Archive for January, 2010

A sustainable agriculture research and education agenda to address a gathering crisis

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

A Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Agenda to Address a Gathering Crisis
Karl North 2002
The Crisis, in its multidimensionality, with likely multiplier effects across its elements:

Exponentially rising energy costs for coming decades as currently foreseeable alternative energy technologies fail to compensate for the end of cheap oil;
Gradual loss of most of the energy-intensive inputs that currently [...]

Introduction to Systems Thinking

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

A New Understanding of Root Cause—
Systems Thinking for Problem Solvers
By Karl North
“We’ll never be able to go back again to the way we used to think.” – anonymous holist

A Revolution in the Making
The insight that the world functions in complex, interdependent wholes drives a growing revolution in the way people are examining, understanding, [...]

Two Folktales for Comprehending Late Stage Capitalism and its Scientific Culture

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

Karl North 2006
Folktales distill the wisdom of the ages. All too often their teachings are applicable to any era. Perhaps their continuing relevance comes, as the saying goes, from the human propensity to repeat history, once as tragedy, again as farce.
My favorite tales to explain the hilarious but tragic human behavior patterns of late stage [...]

The Left and the Zioncons

Monday, January 4th, 2010

The Left and the Zioncons[1]
Karl North
January 2010
Back a couple years Michael Moore wrote a piece about how “we”[2] should get out of Iraq. It was all very nice, cheeky, classic Michael Moore. And much of it of course true. But by saying the oil industry wanted the war, he made the same mistakes about war [...]