Year: 2012

Feeding The Buzzards

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There is something more mystifying about buzzards to me than the sight of them. They are almost as ubiquitous as robins, with a range from the southern tip of South America to far up in Canada. Even though they are awesome to behold, humans for the most part give them scant attention.

Our Cooperative Darwinian Moment

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Darwin tells us we must evolve or die, and current circumstances bring that choice into stark relief. A lot of people evidently think that fitness and selfishness are the same…Yet it is our abilities to innovate socially and to cooperate in order to increase our collective fitness that have gotten us this far…

Back to school

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While I’m sure this is true of some of the workers and strivers of the present, the overwhelming justification for education at every level is that you will need it to get a job – education will cost you now in loans, time spent doing activities that look good on college applications, tutors, SAT prep, etc…. but it will return to you your investment many times over. The problem of course, is that as education’s costs have risen and the economy has been less stable, this has become less and less true for most people.

Our Oversized Groundwater Footprint

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We don’t see it, smell it or hear it, but the tragedy unfolding underground is nonetheless real – and it spells big trouble. I’m talking about the depletion of groundwater, the stores of H2O contained in geologic formations called aquifers, which billions of people depend upon to supply their drinking water and grow their food.

The specter of military defeat

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These days, the United States is in conventional terms far and away the world’s most formidable military power, and nearly all discussions of the implications of peak oil for national security and the future of war take US predominance as a given. History warns, though, that military power is not a single uncomplicated variable, and sudden shifts in military technique — shifts that involve radical simplification as often as they involve technological progress — have frequently brought to defeat to the theoretically stronger side. As the world stumbles toward the Peak Oil Wars, the possibility has to be taken into account that the US may face military defeat, not in spite of its military advantages but because of them. The Archdruid explains…

Charles Eisenstein wants to devalue your money to save the economy

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Imagine if you had a warehouse full of bread that would go stale in three days. You’d want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Of course, you wouldn’t try to sell it at premium prices. Instead, you’d want to hold a liquidation sale. Or, maybe even not go through the bother of trying to sell it at all — just give it away. In that way, you’d earn both gratitude and favors that you could call in later. In a sense, giving away all your bread would become an investment in social capital.