December 2011

Paul Krugman continues to be persuasive, although we worry that it’s necessary for him to make this point. Excerpted from “Keynes Was Right:” “The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury.” So declared John Maynard Keynes in 1937, even as F.D.R. was about to prove him right by trying [...]

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Professor David Levine has not a really impressive title – “John H. Biggs Distinguished Professor of Economics at Washington University in St. Louis.” Plus – his web pages (and linked pages) on “What is Game Theory? are outstanding.

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Let us remember the Blue Marble. There would be no food – and no life – without sunlight and clean water. The whales, and the dolphins, the deer and the polar bear, are our cousins. Let us return to the UN on March 20, May 9, June 20, September 3, and December 21 with delegations [...]

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I just bought some LED bulbs at Home Depot. The bulbs, from Cree and Lighting Sciences, are sold under the “ecosmart” ™ brand. The Lighting Sciences bulbs will go into my bathroom.  The CREE bulbs will go into the bedrooms, family room, and the kitchen. Over their 35,000 lifespan, each LED bulb will outlast 14 [...]

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The Jewish celebration of Chanukah, the “Festival of Lights,” commemorates the successful struggle for freedom and independence of Israel from the Selucid Greeks,  about 2200 years ago.  At the conclusion of this war, the Macabees purified The Temple in Jerusalem and sought to relight their “Eternal Lamp.” They only had enough oil for one day. [...]

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Here are my top 10 predictions for 2012. These are less readings of the tea leaves or the entrails of goats and chickens and more simple extrapolations of patterns in progress. Altho that may be the way effective oracles. They just masked their observations with hocus pocus, mumbo-jumbo, and guts. This list runs a gamut [...]

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Does “Moore’s Law” hold for Solar Power? In New Jersey, between 2001 and 2010, we went from a total of six systems with a combined capacity of 9.0 KW to about 7000 systems with a combined capacity of 211,000 KW or 211 MW. This is illustrated below. This is the “hockey stick” curve of exponential [...]

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From MIT Study: US Can Meet Power Grid Challenges of Future, by Gino Troiani, According to a recent two-year study commissioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology‘s Energy Initiative, if certain measures are taken, the answer is yes. The study was composed of 13 MIT faculty members, 1 Harvard faculty member, 10 graduate students and [...]

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World Health Organization warns of measles outbreak in Europe, which has included 26,000 cases and nine deaths.

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Jeremy Grantham, the founder of GMO LLC, a hedge fund with $93 Billion under management, will speak Friday, 12/2/2011, at 5:00 PM at the Marlboro College Grad School, 28 Vernon Street, Brattleboro, Vermont. Grantham has written “Everything you need to know about global warming in 5 minutes,” which can be found at Think Progress and [...]

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