Category Archives: Month in Review

July 2019 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Most hopeful story: Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • I laid out the platform for my non-existent Presidential campaign.

June 2019 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • The world economy appears to be slowing, even though U.S. GDP is growing as the result of the post-2007 recovery finally taking hold, juiced by a heavy dose of pro-cyclical government spending. The worry is that if and when there is eventually a shock to the system, there will be little room for either fiscal or monetary policy to respond. Personally, the partisan in me is thinking any time before November 2020 is as good a time for any for a recession to hit the U.S. I am a couple decades from retirement, and picturing that bumper sticker “Lord, Just Give Me One More Bubble”. Of course, this is selfish thinking when there are many people close to retirement and many families struggling to get by out there. And short-term GDP growth is not the only metric. The U.S. is falling behind its developed peers on a wide range of metrics that matter to people lives, including infrastructure, health care costs and outcomes, life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, addiction, suicide, poverty, and hunger. And it’s not just that we are no longer in the lead on these metrics, we are below average and falling. Which is why I am leading the charge to Make America Average Again!

Most hopeful story:

  • There have been a number of serious proposals and plans for disarmament and world peace in the past, even since World War II. We have just forgotten about them or never heard of them.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • In technology news, Elon Musk is planning to launch thousands of satellites. And I learned a new acronym, DARQ: “distributed ledger technology (DLT), artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR) and quantum computing”. And in urban planning news, I am sick and tired of the Dutch just doing everything right.

 

May 2019 in Review

This wasn’t my most prolific writing (or reading) month ever. In fact, it my have been my worst. But here are a few highlights of what I did get around to.

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • Without improvements in battery design, the demand for materials needed to make the batteries might negate the environmental benefits of the batteries. I’m not really all that frightened or depressed about this because I assume designs will improve. Like I said, it was slim pickings this month.

Most hopeful story:

  • Planting native plants in your garden really can make a difference for biodiversity.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • Joseph Stiglitz suggested an idea for a “free college” program where college is funded by a progressive tax on post-graduation earnings.

 

April 2019 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • The most frightening and/or depressing story often involves nuclear weapons and/or climate change, because these are the near-term existential threats we face. Oliver Stone has added a new chapter to his 2012 book The Untold History of the United States making a case that we have lost serious ground on both these issues since then. In a somewhat related depressing story, the massive New Orleans levy redesign in response to Hurricane Katrina does not appear to have made use of the latest climate science.
Most hopeful story: Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • Genetic engineering of humans might have to play a big role in eventual colonization of other planets, because the human body as it now exists may just not be cut out for long space journeys. In farther future space colonization news, I linked to a video about the concept of a “Dyson swarm“.

March 2019 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

Most hopeful story:

  • The Green New Deal, if fleshed out into a serious plan, has potential to slow or reverse the decline of the United States.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • China is looking into space-based solar arrays. Also, injecting sulfate dust into the atmosphere could actually boost rice yields because rice is more sensitive to temperature than light, at least within the ranges studied. This all suggests that solutions to climate change that do not necessarily involve an end to fossil fuel burning and carbon emissions are possible with existing or very near future technology.


February 2019 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

Most hopeful story:

  • Here is the boringly simple western European formula for social and economic success: “public health care, nearly free university education, stronger progressive taxation, higher minimum wages, and inclusion of trade unions in corporate decision-making.” There’s even a glimmer of hope that U.S. politicians could manage to put some of these ideas into action. Seriously, I’m trying hard not to be cynical.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • We could theoretically create a race of humans with Einstein-level intelligence using in-vitro fertilization techniques available today. They might use their intelligence to create even smarter artificial intelligence which would quickly render them (not to mention, any ordinary average intelligence humans) obsolete.



January 2019 in Review

After blogging pretty consistently daily for years, I’ve finally slowed this blog down to every other day due to the realities of work and family. Maybe I’ll get back to daily in a couple years. In the meantime, I’m going to pare my “month in review” posts to highlight three items, because it wouldn’t really make sense to do a Top 9 out of 15.

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • Writing in 1984, Isaac Asimov thought we would be approaching world peace, living lives of leisure, children would love school, and we would be mining the moon and manufacturing things in orbital factories by now.

Most hopeful story:

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • Some in the U.S. Senate and military take UFOs seriously.

 

November 2018 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing stories:

  • Coral reefs are expected to decline 70-90% by mid-century.
  • The U.S. stock market is overvalued by about 40% by historic measures, and some economists think a major recession may be looming.
  • About half a million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan since the U.S. invasions starting in 2001. This includes only people killed directly by violence, not disease, hunger, thirst, etc.

Most hopeful stories:

Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:

  • New tech roundup: People in Sweden are barely using cash at all, and some are paying with microchips embedded in their fingers. New technology may allow screening of multiple airport passengers from 25 feet away with minimal disruption. This is great for airline passengers who are already expecting to be screened intrusively, but of course raises some concerns about potential uses elsewhere in the public realm. Amazon is hiring about 100,000 seasonal workers this year, compared to about 120,000 in past years, and the difference may be explained by automation. There is a new ISO standard for toilets not connected to sewers systems (and not just your grandfather’s septic tank.)
  • A unidentified flying object has been spotted in our solar system, and serious scientists say there is at least a plausible, if very unlikely, chance that it is an alien spacecraft.
  • People are taking micro doses of LSD on a daily basis, believing it boosts creativity, and there is some evidence for this although the science is not rigorous.

October 2018 in Review

Most frightening stories:

  • The Trump administration has slashed funding to help the U.S. prepare for the next pandemic.
  • I read more gloomy expert opinions on the stability and resilience of the global financial system.
  • A new depressing IPCC report came out. Basically, implementing the Paris agreement is too little, too late, and we are not even implementing it. There is at least some movement towards a carbon tax in the U.S. – a hopeful development, except that oil companies are in favor of it which makes it suspicious. There is a carbon tax initiative on the ballot in Washington State this November that the oil companies appear to be terrified of, so comparing the two could be instructive, and the industry strategy may be to get a weaker law at the federal level as protection against a patchwork of tough laws at the state and local levels.

Most hopeful stories:

  • There is no evidence that kids in U.S. private schools do any better than kids in U.S. public schools, once you control for family income. (Okay – I admit I put this in the hopeful column because I have kids in public school.)
  • Regenerative agriculture is an idea to sequester carbon by restoring soil and  protecting biodiversity on a global scale.
  • Applying nitrogen fixing bacteria to plants that do not naturally have them may be a viable way to reduce nitrogen fertilizer use and water pollution.

Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:

  • New tech roundup: Artificial spider silk is an alternative to carbon fiber. Certain types of science, like drug and DNA experiments, can be largely automated. A “quantum internet” could mean essentially unbreakable encryption.
  • Modern monetary theory suggests governments might be able to print (okay, “create”) and spend a lot more money without serious repercussions. What I find odd about these discussions is they focus almost entirely on inflation and currency exchange values, while barely acknowledging that money has some relationship actual physical constraints. To me, it has always seemed that one function of the financial system is to start flashing warning lights and make us face the realities of how much we can do before we are all actually starving and freezing in the dark. It could be that we are in the midst of a long, slow slide in our ability to improve our physical quality of life, but instead of that manifesting itself as a long slow slide, it comes as a series of random shocks where one gets a little harder to recover from.
  • I read some interesting ideas on fair and unfair inequality. Conservative politicians encourage people not to make a distinction between alleviating poverty and the idea of making everybody equal. These are not the same thing at all because living just above the poverty line is no picnic and is not the same thing as being average. There is a strong moral case to be made that nobody “deserves” to live in poverty even if they have made some mistakes. And simply “creating jobs” in high-poverty areas sounds like a nice conservative alternative to handouts, except that there isn’t much evidence that it works.

September 2018 in Review

Most frightening stories:

Most hopeful stories:

  • The Suzuki and Kodaly methods are two ways of teaching music to young children that may actually help them think later in life. Training in jazz improvisation may also be good for young brains in a slightly different way.
  • There are some bright ideas for trying to improve construction productivity, which has languished for decades. Most involve some form of offsite fabrication.
  • In energy news, there’s a big idea to produce half the world’s electricity from sunlight in the Sahara desert. Another idea for collecting solar energy in otherwise (ecologically) wasted space is solar roadways, and there are a few prototypes around the world but this doesn’t seem to be a magic bullet so far. Another big idea is long-term storage of energy to smooth out fluctuations in supply and demand over months or even years.

Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both: