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Fear, Fury, and Forgetting

Change often doesn’t happen smoothly, but rather in fits and starts.

Here’s a look at some mass actions over the past few decades that either caused fear or fury and (for some of them) how they were ultimately forgotten.

Since we’ve seen a year of fear and fury around the world, largely in the form of many types of large sustained protests and the impact of COVID-19, let’s look at some past examples and how change plays out (or doesn’t). What behavior and consequences emerge along the way?

Radon Gas. In the 1980s a report from the EPA and its reporting in media set off a radon gas scare in the US. The gas, naturally occurring in the ground, seeped into home basements and was blamed for cancer deaths. People suddenly became afraid to spend much time in their basements. But the risk was exaggerated in importance.

Radon gas as a cause of cancer is highly tied to smoking. Given that smoking has declined in the US over the last few decades before the recent creation of vaping, is radon really an issue? An EPA report estimates that 21,000 die of lung cancer caused by radon but 86% of them are also smokers.

With more knowledge, the fear dissipated like the gas itself.

Continue reading “Fear, Fury, and Forgetting”

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Changes in Value (Part 2)

While I discussed silver, tulips, and drugs in Changes in Value Part I, here I look at education, art, spices, chicken feet, and conformity. What systems influence the value of things? Why does value change?

At the end I provide suggestions to assess your own situations.

Education

I’ve been critical of higher education on this blog before, but for other reasons. When it comes to the the price of a college degree — and here I’m mostly talking of the price of American college tuition — we’ve seen a doubling in price, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years. A number of factors combine to drive up the price.

Continue reading “Changes in Value (Part 2)”

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Asylum from a Pack of Wolves

People seek asylum for different reasons. Sometimes, a country becomes unsafe because of one’s identity — as a member of a targeted ethnic, religious, or political group. And sometimes one’s actions — sometimes even unintentional — make their home country unsafe.

The idea of seeking safety elsewhere in the world is an interesting one because, even with the recent refugee crises, it has historically been relatively uncommon. (Asylum is the protection a nation grants to someone from another country, often as a political refugee. An asylee to the US requests asylum while in the US but a refugee requests that protection while still outside the US.)

But today — and maybe because I’m both a friend of the individual and a writer — I’m focused on an instance of someone seeking asylum because of something that they wrote. Continue reading “Asylum from a Pack of Wolves”

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Modeling Epidemics (Parrot Fever, 1918 Flu, Plague)

I’ve written about high-profile diseases already (here, here, here, and many more). There’s something timeless about studying the way diseases spread and impact systems, especially when it comes to second-order effects. So let’s map out a few disease scares from the past century. Here’s a systems map look at parrot fever, 1918 flu, and modern-day bubonic plague.

I’m not including COVID-19 in the bunch since I’ve written about it frequently and there’s still a lot we don’t know about the system that led to its spread. Then again, there is also a lot we don’t know about the spread of the diseases below, but the perspectives on them are more static.

I decided to write this piece after seeing how hidden the pathways to illness can be and how straightforward the solutions can seem after the system is understood.

Psittacosis (Parrot Fever)

You’ve probably never heard of it, but in 1929, deaths from the then unknown disease psittacosis (also called “parrot fever”) scared a lot of people who thought it might be a new epidemic.

It took some sleuthing, but the commonality between people affected by this disease was their proximity to imported birds such as parrots and parakeets.

Keeping birds in the home as pets was a relatively new fashion. Salesmen sold birds door to door.

But even with importation of infected birds, we might have avoided the local spread of psittacosis if not for crowded conditions in pet stores and the easier spread of psittacosis among the birds, asymptomatic healthy seeming birds, and then close conditions between birds and human owners in the home.

Here’s a map of psittacosis flowing from wild populations to the pet owners.

Continue reading “Modeling Epidemics (Parrot Fever, 1918 Flu, Plague)”

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Pandemic Protests

As with other sudden, widespread changes, there are many second-order effects from coronavirus. I’ve been slowly chronicling them on this blog. Today, let’s look at the impact on protest movements and tactics.

Over the past few months people around the world lost their ability to protest. Or, they lost the type of protest that had worked for them — the mass gatherings to show dissatisfaction and force government response.

In locations including Algeria, Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Haiti, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Russia, Spain, Netherlands, Peru, Syria, and the US, protests have declined or have taken a different turn — due to COVID-19. What systems are changing and what is likely to remain changed after a vaccine?

Continue reading “Pandemic Protests”

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A Religion of Isolation (Pandemics Past and Present)

When a new topic overwhelms — as with coronavirus — it’s easy to take in a lot of noisy information. Information that isn’t helpful, accurate, or clear. With that in mind, and especially for those of you physically isolated in response to COVID-19, I present this (long) quote about the Dark Ages of Europe.

“Whatever reproach may, at a later period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and luxury of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an age of ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated, in which gentle and contemplative natures find an asylum, in which one brother could employ himself in transcribing the Aeneid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of Aristotle, in which who had a genius for art might illuminate a martyrology or carve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turn for natural philosophy might make experiments on properties of plants and minerals. Had not such retreats been scattered here and there, among the huts of a miserable peasantry, and the castles of a ferocious aristocracy, European society would have consisted merely of beasts of burden and beasts of prey. The Church has many times been compared by divines to the ark of which we read in the Book of Genesis: but never was the resemblance more perfect than during that evil when she alone rode, amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the great works of power and wisdom lay entombed, bearing within that feeble germ from which a second and more glorious civilization was to spring.”

Continue reading “A Religion of Isolation (Pandemics Past and Present)”

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On Campuses Reopening

Around the US, college campuses closed in mid-March. And they generally closed earlier in parts of Asia and later elsewhere around the world. When should they reopen?

The president of Brown University wrote an Op-ed piece in the NY Times (published April 26) to address this question.

I’ll only call out a few quotes and suggest you read it for yourself.

“Our students will have to understand that until a vaccine is developed, campus life will be different. Students and employees may have to wear masks on campus. Large lecture classes may remain online even after campuses open. Traditional aspects of collegiate life — athletic competitions, concerts and yes, parties — may occur, but in much different fashions. Imagine athletics events taking place in empty stadiums, recital halls with patrons spaced rows apart and virtual social activities replacing parties.

“But students will still benefit from all that makes in-person education so valuable: the fierce intellectual debates that just aren’t the same on Zoom, the research opportunities in university laboratories and libraries and the personal interactions among students with different perspectives and life experiences.”

But the paragraphs that might be called tone deaf are these. Continue reading “On Campuses Reopening”

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Illegal Drugs and Coronavirus

After my earlier five-part series I managed to go a month without writing anything new about coronavirus. That ends today. But since this blog is about second-order effects (and because part of me still needs a break from the topic) I’m not writing about coronavirus in a conventional way. Instead, I’m revisiting a topic I first covered a year and a half ago and looking at impact from COVID-19.

That topic: the changed market for illegal substances (rhino horn and cocaine for now) and how they flow around the world.

In the midst of all the global health concerns you might wonder why I would return to the topic of rhino horn and cocaine when I could also write about so many other issues. I returned to this topic because by looking at the systems behind these illegal trades we can understand other issues relevant for COVID-19. Continue reading “Illegal Drugs and Coronavirus”

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Changes in Value (Part 1)

When something changes in financial value quickly, unintended consequences abound. When this change happens at scale, affecting many people, the consequences are even more extreme. These changes impact supply and demand and social change around the world.

Let’s look at some examples of value change causing havoc. This week I’m intentionally (well, almost entirely) not writing about the topic you can’t escape.
Continue reading “Changes in Value (Part 1)”