Easter island

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Collapse by Jared Diamond

biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, California energy crisis, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, Donner party, Easter island, European colonialism, Exxon Valdez, Garrett Hardin, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, job satisfaction, low interest rates, means of production, Medieval Warm Period, megaproject, new economy, North Sea oil, Piper Alpha, polynesian navigation, prisoner's dilemma, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Stewart Brand, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, unemployed young men

Two books by Thor Heyerdahl that inspired my interest and that of many others in Easter Island are The Kon-Tiki Expedition (London: Allen & Unwin, 1950) and Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958). A rather different interpretation emerges from the excavations of the archaeologists whom Heyerdahl brought to Easter Island, as described in Thor Heyerdahl and E. Ferdon, Jr., eds., Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific, vol. 1: The Archaeology of Easter Island (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961). Steven Fischer, Glyph Breaker (New York: Copernicus, 1997) and Rongorongo: The Easter Island Script (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) describe Fischer's efforts at deciphering the Rongorongo text.

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Two other recent books are Catherine and Michel Orliac, The Silent Gods: Mysteries of Easter Island (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), a short illustrated overview; and John Loret and John Tancredi, eds., Easter Island: Scientific Exploration into the World's Environmental Problems in Microcosm (New York: Kluwer/Plenum, 2003), 13 chapters on results of recent expeditions. Anyone who becomes seriously interested in Easter Island will want to read two classic earlier books: Katherine Routledge's own account, The Mystery of Easter Island (London: Sifton Praed, 1919, reprinted by Adventure Unlimited Press, Kempton, 111., 1998), and Alfred Metraux, Ethnology of Easter Island (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Bulletin 160,1940, reprinted 1971).

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., The Journal of Jacob Roggeveen (London: Oxford University Press, 1970) reprints on pp. 89-106 the first European eyewitness description of Easter Island. An archaeological mapping of Easter Island is summarized in Claudio Cristino, Patricia Vargas, and R. Izaurieta, Atlas Arqueologico delsla dePascua (Santiago: University of Chile, 1981). Detailed articles about Easter Island are published regularly in the Rapa Nui Journal by the Easter Island Foundation, which also publishes occasional conferences about the island. Important collections of papers are Claudio Cristino, Patricia Vargas et al., eds., First International Congress, Easter Island and East Polynesia, vol. 1 Archaeology (Santiago: University of Chile, 1988); Patricia Vargas Casanova, ed., Easter Island and East Polynesia Prehistory (Santiago: University of Chile, 1998); and Christopher Stevenson and William Ayres, eds., Easter Island Archaeology: Research on Early Rapanui Culture (Los Osos, Calif.: Easter Island Foundation, 2000).

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, California energy crisis, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, Donner party, Easter island, European colonialism, Exxon Valdez, Garrett Hardin, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, job satisfaction, low interest rates, means of production, Medieval Warm Period, megaproject, new economy, North Sea oil, Piper Alpha, polynesian navigation, profit motive, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Stewart Brand, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, unemployed young men

Two books by Thor Heyerdahl that inspired my interest and that of many others in Easter Island are The Kon-Tiki Expedition (London: Allen & Unwin, 1950) and Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958). A rather different interpretation emerges from the excavations of the archaeologists whom Heyerdahl brought to Easter Island, as described in Thor Heyerdahl and E. Ferdon, Jr., eds., Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific, vol. 1: The Archaeology of Easter Island (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961). Steven Fischer, Glyph Breaker (New York: Copernicus, 1997) and Rongorongo: The Easter Island Script (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) describe Fischer’s efforts at deciphering the Rongorongo text.

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Two other recent books are Catherine and Michel Orliac, The Silent Gods: Mysteries of Easter Island (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), a short illustrated overview; and John Loret and John Tancredi, eds., Easter Island: Scientific Exploration into the World’s Environmental Problems in Microcosm (New York: Kluwer/Plenum, 2003), 13 chapters on results of recent expeditions. Anyone who becomes seriously interested in Easter Island will want to read two classic earlier books: Katherine Routledge’s own account, The Mystery of Easter Island (London: Sifton Praed, 1919, reprinted by Adventure Unlimited Press, Kempton, Ill., 1998), and Alfred Métraux, Ethnology of Easter Island (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Bulletin 160, 1940, reprinted 1971).

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., The Journal of Jacob Roggeveen (London: Oxford University Press, 1970) reprints on pp. 89-106 the first European eyewitness description of Easter Island. An archaeological mapping of Easter Island is summarized in Claudio Cristino, Patricia Vargas, and R. Izaurieta, Atlas Arqueológico de Isla de Pascua (Santiago: University of Chile, 1981). Detailed articles about Easter Island are published regularly in the Rapa Nui Journal by the Easter Island Foundation, which also publishes occasional conferences about the island. Important collections of papers are Claudio Cristino, Patricia Vargas et al., eds., First International Congress, Easter Island and East Polynesia, vol. 1 Archaeology (Santiago: University of Chile, 1988); Patricia Vargas Casanova, ed., Easter Island and East Polynesia Prehistory (Santiago: University of Chile, 1998); and Christopher Stevenson and William Ayres, eds., Easter Island Archaeology: Research on Early Rapanui Culture (Los Osos, Calif.: Easter Island Foundation, 2000).

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Airbnb, Anton Chekhov, basic income, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, Broken windows theory, call centre, data science, David Graeber, domesticated silver fox, Donald Trump, Easter island, experimental subject, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Garrett Hardin, Hans Rosling, invention of writing, invisible hand, knowledge economy, late fees, Mahatma Gandhi, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, nocebo, placebo effect, Rutger Bregman, scientific management, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Stanford prison experiment, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, tulip mania, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, World Values Survey

Jacob Roggeveen (Middelburg, 1838), p. 104. 31Bolton Glanvill Corney, The Voyage of Captain Don Felipe González to Easter Island 1770–1 (Cambridge, 1908), p. 93. 32Beverley Haun, Inventing Easter Island (Toronto, 2008), p. 247. 33James Cook, A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Part 1 (1777). 34Henry Lee, ‘Treeless at Easter’, Nature (23 September 2004). 35The book in question is Thor Heyerdahl et al., Archaeology of Easter Island. Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific (Part 1, 1961), p. 51. 36Thor Heyerdahl, Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island (1957). 37Carl Behren’s account is included as an appendix to Glanvill Corney, The voyage of Captain Don Felipe González to Easter Island 1770–1, p. 134. 38Cook, A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Chapter 8. 39Some scientists believe the statues fell down during an earthquake.

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The moral is about us. Set Easter Island and Planet Earth side by side and there are some disturbing parallels. Just consider: Easter Island is a speck in the vast ocean, the earth a speck in the vast cosmos. The islanders had no boats to flee; we have no rocket ships to take us away. Easter Island grew deforested and overpopulated; our planet is becoming polluted and overheated. This leads us to a conclusion diametrically opposed to what I argued in the foregoing chapters. ‘Humankind’s covetousness is boundless,’ archaeologists Paul Bahn and John Flenley write in their book Easter Island, Earth Island. ‘Its selfishness appears to be genetically inborn.’13 Just when you thought you had cast off Hobbes’s veneer theory, it doubles back like a boomerang.

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Though it failed to convince the experts, his theory did sell fifty million books.7 With the fortune he made on his bestseller, Heyerdahl was able to bankroll an expedition to Easter Island. He invited several eminent scientists to join him, among them William Mulloy, an American who would devote the rest of his life to studying Easter Island. ‘I don’t believe a damn thing you’ve published,’ he assured Heyerdahl before they set out.8 Turns out scientist and daredevil got along surprisingly well, and not long after arriving on Easter Island the pair made a spectacular find. In the depths of a swamp, Heyerdahl’s team discovered pollen from an unknown tree.

A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright

Albert Einstein, Atahualpa, Bretton Woods, British Empire, clean water, Columbian Exchange, cuban missile crisis, Easter island, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Haber-Bosch Process, Hernando de Soto, invention of agriculture, It's morning again in America, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, nuclear winter, out of africa, Parkinson's law, post-war consensus, precautionary principle, Ronald Reagan, technological determinism, Thomas Malthus, urban sprawl

From The Journal of Jacob Roggeveen, trans. and ed. Andrew Sharp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). Quoted in Paul Bahn and John Flenley, Easter Island, Earth Island (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), p. 13, and more fully in Catherine and Michel Orliac, Easter Island, trans. Paul G. Bahn, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995), pp. 98–99. 5. Orliac, Easter Island, p. 17. 6. Both land and sea were, however, less rich in species than large tropical archipelagoes such as Fiji and the Tahitian islands. Like the Marquesas, Easter Island lacks a surrounding coral reef. 7. Or an extinct species closely related to the Chilean palm. 8. Most of these were ultimately of Southeast Asian origin.

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But the worst came in 1862, when Peruvian slave raiders took away half or more of the population to the “islands of death,” the infamous British-financed guano diggings off the Peruvian coast, where labourers were chained together and worked until they dropped. Only fifteen made it back alive to Easter Island (after humanitarian appeals by the bishop of Tahiti), and they brought smallpox with them. By 1872, when Pierre Loti saw it, the island was a mass grave, with scarcely more than a hundred people left alive (Bahn and Flenley, Easter Island, p. 179). 18. Those standing today have been restored. 19. Bahn and Flenley, Easter Island, pp. 213, 218. 20. The island even had a form of script, called rongorongo, though many experts believe it to be post-contact in origin. 21.

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Nature, he concluded, had “been exceedingly sparing of her favours to this spot.”5 The great mystery of Easter Island that struck all early visitors was not just that these colossal statues stood in such a tiny and remote corner of the world, but that the stones seemed to have been put there without tackle, as if set down from the sky. The Spaniards who had credited the Devil with the splendours of Inca architecture were merely unable to recognize another culture’s achievements. But even scientific observers could not, at first, account for the megaliths of Easter Island. The figures stood there mockingly, defying common sense. We now know the answer to the riddle, and it is a chilling one.

The Rough Guide to Chile by Melissa Graham, Andrew Benson

Atahualpa, California gold rush, call centre, centre right, company town, cuban missile crisis, Easter island, feminist movement, Francisco Pizarro, it's over 9,000, Murano, Venice glass, sensible shoes, sustainable-tourism, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, union organizing, women in the workforce

Selkirk’s story was used by Daniel Defoe as the basis for his classic novel, The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (see p.482). These days, the island’s small community milks the E AS TE R I S L A ND Easter Island and the Juan Fernández Archipelago 465 Crusoe connections to death in an attempt to boost the tourist trade, but the Juan Fernández Archipelago remains an adventurous destination, well off the beaten track. Easter Island EASTER ISLAND | One of the most remote places on earth, tiny EASTER ISLAND is home to some four thousand islanders. Two thirds are indigenous (called pascuenses in Spanish), with the rest being mainly continentales (Chilean immigrants).

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In the summer, the Conservatorio de Música in the basement gives concerts in the palace. 151 Nearby, at Libertad 250, is the Palacio Carrasco (Mon–Fri 9.30am–1pm & 2–6.30pm, Sat 10am–1pm), an elegant, three-storey building designed in a French Neoclassical style Museo Francisco Fonck VAL PARAÍ S O, V I ÑA AND THE C E NTRAL C OA S T The excellent Museo Francisco Fonck, at 4 Norte 784 (Mon–Sat 10am– 7pm, Sun 10am–2pm; CH$1500), has one of Chile’s most important Easter Island collections, plus some fascinating pre-Hispanic exhibits. It is named after Prussian medic Franz Fonck (1830–1912), who studied botanical and archeological sites in central Chile and left his collections to the state. One of the museum’s best pieces stands in the garden, by the entrance: a giant stone moai, one of just six that exist outside Easter Island. Inside, the three groundfloor rooms dedicated to Easter Island include wooden and stone carvings of those long, stylized faces (some around five hundred years old), as well as jewellery, weapons, household and fishing utensils, and ceremonial objects.

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As time passed, these groups became more sophisticated and stratified, made up of a diverse collection of priests, fishermen, farmers and craftsmen. What the experts say: east or west? EASTER ISLAND | 468 Central to any discussion of Easter Island’s settlement are the controversial theories of Thor Heyerdahl (1906–2002), the Norwegian explorer-archeologist whose widely publicized expeditions and best-selling books generated an enormous amount of academic interest in the island’s history. Heyerdahl was convinced that Easter Island had been colonized by settlers from South America and, in 1948, he proved, quite spectacularly, that such a voyage was indeed possible when he and five companions successfully sailed a traditionally constructed balsa raft (the Kon Tiki) from Peru to an island east of Tahiti in a 101-day voyage.

Lonely Planet Chile & Easter Island (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, Carolyn McCarthy, Kevin Raub

California gold rush, call centre, carbon footprint, centre right, Colonization of Mars, company town, East Village, Easter island, gentrification, haute cuisine, Kickstarter, land reform, low cost airline, mass immigration, New Urbanism, off grid, off-the-grid, place-making, QR code, rewilding, satellite internet, Skype, sustainable-tourism, trade route, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, white picket fence

Bus Sur ( 420-997; www.bus-sur.cl; ticket office 25 de Mayo 712) To Ushuaia, Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales, Chile, three times weekly at 5:30am, connecting with Montiel. Top of section Easter Island (Rapa Nui) Includes » Hanga Roa Parque Nacional Rapa Nui Northern Circuit Southwest Circuit Northeast Circuit Understand Easter Island Easter Island Today History The Culture Arts Environment Directory A–Z Transportation Why Go? Easter Island (Rapa Nui to its native Polynesian inhabitants) is like nowhere else on earth. Historically intriguing, culturally compelling and scenically magical, this tiny speck of land looks like it’s fallen off another planet.

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SURVIVAL GUIDE Directory A–Z PRACTICALITIES » Mercurio, the national daily newspaper, can be purchased at various shops in Hanga Roa. Easter Island also has its own newspaper, El Correo del Moai. »Chilean shows of the government-owned Television Nacional (TVN) are beamed to the island via satellite. »Easter Island uses the NTSC system for videos. »Electricity is supplied at 240V, 50Hz AC. »Easter Island follows the metric system. Accommodations If you come here from mainland Chile, be prepared for a shock. Despite a high number of establishments – about 90 when we visited – accommodations on Easter Island are fairly pricey for what you get. All accommodations options are located in Hanga Roa except the Explora en Rapa Nui.

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The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch

agricultural Revolution, Albert Michelson, anthropic principle, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, Bonfire of the Vanities, Charles Babbage, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, cosmological principle, dark matter, David Attenborough, discovery of DNA, Douglas Hofstadter, Easter island, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, first-past-the-post, Georg Cantor, global pandemic, Gödel, Escher, Bach, illegal immigration, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, Jacquard loom, Johannes Kepler, John Conway, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kenneth Arrow, Loebner Prize, Louis Pasteur, mirror neurons, Nick Bostrom, pattern recognition, Pierre-Simon Laplace, precautionary principle, Richard Feynman, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, seminal paper, Stephen Hawking, supervolcano, technological singularity, Thales of Miletus, The Coming Technological Singularity, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Review, William of Occam, zero-sum game

When Bronowski made his documentary, there were as yet no detailed theories of how the Easter Island civilization fell. But, unlike Attenborough, he was not interested in that, because his whole purpose in going to Easter Island was to point out the profound difference between our civilization and civilizations like the one that built those statues. We are not like them was his message. We have taken the step that they did not. Attenborough’s argument rests on the opposite claim: we are like them and are following headlong in their footsteps. And so he drew an extended analogy between the Easter Island civilization and ours, feature for feature, and danger for danger: A warning of what the future could hold can be seen on one of the remotest places on Earth…When the first Polynesian settlers landed here they found a miniature world that had ample resources to sustain them.

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You have to live the solution, and to set about solving the new problems that this creates. It is because of this unsustainability that the island of Britain, with a far less hospitable climate than the subtropical Easter Island, now hosts a civilization with at least three times the population density that Easter Island had at its zenith, and at an enormously higher standard of living. Appropriately enough, this civilization has knowledge of how to live well without the forests that once covered much of Britain. The Easter Islanders’ culture sustained them in both senses. This is the hallmark of a functioning static society. It provided them with a way of life; but it also inhibited change: it sustained their determination to enact and re-enact the same behaviours for generations.

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One of the consequences of optimism is that one expects to learn from failure – one’s own and others’. But the idea that our civilization has something to learn from the Easter Islanders’ alleged forestry failure is not derived from any structural resemblance between our situation and theirs. For they failed to make progress in practically every area. No one expects the Easter Islanders’ failures in, say, medicine to explain our difficulties in curing cancer, or their failure to understand the night sky to explain why a quantum theory of gravity is elusive to us. The Easter Islanders’ errors, both methodological and substantive, were simply too elementary to be relevant to us, and their imprudent forestry, if that is really what destroyed their civilization, would merely be typical of their lack of problem-solving ability across the board.

The Oil Age Is Over: What to Expect as the World Runs Out of Cheap Oil, 2005-2050 by Matt Savinar

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, clean water, disinformation, Easter island, energy security, hydrogen economy, illegal immigration, invisible hand, military-industrial complex, new economy, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, post-oil, Ralph Nader, reserve currency, rolling blackouts, Rosa Parks, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Y2K

Like the Irish of the 18th and 19th centuries, our population has nearly quadrupled since the introduction of a single resource. Like the Irish, we are totally dependant on that resource. Unlike the Irish, we have nowhere else to go when that resource is no longer readily available. Example D: Easter Island Over the course of history, many human populations have suffered from die-offs. The die-off most analogous to our current situation is the one that took place on Easter Island during the early 18th century. Easter Island was discovered by western civilization in 1722 when Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen landed on the island. At the time, Roggeveen described the island as a wasteland. The islanders he encountered led a particularly primitive existence, even by 18thcentury standards.

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The islanders possessed no wheels, no draft animals, few tools, and only 3-4 flimsy, leaky canoes. Despite the barren existence, Easter Island was populated with huge, elaborately constructed, stone statues. Roggeveen and his crew were completely perplexed by these statues, as it was clear whoever built them had tools, resources, and organizational skills far more advanced than the islanders they encountered. What happened to these people? 18 The Oil Age is Over According to archeologists, Easter Island was first colonized by Polynesians sometime around the year 500 AD. At the time, the island was a pristine paradise with lush forests.

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By around 1700, the population began to crash toward between onequarter and one-tenth of its former number. People took to living in caves for protection against their enemies and the statues were torn down in clan warfare.15 Once the home of a highly complex society, Easter Island had turned into an atoll of the barbaric. As UCLA Medical School Professor Jared Diamond has explained: Easter Island looks like a metaphor for us today. The islanders were isolated in the middle of the ocean with nobody to turn for help, with nowhere to flee once the island collapsed. In the same way today, one can look at Planet Earth in the middle of the galaxy, and if we too get into trouble, there's no way we can flee, and no people to whom we can turn for help out there in the galaxy.16 D.

The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World by John Michael Greer

back-to-the-land, Black Swan, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, David Strachan, deindustrialization, Easter island, European colonialism, Extropian, failed state, feminist movement, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Santayana, hydrogen economy, hygiene hypothesis, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, Jevons paradox, Lewis Mumford, mass immigration, McMansion, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, post-industrial society, Project for a New American Century, Ray Kurzweil, Stewart Brand, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, upwardly mobile, Whole Earth Catalog, Y2K

If a culture uses any one of the resources necessary to its survival at an unsustainable rate, it follows the usual overshoot curve — ​population boom, followed by population crash.1 19 20 T he E cotechnic F u t u re A classic example of the process took place on Easter Island, where towering stone statues still serve as a reminder that cultural evolution is not a one-way street.2 The people of Easter Island thrived on the rich sea life of the Pacific, but their access to those resources depended on wood for canoes, and that turned out to be their downfall. It took the Easter Islanders only a few centuries to strip the forests of their island home to bare soil. Once deforestation was complete, they were left with a population far beyond what the island’s own resources could support.

