Check out Jeff Sachs’s visit to Occupy Wall Street: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8svbm4WYmU
The first half is Jeff at his best, or at least channeling Noam.

Political commentators keep trying to make this about the state of the economy, but it really isn’t. It’s about the structure of the economy– a system that abuses and expends even in the best of times. I want the OWS protesters to know that they are crying with the same voice of the world poor and ecosystems everywhere– not because they’re poor, but because they’re subject to the same powerlessness.

If there’s any doubt of the absurdity of it, Flame recently sent me the handy table (from a not so good blog):

I’ve been submitting syllabi for classes to the powers-that-be, recently. The last two (the Human System Dynamics class I taught at Olin, and a “How Power Works” class) I submitted because I thought they’d be fun, but I think I’ve found one that would be much more useful.

It’s a Computational Tools class, for to-be researchers in sustainable development (or really anything at the intersection of social science and earth science). The idea is to give an introduction to all the tools (or the subset I know about) that can be at a researcher’s fingertips, from an understanding of XHTML to extract data from webpages to the basics of inversion theory. Simultaneously, the class provides a
semester-long education in the thought processes behind programming, computation, and modeling, using the various tools as both examples and building blocks.

Here are all the topics I’ve come up with, and I’m interested in any other ideas!

unix and shell scripting
GIS
techniques in programming: working with data files, data structures, algorithms, ideas of modern languages
useful Matlab toolboxes
introductory R
intermediate stata
techniques in network theory: metrics, algorithms
techniques in inversion theory
system dynamics: elements, insights
agent based modeling
xhtml for web data collection
algorithms from numerical analysis
source control and project management systems
relational databases
spectral analysis and tools from signal processing
data collections and organizations to know
LaTeX and beamer
using the econ cluster
tools from “Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics”
insights from nonlinear dynamics and chaos

If it’s not designed for people in my program, I would add the following:
OLS, GMM, VAR
Optimization Problems
Optimal Control

In addition, there would be an ongoing project, where each student to chooses a field (like climate or child health) and expands a collective wiki by finding good data sources, modeling tools, and techniques used in that field.

When you talk to earth scientists, the problem is climate change, and the verdict is that life will be several percent more difficult, in a century or so. When you talk to economists, the problem is resource limits, and the prognosis is positively rosy if we get our act together, but deadline is only about 20 years. But by far, the scientists who are most concerned with (both most fearful of and most riveted by) the coming crisis are ecologists. For them, the loss of species and the degradation of ecosystems is like watching Humpty Dumpty already smashing into the ground, and knowing that no royal calvary will be able to put him back together.

One of my classes this term is Sustainability Science, co-taught between Harvard, Columbia, Arizona and Minnesota States. Last week the topic was biodiversity, and the two main points were (1) we now have plenty of evidence that it matters, and (2) we’re losing it fast. The reading I enjoyed the most was old news to the ecologists in the room: a chapter from E.O. Wilson’s Consilience. He argues that, like an aggregate Indiana Jones, society is racing toward a quickly closing hole in the wall that forms the future of our planet. If we aren’t careful, we’ll hit the wall, and even our survival will be at risk. We can apply all our technical genius to get through the hole in time, but for every pair of prosthetic legs we build, we make civilization more precarious and alienated. The challenge is to carry as much of the natural world through the hole with us.

Here’s the chapter we read: To What End? Skip the first couple pages to where it says to start reading (before that is a rant I can’t endorse).

Enjoy!

I wrote this poem in they days before my recent 30th birthday party.

Here follow the potholes, worse than curves in this lane,
A couple couplets to express the speed of this strain.

We stay old too long, set on our climb to the peak,
Three decades before we learn a word to misspeak.

I wonder sometimes if never we return like the fall,
One instant to reach, come up short or stall.

The doubts more dazzling than any dream we could doze,
The joys of flashing buttocks and a yellow paper prose.

