil fuels, it will be impossible to maintain population growth because phosphate deposits are probably in decline. It will be impossible to maintain an agriculture without recycling nutrients.
    http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2882