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Especially in periods of decline, though, the fate of societies is often determined by the survival or disappearance of technologies so common they are hardly noticed. For the people of Easter Island, for example, deepwater canoes had been part of daily life for thousands of years before their ancestors reached this westernmost outpost of Polynesia. This may be among the core reasons that nobody on Easter Island anticipated the consequences of cutting down too many trees. The resulting deforestation eliminated large tree trunks, an essential resource without which deepwater canoes could not be made, cutting off the majority of the island’s food supply and, at the same time, the only way out of the trap the Easter Islanders set for themselves. The canoe had been so omnipresent a part of life for so long that the possibility of its absence very likely never entered into the islanders’ darkest dreams.4 A similar sort of dependence on a vulnerable technology, according to the medieval Arab historian ibn Khaldûn, drove the collapse and abandonment of cities across the Middle East and North ­Africa in the centuries prior to his own time.

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What made the agrarian economies of the desert nations vulnerable, rather, was the same failure to prioritize the requirements of essential technologies that doomed the Easter Islanders. By the Middle Ages, due to climate change and topsoil loss, most Middle Eastern societies had to direct much of their economic output into maintaining the canals and waterworks on which survival depended. This became their Achilles’ heel, because the desert nomads who conquered the urban centers rarely grasped the importance of the irrigation systems and starved them of resources until local breakdowns could no longer be repaired and the entire system failed. Like the deforestation of Easter Island, the breakdown of the irrigation canals was a one-way ticket to collapse; once farmland turned into desert, the agricultural wealth that made canal building and repair possible was no longer there to be spent, and regions that had been settled for millennia turned into deserts spotted with crumbling ruins.

They Have a Word for It A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases-Sarabande Books (2000) by Howard Rheingold

Ayatollah Khomeini, clockwork universe, Easter island, fudge factor, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, junk bonds, Kula ring, Lao Tzu, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, The Home Computer Revolution, the map is not the territory, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons

The currently popular way of life dedicated to the relentless pursuit of new cars, bigger houses, more powerful appliances-status symbols-followed by the ritual display of these symbolic objects and accompanying symbolic boasting, might grow into some- 20 THEY HAVE A WORD FOR IT thing wonderfully different if people toyed with the idea. ''.John," you might say, "I'm overcome with admiration for your beautiful new toaster [wristwatch, overcoat, stereo]. I'm afraid I must ask for tingo." anga-anga [noun/verb], hakanuka-nuka [noun], and ngaobera [noun] (Pascuense, Easter Island) Nasty, useful social games. Easter Island contains one of the most isolated cultures on earth, both geographically and culturally. Located in the South Pacific, 2350 miles west of the coast of Chile (which owns it), Easter Island is home to a native culture numbering around 15,000 people today, descendants of daring Oceanian seafarers of ages past. There had been no contact with outsiders until the 19th century.

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If a word from a group IO THEY HAVE A WORD FOR IT of islands in the Indian Ocean conveys an idea that would be just as significant in Los Angeles or Minneapolis, I included it. There is a sprinkling ofltalian, an abundant pinch of German, a soup(on of French, a bit of Yiddish, a generous helping ofJapanese and Chinese in these pages, along with tidbits of Sanskrit, Tibetan, Indonesian, Iroquois, Tierra del Fuegan, Pascuense (language of the Easter Islands), Scottish, Bantu, and a half dozen truly obscure languages. The sophisticated linguist will recognize as many as a dozen words. In fact, if you can recognize a dozen words, that's proof positive that you are a sophisticated linguist. And if you can use them in conversation, consider yourself an accomplished sophisticated linguist.

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You don't have to be kin to have complex relationships-neighbors and friends are also objects of affection and scorn. The kinds of problems people have with one another, as well as the cultural mechanisms we have for dealing with these problems, are reflected in our vocabularies. In Hawaii, people deal with domestic disputes by arranging a ho 'oponopono. On Easter Island, the words hakamaroo and tingo refer to different kinds of outrageous borrowing behavior. The Yiddish words tsuris and nakhes refer to two extreme emotions that only your son or daughter can invoke in you. Social games can be methods for disarming potentially explosive conflicts, as the Pascuense words anga-anga, hakanuka-nuka, and ngaobera attest.

Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies by Jared M. Diamond

affirmative action, Atahualpa, British Empire, California gold rush, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, discovery of the americas, Easter island, European colonialism, founder crops, Francisco Pizarro, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, invention of movable type, invention of the wheel, invention of writing, James Watt: steam engine, Maui Hawaii, QWERTY keyboard, the scientific method, trade route

The largest products of Polynesia were the immense stone structures of a few islandsthe famous giant statues of Easter Island, the tombs of Ton gan chiefs, the ceremonial platforms of the Marquesas, and the temples of Hawaii and the Societies. This monumental Polynesian architecture was obviously evolving in the same direction as the pyramids of Egypt, Meso- potamia, Mexico, and Peru. Naturally, Polynesia's structures are not on the scale of those pyramids, but that merely reflects the fact that Egyptian pharaohs could draw conscript labor from a much larger human popula- tion than could the chief of any Polynesian island. Even so, the Easter Islanders managed to erect 30-ton stone statuesno mean feat for an island with only 7,000 people, who had no power source other than their own muscles.

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In contrast, we can confidently attribute Sumerian cuneiform and the earliest Mesoamerican writing to independent invention, because at the times of their first appearances there existed no other script in their respec- tive hemispheres that could have inspired them. Still debatable are the ori- gins of writing on Easter Island, in China, and in Egypt. The Polynesians living on Easter Island, in the Pacific Ocean, had a unique script of which the earliest preserved examples date back only to about A.D. 1851, long after Europeans reached Easter in 1722. Perhaps writing arose independently on Easter before the arrival of Europeans, although no examples have survived.

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The habitable terrain of some islands, notably the Marquesas, is fragmented into steep- walled valleys by ridges, while other islands, such as Tonga and Easter, consist of gently rolling terrain presenting no obstacles to travel and com- munication. The last environmental variable to consider is isolation. Easter Island and the Chathams are small and so remote from other islands that, once they were initially colonized, the societies thus founded developed in total isolation from the rest of the world. New Zealand, Hawaii, and the Mar- quesas are also very remote, but at least the latter two apparently did have some further contact with other archipelagoes after the first colonization, and all three consist of many islands close enough to each other for regular contact between islands of the same archipelago.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond

agricultural Revolution, assortative mating, Atahualpa, Boeing 747, Columbian Exchange, correlation coefficient, double helix, Drosophila, Easter island, European colonialism, Great Leap Forward, invention of gunpowder, invention of the wheel, invention of writing, language acquisition, longitudinal study, out of africa, phenotype, planned obsolescence, Scientific racism, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, the long tail, the scientific method, trade route

See under suggested reading for Chapter Eighteen for accounts of species' extinction in the Americas. The grisly end of Easter Island civilization is recounted by Patrick V. Kirch in his book The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984). Easter's deforestation was reconstructed by J. Flenley, 'Stratigraphic evidence of environmental change on Easter Island', Asian Perspectives 22, pp. 33–40 (1979), and by J. Henley and S. King, 'Late Quaternary pollen records from Easter Island', Nature 307, pp. 47–50 (1984). Some accounts of the rise and fall of Anasazi settlement at Chaco Canyon are J.L.

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Therefore, although it is now reasonably certain that the first pre-industrial peoples to reach islands wrought havoc among island species, the jury is still out on the question of whether this also happened on continents. From all this evidence that the Golden Age was tarnished by exterminations of species, let's now turn to evidence for destruction of habitats. Three dramatic examples involve famous archaeological puzzles: the giant stone statues of Easter Island, the abandoned pueblos of the American Southwest, and the ruins of Petra. An aura of mystery has clung to Easter Island ever since it and its Polynesian inhabitants were 'discovered' by the Dutch explorer Jakob Roggeveen in 1722. Lying in the Pacific Ocean 2,300 miles west of Chile, Easter surpasses even Henderson as one of the world's most isolated scraps of land.

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The scene today is as if the carvers and movers had suddenly walked off the job, leaving an eerily silent landscape. When Roggeveen arrived, many statues were still standing, though new ones were no longer being carved. By 1840 all the erected statues had been deliberately toppled by the Easter Islanders themselves. How were such huge statues transported and erected, why were they eventually toppled, and why had carving ceased? The first of those questions was answered when living Easter Islanders showed Thor Heyerdahl how their ancestors had used logs as rollers to transport the statues and then as levers to erect them. The other questions were solved by subsequent archaeological and paleontological studies that revealed Easter's gruesome history.

Insight Guides South America (Travel Guide eBook) by Insight Guides

Airbnb, anti-communist, Atahualpa, bike sharing, call centre, centre right, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, COVID-19, digital nomad, Easter island, European colonialism, failed state, Francisco Pizarro, invention of writing, Kickstarter, land reform, urban planning, urban renewal

The most likely explanation for the island’s decline is that the population of Easter Island had outgrown its resources; the food supply failed, the forests were felled and soil began to erode. Without wood for canoes to escape from the island, fighting and cannibalism broke out, and the moai were toppled. Fact Easter Island was given the name Rapa Nui (Great Rapa) by Tahitian sailors in the early 1860s, as it reminded them of an island called Rapa near their home. That island is now known as Rapa Iti, or Small Rapa. The people of Easter Island were to endure further suffering in the 19th century, when whalers and slave traders came to call.

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Just before the border crossing near the bay of San Sebastian, a road branches south and wends its way to the remote sub-Antarctic forest park of Karukinka, beyond the magnificent Lago Deseado. View across Punta Arenas toward the Strait of Magellan. iStockphoto EASTER ISLAND This tiny Pacific outpost more than makes up for its remoteness with gigantic, mysterious monolithic figures and beautiful beaches. Main Attractions Rano Raraku crater Rano Kau volcano Orongo Hidden in the endless wastes of the Pacific, nearly 4,000km (2,500 miles) from the coast of Chile, the small remnant of volcanic rock named Easter Island – Rapa Nui in the local language - was once the most isolated place on earth. But in recent decades the huge and inexplicable statues left by the Polynesian culture have drawn attention from around the world.

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Where once only one ship a year stopped here, today flights arrive six days a week from Santiago. This tiny triangular South Seas outpost measures just 24km (15 miles) across and has a population of only 7,800, but there is a lot to explore. Easter Island has a wonderful raw, unspoiled beauty with windswept coastlines, gentle, treeless hills, and a lush interior. Golden beaches and coconut palms are in short supply. Local woodcarver at Ahu Tahai. Bob Krist/Corbis Archeologists believe Easter Island may have been populated as long ago as AD 400. Norwegian adventurer and archeologist Thor Heyerdahl argued in his book Aku-Aku that the inhabitants came from South America, noting resemblances between the island culture and that of Tiahuanaco in Bolivia.

The Rough Guide to South America on a Budget (Travel Guide eBook) by Rough Guides

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Atahualpa, banking crisis, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, centre right, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, company town, Day of the Dead, discovery of the americas, Easter island, Francisco Pizarro, garden city movement, gentrification, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, it's over 9,000, Kickstarter, mass immigration, Nelson Mandela, off grid, openstreetmap, place-making, restrictive zoning, side project, Skype, sustainable-tourism, the long tail, trade route, urban sprawl, walkable city

Surfers head to Chile’s top spot, Pichilemu, just south of Santiago, though there are excellent surfing and windsurfing opportunities all along the coast north of the capital, around Iquique in particular, and year-round swells on Easter Island. In the northern half of the country, lack of rain makes for good visibility and abundant marine life for divers and snorkellers, while Easter Island has world-class dive spots. Hiking, climbing and skiing Hiking in the Torres del Paine National Park, on Isla Navarino or anywhere in the south is limited to the summer, spring and autumn, but the rest of Chile can be visited at any time of year.

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Several blocks of Avenida Valparaíso, Viña’s main thoroughfare, which runs from the square’s southwest corner, have been pleasantly pedestrianized, with a number of shops and places to eat. Museo Francisco Fonck Museo Francisco Fonck (4 Norte 784; Mon 10am–2pm & 3–6pm, Tues–Sat 10am–6pm, Sun 10am–2pm; CH$2700; 32 268 6753, museofonck.cl) has one of Chile’s most important Easter Island collections, plus some fascinating pre-Hispanic exhibits. One of the museum’s best pieces stands by the entrance in the garden: a giant moai, one of just six that exist outside Easter Island. The beaches Playa Caleta Abarca lies in a sandy cove south of Castillo Wulff, an impressive castle-like structure built on a rocky outcrop at the mouth of the estuary by a Valparaíso businessman in 1906.

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El Resto del Sur Ricardo Maragano 146. The smartest restaurant in town, offering a short menu of pasta (CH$6500–10,000; try the centolla ravioli) and pizza (CH$9000–13,000), and a range of drinks, including a refreshing calafate sour. Daily 12.30–3.30pm & 8–11pm. Easter Island One of the most remote places on earth, over 2000km from the nearest inhabited part of the world, EASTER ISLAND entices visitors with the enduring mystery of its lost culture. A remarkable civilization arose here, far from outside influence on an island only 163 square kilometres in extent. It apparently declined rapidly and had all but disappeared by the time Europeans first arrived here.

The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality by Oded Galor

agricultural Revolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, Andrei Shleifer, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, colonial rule, Columbian Exchange, conceptual framework, COVID-19, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francisco Pizarro, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, income per capita, intermodal, invention of agriculture, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, invention of the telegraph, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kenneth Arrow, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, means of production, out of africa, phenotype, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Scramble for Africa, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Walter Mischel, Washington Consensus, wikimedia commons, women in the workforce, working-age population, World Values Survey

An extreme and dismal example of rapid population growth and over-extraction leading ultimately to collapse can be seen among the isolated Polynesian tribes, such as those who settled Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean at the beginning of the thirteenth century.[5] For nearly four hundred years, the human population of Easter Island expanded rapidly due to the abundance of vegetation and fishing waters. The Polynesians built a flourishing civilisation on the island and sculpted the famous and impressive moai statues, the largest of which stands ten metres tall. However, population growth eventually placed increasing pressure on the fragile local ecosystem. By the turn of the eighteenth century, Easter Island’s bird population had been wiped out and its forests destroyed, making it harder for the inhabitants to build and maintain fishing boats.

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Population growth supported by food abundance and technological improvements prompted a gradual decline in per capita food availability from hunting and gathering until their temporarily enhanced living standards reverted towards subsistence. However, the particular biodiversity of the Fertile Crescent with its abundance of domesticable species of plants and animals granted these societies an alternative mode of subsistence that was largely unavailable to the Easter Islanders – adopting agriculture. Climatic conditions contributed, too.[8] With the end of the last ice age, around 11,500 years ago, land became more suitable for agriculture and climatic volatility and seasonality increased. Farming thus became a safer strategy of food production, despite being associated with inferior diet quality, than the richer but less predictable and increasingly scarcer one of hunting and gathering.

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Farming thus became a safer strategy of food production, despite being associated with inferior diet quality, than the richer but less predictable and increasingly scarcer one of hunting and gathering. The viability of reliance on agriculture in the Fertile Crescent helped avert the ecological crisis that would later destroy the civilisation on Easter Island, allowing the region to support a significantly larger population. Indeed, by some accounts, a single acre of land could feed nearly a hundred times more farmers and shepherds than hunter-gatherers.[9] Ultimately, of course, the population size of agricultural societies stabilised at a new and higher level, but this time, in reverting to subsistence level, their living conditions actually became significantly lower than those of hunter-gatherers who had lived millennia before them, when existing ecological niches were not yet densely populated.

Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science by Michael Nielsen

Albert Einstein, augmented reality, barriers to entry, bioinformatics, Cass Sunstein, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, conceptual framework, dark matter, discovery of DNA, Donald Knuth, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fault tolerance, Fellow of the Royal Society, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, Freestyle chess, Galaxy Zoo, Higgs boson, Internet Archive, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Johannes Kepler, Kevin Kelly, Large Hadron Collider, machine readable, machine translation, Magellanic Cloud, means of production, medical residency, Nicholas Carr, P = NP, P vs NP, publish or perish, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, selection bias, semantic web, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Singh, Skype, slashdot, social intelligence, social web, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, subscription business, tacit knowledge, Ted Nelson, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Nature of the Firm, The Wisdom of Crowds, University of East Anglia, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, Wayback Machine, Yochai Benkler

There was not a single tree higher than three meters anywhere on the island. Today, by analyzing pollen from the island, we know that Easter Island was formerly a subtropical forest, with at least 21 species of tree, some of them growing up to 30 meters high. Roggeveen also found not a single species of land bird. Today we know that at least six species of land bird used to live on the island. As the Easter Islanders destroyed their stocks of food and timber, they began to starve, and the population crashed, dropping perhaps 90 percent. Easter Island culture descended into warfare and eventually cannibalism. The author Thomas Homer-Dixon has coined the phrase “ingenuity gap” to describe the gap in difficulty between the problems faced by a society and that society’s capacity to solve problems.

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Bridging the Ingenuity Gap The most isolated place in the world is Easter Island. It’s a tiny island in the southeast Pacific, just 25 kilometers (15 miles) across, 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) west of Chile, and 2,100 kilometers (1,300 miles) east of the Pitcairn Islands. The island was originally settled by Polynesian islanders, and its culture thrived for hundreds of years, with the population growing to somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 people. But as the population grew, the islanders consumed more and more of the island’s resources, and sometime in the 1500s or 1600s, its society collpsed. When Easter Island’s European discoverer, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, arrived in 1722, he found an island stripped of natural resources.

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The cases were covered in remarkable detail at a community website called Groklaw (http://groklaw.net), started by a paralegal named Pamela Jones. p 167: Pharyngula is at http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/. The figures for the circulation of the Des Moines Register and the Salt Lake Tribune are from the Audit Bureau of Circulations [8]. p 170: My account of Easter Island is based on Jared Diamond’s book Collapse [53]. The reconstruction of Easter Island’s history is difficult and complex, and the subject of much contention among scholars; unsurprisingly, some disagree with Diamond’s account. p 171: On the reduction of life expectancy due to HIV/AIDS in the most highly affected African countries, see [103].

The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations by David Pilling

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Branko Milanovic, call centre, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Erik Brynjolfsson, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial intermediation, financial repression, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, Mahatma Gandhi, Mahbub ul Haq, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mortgage debt, off grid, old-boy network, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, peak oil, performance metric, pez dispenser, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, science of happiness, shareholder value, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

Instead, it would have happened gradually, like the proverbial frog being boiled alive in an imperceptibly warming bath. Easter Island’s civilization collapsed not with a bang—or the strike of the last ax on the last tree trunk—but with a resigned croak. By the time Roggeveen arrived, its population had fallen to between a quarter and a tenth of its peak, the flora and fauna had been all but destroyed, and the civilization mangled. The islanders, who once feasted on a rich diet of porpoises, shellfish, and seafood, had apparently sunk into cannibalism. Their most “inflammatory taunt” was “The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth.”8 Easter Island is the earth writ small, a parable of what can happen to societies if they neglect the wealth on which their livelihood depends.

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Yet, without the acceptance of the science or the political will to act, all the data in the world is not enough to make societies adjust. Who knows whether the Easter Islanders, had they been in possession of sophisticated wealth accounts showing their practices were unsustainable, would have changed course and saved themselves? And yet measuring must be the starting point. Without that, as a species we may be doomed to repeat the Easter Islanders’ collective suicide. * * * — Dasgupta thinks of it like fish in a giant pond. “If the size of the fish population is low, then there is plenty of food in the pond and the fish population grows.

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Getting a handle on wealth would give present generations the chance to see more clearly what sort of future they were leaving their children and grandchildren. The third, closely related, reason for considering wealth is sustainability. Put starkly, measuring wealth could help societies avoid collapse. Easter Island, 2,000 miles off the coast of South America, is a well-known example of a once-flourishing civilization that imploded. It is famous for its mysterious stone-head carvings, which now lie abandoned and desecrated.7 When the island was “discovered” by Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen on Easter day in 1722 it was already a barren grassland without a single tree or bush over ten feet tall.

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges, Joe Sacco

Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, clean water, collective bargaining, company town, corporate personhood, dumpster diving, Easter island, Exxon Valdez, food desert, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Howard Zinn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, laissez-faire capitalism, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, union organizing, urban decay, wage slave, white flight, women in the workforce

The House, in April 2011, voted 184 to 240 against legislation asserting that global warming was real.30 The same happened on Easter Island. The inhabitants, when they first settled the sixty-four-square-mile island during the fifth century, found abundant freshwater and woods. Seafood was plentiful. Within five or six centuries, Easter Island’s population swelled to some ten thousand people. The natural resources were depleted. “Forest clearance for the growing of crops would have led to population increase, but also to soil erosion and decline of soil fertility,” Paul Bahn and John Flenley write in Easter Island, Earth Island: Progressively more land would have had to be cleared.

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See West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Department of Social Services, 6 Deportations, 223, 227 DeSersa, Byron, 16 Developing Nations, The (Gamer), 38 Dienstbier, Jiří, 230 Dimon, Jamie, 233 Disability, 153, 157 Division of Air Quality, coal dust and, 162 Division of Criminal Justice, 89 Doria, Joe, 89 Douglass, Frederick: on struggle/progress, 160 Doyle, Michael, 76, 109 Heart of Camden project and, 102 on poverty, 110–111 on Virgilio, 112–113 Drug abuse, 99, 100, 102, 149, 154, 156–157, 158, 204 Drug trade, 8, 68, 73, 97, 102, 132, 154, 158 Due process, denial of, 263 Dumpeadores, 186–187 Dust containment dome, illustration of, 165 Dylan, Bob, 237 East German government, 227 dialogue with, 228–229 Easter Island, 150, 151 Easter Island, Earth Island (Bahn and Flenley), 151 Economic collapse, 151, 185, 231 Ecosystem, 245, 265, 266 destruction of, 237, 242, 260 Edgar (Guatemalan), 221 Education, 239 disemboweling, 265 El labor, 179, 187, 223 Elk Run Coal Company, 159, 161, 162, 164 dust containment dome by, 165 (illus.)

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The soil had eroded and washed into the sea. The islanders began to fight over old timbers and were reduced to eating their dogs and the last nesting birds. “Are the events of three hundred years ago on a small remote island of any significance to the world at large?” Bahn and Flenley ask. “Like the Earth, Easter Island was an isolated system. . . . They carried out for us the experiment of permitting unrestricted population growth, profligate use of resources, destruction of the environment, and boundless confidence in their religion to take care of the future. The result was an ecological disaster leading to a population crash. . . .

The Weather of the Future by Heidi Cullen

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, air freight, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, availability heuristic, back-to-the-land, bank run, California gold rush, carbon footprint, clean water, colonial rule, data science, Easter island, energy security, hindcast, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, millennium bug, ocean acidification, out of africa, Silicon Valley, smart cities, trade route, urban planning, Y2K

History has not been kind to those who have failed to understand the physics of the irreversible. Just look at a symbol of irreversibility, Easter Island. Settled by Polynesians sometime around a.d. 900, Easter Island is an isolated 66-square-mile chunk of volcanic land situated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between Peru and Australia. The volcanic tuff was carved to create the enormous stone statues, called maoi, that made Easter Island famous. The Polynesians used tree trunks to transport and erect the maoi. In fact, trees made much of life on the remote island possible. And archaeological evidence suggests that at one time Easter Island had a diverse forest. The bark of certain trees was used to make rope or beaten into cloth; other trees were used to build canoes, or to make harpoons.

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The fronds were ideal for thatching houses, and for making baskets, mats, and boat sails. It would seem as if the only things not made of wood on Easter Island were the maoi, which are thought to represent high-ranking ancestors. Wood was used for so many aspects of life on the island that by 1722, when the Dutch explorer Jacob Rogeveen arrived on the island, he saw no trees more than 10 feet tall. The gradual deforestation was nearly complete. Today, Easter Island serves as one of the most extreme examples of forest destruction in all of history. Deforestation made it impossible for the Polynesians to build the canoes that allowed them to catch porpoises.

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It is believed that deforestation set off a chain of events that eventually led to collapse. The population dropped sharply and the construction of the maoi ceased. The only things left to eat on the island were rats and people. In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond says: I have often asked myself, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?” Like modern loggers, did he shout “Jobs, not trees!”? Or: “Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we’ll find a substitute for wood”? Or: “We don’t have proof that there aren’t palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear mongering”?

Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old by Andrew Steele

Alfred Russel Wallace, assortative mating, bioinformatics, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, clockwatching, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, CRISPR, dark matter, deep learning, discovery of penicillin, double helix, Easter island, epigenetics, Hans Rosling, Helicobacter pylori, life extension, lone genius, megastructure, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, parabiotic, Peter Thiel, phenotype, precautionary principle, radical life extension, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, stealth mode startup, stem cell, TED Talk, zero-sum game

However, it would be even better if we could find some way to mimic the biological effects of restricting diet, but with less of the tedious abstinence. Enter ‘DR mimetics’: drugs which activate many of the same mechanisms as DR itself (including autophagy) without the need to eat less. The story of DR mimetics begins over half a century ago, in November 1964, as the Canadian naval vessel Cape Scott left port in Canada bound for Easter Island. Easter Island is one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth, deep in the Pacific Ocean, some 3,500 kilometres from the coast of Chile. Known as Rapa Nui in the native Polynesian, it’s most famous for its monolithic moai: gigantic human-like stone statues with enormous heads. Prompted by plans from the Chilean government to build an international airport, intruding on centuries of almost complete isolation, the Cape Scott carried a 38-strong expedition team whose job it was to scientifically document the pristine island environment and its 949 native inhabitants before it was lost forever.

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You’ve probably realised by now that rapamycin isn’t just an immune suppressant and anti-cancer drug (though Sehgal was right, and it is now licensed for use as both) – its biggest contribution to human health could be as anti-ageing medicine. And, if you one day take rapamycin or one of its derivatives to stave off old age, you have that ludicrous chain of events to thank. The Chilean government’s decision to build an airport on Easter Island in the 1960s has already saved millions of lives – and, if it works against ageing, it could rack up billions more. Scientists trying to work out how rapamycin actually works discovered that it interacts with a protein which was named after the drug: ‘target of rapamycin’, or TOR. TOR is a nexus in cellular metabolism, critical to some of the most fundamental processes in life.

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While it’s still a useful drug for transplant patients and cancer sufferers, people with no pre-existing conditions are far less likely to want to run that gauntlet for the chance of a modest reduction in the rate of ageing. However, treatments for our anti-ageing arsenal may yet result from that expedition to Easter Island. Firstly, those side effects are observed at far higher doses of rapamycin than are needed for its use as an anti-ageing medication. In fact, some of them are even entirely reversed when it’s given at lower doses – counter-intuitively, while a high dose of rapamycin will suppress the immune system, a low dose doesn’t suppress it a bit as you might expect, but seems to enhance its performance.

Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think by Alan Grafen; Mark Ridley

Alfred Russel Wallace, Arthur Eddington, bioinformatics, Charles Babbage, cognitive bias, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, Dava Sobel, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Easter island, epigenetics, Fellow of the Royal Society, Haight Ashbury, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John von Neumann, loose coupling, Murray Gell-Mann, Necker cube, phenotype, profit maximization, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

A freeloader makes the world worse for everyone, but he makes it especially bad for those who are not freeloaders. And thus selection favours freeload-ing. The Easter Islander who pushed the Easter Island palm into extinction was relatively better off than those who had no access to that wood, and that is true even if everyone would have been advantaged by tree conservation. Much that is irrational in human worlds is the result of a conflict between what is good for a society as a whole, and what is good for specific individuals within society. Before the final ecological collapse on Easter Island, that society expended a huge chunk of its surplus in erecting huge stone statues (up to 75 tons), in a status competition between the chiefs of the competing clans.

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The (apparently) irrational is sometimes a side effect of conflicts of interest. Individual rationality sometimes sums to collective idiocy. Easter Island is a famous example of humans at their most (self-) destructive: an island paradise reduced to an eroded barren wasteland, littered with broken statues and warring clans. In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond wonders about the psychology of over-exploitation, imagining it as self-deceptive wishful thinking: I have often asked myself, ‘What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?’. Like modern loggers, did he shout ‘Jobs, not trees’?

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., 127 design, 36-40, 126, 127-8, 140-1, 186-7, 215, 231-3, 244, 248, 258, 259, 267 Devil’s Chaplain, A (Dawkins), 219, 237, 269 Diamond, Jared, 217 Dickens, Charles, 272 Diderot, Denis, 146 disease, 4, 8-12, 154, 261 DNA, 53, 56, 61, 66, 109, 117, 134, 180-1, 182, 256, 258 Dobzhansky, Theodosius, 147 Easter Islanders, 217, 218 Eddington, Arthur, 265 Edwards, A. W. F., 70 Einstein, Albert, 14 Eldredge, Niles, 90 Encephalization Quotient (EQ), I49-5° environmental interaction, 40-1, 48, 54-5, 126, 127, 168, 170, I74 -5 ESS (Evolutionary Stable Strategy), 82, 84, 86, 94-5 n. 21 ethology, 28-9, 79, 80, 87, 88, 96 n. 27, 110-11 evolution, 87, 255-6, 275-6 biomorphs, II8 evidence for, 232 evolvability of, 119, 150, 151, I58 Orgel’s Second Rule of, 109 progression, 145-59 religion and, 237-8 social, 76, 81-2, 153, 210-11 see also cultural evolution evolutionary psychology, 54, 75, 90, 173, 187, 210, 214, 215-16, 250, see also sociobiology Ewald, Paul, 8 existentialism, 257, 258, 260-2 Extended Phenotype, The (Dawkins), 15, 32-41, 47, 87-8, I04^ 13^ I34, I55, 167, 182, 194, 213, 267 facial resemblance, 192, 193, 196 faith, 178, 233, 237, 241 n. 5, 244-7, 256, 274 family studies, 191-200 Farrer, Austin, 237, 238, 241 n. 5 fecundity, 66, I77-8 Fehr, Ernest, 210 fidelity, 66, 177, 183 Fisher, R.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, Columbian Exchange, correlation does not imply causation, double helix, Easter island, Honoré de Balzac, index card, Jacob Silverman, Maui Hawaii, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, out of africa, seminal paper, Skype, Steven Pinker, the long tail, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Yogi Berra

The Pacific rat, Rattus exulans, a native of southeast Asia, traveled with Polynesian seafarers to, among many other places, Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa, Easter Island, and New Zealand. Encountering few predators, stowaway Rattus exulans multiplied into what the New Zealand paleontologist Richard Holdaway has described as “a grey tide” that turned “everything edible into rat protein.” (A recent study of pollen and animal remains on Easter Island concluded that it wasn’t humans who deforested the landscape; rather, it was the rats that came along for the ride and then bred unchecked. The native palms couldn’t produce seeds fast enough to keep up with their appetites.)

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It’s only fully modern humans who start this thing of venturing out on the ocean where you don’t see land. Part of that is technology, of course; you have to have ships to do it. But there is also, I like to think or say, some madness there. You know? How many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you found Easter Island? I mean, it’s ridiculous. And why do you do that? Is it for the glory? For immortality? For curiosity? And now we go to Mars. We never stop.” The same stretch of chromosome 5 from the human, Neanderthal, and chimp genomes. If Faustian restlessness is one of the defining characteristics of modern humans, then, by Pääbo’s account, there must be some sort of Faustian gene.

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(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 89. “We have already left a record”: Ibid., 240. “a grey tide”: Quoted in William Stolzenburg, Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World’s Greatest Wildlife Rescue (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), 21. A recent study of pollen: Terry L. Hunt, “Rethinking Easter Island’s Ecological Catastrophe,” Journal of Archaeological Science 34 (2007): 485–502. “a species or two of large naked rodent”: Zalasiewicz, The Earth After Us, 9. “Because of these anthropogenic emissions”: Paul J. Crutzen, “Geology of Mankind,” Nature 415 (2002): 23. “as future evolution”: Jan Zalasiewicz et al., “Are We Now Living in the Anthropocene?”

Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You by Scott E. Page

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic trading, Alvin Roth, assortative mating, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Checklist Manifesto, computer age, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, data science, deep learning, deliberate practice, discrete time, distributed ledger, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, Everything should be made as simple as possible, experimental economics, first-price auction, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Higgs boson, High speed trading, impulse control, income inequality, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, meta-analysis, money market fund, multi-armed bandit, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, Network effects, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, p-value, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Paul Erdős, Paul Samuelson, phenotype, Phillips curve, power law, pre–internet, prisoner's dilemma, race to the bottom, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Robert Solow, school choice, scientific management, sealed-bid auction, second-price auction, selection bias, six sigma, social graph, spectrum auction, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Supply of New York City Cabdrivers, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Great Moderation, the long tail, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the rule of 72, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, urban sprawl, value at risk, web application, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

Among the most famous is the collapse of the Polynesians on Easter Island, described by Jared Diamond.2 Easter Island lies over two thousand miles west of Chile in the South Pacific, with no other inhabitable island within a thousand miles in any direction. Given that location, Easter Islanders have always had to manage for themselves. For over a thousand years they lived well. Some estimate that by the early seventeenth century, Easter Island’s population exceeded fifteen thousand people. In the sixteenth century, the Easter Islanders marshaled sufficient resources to free up labor to build giant stone heads, called maoi, that weigh up to eighty tons.

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While the Easter Islanders were busy constructing maoi, they were not cooperating in the management of their forests. By 1722, when Europeans first landed on the island, food was relatively scarce and the population had dropped to around two thousand. Few trees over ten feet tall remained. Many species of birds and animals had gone extinct. To use Diamond’s phrasing, the civilization collapsed. The collapse became complete when viruses carried by the Europeans killed nearly all of the remaining population. According to Diamond’s account, the collapse of the civilization on Easter Island, as well as the collapses of the Mayans in Central America, the Anasazi in the American Southwest, and the Vinlanders on Greenland, resulted from a combination of overharvesting of natural resources (caused by institutional and cultural failures) and climatic changes.

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According to Diamond’s account, the collapse of the civilization on Easter Island, as well as the collapses of the Mayans in Central America, the Anasazi in the American Southwest, and the Vinlanders on Greenland, resulted from a combination of overharvesting of natural resources (caused by institutional and cultural failures) and climatic changes. The Vinlanders grazed animals on marginal land and tore up fragile sod to make houses. In short order, the land became barren from overuse, and the Vinlanders starved. Like the Easter Islanders, the Vinlanders had failed to manage a common pool resource. By chopping down too many trees and using up too much turf, they produced a collapse. Though evocative and compelling, these examples lead many to see collective action problems as something of relevance only in the past. That framing is unfortunate.

Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, Ella Morton

anti-communist, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, centre right, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, cosmic microwave background, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Day of the Dead, double helix, East Village, Easter island, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, germ theory of disease, Golden Gate Park, Google Earth, Haight Ashbury, horn antenna, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, index card, intentional community, Jacques de Vaucanson, Kowloon Walled City, Louis Pasteur, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, mutually assured destruction, off-the-grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, phenotype, Pluto: dwarf planet, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Tunguska event, urban sprawl, Vesna Vulović, white picket fence, wikimedia commons, working poor

What were the plans for El Gigante and the rest of the moai? Why carve so many and just leave them in a pile? It may have been a case of ambition eclipsing resources. Anthropologists have argued that the Easter Islanders used up all of their island’s resources in the process of building their society. The two major tribes of Easter Island lived in a tropical rain forest, a paradise of food and fishing, with plenty of time to put into the “great work” of statues. According to Easter Island’s resident archaeologist, Edmundo Edwards, the Polynesians used to sail back and forth across great distances among the Pacific islands, but eventually they used up all the large trees, thereby losing the ability to build large canoes.

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Now home to a few hundred people, it is a place of extreme beauty, with coral reefs, white-sand beaches, blue lagoons, and abundant tropical fruits—not a bad place to be stranded. Two-hour flights from Santiago depart several times per week. Hike to Selkirk’s Lookout—a 3-hour trek that the marooned sailor made daily to watch for rescue ships. 33.636666 78.849588 The Unfinished Giant of Easter Island ISLA DE PASCUA, VALPARAÍSO Between 1400 and 1600 CE, the Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island carved 288 stone statues, or moai, and hauled them across the island, where they were installed on ceremonial pedestals. These representations were erected between the village and “chaos”—the ocean—as a wall of protection. Remarkably, the 288 figures represent less than a third of the statues that were created.

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According to Easter Island’s resident archaeologist, Edmundo Edwards, the Polynesians used to sail back and forth across great distances among the Pacific islands, but eventually they used up all the large trees, thereby losing the ability to build large canoes. At this point, they became effectively trapped. The old middens (a dump for domestic waste) show that fish bones got progressively smaller, as the Polynesians could no longer sail out to deep fisheries. Flights to Easter Island leave from Santiago. The trip takes about 5 hours. 27.121191 109.366423 Easter Island’s greatest statue was never erected. Weighing more than two 737s, it’s unclear how the islanders ever planned to move it. Also in Chile El Tatio Geysers Antofagasta · With over 80 active geysers, some of which you can bathe in, El Tatio is the third-largest geyser field in the world.

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Doto Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal

banking crisis, behavioural economics, bioinformatics, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cognitive bias, delayed gratification, Dunning–Kruger effect, Easter island, game design, impulse control, lifelogging, loss aversion, low interest rates, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, PalmPilot, phenotype, Richard Thaler, social contagion, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Tragedy of the Commons, Walter Mischel

Presented at the 2008 World Meeting of the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology and the Society for Advancement of Behavioral Economics, Rome. Page 77—For a dramatic telling of the Easter Island tragedy, see Diamond, J. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking, 2004. For an economic model, see Bologna, M., and J. C. Flores. “A Simple Mathematical Model of Society Collapse Applied to Easter Island.” EPL (Europhysics Letters) 81 (2008): 480–86. Page 78—“Choice architecture”: Thaler, R. H., and C. R. Sunstein. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New York: Knopf, 2008.

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In contrast, players who had not performed the distraction task still had a forest when the simulation ended at twenty-five years, and they had made more money while saving a few trees. Cooperation, economic success, environmental stewardship—I don’t know about you, but I know which players I’d put in charge of my forest, business, or country. The Forest Game is just a simulation, but one cannot help being reminded of the eerily similar demise of the Easter Island forest. For centuries, the lush, densely forested island in the Pacific Ocean supported a thriving civilization. But as the population grew, the island’s inhabitants started cutting down trees for more land and wood. By the year 800 C.E., they were cutting down trees faster than the forest could regenerate.

