I’ll be back on Tuesday. I don’t expect there is any room for blogging midst all the family events on Nick’s high school graduation.
Continue ReadingSilent Spring Revisited
I generally try to avoid sensational blogging as there is already enough around. I have become skeptical that showing the horrific consequences of humans’ mistreatment of nature and other humans can change the course of history. There have been a few exceptions so I have only got as far as skepticism, not downright dismissal. The memories of these scenes quickly fades under the competition of the banal stream of media signals that capture public attention. Most people cannot make the connection between the catastrophe in the Gulf and the gas they pump at the local BP station. Just think for… Read More
Continue ReadingToday’s Synchronicity–the Classics
A triple play today. It started with my writing a response to one of my students at the Marlboro MBA for Managing Sustainability program. We have been reading several essays probing what well-being means to economists. The last few selections were by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Nussbaum in particular draws her framework from Aristotle who describes the Good as those things and action that create eudaimonia. The closest translation for this Greek word is flourishing or fully functioning. My interpretation, not necessarily hers, is that we have to look back to classical times to fully understand ethical or normative… Read More
Continue ReadingTechnology Seen Through Art
It’s a little fuzzy. (Thanks to Sherry Immediato for pointing me to this.)
Continue ReadingThe Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information
This is the title of a classic psychological research paper, written by G. A. Miller in 1956. Miller’s thesis was that our cognitive system has limits to the amount of information a human can process in a short time. He discovered this more than 50 years ago before we had machines that could image the brain and find out so much about how our cognitive system works. It should come then as no surprise that researchers are finding that extreme multi-taskers, people who constantly are bombarded with signals from a variety of devices, become distracted and lose capability in performing… Read More
Continue ReadingMore Oil Where It Shouldn’t Be
Maybe it’s global warming or just Mother Nature showing her displeasure at the way we are inflicting wounds on her body, but I was awakened early this morning by the most powerful thunderstorm I can remember. The rain was literally coming down in buckets, and the lightning lit up the bedroom like an old-fashioned flash bulb. I, like most, have been focusing on the Gulf blow-out, but this is not the only place where drilling operations are creating havoc. Nigeria, where several international oil companies have been operating for quite a while, is suffering from both natural and political fallout.… Read More
Continue ReadingLooking for Mr. Fixit
With the oil still spurting out of a hole a mile under the sea, everyone is looking for Mr. Fixit. One of the front page stories in the NYTimes News of the Week in Review on May 30, 2010 discussed the incessant search for technological answers to all of our problems. Americans have long had an unswerving belief that technology will save us — it is the cavalry coming over the hill, just as we are about to lose the battle. And yet, as Americans watched scientists struggle to plug the undersea well over the past month, it became apparent… Read More
Continue ReadingPunching More Holes in the Ground
While the Nation’s and the World’s attention has been focused on the catastrophe in the Gulf, another search for fuel for our insatiable appetite for energy has slipped under the radar screen. Operations to release methane trapped deep underground in layers of shale have been going on for some time. Known by the ungainly name of “fracking,” holes are being drilled deep into the Earth to tap what is said to be the largest natural gas reserve in the US. One of the largest shale formations, called the Marcellus layer after the town where one of the first wells that… Read More
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