LifeItself

This post has been precipitated by the following question Christoph Becker asked rhetorically in a comment to Part VI : " Is education in our situation still of any use or is it just depressing, unwanted or even dangerous? " Mike Haywood, of course, found this cartoon that illustrates so well the fundamental quandary of the Green New Deal: Economic growth we got accustomed to will stop, and with it the global Ponzi scheme, which is a synonym for the global economy, will crumble. My short answer to Christoph was that good education would always be necessary for a functioning democracy. We see great examples of this requirement in Denmark, Finland, Holland, Norway, Sweden and Germany, for example. Education is the necessary condition for a thriving democracy, but it alone is woefully insufficient.  Democracy must also be antifragile in the sense of Nassim Taleb . That is, any perturbation that attempts to blow up an antifragile democracy, will only make it stronger...

Two years ago, almost to the day, I wrote a blog, The Bird of Dawn , full of hope for the indomitable human spirit which can transcend and erode all repression, whether religious or political. A year ago, in The Way We Were , I connected the liberal Western Civilization, where my soul and body reside, to its ancient Greek roots. Both pieces have been wildly popular with the readers around the world, because they spelled out hope for humanity and its future. Today we are in Cefalù in Sicily, immersed again in a simpler world of the past, the world which graces us only occasionally when we leave our thoroughly modern, connected academic cocoon, powered by a high-rate throughput of fossil fuels that appear mostly as research funding, electricity, computers, and airplane tickets. Compared with Cefalù’s Arab fortress of 1063, and the Norman cathedral with the magnificent twelfth century mosaics our world is truly ephemeral. It cannot last for longer than a few more decades. Yet, this...

Here is a decomposition into multiple Hubbert cycles of patents granted each year since 1790 by the U.S. Patent Office to 1 million US residents. Note that without a new cycle of inventions in something, the current cycles will expire by 2050.  In other words, the total number of U.S. inventions will decline dramatically in the next 20-30 years.  Some of this decline might be forced by a decline of support for R&D and fundamental research in the US. The fundamental cycle of patented inventions in the US peaked in 1914, when expressed per 1 million of people living in the US. This was the classical science and engineering patent cycle. The first small peak in 1870, was related to the Civil War and the newly acquired technological sophistication in the U.S. The second small peak in 1885, was probably related to the innovators who were born post 1860, coming of age. The third small peak in 1930, was a boost to innovation during the roaring 1920s. Curiously, the next larg...

Our little cat, Kicka, all bundled up, is lying semi-conscious and half-paralyzed on top of Joanna, who in turn fell asleep on a sofa. So I have time to reflect on this year and dream about the next one. Recently, I was asked to predict the most important events in 2011, and found it impossible. Instead, I have attempted to be wildly optimistic and skip the usual "peak-everything" stuff. Here is the result: The Happy New Year 2011 will see a thorough public discussion of what needs to be done to make the U.S. a more resilient society and economy. Federal government, Congress and Senate will start working together on the development of a massive national electrified railroad system to transport goods and people. We will come off the high horse and stop hallucinating about building bullet train tracks in a railroad system that is decidedly mid-twentieth century or older. Many cities across the U.S., will embark on the crash investment in light rail and other alternative...