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By the 1500s, the forest was wiped out, along with many species the inhabitants depended on for food. Starvation and cannibalism became widespread. By the late 1800s, 97 percent of the population had died or left the barren island. Since then, many people have wondered, what were the residents of Easter Island thinking as they destroyed their forests and society? Couldn’t they see the long-term consequences of what they were doing? We can’t imagine ourselves making such obviously shortsighted decisions, but we shouldn’t be so sure. Humans have a natural tendency to focus on immediate gains, and changing course to prevent future disaster takes enormous self-discipline from all members of a society.

The Wood Age: How One Material Shaped the Whole of Human History by Roland Ennos

British Empire, carbon footprint, circular economy, Easter island, experimental subject, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Kickstarter, place-making, rewilding, three-masted sailing ship, University of East Anglia, wikimedia commons, yellow journalism

This means that thin shell blades can withstand bending forces and can perform almost as well as metal ones. Several lines of evidence back up the idea that the techniques used to build plank boats were passed on to the coastal American tribes by the Polynesians. For a start, these parts of the Americas are closest to the most easterly Polynesian islands—Hawaii and Easter Island. The boatbuilding tradition of the Chumash also dates to around thirteen hundred years ago, the time when the Polynesians first reached Hawaii. There certainly seems to have been contact as the Polynesians were raising sweet potatoes, which they must have obtained from the American continent, some thousand years ago, while the Chumash started to use complex fishhooks like those used by the Polynesians at around the same time.

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These deforestation myths have cropped up again and again throughout history; deforestation has been blamed for the fall of several ancient Mesopotamian empires, Mycenaean Greece, the Mayan Empire, the Venetian Republic, and, most devastatingly, the collapse of civilization itself among the Rapa Nui of Easter Island. Perhaps the most frequently cited example of all is the foundation myth of the British Empire: that the construction of the Royal Navy destroyed the country’s great primeval oak forests. The truth is very different. We have certainly had a huge effect on the world’s forests: reducing forest cover and changing the composition of the forests that do remain.

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In the last two centuries farmers have abandoned their small farms on the unproductive soils of Connecticut and Surrey, letting them revert to the secondary woodland that now covers the land around the commuters’ dormitory villages. And the deforestation myths themselves do not stand up to closer examination. Take one of the most cited myths, the environmental destruction of Easter Island. The Rapa Nui did indeed clear the island of its forest cover, but this was a perfectly rational thing to do. The palms that dominated the forest could not have produced useful timber, since palms are monocotyledonous plants that do not make proper wood. And the shed fronds of palms smother the forest floor, forming an infertile blanket that prevents the growth of any understory plants.

Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers by Simon Winchester

9 dash line, Albert Einstein, Boeing 747, BRICs, British Empire, California gold rush, classic study, colonial rule, company town, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Easter island, Frank Gehry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Kwajalein Atoll, land tenure, Larry Ellison, Loma Prieta earthquake, Maui Hawaii, Monroe Doctrine, ocean acidification, oil shock, polynesian navigation, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, The Day the Music Died, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, transcontinental railway, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, undersea cable, uranium enrichment

Hawaii’s shopping malls and warplanes and mountaintop telescopes and aircraft carriers and its legions of resident oceanographers and meteorologists may give the impression that the islands have fully entered and embraced the modern era. Yet, culturally, Hawaii is still Polynesia, linked firmly to Easter Island and the Cook Islands and Aotearoa (“the Land of the Long White Cloud”), New Zealand. Hawaii, for all its apparent intimacy with the American mainland, still resonates with the old Pacific stories of Herman Melville, of Robert Louis Stevenson. It is still emotionally connected to the Pacific that so enchanted poets such as Rupert Brooke, who spent seven idyllic months two thousand miles farther south, in Tahiti, and memorialized it in lines that, once heard, are long remembered: Taü here, Mamua, Crown the hair, and come away!

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Five thousand years BP (using the new dating convention with which I began this book; 3000 BC as it used to be), islanders from the archipelagos of the Philippines and in the South China Sea had started moving both westward and eastward in canoes, populating as they did islands in the Indian Ocean as far away as Madagascar, and in the Pacific Ocean as distant as Easter Island. The evidence for their having done so is overwhelming: pottery shards, imported animal types, and words of common origin, together with the kinds of boats they used, of which images appear in ancient pictographs. They sailed, they paddled, they established communities, they planned return voyages, they traded, they planted gardens, and they fished.

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Rather, we see them as they see themselves: as a landed people separated by expanses of sea. But the achievements of the early people of Polynesia are quite different, and are such as to set them very much aside. The distances for them were truly prodigious. Their present-day homeland, roughly a triangle bounded by Hawaii in the north, Easter Island to the east, and the hulking mass of New Zealand to the west (or, to use the Polynesians’ names for these last two, Rapa Nui and Aotearoa), is almost entirely marine, nearly all aqueous. Perhaps a new word should be coined for where such people live: they inhabit not a homeland but a home sea, in this case an expanse of fourteen million square miles of ocean, dusted with islands that are few and almost all far between.

The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans by David Abulafia

Admiral Zheng, Alfred Russel Wallace, Bartolomé de las Casas, British Empire, colonial rule, computer age, Cornelius Vanderbilt, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, discovery of the americas, domestication of the camel, Easter island, Edmond Halley, Eratosthenes, European colonialism, Fellow of the Royal Society, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, land reform, lone genius, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, megacity, new economy, out of africa, p-value, Peace of Westphalia, polynesian navigation, Scramble for Africa, South China Sea, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, undersea cable, wikimedia commons, yellow journalism

Skjølsvold, Archeological Evidence of Pre-Spanish Visits to the Galápagos Islands (Oslo, 1990; originally published in American Antiquity , vol. 22 (1956), no. 2, part 3). 20. Flenley and Bahn, Enigmas of Easter Island , p. 34. 21. Irwin, ‘Voyaging and Settlement’, p. 85. 22. Flenley and Bahn, Enigmas of Easter Island , p. 40. 23. Lewis, We, the Navigators , p. 353; Sharp, Ancient Voyagers , pp. 153–5. 24. Flenley and Bahn, Enigmas of Easter Island , pp. 54–5, 75–7, 184–5. 25. Ibid., p. 68. 26. A. Di Piazza and E. Pearthree, ‘A New Reading of Tupaia’s Chart’, Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 116 (2007), pp. 321–40; Thompson, Sea Peoples , pp. 88–98. 27.

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The word used by the Quechua Indians in South America for the sweet potato, kamote , has been imaginatively compared to Easter Island kumara and Polynesian kuumala .20 Seasonal winds made journeys to South America possible, but there is no evidence for any attempt to settle there and no evidence for active commerce between South America and any part of Polynesia.21 It might be argued that the sweet potato was diffused by the Spaniards when they gained control over trans-Pacific trade routes in the sixteenth century. However, the places where they were most actively cultivated lay some way from the Spanish trade routes – Hawai’i, New Zealand and Easter Island – and carbonized tubers of sweet potato excavated by archaeologists in New Zealand, Hawai’i and Mangaia can all be dated to the period before the arrival of the Europeans.

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Even more remarkable than possible contact with the admittedly vast landmass of South America, impossible to miss if you go far enough eastwards, is the settlement of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, in the middle of nowhere. And yet, by contrast with Hawai’i, it at least lies on the plane of Polynesia, and reaching Rapa Nui posed less of a challenge in dealing with the winds. There are probably as many theories about the significance of the island’s enigmatic giant statues as there are statues. The question here is, rather, by what means navigators reached Rapa Nui and what sort of outside contacts the islanders maintained after its discovery and settlement. Heyerdahl, naturally, saw Easter Island as one of the first bases of his pioneering Peruvian sailors; the locals obliged him by offering him pieces of South American pottery, but they were just modern Chilean ceramics (the island is governed by Chile) – they wanted to keep the eccentric Norwegian gentleman happy.

The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life by Robert Wright

agricultural Revolution, Andrei Shleifer, Apollo 13, Asian financial crisis, British Empire, centre right, cognitive dissonance, cotton gin, double entry bookkeeping, double helix, Easter island, fault tolerance, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Garrett Hardin, George Gilder, global village, Great Leap Forward, invention of gunpowder, invention of movable type, invention of the telegraph, invention of writing, invisible hand, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Marshall McLuhan, Multics, Norbert Wiener, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, pre–internet, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, social web, Steven Pinker, talking drums, technological determinism, the medium is the message, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, your tax dollars at work, zero-sum game

But other common forms of chiefly self-advertisement are more enduring, such as monumental architecture, often built in tribute to (and as a reminder of ) the chief ’s distinguished lineage. Hence the huge mounds built in North America as tombs for past chiefs. Or the pyramid-like temples on Tahiti, or the earliest ziggurats in Mesopotamia. The giant stone heads on Easter Island, up to ten meters tall, also suggest social organization beyond the Big Man level. Using these and other hallmarks† of a chiefdom, archaeologists have found a clear pattern: After agriculture first spreads across a region, chiefdoms tend to follow. This doesn’t mean that farming is a prerequisite for a chiefdom.

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The same pattern—first farming, then chiefdoms—is found earlier in continental Europe. (Julius Caesar would happen upon chiefdoms when he ventured into Germany and Gaul.) In Mesoamerica—Central America and the south of modern Mexico—farming villages were common by 2000 B.C., and within a thousand years, immense stone heads, in the Easter Island genre, had been carved. And so on. Chiefdoms, the scholar Randolph Widmer has written, “were at various times the most common form of society found throughout Europe, Africa, the Americas, Melanesia, Polynesia, the Near East, and Asia.” Around the world, with the multiple invention and rapid spread of agriculture, cultural evolution marched on.

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And within the Old World, the origin of writing in China after 2000 B.C. was probably independent of its origin in the Near East around 3000 B.C. The academic consensus is that writing arose at least three times independently. And, just as there are “proto-agricultural” and “horticultural” societies—illustrating agriculture in the process of evolving—there are examples of writing in mid-evolution. Easter Island featured a primitive and apparently indigenous script called rongorongo. Some scholar talk as if writing arose in the Near East, the New World, and China for very different purposes. The simplest version of the stereotypes runs something like this: The Sumerian script of the Near East was heavily economic in function; the Maya were more inclined to history, politics, and religion (including an elaborate astronomy-cum-astrology); the Chinese used their script to tell fortunes.

The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World―and Globalization Began by Valerie Hansen

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, British Empire, disinformation, Easter island, financial innovation, Google Earth, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, polynesian navigation, seigniorage, South China Sea, trade route, transatlantic slave trade

In around 800 BC the ancient Polynesians departed from Micronesia, to the east of the Philippines, and reached Samoa. There they stayed 1,800 years before, in AD 1025–1120, they sailed to the Society Islands, located at the center of the Pacific Triangle, which connects Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. And between 1190 and 1290 they moved simultaneously in three directions: north to Hawaii, southwest to New Zealand, and east to Easter Island, or Rapa Nui. Each of these journeys is more than 2,500 miles (4,000 km) long. Why did the Polynesians decide to explore the entire Pacific just after 1000? Possible answers include an environmental crisis, a sudden breakthrough in technology (perhaps the invention of the double canoe), or even an El Niño event, such as increased winds, which would have facilitated travel to more distant islands.

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Early sailors took advantage of the North Pacific Gyre to continue their expansion across the Pacific in double canoes bearing sails; like the Vikings, they did not use any navigational instruments. Departing from Samoa, they reached the Society Islands in around 1025, and it took them two and a half centuries longer to reach Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. In fact, if the conditions are right, one can cross the Pacific drifting on ocean currents with no sail at all, as fourteen unfortunate Japanese sailors discovered. On December 2, 1832, their wooden fishing vessel, some 50 feet (15 m) long, set off from Nagoya on the east coast of Japan and headed for Tokyo.

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At present we have no way of knowing whether these early sailors used double canoes or larger boats with multiple sails. We are certain that Polynesian navigators ventured east into the Pacific at the same time as the Malay voyages to Madagascar. Starting from Micronesia, the Polynesians gradually fanned out, reaching Fiji, Samoa, Hawaii, Easter Island (Rapa Nui), and New Zealand, the last place on earth to be occupied by humans, in around AD 1300. The settlers left behind shards of distinctive pottery, which make it possible to trace their route, though controversy still surrounds the exact date when each island was settled. There are always two camps: the proponents of a long chronology who see the settlement of a given place as occurring earlier, and those in favor of a short chronology who believe in more recent occupation.

Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists by Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, bread and circuses, carbon credits, carbon tax, clean water, conceptual framework, David Brooks, deindustrialization, Easter island, facts on the ground, falling living standards, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Great Leap Forward, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, Indoor air pollution, insecure affluence, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, knowledge economy, land reform, loss aversion, market fundamentalism, McMansion, means of production, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microcredit, new economy, oil shock, postindustrial economy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Florida, science of happiness, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, trade liberalization, War on Poverty, We are as Gods, winner-take-all economy, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

But Diamond ignores several decades’worth of research into political psychology and social values, which offers far more clues to understanding today’s ecological crises than the collapse of relatively tiny premodern societies. Diamond gave Collapse the subtitle How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, in the belief that societies choose how and whether to adapt to changing circumstances. But neither the Easter Islanders nor the Greenland Norse ever convened tribal councils to choose collective suicide. The Easter Islanders, whom Diamond describes as having logged all of their trees in order to erect massive stone faces on their hillsides, and the Greenland Norse, who chose starvation over eating fish, were indeed behaving in ways that were perfectly rational, given their values, their cultures, and their belief systems.

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“I decided to devote most of my career efforts at this stage of my life to convincing people that our problems have to be taken seriously and won’t go away otherwise,” he wrote. But in the end, Collapse is an argument against human attempts to control, ignore, or live out of balance with Nature. The stories that Diamond tells—of Greenlanders overgrazing their land and refusing to eat plentiful fish, of Easter Islanders and Maya kings deforesting their landscape in service of false idols—are tales of human hubris, of societies that neglected the laws of Nature in pursuit of human follies and were punished accordingly. One of the primary cautionary tales in Diamond’s book is of the Greenland Norse, whose civilization collapsed when irrational taboos triumphed over survival needs in a steadily worsening food crisis.

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The Easter Islanders, whom Diamond describes as having logged all of their trees in order to erect massive stone faces on their hillsides, and the Greenland Norse, who chose starvation over eating fish, were indeed behaving in ways that were perfectly rational, given their values, their cultures, and their belief systems. In the end, Diamond projects the theological narrative of humanity’s fall from Nature onto the societies that he writes about, asserting that “[as] a result of lust for power, Easter Island chiefs and Maya kings acted so as to accelerate deforestation rather than to prevent it.”12 In so doing, Diamond is unaware that he has told a biblical rather than a scientific story, a theological cautionary tale wrapped in the white laboratory coat of Science. 4. For years, environmentalists have credited their strict and literal adherence to science for their successes, though not, notably, their failures.

Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives by Stefan Al

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, biodiversity loss, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, carbon footprint, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, colonial rule, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, digital twin, Disneyland with the Death Penalty, Donald Trump, Easter island, Elisha Otis, energy transition, food miles, Ford Model T, gentrification, high net worth, Hyperloop, invention of air conditioning, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, Marchetti’s constant, megaproject, megastructure, Mercator projection, New Urbanism, plutocrats, plyscraper, pneumatic tube, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, Sidewalk Labs, SimCity, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, social distancing, Steve Jobs, streetcar suburb, synthetic biology, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the built environment, the High Line, transit-oriented development, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, tulip mania, urban planning, urban sprawl, value engineering, Victor Gruen, VTOL, white flight, zoonotic diseases

Yet this global and historic effort required an accumulation of inventions from all over the world—Roman engineering, American rebar, and a German pump—all in the Arabian Desert. HUMANS ARE NO strangers to shortsightedness in building. Easter Island was once a thriving civilization, until the natives wasted natural resources on creating enormous statues. Several anthropologists believe the Easter Islanders cleared trees to make logs to roll the statues. One tree at a time, they eventually wiped the island clean. The deforestation caused erosion, which led to food shortages, creating conflict, internal violence, and eventually, societal collapse.

…

Projects like this have led to the coining of the “Skyscraper Curse,” an assumption that the tallest towers signal economic decline.44 In tandem with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, the building of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building closely preceded the Great Depression. The Burj Khalifa was completed in 2009 just as the Dubai property market collapsed. Throughout history, the hubris of tall structures, like the Tower of Babel or the Easter Island moai, have seemed to tempt the gods, leading to societal breakdown. In 2020, with a wave of new supertalls in New York still under construction, COVID-19 hit. The pandemic brought the city to an abrupt halt, including its feverish construction activity. Was the curse striking again, with New York’s record-breaking skyscrapers the latest symptoms of excess, and looming economic decline?

…

See also glass Debord, Guy, 171 de Botton, Alain, 164, 165–66 de Mestral, George, 82–83 Deng Xiaoping, 101 density, and human behavior, 228–29 de Portzamparc, Christian, 195 design computational methods, 9, 84 principles broken by super slenders, 178 structural efficiency and, 81–82 sustainable ratings of, 137 DeWitt Chestnut Apartments, Chicago, 61 digital twin, 140, 264 Diller Scofidio + Renfro, 201 domes, 27–28, 32, 56, 82, 130–31 Dubai, 3, 13, 36, 37. See also Burj Khalifa, Dubai Easter Island, 41, 207 Eastgate Centre, Zimbabwe, 140–41 economic growth, 12–13, 239 economic height, 188 Eiffel Tower, 6, 7, 88, 89, 145–46, 167, 169 electric lighting, 12, 115, 121, 133, 218 elevator cable, 108–9 elevator consultant, 97 elevator music, 95 elevator operators, 94–95, 107 elevators accidents with, 92, 94–95, 106–7 advances in, 5, 87, 99–100, 104–6, 107, 109–11 air pressure in, 106, 107–8 as an attraction, 97–99 in China, 85, 87, 101, 103, 107 COVID-related changes to, 210 energy consumption by, 109–10 Futurists’ vision for, 96–97 history of, 89–93 howling of, 95, 105, 106 human psychology and, 95–96 partial vacuum in shaft, 105–6 safety and, 11, 87–88, 91–92, 95, 106–7 on side of HSBC Building, 132 sideways, 110–11 speed of, 5, 87, 92, 93, 99, 100–101, 104, 107–8 stacked, 5, 99 of super slenders, 178 wind forces and, 104–5, 106 elevator-testing towers, 104–5, 110 Elzner, A.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, call centre, cashless society, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, digital twin, disruptive innovation, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental economics, fake news, food miles, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, game design, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, gigafactory, Google X / Alphabet X, gravity well, hive mind, housing crisis, Hyperloop, impact investing, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, initial coin offering, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late fees, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lifelogging, loss aversion, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mary Lou Jepsen, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, microdosing, mobile money, multiplanetary species, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, QR code, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robo advisor, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart contracts, smart grid, Snapchat, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, urban planning, Vision Fund, VTOL, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, X Prize

Aubrey de Grey: Kira Peikoff, “Anti-Aging Pioneer Aubrey de Grey: ‘People in Middle Age Now Have a Fair Chance,’ ” Leapsmag, January 30, 2018. See: https://leapsmag.com/anti-aging-pioneer-aubrey-de-grey-people-middle-age-now-fair-chance/. The Anti-Aging Pharmacy Easter Island is remote: Joe Schwarz, “The Right Chemistry: Easter Island Might Just Hold the Key to Fighting Aging,” Montreal Gazette, March 5, 2019. rapamycin: Bethany Halford, “Rapamycin’s Secrets Unearthed,” C&EN, July 18, 2016. See also: Bill Gifford, “Does a Real Anti-Aging Pill Already Exist?” Bloomberg, July 12, 2015. coating heart stents: P.

