Links for the Week – August 12, 2006

Posted on August 12, 2006 by Dave Pollard
prisonNine articles this week on completely different subjects, none of which you will learn about from the mainstream media, because they’re too complex to dumb down to a two-minute story.

A House Design That Consumes No Net Energy: Really interesting 10-year-old concept summary for siting and construction of a house such that, in many climates, it would be entirely energy self-sufficient. Anyone know if it’s been tried in practice? Thanks to Steven at Deconsumption for the link.

Brad DeLong Predicts Economic Meltdown: Lefty blogger and economist Brad DeLong, writing at Salon, weighs the odds that Bush has already pushed the US, and the world, over the economic tipping point.

American Psychological Association Justifies Member Involvement in Torture: If you need a reason to distrust psychiatrists, psychologists and their methods, their association’s sleazy and slippery justification for their members’ involvement in US political and military torture at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and who knows where else, explained in this Salon article by Mark Benjamin, should fit the bill.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Cognition: A great compendium of online articles about philosophy, the mind, phenomenology, consciousness, and all that stuff, assembled by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad. Thanks to Andrew Campbell for the link.

Bono: Capitalist Tool: For those who still don’t realize celebrity tinkerers are doing more harm than good in their embrace and debate with equally clued-out political and business leaders, Andrew Leonard in Salon will set you straight.

US War on Drugs Ignores Evidence That Suffering is the Precursor for Addiction: A fascinating article from the Guardian points to research on lab rats that suggests that only rats that live in deprived environments become addicts. The idea that ending global poverty, violence and misery would eliminate the need for the preposterous ‘war on drugs’ is, of course, anathema to the mindset of Bush & Co.

Human-Computer Interaction: The Next Generation: A lengthy article by John Canny reviews the history of HCI and suggests a leapfrog is necessary to make next-gen electronics much more useful. They need to be designed, he says, to be context-aware, and hence to use heuristic neural processes rather than dumb analytical ones. Once again, this is all about abandoning dysfunctional and inadequate ‘complicated’ systems, methods and technologies, and embracing complexity, with all its imprecision, unpredictability, and wonder. Thanks to Innovation Weekly for the link.

The US is Indefensible: Also on the subject of complexity, Ron Suskind, interviewed here in Salon, finally makes the point that the War on Terror (like the War on Drugs referred to above) cannot be won, because a complex democratic republic can never be defended from all conceivable attacks. Indefensibility is not an inevitable consequence of democracy, however, but an inevitable consequence of complexity.

Peak Oil and the Threat to Knowledge (and to the Internet): A lengthy and wonderfully-researched article by Alice Friedemann in Energy Bulletin explains that the End of Oil threatens not only our material well-being but our ability to maintain and retrieve our collective learning and knowledge as well. Scary stuff. Return to an oral culture, anyone? She also explains, again, why nukes, hydrogen cells, solar and wind cannot solvethe crisis that the End of Oil will precipitate. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link.
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8 Responses to Links for the Week – August 12, 2006

  1. Doug Alder says:
    August 12, 2006 at 19:39

    Dave they have built lots of homes. The company’s website is at http://enertia.com/

  2. Ken Hirsch says:
    August 13, 2006 at 04:37

    “The idea that ending global poverty, violence and misery would eliminate the need for the preposterous ‘war on drugs’ is, of course, anathema to the mindset of Bush & Co.” Right. That’s why rich people never become drug addicts.

  3. Ken Hirsch says:
    August 13, 2006 at 05:15

    “For those who still don’t realize celebrity tinkerers are doing more harm than good in their embrace and debate with equally clued-out political and business leaders, Andrew Leonard in Salon will set you straight.” The only substantive point I see Leonard make is “Bono’s efforts in recent years were instrumental in pointing out the utterly cockeyed nuttiness that African nations owed more to the developed world in annual debt repayments than they were receiving in foreign aid.” Other than that, Leonard seems to just be noting the irony of Bono investing in Forbes Media. What point do you think Leonard is making?

  4. Tatu Siltanen says:
    August 13, 2006 at 12:01

    According to George Monbiot, “In Germany there are now some 4000 homes built to the

  5. Joe Deely says:
    August 13, 2006 at 20:34

    There are plenty(1000s) of examples of zero net energy houses including a recent Habitat for Humanity house in Colorado.http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/release.cfm/release_id=16In the not too distant future… most new houses will be zero net energy houses. By the way, the definition of zero net energy also includes houses that produce MORE energy than they need. With advances in technology we will see more houses becoming mini power plants.I find it ironic than in the same article that you mention houses with zero net energy you describe a gloom and doom article by Alice Friedemann about “Peak Oil” as wonderfully researched and scary stuff ??? Her article is a joke.Even with the huge amounts of waste in our systems today we continue to grow the economy much faster than energy usage. see- http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/pdf/pages/sec1_16.pdfThere is no reason why we can’t grow the economy and LOWER energy usage. In fact, overall US energy usage has been essentially flat since 2000.see – http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/pdf/pages/sec1_7.pdf

  6. Siona says:
    August 14, 2006 at 00:01

    Oh, Ken. As though being rich is a guarantee of happiness! The rich have all the more reason to want to escape consideration of their condition; it’s our materialistic lifestyles that so contribute to the inequity and misery of so many others on this planet, and being awake to that is unbearably painful. How can anyone be happy when those one is co-caged with are miserable? I have a feeling that if only a few rats were given the toys / food / etc. to keep them happy, but left in the same living space with a bunch of deprived rodents, they’d soon succumb to the level of – and addictive behavior – of the later. Note the *global* in Dave’s comment. We’re all in this together.

  7. Barbara W. Klaser says:
    August 15, 2006 at 16:34

    I’d agree celebrity efforts can be dangerous, because so many people will follow them, but if a celebrity supports an already established, well-intended, -managed and -thought out effort, they can bring a great deal of support to it and thus a great deal of good. I see nothing wrong with RESPONSIBLE celebrity meddling. Even the best intended and researched efforts can go wrong. One example is the closure of pollock fisheries in Alaska, when it turned out later that the risk to herring was much greater, and the more aggressive pollock were part of that threat–to the herring and all animals that feed on the herring. The science was there behind the actions, but the science hadn’t gone far enough yet. There was no celebrity involved there, and things still went way wrong. We humans are simply sometimes much less ept than we want to believe at solving problems.

  8. Dave Pollard says:
    August 24, 2006 at 09:18

    Great comments, great links, encouraging news on the energy-self-sufficient house front. Thanks, everyone.

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