Last week, I reported the surprising realization that official population projections from the United Nations adhere to a notion of future fertility that appears to be immediately at odds with present real trends. The recent rapid decline in population growth—even pre-COVID—suggests that a population peak prior to 2050 is not outlandish, provided that current drivers continue to apply. Recent declines in fertility rates, together with a flattening age distribution of young folks, combin...| Do the Math
From Boston Public Library via Wikimedia Commons.Daniel Quinn returned to the theme that “food makes babies” so often in his writings that it would seem he was continually dissatisfied either with the clarity of his case, or with objections people had, or both. I get it. I often return over and over to the same thorny themes, each time thinking I’ll finally nail it. The exercise is as much for improving internal clarity as anything.| Do the Math
Image from Wikimedia Commons.This is part of a series of posts representing ideas from the book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I view the ideas explored in Ishmael to be so important to the world that it seems everyone should have a chance to be exposed. I hope this treatment inspires you to read the original.| Do the Math
Have I mentioned how important I think Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael is? I reread it recently for the first time in a while, and was again impressed with how many important modernity-challenging ideas are packed into one novel.| Do the Math
Most people are probably familiar with text substitution, in some form. It’s when a particular bit of text in a document is replaced throughout with an alternate. In many packages this is carried out via a Find/Replace dialog box. My main use has been in a Unix/vi environment, where the friendly and intuitive command :1,$s/old text/new text/g finds every instance of “old text” and replaces with “new text.” The true nerd will appreciate that the command is compatible with ‘regular ...| Do the Math
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay| Do the Math
This page serves to put the Metastatic Modernity video series (introduced here) in one convenient place, in chronological order. Each entry has a title, a one-line description of the content, the embedded video (can also click at lower left to watch on YouTube where comments and chapter navigation appear), and a link to the associated complementary write-up.| Do the Math
This is the fourteenth of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. We have arrived at the episode whose concept inspired the name of the series. Though no metaphor can perfectly capture a complex reality, by comparing modernity to metastatic cancer I hope to provide a useful framework that counters the usual modernity-boosting...| Do the Math
Ishmael the novel. Ishmael teaches that which all humans need to learn - must learn - if our species, and the rest of life on Earth is to survive.| Ishmael.org, the work & philosophy of Daniel Quinn
A post from last year titled The Ride of Our Lives explored the game theory aspect of modernity: those who adopted grain agriculture and new technologies had a competitive advantage over neighbors who didn’t. The “winners” were destined to be those who followed the path that we now call progress.| Do the Math