…

And this means that possibly you, and definitely your children, will have the potential to tack decades onto your lives, simply because, as time passes, all of us will intercept a gaggle of anti-aging technologies along the way. Let’s turn our attention to a few of the most promising ones. The Anti-Aging Pharmacy Easter Island is remote. It’s exotic. It’s home to strange rumors and stone heads and sometimes strange rumors about stone heads. Some say the elders, with the right spells, can wake the heads from their slumber, controlling them like a giant stone army. Others say the heads themselves have the control—over your life force, with both the ability to steal it, bringing on an early death, or amplify it, conferring virility and strength on a chosen few.

…

Others say the heads themselves have the control—over your life force, with both the ability to steal it, bringing on an early death, or amplify it, conferring virility and strength on a chosen few. Then, in the mid-1960s, a small team of researchers discovered that this last bit, that conferring of strength and virility part, might be more than a rumor. It started when the very small and very isolated community living on Easter Island decided they’d had enough. Enough smallness. Enough isolation. It was time, they decided, to build an airport. Scientists freaked out. One of the most ecologically untainted regions of the world was about to lose its purity. In an emergency effort, an international team was rushed in to collect flora, fauna, and microbial samples, including—most critically for this story—dirt excavated from beneath one of the island’s mysterious heads.

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking by Michael Bhaskar

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 747, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, call centre, carbon tax, charter city, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cognitive load, Columbian Exchange, coronavirus, cosmic microwave background, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crony capitalism, cyber-physical system, dark matter, David Graeber, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, discovery of penicillin, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, energy security, energy transition, epigenetics, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, Eroom's law, fail fast, false flag, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, GPT-3, Haber-Bosch Process, hedonic treadmill, Herman Kahn, Higgs boson, hive mind, hype cycle, Hyperloop, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, invention of the steam engine, invention of the telegraph, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, James Watt: steam engine, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, liberation theology, lockdown, lone genius, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megacity, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, minimum viable product, mittelstand, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Murray Gell-Mann, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, nuclear winter, nudge unit, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, post-truth, precautionary principle, public intellectual, publish or perish, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, rent-seeking, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, skunkworks, Slavoj Žižek, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, techlash, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, total factor productivity, transcontinental railway, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, When a measure becomes a target, X Prize, Y Combinator

We are different to those peoples in every respect bar one; on the grandest level we too are an island. This is what remains so haunting about those collapsed civilisations: in cosmic terms, planet Earth is just a much larger version of Easter Island. Sure, we have more awareness, resource, technology and knowledge, but as on Easter Island no one is coming to save us. It's not hard to imagine the long-emptied skyscrapers of New York or Hong Kong piercing the lapping ocean like so many Mayan temples over the jungle canopy. Nor are Easter Island style ‘ecocides’ the only means of civilisational collapse: disease, wars, raids, elite ossification can all do the same. In 146 bce the Romans utterly obliterated Carthage, even salting the ground to ensure it would never come back.

…

From our earliest days we have been captivated by the search for deep explanations, for mastery of our physical environment. It is part of who we are. Humanity also needs big ideas. In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond narrates how a series of island peoples saw their civilisation fall apart, ultimately to be extinguished for ever.36 Stuck on their own, the people of Easter Island or tiny Pitcairn Island, or the Norse in Greenland, found what they thought was a sustainable lifestyle, often for hundreds of years at a stretch, and managed to thrive at the very margins of human life. But problems accumulated. Weather changed for the worse. Crops failed. Violence spiked. Soil was degraded and eroded; resources were exploited to the point of diminishing returns before falling apart.

…

., and Uzzi, Brian (2007), ‘The Increasing Dominance of Teams in Production of Knowledge’, Science, Vol. 316 No. 5827, pp. 1036–9 Xinhua (2019), ‘China to build scientific research station on Moon's south pole’, Xinhua, accessed 18 January 2021, available at http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-04/24/c_138004666.htm Yueh, Linda (2018), The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today, London: Penguin Viking Index ‘0,10’ exhibition 103 ‘0-I’ ideas 31 Aadhaar 265 abstraction 103 AC motor 287, 288 academia 209 Académie des sciences 47 Adam (robot) 235–6 Adams, John 211 Adler, Alfred 188 Adobe 265 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) 180, 247, 253, 296, 317 AEG 34 aeroplanes 62–6, 68–70, 71, 219 Aeschylus 3 Africa 267, 279–80, 295 age/ageing 122, 158–60, 193 AGI see artificial general intelligence Agrarian Revolution 252 agricultural production 92–3 AI see artificial intelligence Akcigit, Ufuk 193 Alexander the Great 159 Alexander, Albert 52 Alexandrian Library 4, 295, 304 algorithms 175, 185, 196, 224, 235, 245 aliens 240–1, 306, 308–9, 337 Allison, Jim 58 Alphabet 193, 225, 265, 294, 295 AlphaFold software 225–6, 227, 228–9, 233 AlphaGo software 226–7, 228, 233 AlQuraishi, Mohammed 225, 226, 229 Amazon 84–5, 214, 272 Amazon Prime Air 71 American Revolution 139 amino acids 223, 226 Ampère, André-Marie 74–5 Anaximander 35 ancestors 10–12 ancient Greeks 1–6, 7–8, 291, 303–4 Anderson, Kurt 106 Angkor Wat 43 anthrax 47–8, 51 Anthropocene 14–15 anti-reason 211–12 anti-science 211–12 antibacterials 234 antibiotics 38, 52–3, 124, 125, 217, 315 resistance to 235 Apollo missions 70, 315, 316, 317, 318 Apple 33, 85, 159, 185, 186, 193, 272, 296, 312 Aquinas, Thomas 36 AR see augmented reality archaeology 153–4 Archimedes 1–6, 7–8, 19, 27, 32, 37, 39, 291, 304 architecture 103, 115, 188 ARIA 297 Aristarchus 5 Aristotle 24, 108, 282, 304 Arkwright, Richard 25, 26, 34, 253 Armstrong, Louis 103 ARPA see Advanced Research Projects Agency art 99–104, 107–8, 176–7, 236, 321, 339 Artemis (Moon mission) 71, 218 artificial general intelligence (AGI) 226, 237–8, 249, 250, 310, 313, 330, 341 artificial intelligence (AI) 225–9, 233–41, 246–7, 248, 249–52, 262, 266, 300, 310, 312–13, 323, 329, 330, 331, 338 arts 152, 293 see also specific arts Artsimovich, Lev 147 arXiv 116 Asia 264, 267–8, 273, 275 Asimov, Isaac, Foundation 45 Astor, John Jacob 288 astronomy 30, 231, 232 AT&T 85, 181, 183, 185, 197 Ates, Sina T. 193 Athens 24, 295 Atlantis 154 augmented reality (AR) 241–2, 338 authoritarianism 112–13, 284 autonomous vehicles 71, 72, 219 ‘Axial Age’ 108 Azoulay, Pierre 317–18 Bach, J.S. 236 bacillus 46 Bacon, Francis 25, 259 bacteria 38, 46, 53 Bahcall, Safi 31 Ballets Russes 99–100 Baltimore and Ohio railway 67 Banks, Iain M. 310 Bardeen, John 182 BASF 289 Batchelor, Charles 286 Bates, Paul 226 Bayes, Thomas 289 Beagle (ship) 36 Beethoven, Ludwig van 26 Beijing Genomics Institute 257, 294–5 Bell Labs 180–4, 186–8, 190, 206, 214, 217, 289, 296, 322 Benz, Karl 68, 219, 330 Bergson, Henri 109 Bessemer process 80 Bezos, Jeff 71, 326 Bhattacharya, Jay 201, 202, 321 Biden, Joe 59 Big Bang 117, 174, 181 Big Big Ideas 79–80 big ideas 5, 8, 11, 13–19 adoption 28 and an uncertain future 302–36 and art 99–103 artificial 223–38 and the Big Ideas Famine 13 and bisociation 36 blockers to 17–18 and breakthrough problems 46–73, 77, 86, 98, 222, 250, 301 and the ‘burden of knowledge’ effect 154–65, 175, 178, 235, 338 and business formation 95 ceiling 18 conception 37 definition 27–8, 40–1 Enlightenment 132–40, 136–40 era of 109–10 erroneous 176 evidence for 222, 223–54 execution 37 ‘fishing out’ mechanism 152 future of 45, 98, 302–36, 337–43 harmful nature 41–2 how they work 23–45 and the Idea Paradox 178–9, 187, 191, 217, 226, 250, 254, 283–4, 301, 312, 342 and the Kardashev Scale 337–43 long and winding course of 4, 5, 35–8, 136 and the low-hanging fruit paradox 149–54, 167, 178 and luck 38–9 moral 136, 138 nature of 169–72 necessity of 41–3 need for 42–3 normalisation of 171–5, 178 originality of 28 paradox of 143–79 and patents 97 process of 37–8 purchase 37–8 and resources 128 and rights 132–40 and ‘ripeness’ 39 and short-termism 192 slow death of 106–7 slowdown of 98 society's reaction to 216 and specialisation 156, 157–8 today 21–140 tomorrow 141–343 big pharma 31, 60, 185, 217–18, 226 Big Science 118–19 Bill of Rights 137 Bingham, Hiram 153 biology 243–8, 300 synthetic 245–6, 251, 310, 329 BioNTech 218, 298 biotech 195–6, 240, 246, 255–8, 262, 266, 307 bisociation 36 Björk 104 Black, Joseph 26 ‘black swan’ events 307, 310 Bletchley Park 180, 296 Bloom, Nick 91, 92, 93 Boeing 69, 72, 162, 165, 192, 238 Bohr, Niels 104, 118, 159 Boltsmann, Ludwig 188 Boston Consulting Group 204 Botha, P.W. 114 Bowie, David 107 Boyer, Herbert 243 Boyle, Robert 232 Brahe, Tycho 36, 229, 292 brain 166, 246–8, 299–300 collective 299, 300–1 whole brain emulations (‘ems’) 248–9, 341 brain drains 197 brain-to-machine interfaces 247–8 Branson, Richard 71 Brattain, Walter 182 Brazil 266–7, 268, 279 breakthrough organisations 294–9 breakthrough problems 46–73, 77, 86, 98, 222, 234, 250, 301 breakthroughs 2–5, 27–8, 32–7, 41, 129, 152, 156 and expedition novelty 333 hostility to 187 medical 58–60 missing 175 near-misses 160 nuclear power 145 price of 87–98 and short-termism 192 slowdown of 87, 94 society's reaction to 216 and universities 204 see also ‘Eureka’ moments breast cancer 94 Brexit referendum 2016: 208 Brin, Sergey 319, 326 Britain 24, 146, 259, 283, 297 see also United Kingdom British Telecom 196 Brunel, Isambard Kingdom 67 Brunelleschi 232 Bruno, Giordano 216 Buddhism 108, 175, 264–5, 340 Buhler, Charlotte 188–9 Buhler, Karl 188–9 ‘burden of knowledge’ effect 154–65, 175, 178, 235, 338 bureaucracy 198–87, 280–1 Bush, George W. 211 Bush, Vannevar 168, 314–15, 317 business start-ups 95–6 Cage, John 104 Callard, Agnes 111 Caltech 184 Cambridge University 75, 76, 124, 235–6, 257, 294–6 canals 67 cancer 57–61, 76, 93–4, 131, 234, 245, 318 research 59–61 capital and economic growth 88 gray 192, 196 human 275, 277 capitalism 36, 111–13, 186, 189, 191–8 CAR-Ts see chimeric antigen receptor T-cells carbon dioxide emissions 220–1 Cardwell's Law 283 Carey, Nessa 244 Carnap, Rudolf 189 Carnarvon, Lord 153 cars 289 electric 71 flying 71 Carter, Howard 153 Carter, Jimmy 58 Carthage 3, 43 Cartright, Mary 163 CASP see Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction Cassin, René 135 Catholic Church 206, 230 Cavendish Laboratory 76, 294 Cell (journal) 234 censorship 210–11 Census Bureau (US) 78 Centers for Disease Control 212 Cerf, Vint 253 CERN 118, 233, 239, 252, 296 Chain, Ernst 52, 60, 124 Champollion, Jean-François 155 Chang, Peng Chun 135 change 10–13, 18–19, 24 rapid 30, 32 resistance to 222 slowdown 85 chaos theory 163 Chaplin, Charlie 104 Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de 300 Charpentier, Emmanuelle 244, 256 chemistry 49, 56, 104, 117, 118, 124, 149–50, 159, 241, 244 chemotherapy 57 Chicago 10 chicken cholera 46 chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CAR-Ts) 58, 61 China 15, 25, 71–2, 111, 112, 138, 208, 213, 216, 255–64, 265, 266, 267, 268, 275, 277, 279, 280, 283, 284–5, 312, 313, 314, 319, 328 Han 259, 260 Ming 284, 308, 309 Qing 260 Song 24, 259–60, 306 Tang 259–60 Zhou 259 Christianity 108, 303–4, 340 Church, George 245 cities 270–2, 308–9, 340 civilisation collapse 42–4 decay 187 cleantech 195 climate change 219–21, 284, 313–14, 338 clinical trials 218 cliodynamics 339 coal 23, 24, 26, 80, 220 Cocteau, Jean 101 cognitive complexity, high 332–3 cognitive diversity 281–3 Cognitive Revolution 252 Cohen, Stanley N. 243, 244 collective intelligence 339 collectivism 282 Collison, Patrick 117, 272 colour 75 Coltrane, John 104 Columbian Exchange 177 Columbus 38 comfort zones, stepping outside of 334 communism 111, 133, 134, 173, 217, 284 companies creation 95–6 numbers 96–7 competition 87, 283 complacency 221–2 complexity 161–7, 178, 204, 208, 298, 302, 329 high cognitive 332–3 compliance 205–6 computational power 128–9, 168, 234, 250 computer games 107 computers 166–7, 240, 253 computing 254 see also quantum computing Confucianism 133, 259 Confucius 24, 108, 109, 282 Congressional Budget Office 82 connectivity 272 Conon of Samos 4 consciousness 248, 340 consequences 328–9 consolidation, age of 86 Constantine 303 convergence 174, 311–12 Copernicus 29, 30, 41, 152, 171, 229, 232, 292 copyright 195 corporations 204–5 cosmic background microwave radiation 117, 181 cotton weaving, flying shuttle 24–5 Coulomb, Charles-Augustin de 74–5 counterculture 106 Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic 13, 14, 15, 55, 86, 113–14, 193, 202, 208, 212, 218, 251–2, 263, 283–4, 297–8, 309, 318, 327 vaccine 125, 245 Cowen, Tyler 13, 82, 94–5, 221 cowpox 47 creativity 188, 283 and artificial intelligence 236 crisis in 108 decrease 106–8 and universities 203 Crete 43 Crick, Francis 119, 296 CRISPR 243, 244, 251, 255–8, 299 Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) 224–6, 228 Cronin, Lee 242 crop yields 92–3 cultural diversity 281–3 cultural homogenisation 177 cultural rebellion 106–7 Cultural Revolution 114, 305 culture, stuck 106 Cunard 67 Curie, Marie 104, 144, 203, 289–90, 332 Daniels, John T. 62–3 Daoism 259 dark matter/energy/force 338 DARPA see Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Darwin, Charles 34, 35–6, 37–8, 41, 77, 109, 118, 171, 289 Darwin, Erasmus 35 data 233 datasets, large 28 Davy, Sir Humphrey 149, 150 Debussy, Claude 100–1 decision-making, bad 43–4 Declaration of Independence 1776: 137 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen 1789: 137 DeepMind 225–9, 296 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 315 democracy 111–12 Deng Xiaoping 261 deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) 119, 223–4, 243, 251, 255, 339 DNA sequencing 56 Derrida, Jacques 109 Deutsch, David 126, 203 Diaghilev, Sergei 99–101 Diamond, Jared 42 Digital Age 180 digital technology 241–2, 243 diminishing returns 87, 91, 94, 97, 118, 123, 126, 130–1, 150, 161, 169, 173, 222, 250, 276, 285, 301 Dirac, Paul 159–60 disruption 34, 96, 109, 119, 157 diversity, cultural 281–3 DNA see deoxyribonucleic acid Dorling, Danny 171 Doudna, Jennifer 244, 251, 256 Douglas, Mary 290 Douthat, Ross 14, 106 drag 65 Drake equation 306 Drezner, Daniel 214 drones, delivery 71, 72 Drucker, Peter 189 drugs 55–7, 124, 235 Eroom's Law 55, 57, 61, 92–3, 119, 161, 234, 245, 338 and machine learning 234 research and development 55–7, 61, 92–4, 119, 161, 172–3, 217–18, 234, 245, 315, 338 see also pharmaceutical industry Duchamp, Marcel 103, 171 DuPont 184 Dutch East India Company 34 Dyson, Freeman 120 dystopias 305–8 East India Company 34 Easter Island 42–3 Eastern Europe 138 ecocides 42–3 economic growth 240, 272, 273, 316 endogenous 94 and ideas 88, 89–92, 95 process of 87–8 slowdown 82, 83, 84, 85, 178 economics 87–9, 98, 339, 340 contradictions of 87 Economist, The (magazine) 188 Edelman annual trust barometer 209 Edison, Thomas 183–4, 286–9, 290, 293 education 127, 277, 324–8 Einstein, Albert 11, 29, 74, 77, 104, 109, 117, 119, 124, 159–60, 203, 332 Eisenstein, Elizabeth 231 Eldredge, Niles 30 electric cars 71 electricity 11, 74–7, 81, 286–7, 289 electromagnetic fields 76 electromagnetic waves 75, 76 elements (chemical) 149–50 Elizabeth II 144–5 employment 204–5 Encyclopædia Britannica 97, 128, 155 ‘End of History’ 112 energy 337–8, 341–2 availability 85 use per capita 85 see also nuclear power engineering 243 England 25, 144–5, 309 Englert, François 118 Enlightenment 130, 136–40, 252 see also Industrial Enlightenment; neo-Enlightenment Eno, Brian 295 entrepreneurship, decline 96 epigenetics 164 epigraphy 236–7 epistemic polarisation 210 Epstein, David 334 Eratosthenes 5 Eroom's Law 55, 57, 61, 92–3, 119, 161, 234, 245, 338 ethical issues 256–7 Euclid 3, 304 ‘Eureka’ moments 2–5, 35, 36–7, 129, 163 Europe 95, 247, 258–60, 268, 268, 271, 283, 304, 308 European Space Agency 71 European Union (EU) 206, 216, 262, 266 Evans, Arthur 153 evolutionary theory 30, 35–6 expedition novelty 333 experimental spaces 296–8 Expressionism 104 Facebook 34, 159, 170, 197 Fahrenheit 232 failure, fear of 335 Faraday, Michael 75 FCC see Future Circular Collider FDA see Food and Drug Administration Federal Reserve (US) 82 Feigenbaum, Mitchell 163 fermentation 49 Fermi, Enrico 143, 159, 306 Fermi Paradox 306 Fernández-Armesto, Felipe 109 fertility rates 269 Feynman, Richard 77, 166, 332 film 104, 106–7, 108, 115 financialism 191–8, 206–7, 214, 217, 219 Firebird, The (ballet) 99–100 ‘first knowledge economy’ 25–6 First World War 54, 99, 104, 187, 188–9 Fisk, James 182 Fleming, Alexander 38, 52, 60, 332 flight 36, 62–6, 68–70, 71, 335 Flint & Company 64 flooding 220, 284 Florey, Howard 52, 60, 124, 332 Flyer, the 62–4, 66, 72 Foldit software 225 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 55, 60, 93, 212 food supply 81 Ford 34, 253 Ford, Henry 68, 104, 219 Fordism 81 Foucault, Michel 110 Fraenkel, Eduard 124 France 49–51, 54, 64, 67, 95, 279, 309, 332 franchises 31 Franklin, Benjamin 119, 211 Frederick the Great 292 French Revolution 137, 275 Freud, Sigmund 34, 36, 77, 104, 171, 188, 190, 216 frontier 278–9, 283–4, 302, 310–11 Fukuyama, Francis 111–12 fundamentalism 213 Future Circular Collider (FCC) 239 futurology 44 Gagarin, Yuri 70 Galen 303 Galileo 206, 231, 232, 291, 322 Galois, Évariste 159 GDPR see General Data Protection Regulation Gell-Mann, Murray 77 gene editing 243–4, 251, 255–8 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 206 General Electric (GE) 33, 184, 265, 288, 333 General Motors 289 Generation Z 86 genes 223–4 genetic engineering 243–4, 251, 253, 255–8 genetic science 163–4, 202 genius 26 genome, human 119, 202, 244, 255–7, 296, 313 genome sequencing 243–4 germ theory of disease 50–1, 53 Germany 54, 95, 96, 279, 283, 292, 332 Gesamtkunstwerk 99 Gibson, William 241 Glendon, Mary Ann 135 global warming 147 globalisation 177 Go 226–7 Gödel, Kurt 41, 168 Goldman Sachs 197 Goodhart's Law 199 Google 34, 85, 185, 197, 240, 272, 318 20 per cent time 319–20 Google Glass 241 Google Maps 86 Google Scholar 116 Google X 294 Gordon, Robert 13, 83, 94–5 Gouges, Olympe de 137 Gould, Stephen Jay 30 Gove, Michael 208 government 205, 207, 214, 216, 252, 267–8, 297 funding 185–6, 249, 252, 314–19, 321 GPT language prediction 234, 236 Graeber, David 13–14, 111 grants 120, 185–6, 195, 202, 316, 317, 319, 321–3 gravitational waves 117–18, 119 Great Acceleration 309–10 Great Convergence 255–301, 339 Great Disruption 96 Great Enrichment (Great Divergence) 23, 26, 258 Great Exhibition 1851: 293, 309 Great Stagnation Debate 13–14, 16, 17, 45, 72, 82–3, 87, 94–6, 129, 150, 240, 279, 338 Greenland 42 Gropius, Walter 103 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 82, 90, 128, 278, 318 GDP per capita 23, 78, 82 growth cultures 25 growth theory, endogenous 88–9, 94 Gutenberg, Johannes 36 Guzey, Alexey 200, 322 Haber, Fritz 332 Haber-Bosch process 289 Hadid, Zaha 152 Hahn, Otto 144 Hamilton, Margaret 316 Harari, Yuval Noah 114–15, 236 Harris, Robert 307 Harvard Fellows 200 Harvard, John 156 Harvey, William 34, 291–2 Hassabis, Demis 229, 233 Hayek, Friedrich 189 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 36 Heisenberg, Werner 41, 159, 168, 332 heliocentric theory 5, 29, 118, 232, 304 helium 145 Hendrix, Jimi 105 Henry Adams curve 85 Hero of Alexandria 39 Herper, Matthew 55 Hertz, Heinrich 76 Herzl, Theodor 188 Hesse, Herman 307 Hieron II, king of Syracuse 1–2 Higgs, Peter 118 Higgs boson 117–18, 119, 239 Hinduism 133 Hiroshima 144 Hitler, Adolf 138, 188 Hodgkin, Dorothy 124, 332 Hollingsworth, J.

