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Unforeseen, Unintended Consequences
Untold Stories of Diapers (Video 8 minutes) Disposable Diapers Deep in Doo-Doo Disposable diapers are one of the hardest items to recycle. Almost all go to landfill. How did we wind up in this mess? How It Began In the summer of 1961, I was a young junior engineer for Union Carbide Polymers Division. Proctor […]
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After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform, by Andrea Gabor
Schools Done the W. Edwards Deming Way? After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform, by Andrea Gabor Andrea Gabor is the Bloomberg chair of business journalism at the Baruch School, CUNY. Having published in The Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Business Week, and The New York Times, she is well grounded […]
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What Box Are You In?
Or What’s Objectivity in Journalism, Science, and Life? The ending of Propaganda Blitz, reviewed previously, digs deep into objectivity in journalism. What is it? To answer this question, the authors, David Edwards and David Cromwell, cite ancient philosophers, mainly Oriental ones. They conclude that commercially funded journalism is trapped in the box of business rationality. […]
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Imagining the Unimaginable
Tribe of the Whole (7 minute video) Or, Toward a Better Learning Civilization Imagine transforming into something very different, like a werewolf. That we can imagine. Now, imagine living very differently in a completely changed world. That’s more complex. Every detail of life changes. We can only imagine them from analogies to our past. The […]
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Propaganda Blitz: How the Corporate Media Distort Reality, by David Edwards and David Cromwell
Fuzz: Implying by Not Talking Propaganda Blitz: How the Corporate Media Distort Reality, by David Edwards and David Cromwell Neither Edwards nor Cromwell are practicing journalists. One was a teacher, the other a scientist. Perhaps that qualifies them to be objective media critics. That’s what they do through a British website called Media Lens that I’d […]
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Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, by Anand Giriharadas
Keeping Up Appearances Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, by Anand Giriharadas This new book is stirring a mini-storm in the world of non-profits, provoked by a guy who has inhabited the institutions he criticizes, Anand Giriharadas. He refers to business thinking as a pattern of logic of business he calls […]
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The Predicament of Mankind: Searching for Causality
Predicament of Mankind (Video 7 minutes) The Predicament of Mankind: Searching for Causality by Doc Hall Many more issues threaten the environment than climate change, although that one exacerbates all others, and it dominates environmental reporting. The enormity of the social upheaval to mitigate these threats boggles the mind, and imagining Armageddon is depressing. Most […]
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Journey to Earthland: The Great Transition to Planetary Civilization by Paul Raskin
Journey to Earthland: The Great Transition to Planetary Civilization by Paul Raskin Paul Raskin is the founding president of the Tellus Institute, a Boston “think tank” that began an initiative called The Great Transition in 2002. That initiative is a vision of how an ecologically threatened world could transition to a sustainable economy. This book […]
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No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies by William T. Vollmann
No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies, by William T. Vollmann William T. Vollmann (Bill) is a prize-winning professional writer, noted for being adventurous researching his books. For his first, he embedded with the Mujadin fighting the Soviets invading Afghanistan. He follows a story wherever curiosity takes him. This book is no different. It […]
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Radical Change
Radical Change (Video 13 minutes) Timed Out: The Environmental Fan is Loaded In the past month, climate scientists emerged from scientific cocoons clanging alarms that climate change is a runaway. If we shut off man-made emissions immediately, natural forces will keep elevating atmospheric CO2 anyway. In mainline media, this set off second tier headlines, below immediate […]
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Talking Water
Talking Water (video 18 minutes) Talking Water — Water, Water Everywhere The video explains history of water use and some of the complexities of today’s water issues, but water is both a common subject and a profound mystery. We can never stop learning about it. Water is the stuff of life. It makes up 45-73% […]
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Are You Sure You Know Why That Happened?
The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect by Judea Pearl and Dana MacKenzie Judea Pearl is professor of computer science at UCLA with a long, distinguished career in software and artificial intelligence. This book is his third in a series on causality. Dana MacKenzie is a professional writer. The point of […]
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New Mythology for a New Humanity
A New Myth (Video 5 minutes) A New Mythology for the 21st Century Say “mythology” and we think of Greek mythology or indigenous tribal stories, but we think we follow facts and logic. Actually the 21st century is soaked in myths that we follow more than we think. When facts confuse and emotions tug, we […]
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Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or How Capitalism Works and How It Fails, by Yanis Varoufakis and Jacob Moe
Why Economic Theories Are Screwing Us Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works – and How It Fails, by Yanis Varoufakis and Jacob Moe Yanis Varoufakis will be heard from again. He attracted global attention as the Finance Minister of Greece who tried – and failed – to negotiate Greek debt […]
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Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, by David Graeber
The Whole Economy is Full of It Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, by David Graeber Although an American and by training an anthropologist, David Graeber is a professor at the London School of Economics. He’s not a stereotypical economist. He’s a rebel in the growing gang of “economists” at Evonomics, seeking a new economic system. Readers […]
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The Psychology of Compression Thinking
The Psychology of Compression Thinking (Video 7 minutes) The Psychology of Compression Thinking The basic points of Compression Thinking have changed little over the past five years. Their internal logic and consistency seem sound. But they are not trending on social media. Shifting from advanced economic norms remains a bridge too far to perturb the […]
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Effective Learning is Inefficient
The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can’t Do by Edward Tenner Edward Tenner, researcher of history and critic of technology, writes regularly for The Atlantic. Noted for a prior book, Why Things Bite Back, Tenner popularized the idea of unintended consequences. Examples from today’s leading edge to ancient times illustrate The Efficiency Paradox. In it, […]
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Is it All Empty Vanity?
Are We All Avatars in a Big Simulation? Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard, translated by Jean Glaser and Sheila Faria Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard was a French philosopher, a contributor to post-structuralism, along with the better-known Jacques Derrida. This bores anyone not deep into philosophy, so why dig into it? Because Simulacra and Simulation is […]
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Is Truth Just a Better Lie?
Truth by Doc Hall (Video 7 minutes) Is Truth Just a Better Lie? The arts of human deception have ever resided within us. On-line technology multiplies opportunities to practice them. Every morning before breakfast I trash a half-dozen or more e-mail scams. Fifty years ago no one began scamming you until you were awake. Scams […]
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The Viral Ugliness of Internet Trolling
Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right by Angela Nagle Angela Nagel is an Irish social critic specializing in the subcultures of the on-line interactive world, something that this reviewer and probably most readers don’t do. Tracking the logic warping feedback loops of troll wars is time-consuming […]
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Being Roiled and Rolled by Big Data
Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data Hardcover by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge Schönberger is a professor at Oxford and Ramge is a technology writer who has by-lines in The Economist. This book is not their first dance with Big Data. Their objective was to unveil its possibilities to those of us not […]
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Toxic Assets
Toxic Assets (Video 3 minutes) Toxic Assets by Doc Hall The basic thinking behind our system of business is piling up problems faster than we can resolve them. It is has become so toxic that neither money nor magic technology can sustain it. We have to detox human thinking and rethink what we must become. […]
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Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality by Andrew Newberg
Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality by Andrew Newberg Andrew Newberg is an MD and Professor of Emergency Medicine and Radiology, and Director of Research, Marcus Institute of Integrative Health, Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia (how does he cover all this?). Neurotheology, just out, is his newest book. The book attracted […]
