Monthly Archive for October, 2007

How much longer will tomorrow be like yesterday?

Author: Jock Gill The picture above, thanks to David M. Harrison, Dept. of Physics. Univ. of Toronto, is one way to look at the concept of punctuated equilibrium or the bifurcation process that is part of Chaos. I once wrote a simple BASIC program that creates this image of a system bifurcating and then moving [...]

watercolor

Photographer: Jock Gill

The Doninger Appeal

Author: Aldon Hynes Various people have asked me for some of the background information on the Doninger Appeal widget that is currently appearing on the left side of the Greater Democracy page. Last spring, Avery Doninger, junior class secretary at Lewis Mills High School in Burlington, CT was working hard to organize an annual battle [...]

A few thoughts on our Energy Future

Author: Jock Gill As we consider our options for our Energy Future, what sorts of criteria might we use to evaluate the various paths under consideration? Do we want an Energy future that meets these six simple tests: 1] Design goal: a system that is at least 85% efficient end to end; 2] A robust [...]

Do You Support Florida in the Primary Mess?

Today, I received an email that started, “Do You Support Florida in the Primary Mess? If not, I don’t really want to get into a debate about it on list, so send me a off-list e-mail.” I think this is misguided in several different ways. First and foremost, I’m very concerned about the compression of [...]