Icehenge by Kim Stanley Robinson

Buckminster Fuller, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, double helix, Easter island, gravity well, Kim Stanley Robinson

Despite my workouts I felt heavy, and the blazing sun stunned me. It seemed the sky burned. And the blue — that color doesn’t exist on Mars, but I felt that there was a part of my brain that was made to recognize sky blue. Brief images of our tour: Madeleine led me up trails from Macchu Pichu; we laughed at the solemn statues of Easter Island; a tour guide deferred to my knowledge of some site or other. Though I felt a dreamlike recognition for Earth’s ruins from my years of study, I still clumped around as wide-eyed and rubber-necked as the rest of our group. We looked like asteroid miners in Burroughs, I am sure. Bigger diatom: at Angkor Wat one evening, Madeleine and I crawled over the crumbling temples under smeary twinkling stars.

…

“The academic scientists have also ignored all signs indicating Icehenge’s extreme age, so that they may explain it as an artifact of modern civilization. They find these explanations preferable to the one most clearly indicated by the facts — for all that we find points to the existence of a prehistoric space technology; evidence of it lies scattered over the Earth from Stonehenge to Easter Island. Icehenge was built by that antediluvean culture, whose language was Sanskrit, and whose spaceship designs can be found on Mayan temple walls. Over the years the ice liths have become pitted with age (see photos), and one has even been struck by a meteorite, an event that almost defies probability, and indicates the passing of eons.”

…

Forty-five years of learning to gauge how fast the ship is moving by watching coconuts pass by; memorizing the distances between islands; reading the stars, and the weather; lying at the bottom of the ship during cloudy nights, and feeling the pattern of the swells to determine the ship’s direction… I think back to the hand to mouth times of our brief partnership, and I see that he has, perhaps, found what he wants to do. Occasionally I get a note from Fiji, Samoa, Oahu. Once I got one from Easter Island, with a picture of one of the statues included. The note said, “And this one’s not a fake!” That’s the only clue I’ve gotten that he knows what I’m doing. So I stayed on Ganymede and lived in dormitories, and worked at the atmosphere station. My way of life had been learned in the years with my father; it was all I knew, and I kept to the pattern.

Notes From an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back by Mark O'Connell

Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, California gold rush, carbon footprint, Carrington event, clean water, Colonization of Mars, conceptual framework, cryptocurrency, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Donner party, Easter island, Elon Musk, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, Jeff Bezos, life extension, lock screen, low earth orbit, Marc Andreessen, Mars Society, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, New Urbanism, off grid, Peter Thiel, post-work, Sam Altman, Silicon Valley, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, the built environment, yield curve

By the time the first Europeans arrived in 1722, soil degradation and deforestation had caused a total collapse, and the population of the island was down from its peak of ten thousand to a few hundred. Caroline was convinced, she said, that what had happened on Easter Island was what was happening right now, what we were doing to ourselves. Our whole planet, she said, was Easter Island. Here we were, she said, doggedly persisting in the practice of our idolatrous consumerism, heedlessly continuing in the way of life we knew to be causing total ecological collapse, knowing full well the gravity of its consequences, persisting until the last tree was gone, until the soil could no longer support life.

…

She had made it, she said, using the materials and techniques that would have been employed by a Neolithic craftsperson, had there been any requirement for smartphone cases in the Neolithic era. One evening, Caroline told me about how she’d recently become preoccupied to the point of obsession with Easter Island. She was fascinated in particular, she said, with the idea that the demise of the once-thriving island civilization formed an uncanny reflection of our own particular impasse. There was a theory, she said—albeit one that had been fiercely contested by many historians—that the heads themselves, the giant humanoid constructions known as moai for which the island was primarily known, had been a major cause of the civilization’s collapse.

The Switch: How Solar, Storage and New Tech Means Cheap Power for All by Chris Goodall

3D printing, additive manufacturing, carbon tax, clean tech, decarbonisation, demand response, Easter island, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy transition, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, gigafactory, Haber-Bosch Process, hydrogen economy, Internet of things, Ken Thompson, low interest rates, M-Pesa, Negawatt, off grid, Peter Thiel, rewilding, Russell Ohl, smart meter, standardized shipping container, Tim Cook: Apple, wikimedia commons

Nevertheless we could, at least in theory, get a substantial fraction of the world’s total energy need from biomass, either by burning it for electricity or by turning it into combustible gas for heating. But should we do this? Most experts are strongly opposed to increased use of plant matter and food for energy. The serious risk is that humankind would simply do what the Easter Islanders appear to have done, chopping down all the trees on the island for fuel and for other purposes, leaving a barren, unproductive landscape. Rich tropical rainforests are particularly good at capturing solar energy through photosynthesis. But if we cut trees down, and do not replace them, not only will we eventually run out of fuel but we will also have reduced the planet’s ability to store the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels.

…

But if we cut trees down, and do not replace them, not only will we eventually run out of fuel but we will also have reduced the planet’s ability to store the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels. One of the side benefits of photosynthesis, of course, is ‘carbon capture’ as plants consume the CO2 to help build their branches and leaves. We don’t have to make the same mistake as on Easter Island; we can carefully manage plantations so that we sow plants and trees to replace the amount cut down. We could start to farm the forests of the world on an unprecedented scale. It might be sustainable, at least in theory. Virtually nobody wants to do this. Our global experience has been that trying to use the products of photosynthesis for energy causes serious problems.

…

Index A Abramovitz, Yosef 64 absorption chilling 146 acetogens 242–3 Actinomyces 215 Africa food production 134 solar power 60–4 see also individual countries AGL 7 agriculture pumping operations 56–7 UK 226–7 Ainsworth, David 197–8, 199 air, carbon capture 249–54 air travel 224–5 algae 244–5 Algenol 245–6 alkanes 223 aluminium 108 American Physical Society 252 amine absorption 250 ammonia 229–30 anaerobic digestion (AD) 5, 131, 132, 135–41 Andasol 117 Andhra Pradesh 54 Apple 66, 67, 108 Arcelor Mittal 155, 243 archaea 234–5 Argonne National Laboratory 194 Arriba 154 artificial photosynthesis 246–9 asphalt 153 Atacama desert 59 Audi 232 Austin, Texas 53 Australia domestic electricity consumption 260 tracking 96 B bacteria 247–9 Bangladesh 16–17 banks funding solar 105, 106–7 interest rates 98–100 solar power predictions 50–1 batteries 5–6, 173, 240 car batteries 190–2 cost declines 44, 173, 176–9, 256 and demand charges 192–3 domestic 57, 171, 181–5 drones 185–7 flow batteries 174, 201–3, 206 grid storage 44, 187–90, 206–7, 219–20 lithium air 198–9 lithium ion 173–96, 199–201, 210 lithium sulphur 197–8 long term targets 194–5 PV plus battery 199–201 and time-of-use-pricing 162 24M 179–80 zinc-air batteries 201, 203–4 Becquerel, Edmond 74 behind the meter schemes 107, 108 Belgium demand response 152 liquid hydrocarbons 243 Bickl, Thomas 85, 86–90 biochar 225 biofuels see liquid fuels biogas Electrochaea 233–6 Tropical Power 134–41 see also carbon dioxide; methane biological methanation 233–8 biomass 13, 14, 15, 131–4, 142–6, 256 power to gas 233–8, 240 storing liquid hydrocarbons 220, 221–7 Tropical Power 135–42 Bishop, Pete 185–9 Bissell, David 200 Bloch, Mathias 181–2 Bloomberg 35, 42, 53, 60, 178 blue-green algae 244–5 Boardman, Brenda 164–5 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) 18, 19, 20, 176, 177, 178–9 BP 12–13 Bradford, Travis 22, 48–50 Brandao, Rafael 60 Brazil biofuels 223 pylon lines 120 solar electricity prices 3, 60 Breakthrough Energy Coalition 214, 244 Britwind 130–1 Bruce, Peter 198–9 Buffett, Warren 177 Burundi 64 Butler, Nick 41–2, 44 BYD 176–7 C Calgary 253 California demand response 156–8 domestic electricity storage 184 grid storage 201 power to gas 233 renewable energy 35 solar power cost 3 time-of-use-pricing 162, 163 CAM (Crassulacean Acid Metabolism) plants 135–41, 142–5 Cambridge Architectural Research 166 Canada air capture of CO2 253 demand response 154 grid batteries 202 time-of-use-pricing 159 carbon dioxide (CO2) air capture 213, 249–54 artificial photosynthesis 248 cement plants 238–40 diesel generators 149 and microbes 213, 215 plants 133, 135, 137 power to gas 232, 233 using to make liquid hydrocarbons 241, 243, 244–5, 246, 256 Carbon Engineering 253 carbon monoxide 241–2, 243 carbon tax 239, 253 cars component manufacturers 127–8 energy usage 11 hydrogen 228 PV film 89–90 see also electric cars Case, Chris 68–71, 73–4, 79–83 cement factories 238–40, 245 Chiang, Yet-Ming 179–80 Chile concentrating solar power 119 pylon lines 120 solar electricity prices 3 solar power 59–60 China coal-fired power stations 35 energy demand 11, 12 liquid hydrocarbons 243 solar power 24, 53–4, 66 and Zimbabwe 64 Chu, Steven 230 CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide) 90 Citibank 51 Climeworks 250–3 Clinton, Hillary 54 Clostridium Autoethanogenum 242–3 coal 40 Germany 46 Nigeria 60–1 coal-fired power stations Chile 59 China 11, 35 cost 122 demand 36–7 in developing world 58 India 55, 56, 58 move away from 7 Coal India Limited 58 Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) plants 34–5, 37, 39, 40, 236 Committee on Climate Change (CCC) 47–8 compound growth 30–1 compressed air storage 207–8 concentrating solar power (CSP) 116, 117–21, 256 Connolly, Steve 154 conversion efficiency 73, 76–7, 78–9, 80 Cook, Tim 67 Cool Planet 225–6, 241 Cornwall 104–5, 206 cows 139–40 Crabtree, George 194, 195 Crescent Dunes 118 cyanobacteria 244–5 D demand charges 192–3 demand response 149–55, 166, 232, 237–8 and energy efficiency 163 in the home 156–8 what happens next 158–63 Denmark power to gas 233–4, 235 solar electricity costs 45 wind power 116, 124, 234 Deutsche Bank 51, 59, 176 diesel generators 57, 60, 121, 185, 199 demand response 148–9, 151 Hawaii 161, 199 Dinorwig 205 dispatchable power 199–200 Drax power station 131, 132 drones 185–7 Dubai 52 E Easter Island 133 Easton, Roger L 2 Einstein, Albert 75 Eisenberger, Peter 3, 19–20 electric cars 12, 156, 158, 224–5 batteries 173–8, 195 as grid backup 190–2 electricity 255 cutting power demand in the home 156–8 demand and supply 4, 5, 37–9, 147, 150–1, 215, 216–20 demand charges 192–3 demand response 149–55, 158–63, 166, 232, 237–8 distribution costs 55 domestic consumption 259–60 lighting 164–6 microgrids 62–3 power to gas 231–40 prices 37–8, 107, 257 storage 4–6, 43, 44, 173–254 time-of-use-pricing 158–63 transmission networks 58, 59, 61 see also solar power Electrochaea 233–40 electrolysis 220, 227–30, 231–40, 252–3 electrons 74–6, 78–9, 201 Enbala 154 Energiesprong 167–71 energy demand for 9–13, 144 and power 259–60 energy efficiency and demand response 163 insulation 167–72 lighting 165–6 Engie 7 Enterococcus 215 Entrade 145–6 Eos 203–4 EPR 15 ethanol 223, 243–5 Euphorbia Tirucalli 135, 137 experience curve 18–19, 33 batteries 175, 176–9, 187, 210 inverters 97 photovoltaics 22, 26, 30–1, 33 transistors 31–2 wind power 123 Exxon 3, 19–20 F Facebook 185–7 Farmer, Doyne 33 Fischer-Tropsch process 223, 252 Florida 245–6 flow batteries 174, 201–3, 206 food 132–4 Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) 142–3 fossil fuels 27–9, 33–40 see also coal; gas; oil France demand response 152, 155 gas grid 231–2 nuclear power 23 Fraunhofer Institute 3–4, 46–7, 104 Fritts, Charles 74 fullerene 72 G gas 7, 40 grid 231–2 power to gas 6, 213–15, 231–40 see also biogas; methane; syngas gas-fired power stations 150–1 ammonia 229 cost 4, 122 financing 34–5, 36–7, 39, 40, 99 power to gas 236, 238 US 35 gasification 132, 145–6 Gates, Bill 1, 6, 208, 214–15, 244, 255 Gebald, Christoph 252, 253 gene sequencing 18–19 geothermal 59, 108 Germany domestic electricity storage 181–5 electricity demand and supply 215, 217, 218–20, 229–30, 237 electricity price 101, 260 electricity production 260 gas grid 228–9, 231–2 hydrogen 228–9 oil storage 230 power to gas 232 solar power cost 3–4, 46–7 solar power funding 104, 106, 107 wind power 124 Ghent 243 gigawatt hours 260 gigawatts 259, 260 GM 176–7, 198 Google 66, 225 governments 6, 189 solar power tenders 51–3, 54–5, 59, 60 subsidies 50, 107–8, 126 GranBio 223 graphene 187 Greencoat Capital 109 grid integration costs 55–6 grid storage flow and zinc-air batteries 201–4 pumped hydro 205–7 PV plus battery 199–201 South Korea 204 GTM Research 96–7, 193, 201 H Haber Bosch process 229 Hafenbradl, Doris 238–9 Handelsbanken 105 Hawaii 161–2, 184, 199–201 heat pumps 12, 167 heating 12, 167 Heliatek 84–90 Helio100 120–1 heliostats 117–18 Henderson, Bruce 18, 20 Highview Power 208–10 Hinwil 250–1 Hinkley Point 15 Hofstetter, Dominic 233–6 hospitals 148, 149 houses batteries 57, 181–5 heating 12, 167 insulation 167–72 lighting 12, 164–6, 169 Solar House 57–8 see also residential PV installations Hutcheson, Dan 32 hydro-electric power 14, 15, 141–2, 159 pumped hydro 204–7 hydrogen 5, 213–15 conversion to methane 221, 231–40, 256 using electrolysis to generate 212, 220, 227–31, 252–3, 256 Hydrogenics 235 Hymind floating turbines 125–6 I Ibbenbeuren 229 Iceland 108 IKEA 19, 66, 166 Imergy 202 India coal-fired power stations 55–6, 58 solar electricity prices 3 Solar Houses 57–8 solar power 24, 53–8 insulation 167–72 Intel 20 interest rates 98–100, 101–2 International Energy Agency (IEA) 42–3, 45–6 inverters 91–5, 96, 97 investment 4, 100–14, 115, 214 corporate 66–7, 108 Investment and Pensions Europe 102 ITM Power 228–9 J Jelley, Nick 25 Joule Unlimited 244–5 K Kaua’i 199–200 Keith, David 253 Kennedy, Danny 42 Kenya 62–4, 145 Tropical Power 134–42 kilowatt hours 259 kilowatts 259–60 Kisii 62–3 Kiwi Power 149 Klein, Nina 71–3, 74, 85–6 Kohn, Rick 213, 215, 246 KPMG 54–7 L Lafond, Francois 33 Laikipia 135–41 Lancashire County Council 102, 103 Lanzatech 241–4 Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) 46, 65 lead 83 learning curve 19, 23 LEDs 165–6, 169 Leggett, Jeremy 50 Lemnacae 139 levelised cost 98–101 LeVine, Steve 180 Liebreich, Michael 178 lighting 12, 164–6, 169 Lightsail 207–8 lignite 46 liquid air storage 208–10 liquid fuels 5, 6, 213–15 from biomass 220, 221–7 using microbes 221, 240–6, 256–7 lithium air batteries 198–9 lithium ion batteries 173–6, 192–5, 210 car batteries 190–2 cost declines 176–9 domestic 181–5 energy density 195 large-scale 185–90, 199–201 lithium supply 195–6 recycling 195, 196 24M 179–80 lithium sulphur batteries 197–8 Louisiana 226 M M-Pesa 63 MacKay, David 259 Madhya Pradesh 54 Manchester 39, 209 Mason, Mike 137–42, 143, 144 megawatts 259 Mermans, Pieter-Jan 38, 149–53, 155 Meteo 91 methane 131, 135, 137, 213–16 power to gas 221, 231–40, 256 methyl ammonium lead halides 80 microbes 212–15 artificial photosynthesis 247–9 making liquid hydrocarbons 221, 240–6, 256 power to gas 233–40 microgrids 62–3 mobile phones 61–2, 63–4, 185 Modi, Narendra 53 Monbiot, George 226 Moody’s 173, 193 Moore, Gordon 20 Moore’s Law 20–1, 32 Morocco 116, 119–20 Moylan, Andy 111–13 multi-junction cells 76–7 Musk, Elon 175 N Naam, Ramez 49–50 Nelson, Jenny 75 Netherlands home improvements 169, 170–1 storage in car batteries 191 Nevada 53, 118 New Mexico 244–5 NexWafe 78, 79 Nigeria 60–2 Nissan 176 Nissan LEAF 156 Nourse, Richard 109, 122 nuclear power stations 6, 15 costs 22–3, 48, 122 O Oahu 161–2 O’Dea, Christopher 103 offshore wind turbines 15, 124–6 Ohl, Russell 75 OhmConnect 156–8 oil, storage 230, 240–1 oil companies 6, 7–8 oligomer cells 84–90 onshore wind turbines 22, 122–5 Ontario 159, 202 Open Energi 153 Opuntia ficus-indica 135, 136, 138 Oregon 7, 223–4, 225 organic molecules 71–3, 74 organic photovoltaics 84–90 Osinbajo, Yemi 60–1 Ouarzazate 119 oversizing 91–5 Oxford Photovoltaics 68, 79–84 Oxis 197–8, 240 oxygen 234 P Palmer, Jason 166 Panasonic 175, 187–9 paper mills 152 passivation 78–9 Peabody Energy 40 peak shaving 193 see also time-of-use-pricing Pencil Cactus 135, 137 pension funds 4, 101–4, 106–7, 109–11, 112 pentacene 71 perovskites 68, 79–84 Peterhead 125–6 petrol 240 photons 74–5 photosynthesis artificial 246–9 CAM plants 135–7 photovoltaics, electricity prices 3, 45, 46, 51–3, 59, 60 photovoltaics (PV) 5–6, 8, 42–3, 74–6, 116, 255–8 and alternative sources of energy 33–40 availability 34, 55–6, 94–5, 211–12 Brazil 60 Burundi 64 capital and levelised costs 98–101 Chile 59–60 corporate investment 65–7 cost declines 1, 2–4, 21–33, 42, 45, 46–51, 123–4, 254 daily curve 90–6, 147, 260–1 experience curve 22, 26, 30–33 films 84–90 financing 4, 98–114 Germany 217, 218–20 grid integration costs 56 India 53–8 Kenya 62–4 Nigeria 60–2 oversizing 91–5 and pension funds 101–4 predictions 41–51 PV plus battery 199–201 S curve 25–6 system costs 96–7 and time-of-use-pricing 160–3 UK 215, 216–17 USA 65 Vanguard 1 2 Zimbabwe 64 see also solar cells; solar farms; solar panels PJM 155, 200–1 plants see biomass potassium hydroxide 253 power 259–60 power purchase agreements (PPAs) 51–3, 65, 101 power to gas (P2G) 231–40, 256 Powerhive East Africa Ltd 62–3 PowerOasis 185–90 Preqin 111–13 Prickly Pear 135, 136, 138 Primus Power 199 private electricity generators 148–9 pumped hydro 204–7 Punjab 54 pyrolysis 225–6 Q quantum dots 73 Quarry Battery 205–7 R Raizen 223 Red Rock Biofuels 223–4, 225, 241 renewable energy 13–15 see also geothermal; hydro-electric power; solar power; wind power residential PV installations investment 66, 100–1, 107, 110–11 PV film 89 storage 181–5 system costs 96–7 REstore 38–9, 149–55, 158 Robertson, Andrew 103, 112 Rombouts, Jan-Willem 151, 152 Roulstone, Tony 23 Rudd, Amber 40 Russia 226 S S curve 25–6 Sabatier reaction 231 Sainsbury’s 66 Schellnhuber, John 41 Schmickler, Arno 168, 170, 171 Schneider Electric 157–8 Scotland carbon-neutral housing 171 drones 186–7 wind power 122 seawater 245–6 second glass problem 43 second half of the chessboard problem 30–1 semiconductors 18 Sermol, Peter 110–11 sewage farms 154 Shao, Vic 193 Shell 7–8, 41, 43, 223 Siemens 235, 243 silicon 68, 73, 75, 76, 84, 87–8, 195 efficiency 78–9 manufacturing techniques 77–9 tandem cells 81–4 Silicor 108 smart meters 157, 159 Smil, Vaclav 255, 257 Snaith, Henry 80, 81 SoCalGas 233 solar cells 69–70 efficiency 74–7, 78–9 from organic molecules 71–3 history 74–6 multi-junction 76–7 oligomers 84–90 passivation 78–9 perovskite 79–84 silicon 76 solar energy 9–10 solar farms Brazil 60 China 66 costs 48–51, 97 electricity prices 3, 45, 46, 51–3, 54, 55, 59, 60 financing 4, 66, 98–114 and hydro-electric dams 141–2 India 54, 55, 57 land needed for 15–18 oversizing 91–5 shading 141 tracking 95–6 US 3 Zimbabwe 64 solar fuels 213–15 Solar Houses 57–8 solar panels Chris Case 68–71, 73–4 cost declines 4, 21–2, 23–4, 49, 73–4, 77–9 daily curve 260–1 efficiency 76–7 history 74–6 lifetime of 114–15 manufacturing volumes 24 organic molecules 71–3 oversizing 91–5 perovskites 68, 79–84 technology improvements 68–97 tracking 91, 95–6 see also solar cells solar power 1–8, 13–14 concentrating solar power 117–21 see also photovoltaics SolarCity 66, 199 SolarReserve 119 Solexel 78, 79 Sonnen 181–5 Sony 179 South Africa blackouts 183 concentrating solar power 119–21 Fischer-Tropsch refineries 223 tracking 96 South Korea 204 Spain 117, 120 Spinetic 127–30 Sporomusa Ovata 247–8 Statoil 125–6 steelworks 242, 243–4, 245 Stellenbosch University 120 storage 4–6, 13, 43, 44, 94, 104, 116, 173, 210 air capture of CO2 249–54 artificial photosynthesis 246–9 compressed and liquid air storage 207–10 concentrating solar power 117–19, 121 as gas or liquids 220–54, 256–7 methane 135 need for long-term storage 216–20 pumped hydro 204–7 and time-of-use-pricing 162 see also batteries subsidies 50, 107–8, 126 SunEdison 54 SunShot 65 Swanson’s Law 21–2, 23–4 Switzerland 250–1 syngas 145, 223–4, 225, 252 system costs 96–7 T Taiwan 243 tandem cells 81–4 Tarmac 153 Telangana 54 terawatt hours 259, 260 terawatts 259 Tesla 127, 175 batteries 5, 176, 177, 178 Gigafactory 175–6, 177, 180 Powerall 162, 175, 181 Texas 123 Thiel, Peter 8, 208 time-of-use-pricing 158–63 tracking 91, 95–6 transistors 20–1, 31–2 trees see biomass Trina Solar 79, 115 Tropical Power 134–42, 145 24M 179–80 U UK biogas 236 biomass 145–6 daily solar power curve 260–1 demand response 152, 153, 154 electricity demand and supply 148, 164–5, 215, 216–18, 237 electricity price 4, 37–8, 101, 260 Energiesprong 170, 171 energy use 11–12 fossil fuel generation demand 36–7 funding 102–7, 108–10 gas-fired power stations 39 government bonds 101–2 insulation 167 land use 16, 17, 226–7 liquid air storage 208–10 nuclear power stations 23 oil storage 230, 240–1 pension funds 102–4, 106–7, 108–10 pumped hydro 205–7 seasonal deficit 211–12 solar costs 45, 47–8, 52 solar power 24, 36 subsidies 50, 108 time-of-use-pricing 159–60, 162 utility companies 7 willow coppicing 136 wind power 4, 15, 122–3, 124, 125–6, 130 Unilever 66, 108 United States (US) batteries 194, 240 biomass refining 223–4, 225–6 blackouts 183 demand charges 193 demand response 155, 156–8 domestic electricity consumption 260 domestic electricity storage 184 electricity price 3, 52–3 energy demand 11 gas-fired power stations 35, 40 government bonds 101–2 land use 17–18 large-scale grid storage 199–201 power to gas 232–3 solar power 24, 33, 54, 65 system costs 97 time-of-use-pricing 161–2 tracking 96 utility companies 7 wind power 33, 122, 123 United States Geological Service (USGS) 196 University of California, Berkeley 247–8 University of Dresden 84 University of New South Wales 79 utility companies 6, 7, 34–6 Utrecht 191 V van Beurden, Ben 41, 43, 258 vanadium 202–3 Vanguard 1 2 vertical wind turbines 127–30 W Wadebridge 160–1 Wales 226–7 Walmart 66, 67, 108 waste water treatment plants demand response 154 power to gas 233, 234–5 wave power 13, 14 weather forecasting 91, 141, 183 Weil, Bill 105–9 Werlte 232 West Country Renewables 104–5 Westmill Solar 102, 103 Williams, Gage 104–5, 106 Willis, Kathy 142 willow coppicing 136 wind power 5, 13, 14–15, 53, 116, 122–6, 256 Chile 59 cost declines 22 Denmark 116, 124, 234 Germany 124, 217, 218–20 UK 215, 216–17, 237 US 33 wind turbines 4, 123–5 Britwind 130–1 Hymind floating turbine 125–6 Spinetic 126–31 vertical turbines 127–30 wood 131, 132 see also biomass Wright, T.P. 19 Y Yang, Peidong 248–9 Z Zimbabwe, solar power 64 zinc-air batteries 201, 203–4 Zurich Federal Institute of Technology 250 ALSO AVAILABLE FROM PROFILE BOOKS Where Do Camels Belong?

Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet by Roger Scruton

An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, corporate social responsibility, demand response, Easter island, edge city, endowment effect, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, food miles, garden city movement, Garrett Hardin, ghettoisation, happiness index / gross national happiness, Herbert Marcuse, hobby farmer, Howard Zinn, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, market friction, Martin Wolf, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, precautionary principle, rent-seeking, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Sam Peltzman, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, tacit knowledge, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the market place, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, urban planning, urban sprawl, Vilfredo Pareto, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

However, it has been suggested that without a well-articulated temporal plan, or a satisfactory set of forward markets, market prices may not provide the correct signals and incentives.167 For market prices are fixed by what is currently available and by current demand for it, and they will not prevent a resource from being exhausted before a substitute has been found. For all we know there was a thriving market in trees on Easter Island. Optimists tell us that things are better for us now than they were for the people on Easter Island. For we do not merely find substitutes for scarce resources; we create them. Thus John V. Krutilla has argued that in the modern economy it is rare to find a direct substitute for some depleted resource, and far more normal to find an alternative to the process that required it.

…

Indeed, according to the theory of evolution, it is precisely the mistakes that cause the adaptation – only too late for those who make them. Jared Diamond has vividly described societies that have depleted their environmental resources and then, not slowly or gently, but suddenly and catastrophically, collapsed.68 Thus the Easter Islanders ignored the progressive deforestation of their island until it was impossible to survive there. Many people fear that we are all about to follow their example. The publicity release for Al Gore’s propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth began thus: ‘Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heatwaves beyond anything we have ever experienced.’

…

., ref1, ref2n, ref3n, ref4n Denmark, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Diamond, Jared, ref1, ref2 Dickens, Charles, ref1, ref2 discount rates, ref1 Dobson, Andrew, ref1n doomsday literature, ref1, ref2, ref3 Douglas-Home, Jessica, ref1 Douglas, Mary, ref1 Drucker, Peter, ref1n Durkheim, Émile, ref1, ref2 Durodié, Bill, ref1n Dutilleux, Henri, ref1 Dworkin, Ronald, ref1 Dyson, Freeman, ref1n Earth First!, ref1, ref2, ref3 Easter Island, ref1, ref2 Eastwood, John, ref1 Ebbesmeyer, Curtis, ref1n ecofascism, ref1 economic growth, see growth economics and the environment, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n economics of climate change, ref1, ref2 egalitarianism, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Ehrlich, Anne, ref1 Ehrlich, Paul, ref1, ref2, ref3 Eliot, T.

City Parks by Catie Marron

Berlin Wall, crony capitalism, Easter island, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fellow of the Royal Society, Frank Gehry, Golden Gate Park, the High Line, time dilation, urban sprawl

Drop your chocolate wrapper on the grass, and be sure it has not escaped the notice of a Worthy. Sometimes they suggest to me miniature Easter Island figures, but they are really Trieste entablatured. There are perhaps two score of them, by my last befuddled count, including one woman, and they are placed there to commemorate, in particular, their contributions to the cultural and intellectual distinction of their city. As it happens they do not look like a very merry lot. I smile hard at them often, but like their Easter Island confreres they seldom smile back. They include musicians, artists, poets, scholars, educationalists, a botanist (Tommasini himself, in a place of honor), Italo Svevo, and James Joyce (portrayed within a sort of bronze picture frame, perhaps to show that he was only a visitor with a passport . . .).

The Global Minotaur by Yanis Varoufakis, Paul Mason

active measures, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Easter island, endogenous growth, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, Hyman Minsky, industrial robot, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, negative equity, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, paper trading, Paul Samuelson, planetary scale, post-oil, price stability, quantitative easing, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, systematic trading, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, urban renewal, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

Undoubtedly, both nature and history are replete with such cycles. But not all crises can be understood as the passing phase of a regular cycle. Once in a while, a Crisis with a capital C strikes. And then the cycle ends, at least in its existing form. Take, for instance, the Easter Island civilization. Archaeologists tell us that it experienced many cyclical crises in its history. But alas, one big, whopping Crisis wiped it out: once Easter Islanders had chopped down their last tree, the ecological cum economic cycle that their activities had been subject to reached a tragic end. All that was left were the magnificent statues as constant reminders of the destructive and disruptive power of Crises.

…

However, in this tale, the crisis plays its usual redemptive role: once risk aversion has set in, only ‘good’ investment projects seek finance. This steadies the financiers’ nerves, confidence is restored and the cycle is given another whirl. However, once in a while the financial bubble inflates so much that its bursting leads to the cycle’s collapse – pretty much as the Easter Islanders’ volatile economic activity came to a crashing halt when the last tree was felled. When the dust settles, the whole economy lies in ruin, often unable to pick itself up, dust itself down and begin rebuilding.3 A well-used metaphor is apt: think of what happens as cars get safer: we tend to speed more.

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz

biofilm, Black Lives Matter, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, David Graeber, Easter island, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, it's over 9,000, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, mass immigration, megacity, off-the-grid, rent control, the built environment, trade route, urban planning, urban sprawl

Civilizations might cycle through a number of high-density urban phases and dispersal phases over the course of centuries. The collapse hypothesis was nearly dead when Jared Diamond published his popular book Collapse in 2005. Based mostly on anecdotal evidence from cultures like the Maya and Polynesians on Easter Island, he argues that societies “collapse,” or fail, when they engage in environmentally unsound practices. His argument played into a lot of myths about how cities work, including the idea that cultures are wiped out when their high-density settlements disappear. As we’ve seen with the cities in this book, urban abandonment does not mean some kind of cultural death.

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Immediately after Collapse came out, many archaeologists and anthropologists scrambled to correct misconceptions and errors in Diamond’s account. Anthropologists Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee published a volume called Questioning Collapse, an anthology of scholars who present hard data showing that Diamond’s idea of “collapse” was scientifically unsound. They argue that civilizations like the one on Easter Island were decimated by the political process of colonialism, not poor environmental practices. And when it comes to Mayan “collapse,” they point out that there are still millions of Mayans living in Mexico. Can a culture that still thrives really be said to have collapsed? Guy D. Middleton, an anthropologist who has spent his career studying social transformation, chimed in with a book called Understanding Collapse, in which he argued that there is never a single reason for abandonment.

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See also food dogs, 27 domestication, 26–33 as filtering process, 30–31 as self-reinforcing process, 29 symbolic structures and, 29 domesticity, 30–31, 40, 42, 51–58 domestic labor, women and, 51–58 domestic technologies, women and, 51–58 Domitian, 7, 136 Domuztepe, 73–75, 137, 216, 260 doorways, 31–32 drought, 6, 21, 64, 250, 258 Du Pratz, Le Page, 221 earthworks, 211 East Baray (reservoir), 162–63, 166, 168, 192, 197 Easter Island, 237 Eastern Woodlands tribes, 211 East Mound, 19–20, 22, 60, 62–63, 64, 65, 66–68, 74, 246 East St. Louis, Illinois, 9, 10, 207, 212, 228–33 Ebusus, 86 École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), 168, 184–85 Edwardsville, Illinois, 222 egalitarianism, 75 Egyptians, 86 Ellis, Steven, 105–6, 108–10 Emerald site, 222–23 Emerson, Tom, 244–45 engineering, 52 environmental crises, 5, 238, 239–40, 257–58 ancient, 256 fragmentation and, 249–50 modern, 256, 257 Envisioning Cahokia, 234 erect knotweed, 220 Eumachia, 95 Europe, executions in, 216–17 European colonialism, 217, 253 European Research Council, 152 Evans, Damian, 2–3, 160, 169, 178–79, 196–97, 200 city grids and, 155 lidar mapping and, 151–53, 167, 181, 185 excavation blocks, 229–32, 246–47 executions, 216–17 expansion, 256, 257 famine, 64 Fargher, Lane, 236 farming, 51, 54–55, 62, 72–73, 222 agricultural complexity, 73 in Angkor, 146–61 in Cahokia, 218–24, 251 in Çatalhöyük, 61, 73 development of, 27 harvesting, 219–22, 223 men and, 222 shock of agricultural life, 35 urbanism and, 54–55, 73 feasts, 221, 227 Ferguson, Missouri, 254 fertility, 215–16 fertility rituals, 244, 245 fertility symbols, 46–51 festivals, 157, 174, 215–16 in Angkor, 157, 174 figurines, 46–51, 56, 213, 214, 219, 220–21, 251 Fiorelli, Giuseppe, 129 fire, 246–47.

A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies by Matt Simon

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Anthropocene, biofilm, carbon footprint, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, decarbonisation, Easter island, epigenetics, food desert, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, microplastics / micro fibres, ocean acidification, precautionary principle, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, South China Sea, the built environment

Like astronomers can only estimate how many stars are in the sky, so too can oceanographers only estimate how many microplastics are in the sea— except the universe is mostly done making new stars, and humanity has just begun making microplastics. Oodles of particles are washing ashore too. A sampling of six beaches on Oahu found up to 160 microplastics per square foot of sand.10 They’re on the beaches of remote Easter Island and the Galapagos too.11 In the sands of even-more-remote Henderson Island, smack dab between New Zealand and South America, scientists found over 400 pieces of plastic debris per square foot.12 They also discovered that the particles are absorbing the sun’s energy and raising the temperature of the sand by more than four degrees Fahrenheit.13 This could have two huge consequences.

