Forget monetary policy. Re-examining the cause of the Great Depression—the revolution in agriculture that threw millions out of work—the author argues that the U.S. is now facing and must manage a similar shift in the “real” economy, from industry to service, or risk a tragic replay of 80 years…

Most of you probably know about Turing machines : hypothetical gizmos built of paper punch-tape, read-write heads, and imagination, which can — step by laborious step — emulate the operation of any computer. And some of you may be old enough to remember the Sinclair ZX-80 — a sad little personal…

Image credit: Jim Bourg/Reuters/Corbis One thing you learn rather quickly when working at the International Monetary Fund is that no one is ever very happy to see you. Typically, your “clients” come in only after private capital has abandoned them, after regional trading-bloc partners have been…

This is the ten-minute talk I stuck together at the last minute for BERG ’s “Tomorrow’s World” event in London last night. Thanks to BERG and the audience for putting up with me, sorry it’s not very good: When Jones talked me into doing this, he stuck me with the title “the near future of pop.”…

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( Yes, I'm working today ... ) One of the unusual features of SF and fantasy genre literature is that they rely on worldbuilding to an unusual degree. (I note in passing that the SF Encyclopedia doesn't have an entry for worldbuilding yet, hence the wikipedia definition.) When we write fiction in…

The Carter Administration: Myth and Reality Noam Chomsky Excerpted from Radical Priorities , 1981 Perhaps the most striking feature of the new Administration is the role played in it by the Trilateral Commission. The mass media had little to say about this matter during the Presidential campaign —…

En cuanto a la reactivación económica, en la mayoría de casos, las medidas propuestas tienen mucho que ver con el empleo, la reforma fiscal, la reducción del gasto en las administraciones públicas, … Estas categorías disponen de un apartado propio, por lo que en reactivación económica se expondrá un…

17 views this month; 0 overall Ask a random sampling of people if they think we will have colonized space in 500 years, and I expect it will be a while before you run into someone who says it’s unlikely. Our migration from this planet is a seductive vision of the future that has been given almost…

Asunción Briñas y Ramón de la Raspa toman la decisión conjunta como pareja —nueve años arrimaos dios mío— de viajar de Madrid a Londres en un avión de Ryanair en medio de una semana de marzo. Ella cobra el paro y él es autónomo y nacido en Segovia; pretenden pasar tres días lejos de casa. Se mueren…

Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine

In a secluded area on the ground floor, six brave young men (three Russians, an Italian, a Frenchman, and a Chinese national) are simulating a mission to Mars. For 520 straight days—that’s more than 17 months—the volunteers will be sequestered in a tubular steel stand-in for a spacecraft whose…

First, a little bit of background. Say you have a little country of your own, off on an island someplace. You and a few hundred friends, let's say it is. You have a government — monarchy, republic, whatever; doesn't matter. That government has a treasury, but the treasury has no money in it. Which…

HOLLYWOOD is easy to hate, easy to sneer at, easy to lampoon. Some of the best lampooning has been done by people who have never been through a studio gate, some of the best sneering by egocentric geniuses who departed huffily - not forgetting to collect their last pay check – leaving behind them…

Los planes de ajuste impuestos por la Unión Europea, el Fondo Monetario Internacional y el Banco Central Europeo -denominados conjuntamente “la troika”- están fracasando estrepitosamente, y Grecia ha dicho que de momento va a suspender las conversaciones con estos rescatadores que tan malos consejos…

Si hay una profesión verdaderamente desprestigiada esa es la del economista. Y es normal. Cada día vemos como los economistas inundamos los medios de comunicación con predicciones y sesudos análisis, muchos de ellos contradictorios entre sí, que al cabo de un tiempo se demuestran profundamente…

Por Juan Torres López ( www.juantorreslopez.com / @juantorreslopez) y Alberto Garzón Espinosa ( www.agarzon.net / @agarzon). Editores de Altereconomia.org La reforma que proponen los dos partidos mayoritarios, PP y PSOE, consistente en limitar desde la constitución el déficit y la deuda pública es…

Ahora que el Papa ha abandonado Madrid y que la derecha sigue calificando de ateos intolerantes y anti-papa a los participantes en las protestas contra la visita del Papa conviene poner encima de la mesa un debate interesante. Entre las muchas organizaciones y colectivos que se oponían a la visita…

428 Advanced Automation for Space Missions — Chapter 1 Contents Preface [ edit ] Since the late 1950s NASA has devoted itself to the acquisition and communication of information about the Earth, the planets, the stars, and the Universe. It has launched an impressive series of spectacularly…

Here's another game it's useful to learn how to play if you want to write near-future science fiction: spot the Existential Threat. An existential threat (for purposes of this thought experiment) is some phenomenon or activity — it may be natural or may be human-contrived — that threatens, in…

NEEP602 Course Notes (Fall 1997) Resources from Space Lecture #24: Been there! Done that! Bought the T-shirt! Title: Lunar Base Activation Notes: General Assumptions "Business" approach to lunar base activation (whether government or private) o business plan development o financial commitments o…

Madrid capital. Todo comienza una mañana con la llamada telefónica de una consultora. Días atrás, habíamos estado mirando ofertas en Infojobs y una nos llamó la atención: buscaban programadores en PHP y MySQL, con conocimientos medios de Javascript y CSS; valoraban usabilidad, accesibilidad y el uso…