Index for 2006


151: Trust and Economic Development, by Jack Powelson

"Why do some nations develop more economically, and some less so? Forty years ago I thought this was a pretty good question, which I decided to research. I worked on it 25 years... Now I have decided to condense the whole book into an essay of only two pages..." [6 Dec 06]

150: One Nation, Indivisible, by Jack Powelson

"Do we have an ideology? "Ideology" is a belief — right or wrong — in how the world functions, plus our statement of how it ought to function. ... I believe President Bush has violated the trust of the people. The surprising point is that there is such a trust..." [20 Nov 06]

149: Population Implosion, by Loren Cobb

"Many of the arguments over the shape of the future turn on the central question of population growth. Over the past ten thousand years the world population has been increasing at an accelerating rate, with only a few fluctuations. How then will it be possible to advance civilization in the face of the depletion of finite resources? To find an answer to this question for, say, the rest of this century..." [30 Oct 06]

148: Energy Apocalypse? by Loren Cobb

"Peak Oil is the theory that world oil production will hit an all-time maximum within the next few years, if it hasn't already done so. The significance of Peak Oil lies not in its precise timing, but rather in our possibly violent and dysfunctional response to the growing scarcity of inexpensive energy during the decades that follow..." [8 Sep 06]

147: Quaker Values and Economic Evaluations, by William Rhoads

"Recently, The Quaker Economist has focused on major issues facing the world — the peak of oil production, and global warming with perhaps catastrophic climate change — without relating them to any unique or specific Quaker religious values. I would like to tarry for a while and ask what our Quaker values are on some of these subjects, and what, if anything, our Quaker values have to offer to today’s world..." [24 May 06]

146: Ghosts of the Future, by Loren Cobb

"The news these days is filled with intimations of catastrophe. Will the approaching decline in worldwide petroleum reserves cause wars and famine? Have we caused global warming, and if so, will we suffer unimaginable climate change? These are just two of the ghosts that haunt our misty visions of the future..." [11 May 06]

145: Peak Oil and Hybrid Cars, by Loren Cobb

"Have you test-driven a hybrid car recently? I recently had that experience at a Toyota dealership. You turn it on and there is only silence. You engage the motor, and the car silently moves forward. Enter a highway and step on the accelerator, and its small gasoline engine finally kicks in with an almost imperceptible vibration... This experience led me to wonder how hybrid cars of the future may affect the pattern of energy use on the planet. Here are some thoughts..." [20 Apr 06]

144: National Income, National Product, by Jack Powelson

"Income equals product, by definition. What a nation produces is what it gets. We have different measures for each of income and product: gross, net, national, domestic, etc, for which the United Nations and International Monetary Fund have prepared a uniform standard that most counties (including the USA) use. I represented the IMF on the UN committee that prepared the standard method..." [3 Apr 06]

143: Child of the Wind, by Tim Johnson

"The wind was blowing, and how it blew! The year was 1949. The suraso, a freezing winter wind that blows up from Antarctica, had come over the tropical jungle. Palm trees are bending, rain is falling..." [28 Feb 06]

142: Oil Addiction: The Costs of Petroleum Use, by Loren Cobb

"In his 2006 State of the Union address, President Bush called for an end to the nation's 'addiction to oil.' These were remarkable words, coming from a man whose family fortune came from the petroleum industry..." [11 Feb 06]

141: Democracy, by Jack Powelson

"I phoned Western Union this morning to send a telegram to Argentina. "But we don’t send telegrams," I was told. "Great heavens," I thought. "Telegrams were all Western Union did the last time I sent one (decades ago)..." [7 Jan 06]

140: Myth, Ritual, and Symbol, by Loren Cobb

"People find meaning in their lives from symbolic sources, far from the domain of rationality and economics. If you look at the people around you with eyes that see beneath the surface of everyday affairs, you will find traces of this wellspring everywhere..." [1 Jan 06]

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