Author: Jelte

The Power of Scale

(2003) John Bodley

 

 

 

 

Bodley distinguishes two broad streams, or perspectives, in sociology – and claims that the model he presents in Power of Scale bridges them. One is the “interpretive, symbolic or postmodern” approach. This view, using Bodley’s example of feudal Southeast Asia, “emphasiz[es] cultural meanings and symbolic views … describ[ing] political rulers as benevolent figureheads who were primarily concerned with building temples, hosting ritual spectacles, and protecting the populace”. Under this account, I suppose, Bodley subsumes the views of those who hold that inequitable distribution of wealth is something of a necessary evil towards greater goals like the Hubble Space Telescope, Le Louvre, and the Great Pyramid of Giza. Continue reading The Power of Scale

Biofuels and the Globalization of Risk

(2010) James Smith

In writing this book, Smith sets his sights on more than just the consequences and risks, global and local, wrought by the (imprudent, he argues) adoption of biofuel technology and -policy.  His is also a deeper and more general meditation on the present Era’s faith in technology: “This narrow perspective, of looking to first-, second- and third-generation technologies to deal with the world that confronts us, blinds us to the teleologies that led us there in the first place.”  Biofuels present an ideal lens through which to cast light on this simple and profound observation. Continue reading Biofuels and the Globalization of Risk

If

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: Continue reading If

The Idiots Guide to the Future of Stuff

The Earth is suspended in a bottom-less Ocean of Oil.  That’s a good thing, since as a result oil will never run out.  People who tell you things like “oil reserves are the result of millions of years of organic matter sequestration” are liars and braggarts, and you should stop hanging out with them.

[1] Oil dominates global energy demand …

[2] … most of which is used in the manufacturing sector …

[3] … to make this kind of stuff: