What I've Been Reading, March 2017

A few minutes late for sunset over Lake Huron, April 2, 2017

Links

These links appear in the order I read them, rather than any more refined sort of organization. Some of the best ones are near the bottom.

• Massive Permafrost Thaw Documented in Canada, Portends Huge Carbon Release, By Bob Berwyn, InsideClimate News
• Snopes is a Least Biased Source despite what you may have read, Media Bias/Fact Check—the most comprehensive media bias resource.
• The US Motorist Is Unwell: Miles Driven Suffer Biggest Slowdown In Over 2 Years, Zero Hedge
• The Coming Great Wealth Transfer, Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity—the full report is behind a paywall, but what you can see for free is still useful.
• Jane Jacobs Biography, Project for Public Spaces
• How to Be Lucky, By Chelsea Wald, Nautilus. It pays to imagine your life is on a winning streak.
• Inequality Is Killing The American Dream, by Ben Casselman, FiveThirtyEight
• Why We Want Growth, Why We Can’t Have It, and What This Means, Rob Mielcarski, un-Denial
• Republicans Keep Showing Us Who They Are, and we should believe them., by Robert L. Borosage, The Nation.
• Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong, by Julia Galefe, Ideas.Ted.com.
• Cities Are Artificial And Only Exist At The Expense Of Resources From Elsewhere, by Ken Jorgustin, Modern Survival Blog
• Are Collapsing Pensions About To Bring Hell To America? Zero Hedge
• How plagues really work, Wendy Orent, Aeon. The next pandemic will erupt, not from the jungle, but from the disease factories of hospitals, refugee camps and cities
• Utopia Inc., Alexa Clay, Aeon. Most utopian communities are, like most start-ups, short-lived. What makes the difference between failure and success?
• Splat goes the theory, Louise Fresco, Aeon.
  Local and organic is a romantic myth—the future of sustainable agriculture is all about smart technology and scaling up.
  There is a great deal wrong with this article and only a little right. I'll leave it as an exercise for the student to sort it out. Just as a hint, small farms usually get better yields than large ones, other things being equal. And the BAU folks just don't get why we think local is good (hint: transportation uses a lot of energy, oil in particular). Some good discussion in the comments, though.
• There is a simple way to improve the world’s food systems Peter Coclanis, Aeon.
  That would be getting rid of food waste, of course. But highly optimized systems are also very fragile...
• Omens, Ross Andersen, Aeon. When we peer into the fog of the deep future what do we see – human extinction or a future among the stars?
  This starts out similar ideas to my Evaluating Existential Threats series, but then switches over to science fiction...
• There Is No Deep State, By David Remnick, The New Yorker.
  The problem in Washington is not a conspiracy against the President; it’s the President himself.
• None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use, by David Roberts, Grist.
  We are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP
• A timeline of when self-driving cars will be on the road, according to the people making them, by Sarah Kessler, Quartz.
• China keeps finding millions of people who never officially existed, by Echo Huang, Quartz.
• A neuroscientist says there’s a powerful benefit to exercise that is rarely discussed, Wendy A. Suzuki, Quartz.
• Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power, By Diane Cardwell and Jonathan Soble, The New York Times
• Westinghouse Bankruptcy Puts Fate Of Four U.S. Nuclear Reactors In Limbo, Zero Hedge.
• MEDIA DELUDES AMERICANS: Shale Oil Production Suffers Massive Decline Rates, SRSrocco Report.
• When Roman “Barbarians” Met the Asian Enlightenment, Ben Thomas, Medium
• Will "increased competition" bring down healthcare costs as Republicans say? Quora.
• Dorothy Parker Quotes. Last month, Liam Scheff said I should include some humour, and I was pleasantly surprised to find Dorothy quite funny, though before I looked her up in Wikipedia, I didn't know her from Adam (or Eve, as the case may be).

Books

Fiction

I read three Ken MacLeod books this month. The Corporation Wars series (a third is due out near the end of 2017) are top-notch cyber space opera, and deal thoughtfully with artificial intelligence/consciousness issues. Intrusion tells a good human story involving at biotech and the surveillance state.

• The Corporation Wars: Dissidence, Ken MacLeod
• The Corporation Wars: Insurgence, Ken MacLeod
• Intrusion, Ken MacLeod

Non-Fiction

The non-fiction I've been reading this month is full of ideas which will show up over the next few weeks on this blog.

• Four Futures: Life After Capitalism, Peter Frase
  
• Future Scenarios, David Holmgren
• Failing States, Collapsing Systems—BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
  At $70 Canadian for a new copy fromAmazon.ca (an no cheaper at amazon.com), this is a ridiculously expensive book, but a must read. I have a copy here which is available for lending to anyone in the Kincardine area. And there is an informative review on Allan Stromfeldt Chris­tensen's blog.
• The War on Science, Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, What we Can Do About It, Shawn Otto
  
• Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green From Traditional Japan