This is a guest post (first ever) by my dear friend, a brilliant physicist, Prof. Michael Marder. When I went as a prospective graduate student to Santa Barbara the person who became my advisor told me he was studying how snowflakes grow. They build layer by layer, with small bumps emerging into fingers that sprout fingers in turn. The shape of the snowflake is comprehensible at any time in relation to its shape a moment before -- and only in relation to its shape a moment before. The environment matters too and it influences details of the shapes, which is why no two snowflakes are identical. It is an odd mixture of idiosyncrasy and inevitability. This seems to me a useful metaphor for what we call news and opinion. When I pick up the news in the morning, which I do every day and not just in the morning, it appears at first to be, well, new. Here are all the new things that just happened. And here is how to interpret them. By Alexey Kljatov - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https:/...
In this blog, I continue to write about the environment, ecology, energy, complexity, and humans. Of particular interest to me are human self-delusions and mad stampedes to nowhere.