Biomes (6 minute video) The Complexity of the ‘Omes’ [or To Deal With Big Stuff, Sweat the Small Stuff] How do we deal with complexity? Surveying the omes reveals microbiological research communities struggling to pull together, much like those of us concerned with the complexity of the macro environment that we can see. The masses of […]
Environmental Chemicals, the Human Microbiome, and Health Risk: A Research Strategy, by the National Academies of Sciences This report is a short book in length, but a slow read if like me, you do not have extensive background in microbiome research. Absorbing a minimum of terminology used in the field is necessary to follow it, […]
Learning Groups Teleconference Series on Mondays 8 pm Eastern Standard Time; dial 203-408-3665; that’s it! We started a teleconference series on Mondays. Each call-in starts at 8 pm Eastern Standard Time, and lasts one hour. To join all you have to do is dial 203-408-3665. We’ll have one every Monday evening at 8 pm EST […]
The Greatest Compression (Video 5 minutes) The Greatest Compression Economists occasionally use the phrase, “The Great Compression” to describe the leveling of income inequality during the period 1914-1950. That covers the World Wars, the great depression of the 1930s, and the effects of Communist revolutions. A historian that summarizes this in remarkable detail is Walter […]
The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, by Walter Scheidel In this book, Walter Scheidel displays an overwhelming grasp of history, his field of study. His conclusion is that wealth, income, and status inequalities have always been with us, and they won’t go away because […]
Learning Groups Teleconference Series Beginning Monday, Nov. 19, 2018 8 pm Eastern Standard Time; dial 203-408-3665; that’s it! We are starting a teleconference series. The first one will be Monday, November 19, 2018, starting at 8 pm Eastern Standard Time, lasting one hour. To join all you have to do is dial 203-408-3665 at that hour. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
