My, doesn't that sound like a particularly bad Robert Ludlum novel (three inch thrillers with three word titles)? It's about being able to blot out the horrible thing that is inevitably coming, and do what you have to do in the meantime. Sisyphus blah de blah, yadder yadder yadder. In case you don't know the... Continue Reading →
#Australia and #climate – a book, ‘Environmental Boomerang’ warning in 1973…
So, when climate change burst onto the scene in 1988, I doubt too many hardcore environmentalists were surprised.(1) Carbon dioxide gets a few pages in the 1972 'Limits to Growth' book, which went through numerous printings. The earliest Australian book I have been able to find (so far!) is this - 'Environmental Boomerang', published in... Continue Reading →
Medical hubris and arrogance leads to “iatrogenic” agony…
“There was a period of about three years (1987-1990), however, when it became fashionable for physicians to reduce the rather long MR imaging times by using anisotropically shaped (i.e., non-square) imaging pixels in studies of the spine. As it turned out, this resulted in a prominent dark line appearing within the spinal cord. The dark line was a Gibbs... Continue Reading →
For “success”? Timing and conformity as key. Barry Jones, #Keynes and #climate
Barry Jones was the Australian Science Minister between 1983 and 1990, and a key figure in the coming of climate awareness to that country. He is also a pretty smart guy (didn't help him as a politician, naturlich). Keynes said something different but similar - We needed to be transruptive [another of my shoddy neologisms],... Continue Reading →
Emancipating who from what? Risky business around “emancipatory catastrophism” and #climate change.
Beck, U. (2015) Emancipatory catastrophism: What does it mean to climate change and risk society? Current Sociology Vol . 63 (1) 75-88. Didn’t like this. Sorry to speak ill of the dead (and seriously, RIP Ulrich Beck), but this to me smacked of palimpsesting some wishful (millennial?) thinking onto the ugly “facts” (yes yes, Latour... Continue Reading →
marchudson.net 