Chasing after confusions, for a knob we can’t try,
Finding the unknowable fracture behind every loci,

Too blinded by figures to see the lay of the land,
All hidden beyond lines in the analysand.

But I’m sure there’s a world, for heads not to rest,
I’ve seen it in dreams, too full of wit to digest.

A life that’s been kind, every moment for toasts,
Full of friends gathered round by all friendly ghosts.

Nor know how to thank, or who, for this one chance,
Of thirty years gone by of blessing and abundance,

Life in a dream, a planet’s psyche to heal,
All I can say is it’s sure been surreal.

I had a bunch of other clever lines and a big list of what I call “bywords” (words that end with another word to give the sentence a double meaning) that I lost in Burma. So I wrote a quick program to look for all English bywords (and then took out some of the non-useful ones). You can look at the results.

Originally posted by at [soc/anthro] The Recipe, Or What you don’t know about LJ/DW

I’m back. I’m sorting through pictures to produce tighter “best-of” posts, but time is tight with classes now a couple weeks in. I just turned 30 yesterday. We threw a fun “surreal” themed party– with upside-down flowers and all drinkable foods.

I have a poem to post, some recent software work, and a rant against people who say the problem with the [world, country, government] is some other group of people. But now I wanted to respond to something I just read.

I’m reading an article by Kenneth Arrow (big econ guy; “Are We Consuming Too Much?”, 2004), which claims to be a meeting of minds between economists and ecologist, but is pretty solidly economist-think, just about the nature of sustainability. The claim is, sustainability is endlessly rising consumption.

Not only is that vision intrinsically grotesque, there are a couple points that I think turn it on its head:

• Poverty is not about insufficient average consumption. An Irish friend (in my program) explained to me at the party that during the Great Irish Famine, Ireland was producing enough food for everyone. But moneyed interests were exporting it all to England. Today, worldwide, poverty is a result of inequality and a lack of support systems.
• As part of that, as a world, we already consume too much. Not only is our level of consumption too much for the environment, it’s also too much for our own well-being. Thailand has a per-capita income of around $5000 ($13/day)– an income at which you have food, shelter, education and work (they have 1% unemployment), and people seem wonderfully happy. World per-capita income is now at $7000… and yet about 3.5 billion people (half of the world) lives on less than $2 per day.

Forget about increasing the world economy. Let’s shrink it– we can worry about living on more than $13/day later, after we get a better grasp of the whole climate change thing.

We leave for Southeast Asia on Wednesday, after a life of wanting to go! We have five weeks, before my school starts back up and Johanna’s vacation days run out, but it already feels like a brisk visit.

Why is it so difficult to limit oneself to one place? It looks like travel will be more expensive than we imagined (the cheapest hotels are still ~$18 / night in Bangkok!), and language more difficult (we gave up learning the alphabet after the fifth ‘kh’). And yet, after feeling sure we would be happy spending our time mostly in northern Thailand with a 10-day taste of Burma, we discovered Lonely Planet’s 1-2 month, seven country route, and everything is back on the table.

Below is our best idea itinerary for now. We’ll each be working ~4 hours a day, so we don’t want to move more than every other day, which leaves us about 15 locations to explore.

Wednesday, 7/27: Leaving from Newark at 11am
Thursday, 7/28: 4 hours in Tokyo, then arriving in Bangkok at 11pm
Saturday, 7/30: Fly to Rangoon, Burma (300 ft gold stupa)
Monday, 8/1: Pagan (ruins)
Wednesday, 8/3: Inle Lake (island monasteries)
Friday, 8/5: Mandalay and surrounding old cities
Sunday, 8/7: Fly to Bangkok
Monday, 8/8: Ayuthaya or Lapburi (for ancience and art)
Wednesday, 8/10: Khao Yai National Park
Thursday, 8/11: Phimai (Khmer temple)
Saturday, 8/13: Nong Khai, Thailand / Vientiane, Laos
Monday, 8/15: Luang Prabang, Laos
Wednesday, 8/17: Boat on the Mekong River, or Luang Nam Tha or Muang Sing
Friday, 8/19: Chang Mai, Thailand (weekend market)
Sunday, 8/21: Pai or Mae Hong Son (culture and diversity)
Tuesday, 8/23: Sokhothai (ruins) or Phitsanulok (Buddha and noodles)
Thursday, 8/25: Bangkok
Saturday, 8/26: Fly to Phuket, then bus to Khao Sok National Park
Sunday, 8/27: Khao Lak (beach)
Monday, 8/29: Fly to Bangkok
Tuesday, 8/30: Leaving Bangkok at 11pm
Wednesday, 8/31: 8 hours in Tokyo, then arriving in Newark 5 minutes before we leave

With luck, we’ll be visiting a mother of a friend of mine in Rangoon. We’re bringing a bunch of books with us to hand out as gifts in Burma (and we’ll be refilling that space with purchases from our travels).

A vision quest is calling me.

My relationship with Flame is wonderful– forever inspiring, challenging, exciting. I wouldn’t marry for my own sake, but recent discussions have made me realize that it’s not for people like me that marriage exists, and commitment for life isn’t for eternity anyway, right?

Whenever I imagine proposing to Flame, I feel this father figure welling up within me, like a personification of a van Gennep rite of passage. The figure is my father, though not quite as he looks in my one picture of him. He died when I was 10 and he was 34, but he is a part of me in so many ways.

People are said to become more like their parents on the other side of this particular rite, and I wonder what that will mean for me. I’m proud to consider myself an adult already, and have for years, but rites of passage are powerful. Who is this man inside me? I remember very little of him, and I only know fragments from what others have told me. When he appears, what will be come of me? I need to know who he was at my age.

My quest is to find my father, by talking to those who knew him. The door ahead scares me a little, but I will approach it with caution.

Please forward this description and photos to any friends you know who are looking for a wonderful apartment for August!

Johanna and I are leaving our beautiful, one-bedroom Columbia area apartment between July 27 and August 31. We want a you to enjoy our great NYC location for a student-subsided rent!

Setting:
Our apartment is on the 3rd floor of an elevator-equipped building at Amsterdam and 122nd St. It’s two blocks from Columbia University, and a short walk to the 1 train at 116th and the A, B, C, and D trains at 125th. Several buses stop on Amsterdam and Broadway. It’s one block from Morningside park, two blocks from Riverside park, and 10 minutes from Central Park.

Apartment:
The apartment comes fully furnished including bed with extra linens, and comfortable and decorated living and dining areas. Appliances in the kitchen include full size gas stove and oven, microwave, toaster-oven, lots of pots and pans and place setting for many mouths. There are windows in every room.

Additional Perks:

• Free wi-fi.
• Free New York Times daily ($17/wk value), and a few other magazines
• Half of a CSA share which you can pick up from 114th and Broadway ($20/wk value)
• Air conditioning in the bedroom, but please see below about utilities costs
• Washer and dryer in the basement

Limitations:

• We do not own a TV.
• Our stuff will be put away in an orderly fashion into every nook and cranny. We will mostly empty the front closet, half of the dresser, and a large wardrobe for you to use.
• We have a table full of plants. Please water them weekly.
• No pets allowed.

Pictures:

We are asking the price of our rent and utilities for one month: $1500 total. We will take a $200 deposit. If the utilities for August are more than $100 (normal bills are $50 – $70), it will come out of that deposit.

Please contact us if you have any questions!

– James and Johanna (301-802-0529)

Quincy is hosting the Eighth International Conference of Complex Systems, which is right up what could be my alley. And my program graciously agreed to pay for me to go, including two Chinatown bus tickets and a cheap room through airbnb. So I’ll be around Boston tomorrow through Wednesday. Though, between the conference and my half-time job, time will be tight!

[edit: Or maybe no time. I left at 7:30 and didn’t get back until around 10 today. By the way, anyone know why my comment #’s have disappeared?]