Archive for 2018
Tuesday shoesday
The Ecological Crisis is a Political Crisis – Resilience
Oligarchic control compromises a society’s ability to make correct decisions in the face of existential threats. … Citizens in countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia, or the Eurozone members, would generally consider themselves to be living in democratic societies. However, when the political systems of Western democracies are scrutinized, clear and pervasive signs […]
Like antibiotic resistance, but for fungi
Aspergillus fumigatus likes very warm temperatures; it grows happily in the steamy interior of a compost heap, which just happens to be the same temperature as the inside of our bodies. So once it settles in the lungs, the fungus reproduces wildly, spills into the bloodstream, and is conveyed to other organs, where it grows […]
Tuesday shoesday
Good idea, failed execution
One of the most common sources of misunderstanding in probability theory is the confusion of an abstract probability distribution with these representations. In an understandable desire to present concrete examples as early as possible, many introductory treatments of probability theory begin immediately with these representations only to end up muddling their relationship with the abstract […]
Tuesday shoesday – vote blue USians!
We really messed up the bank bail-out
It didn’t have to happen this way. The massive investment in the fossil fuel infrastructure after the bank bailout could just as easily have gone to renewable technologies, like wind and solar projects, which, in an ironic twist, have been pilloried for their reliance on subsidies and inability to turn a freestanding profit. Today, that’s […]