The Templeton Foundation is promulgating a set of short essays by twelve prominent thinkers and writers. I’ve recently noticed these essays in several magazines. Templeton asked the following question to its panel: “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?” The answers ranged from “yes” to “not sure” to “unlikely” to “no.” …
Three weeks ago, I took a 50-mile bike ride through Illinois, heading toward Pere Marquette State Park. I kept thinking about the blog, however . . .
Remember when you were a college student who had just decided to attend journalism school “to make a difference?” You wanted to change the world in a big way back then and the reasons were many. You wanted to become a proud member of the Fourth Estate. You understood that The Media had the power to change the world. You knew that the flow of accurate information was the pulsing blood of our democracy. Perhaps you were inspired by reading the platform Joseph Pulitzer wrote in 1907:
I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.
That was long ago, however, and you now realize you had those idealistic thoughts when you were young and naïve. Now you realize that we all need to make compromises in order to get paid. That’s why you are one of the proud creators of the various “Black Friday” articles in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Now that you are entrenched in a real job, you understand that working for The Media is all about printing the happy type of …
Poland is pulling out of Iraq, according to the Associated Press. Poland's new prime minister outlined ambitious plans for the next four years in his inaugural address Friday, saying he plans to withdraw troops from Iraq next year but also push for stronger relations with NATO. U.S. State Department spokesman…
It’s time to discuss what we’re going to do about our depleting supply of oil.
Here in the U.S., we’re doing nothing, though we call this technique “letting the free market solve the problem.” The are many good reasons to question the “wisdom” of the free market in this context. The consequences of doing nothing will be horrifying, however. The first step to doing something will be to convince economists to wake up from their dangerous fantasies.
This letter by Michael Lardelli, published by Energy Bulletin points out that those who are sounding the alarm about peak oil are primarily scientists — whereas the opposition consists largely of economists. The scientists aren’t seeing eye-to-eye with the economists [Note: Lardelli is a professor with the School of Molecular and Biomedical Science at The University of Adelaide, in AUSTRALIA].
…[The economists] seem to believe that the geological reality of finite conventional oil resources and the thermodynamic constraints on energy production from alternative hydrocarbon sources can be overcome by a sufficiently high price signal.
[However], there are many statistical and energy-production data supporting predictions of imminent energy decline. For example, a chart of annual discoveries of oil during the twentieth century shows that, despite tremendous advancement in discovery and extraction technology during this period, oil discoveries have been on a downwards trend for nearly 50 years (see ASPO Newsletter 73; January 2007).
Although huge, non-conventional oil resources exist — for example: tar sands, shale oil and even biofuels — harvesting these resources is