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Scientists have analyzed a trove of stashed-away plankton samples, collected off the coast of Scotland since the 1960s, and found a significant rise in microfiber contamination over the decades—a sad echo of Jennifer Brandon’s sediment samples.53 Others have taken water samples off Antarctica and found zooplankton tangled up in microfibers.54 Biologists not only find petroplankton and biological plankton mingling together in water samples taken from different depths but also find the particles mingling in the stomachs of captured zooplankton: baby salmon that (eventually) feed bears and humans, the crustaceans that feed fish and birds, the krill that feed whales.55 A survey in the South China Sea tested fish larvae, jellyfish, shrimp, and predatory worms and found microplastics in them all.56 Adult fish that feed on zooplankton, or on smaller fish that feed on zooplankton, then assume the particles: a sampling in the remote South Pacific turned up microplastics in 97 percent of fish species, including mahi-mahi, red snapper, and barracuda57—one foot-long Pacific chub was burdened with 104 pieces of plastic in its gut. It’s worth noting that the most contaminated fish were in the most remote waters, around Easter Island, where the South Pacific Gyre—the counterpart of the a v o ya g e o n t h e s y n t h e t i c s e a s North Pacific Gyre, which creates the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—accumulates plastic. Any size and shape and color of microplastic you can dream of, it’s out there, so a speck too big for one hunter becomes easy pickings for the next.

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See diethylstilbestrol detergents, 34 Díaz Sánchez, Laura, 159 DiBenedetto, Michelle, 43 diethylstilbestrol (DES), 143 digestive tract, 150–151 dinoflagellates, 60 dirt, 93–98 dispersing agents, detergents as, 34 drinking water, 105–110, 158 Dris, Rachid, 126, 128 drought, 89 dryers, 129 Dusza, Hanna, 145–146 earthworms, 93–94, 100 Easter Island, 56–57 economics, 17, 157–162 Ecuador, 104 EDC. See endocrine-disrupting chemicals egestion, 60 elections, 166–167 emissions, 17–18 Emmert, Emery, 90–91 Enck, Judith, 18, 167 endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDC), 6, 137–147. See also bisphenols; PFAS; phthalates epichlorohydrin, 133 equity, 165–166 Erdle, Lisa, 32, 50 Eriksen, Marcus, 13, 156 ethylene, 16, 19 exposure, 134 face masks, 128 farm animals, 103–105 fashion industry, 32, 158–159 fast fashion, 32, 158–159 fecal express, 60–63 Feit, Steven, 162 fertility, 140 fertilizers, 85–88, 87–90 fibrillation, 124 field greenhouses, 90–91 filament yarns, 37 film, 10 filter feeders, 5, 49, 74 filtration, 25–26, 33, 36, 157 fish animal feeds containing, 103 aquaculture and, 73–74 food chain and, 64–67 tires and, 77–80 translocation and, 70–74 fishing vessels, 46–48 fishmeal, 73–74 fissures, 95 flagella, 60 Flaws, Jodi, 138–144 fleece, 32–38, 124, 129 flock workers lung, 132 flooring, 126, 141 Flury, Markus, 100–102 flushable products, 39 Foley, Carolyn, 69 food chain/ food web, 53–54, 63–64 food deserts, 165–166 food dilution, 65–68 foods, estimates of consumption in, 109–110 formaldehyde, 22 Formosa Plastics, 29 fossil fuels, 7–8, 17 Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), 26 free radicals, 23 Frontier Logistics, 29 fungi, 99, 149–150 gastrointestinal issues, 150–151 Germany, 47, 86 237 238 index ghost netting, 46 Gilbreath, Alicia, 84 gills, 66–67 Gkoutselis, Gerasimos, 149–150 Glasgow, Scotland, 35 global plastic toxicity debt, 21 global warming, 44–45, 51, 61–62, 84–85 granulomas, 151–152 grasses, 98–99 gravity, 115 Great Lakes, 50, 107 Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 4, 45–46, 54, 155–156 Green, Dannielle, 82, 98–99 Green, Michael, 164 green spaces, 84 greenhouse gases, 17–18, 162 greenhouses, 90–91 groundwater, 4, 107 hair follicles, 151 HDPE.

The Limits of the Market: The Pendulum Between Government and Market by Paul de Grauwe, Anna Asbury

Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, conceptual framework, crony capitalism, Easter island, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, Honoré de Balzac, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kitchen Debate, means of production, Money creation, moral hazard, Paul Samuelson, price discrimination, price mechanism, profit motive, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Simon Kuznets, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, very high income

When there was a minor change in climate, the environment in which the Mayans lived was no longer capable of producing resources to sustain the population. This led to famine and wars between the different areas of the Mayan kingdom. The chaos and indiscriminate violence which ensued led to the collapse of their entire civilization in a relatively short period. The same pattern can be observed in the collapse of other civilizations, such as Easter Island. The question is whether such scenarios can repeat themselves on a worldwide scale.* At the moment we do not know the answer. It is certain, though, that the phenomenal material growth made possible by the market system leads to growing external costs in large areas of the world. So far we have not developed a mechanism to rein in that growth, so the distance between individual and collective rationality is continually growing worldwide.

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n debt ratios (ratio of government debt to GDP)  decentralized system –, ,  democracy/democratic institutions –, , ,  Denmark employer contribution and labour costs  labour costs, gross hourly f Diamond, J.  distribution/distribution problems , , –,  see also income distribution double-dip recession  Draghi, M.  East Asia  Easter Island  Eastern Europe, stagnation – East Germany technological stagnation  economic growth , f and equality trade-off  education , –, , b efficiency ,  and equality relationship f,  loss of  of production  redistribution at expense of –, f emission standards, negotiable – emotional and spiritual needs  employer contributions and labour costs in European Union f, f Engels, F. ,  environment (external limit) –,  environmental costs, external  environmental damage , ,  and emissions taxes –,  free markets and internalization of external costs – see also carbon dioxide emissions; global warming; pollution equality  and efficiency trade-off f,  see also income equality and economic growth trade-off equilibrium –, , , , ,  Estonia labour costs, gross hourly f euphoria in the market –,  Europe ,  continental b, ,  Eastern – emissions taxation – real wages increase and economic wellbeing  see also European Union; Northern Europe; Western Europe European Central Bank (ECB) , –, b European Commission – European Court of Justice  European Union  employer contributions and labour costs f, f labour costs, gross hourly f productivity, labour costs and public sector  Eurostar –b eurozone gross domestic product (GDP) in constant prices , f,  labour costs, gross hourly f social security  external costs –, , , , , ,  external effects  external limits of capitalism –, – banking system and external risk effects   INDEX environment (external limit) – financial markets (external limit) – global warming – herd effects in financial markets – public goods (external limit) – external limits of government – democracy – government action – externalities , ,  herd effects in financial markets  global warming –, f, , ,  Gordon, R. – government bonds , , f, b debt , f, , – debt/GDP increase f deficit  investment , , f,  and public goods – spending ,  see also governments, role of; internal limits of government governments, role of – external limits of government externalities – public goods, supply of – redistribution – regulation  Great Britain see United Kingdom Great Depression (s) , –, –, f Greece eurozone government bond spreads, ten-year f global financial crisis ()  government bonds  labour costs, gross hourly f Greenspan, A. – gross domestic product (GDP)  in constant prices , f cumulative growth and budgetary austerity f in developed countries and developing countries , f per capita in Soviet Union and United States  real per capita, North Korea and South Korea , f fairness, sense of , ,  financial markets (external limit) – Finland eurozone government bond spreads, ten-year f labour costs, gross hourly f social security spending as percentage of government spending f France eurozone government bond spreads, ten-year f gross domestic product (GDP) per capita f labour costs, gross hourly f personal income tax rates f, f public and private capital f social security f,  taxation policies capping top incomes  free market system , , –,  competition and cooperation ,  external limits ,  internal limits –, , ,  free-rider problem –, , ,  Freud, S.

How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler by Ryan North

agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Anton Chekhov, Brownian motion, butterfly effect, Douglas Hofstadter, Easter island, George Santayana, germ theory of disease, GPS: selective availability, Great Leap Forward, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, invention of radio, invention of the telegraph, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kickstarter, Mahatma Gandhi, megastructure, minimum viable product, moveable type in China, placebo effect, safety bicycle, sugar pill, the scientific method, time dilation, trade route, wikimedia commons, zoonotic diseases

That could’ve introduced the concept of writing to the island, which then quickly evolved into Rongorongo. There is a dark note here: early visitors to Easter Island were told reading and writing was a skill reserved for a privileged few among the ruling elites. And if Rongorongo script is writing—if the Rapa Nui did come up with the idea of turning invisible ideas into visible shapes, an idea so groundbreaking that it had only ever occurred twice before in human history—then they also forgot it. Within the space of a century—a century, it should be noted, defined on Easter Island by European diseases, catastrophic slaver raids, a smallpox epidemic, deforestation, and cultural collapse—the island population had been reduced from thousands to just two hundred individuals, and none of those survivors had ever been taught to read their island’s script.

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Writing shows up in other locations, such as China in 1200 BCE, but this is a result of the Egyptians culturally contaminating the Chinese.4 Similarly, Egyptian and Sumerian script developed at very close to the same time, and while visually quite distinct, they share many of the same influences. One of these cultures invented writing while the other just lifted the idea, probably after seeing what a super useful invention it was. There are two other times when writing may have been invented: in India around 2600 BCE, and on Easter Island after 1200 CE but before 1864 CE. (We say “may” because this is one of several historical mysteries still unresolved. Confirmation could easily be obtained with an incident-free visit to the times and places in question, but for some reason most time travelers have historically been more interested in “experiencing the colossal breadth of human experience” rather than “settling obscure linguistic debates by running controlled temporal observation with an eye to publishing peer-reviewed research.”)

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In contrast, the sentence “Cynthia waved, her hair catching in the warm ocean breeze, and in her sunglasses I saw reflected a horrible, monstrous giant peach: it was my body, forever transformed by those hateful scientists I’d once cut off in traffic” has a meaning that’s much more clearly defined. While there is ambiguity in any language,* the non-ideographic version has a much more particular and specific meaning than the alternative. The Easter Island script, called “Rongorongo,” has also never been deciphered. It’s a pictorial language, comprised of stylized images of animals, plants, humans, and other shapes. It was written by the Rapa Nui people who inhabited their island, and it looks like this: Figure 5: Possibly language, possibly cool pictures, possibly . . . both?

The Price of Everything: And the Hidden Logic of Value by Eduardo Porter

Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, British Empire, capital controls, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, clean water, Credit Default Swap, Deng Xiaoping, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, flying shuttle, Ford paid five dollars a day, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, guest worker program, happiness index / gross national happiness, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jean Tirole, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, longitudinal study, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, means of production, Menlo Park, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, new economy, New Urbanism, peer-to-peer, pension reform, Peter Singer: altruism, pets.com, placebo effect, precautionary principle, price discrimination, price stability, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, search costs, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superstar cities, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, ultimatum game, unpaid internship, urban planning, Veblen good, women in the workforce, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

His brand of catastrophe had visited other corners of the world. The classical Mayan civilization collapsed around the ninth century of the Christian era, tearing itself apart in myriad wars over exhausted natural resources in the lowlands of what is now Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and south-eastern Mexico. The Rapa Nui of Easter Island, famed carvers of huge monolithic heads called Moai, also collapsed after it exhausted its physical limits. A population that reached a peak of ten thousand in the early fifteenth century had withered to about two thousand when Captain James Cook visited the island in 1774. The surviving civilization had no idea how the monumental stone heads had come to be there.

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Carlyle’s quote is in Thomas Carlyle, Chartism (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1847), p. 383. The description of the collapse of ancient civilizations draws from Jared Diamond, “The Last Americans: Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization,” Harper’s, June 2003; and James Brander and M. Scott Taylor, “The Simple Economics of Easter Island: A Ricardo-Malthus Model of Renewable Resource Use,” American Economic Review, Vol. 88, No. 1, March 1998, pp. 119-138. The description of the world in the centuries up to Malthus’s day and the economic transformation experienced since then draws from J. Bradford Delong, “Estimating World GDP, One Million B.C.

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demand democracy Deng Xiaoping Denmark, Danes Denver shoppers deregulation Descartes, René Desperate Housewives (TV show) developing world climate change in garbage dumps in sex in Dickens, Charles Digital Rights Management technologies (DRM) discount rate discrimination divorce finances and dogs, as food dot.com bubble dowries drivers drugs abuse of Duke University Dunkin’ Donuts dwarf tossing Easter Island Easterlin, Richard Eastern Europe, former Soviet satellites in Eastman, George Eastman Kodak Company economic growth happiness and economics for a new world “Economics of Superstars, The” (Rosen) education of children wages and of women efficient markets eggs Egypt, Egyptians Ehrlich, Paul R.

Sextant: A Young Man's Daring Sea Voyage and the Men Who ... by David Barrie

centre right, colonial exploitation, Easter island, Edmond Halley, Eratosthenes, Fellow of the Royal Society, GPS: selective availability, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John Harrison: Longitude, lone genius, Maui Hawaii, Neil Armstrong, Nicholas Carr, polynesian navigation, South China Sea, three-masted sailing ship, trade route

In the course of his three great voyages of discovery, Cook, with sextant in hand, added more to European knowledge of the Pacific Ocean than any other single person. It was he who first recognized the kinship of the peoples inhabiting the so-called Polynesian Triangle—the vast area of sea that embraces at its extremities Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island.9 On his first voyage (1768–71), he put many islands on the map for the first time, circumnavigated New Zealand (of which, until then, only parts of the west coast were known), and went on to explore most of the east coast of what we now know as Australia. On his second voyage (1772–75), Cook sailed farther south than anyone before—on one occasion coming almost within sight of Antarctica itself—in his determined effort to prove that no habitable landmass lay in that region.

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So if—as seems quite possible—the young Napoleon had wanted to join La Pérouse, she would probably not have allowed him to do so.11 Who knows what the consequences for the world might have been if she had not been such a formidable woman? The orders given to La Pérouse were extraordinarily—almost absurdly—detailed and precise both as to the itinerary and the timetable.12 The expedition was to take him around Cape Horn, to Easter Island, Hawaii, Alaska, and down the American coast to California, then across the Pacific to China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Sakhalin, and Kamchatka. In addition to making accurate charts of the places they visited, La Pérouse and his colleagues were required to gather every kind of information that might conceivably be useful—meteorological, botanical, social, anthropological, economic, political, military, and much more besides.

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., 308n18 dolphins, 22, 137, 193, 218, 267, 275 Donkin Cove, 203 double-reflection principle, 30, 31 Drake, Francis, 194 Du Vivier, Alexa and arrival in England, 269 and departure from Halifax, 13 and food on board Saecwen, 193 and music on board Saecwen, 193, 219 and North Atlantic weather, 111–13 and preparations for Atlantic crossing, 8, 10 and routine at sea, 17, 22, 48, 239 and sail repairs, 137 and watch schedule, 48, 85, 218 dung beetles, 23 Dunn, Richard, 108n Dutch East Indies, 43, 51 Dutch States General, 64–65 dysentery, 43, 52, 103, 175 early humans, 23–24, 284–85 Earnshaw, Thomas, 68 East India Company, 76, 82, 88, 168 East Indies, 120 Easter Island, 90, 126 echo sounders, 5, 46 eclipses, 169 electronic chart display and information systems (ECDIS), 282 electronic navigation aids, 265, 286 Elephant Island, 247, 249, 251, 256, 261 Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB), 302n3 emperor penguins, 245–46 Endeavour, 88–89, 96–97, 98–101, 103, 107, 167, 264 Endurance, 241–50 England, 2–3 English Channel, 5, 32–33, 50, 51, 166–67 Entrecasteaux, Joseph-Antoine Bruny d’, xvi–xvii, 133–34 ephemeris tables, 60, 63, 219 equal altitude circles, 220–23, 222, 280, 311n6 Eratosthenes, 4 Escures, Charles d’, 127–28 Euler, Leonhard, 73 Europa, 138 European Union, 280 evolution, 212, 217 Falkland Islands, 114–15, 210 Falmouth, Maine, 8 Fame, 138 Far East, 168 Fidget, 6 Fiji, 40, 134 Fitz Hugh Sound, 152 FitzRoy, Robert on “Breaker Bay,” 206–7, 232 on natural navigation methods, 262 navigational skills, 219 and timekeeping challenges, 225–26 and voyage of the Beagle, 200–210, 210–17 and weather prediction, 170, 206 Flinders, Matthew and Bligh, 157–59, 162 captivity, 182–85 chart-making skills, 185–88 explorations with Bass, 159–63, 170–71 financial difficulties, 188–89 and meteorology, 215 personal papers, 189n and Phillip King, 195 and place-names, 189–90 shipwreck, 177–82 survey of Australian coast, 163–76 and Trim (cat), 190–92, 277 and weather prediction, 206 Flinders, Samuel, 167, 174, 187 Flinders bars, 170 Flinders-Petrie, William, 189, 189n Forster, Johann, 91, 93, 106 fothering, 97 France, 85 Francis, 181 Franklin, John, 167–68 French Frigate Shoal, 129 French Revolution, 133, 142, 183 Frisius, Gemma, 59 fur trade, 139 Fury Island, 231 Galapagos Islands, 211 Galiano, Dionisio Alcalá, 147, 147n Galileo Galilei, 59, 64–65 Gamboa, Pedro Sarmiento de, 196–97n Ganges, 200 geography, 60–61 geometry, 69 George III, 68, 155 George’s Island, 229 George’s River, 160 Gilbert, Humphrey, 14 Gillray, James, 155 Gladwin, Thomas, 263 glass fiber-reinforced plastic (GRP), 46 Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), 299n11 Global Positioning System (GPS), xix–xx, 265, 279–83, 313n27 global warming, 87n GLONASS (Russian satellite navigation system), 280 Glorious First of June (1794), 159 Gloucester, Massachusetts, 8 Godfrey, Thomas, 32 Godin, Louis, 60–61 Gooch, William, 146, 152 Grand Banks, 14, 22, 22n Grand Manan Island, 9, 227 Grand Tour, 142 gravitational field of earth, 303n6 Great Barrier Reef and Bligh’s explorations, 39, 41, 43–44 and Cook’s explorations, 96–97, 98–102, 104 and Flinders’s explorations, 173 Great Britain, xvii Great Circle route, 33 Greek culture, 58, 303n1 Green, Charles, 102–3, 103–4 Greenwich Hour Angle (GHA), 69 Greenwich meridian, 15, 59, 80 Greenwich Time chronometers synchronized with, 70, 104, 144, 251 and “clearing the distance,” 77 and determining longitude, 59–60, 64, 69, 70, 186–87, 220 Grenville, William, 1st Baron, 155 growlers, 11 Guadalcanal, xv Guadeloupe, 65 Gulf of Carpentaria, 120, 173–74 Gulf of Peñas, 198 Gulf Stream, 18 Gulliver’s Travels (Swift), 168–69n H4 watch, 66–67, 78–80, 102, 104 Hadley, John, 31–32, 74 Hadley’s quadrant, 31, 31–32, 82, 89, 114, 299n8 Hakluyt, Richard, 14 Halifax, Nova Scotia, 10, 11, 229 Harbor of Mercy, 196–98 Harrison, John, 66–68, 68n, 72, 77–80, 82 Harrison, William, 67–68, 78 Hawaiian Islands, 90, 94, 140, 143–44, 152, 154 heaving to, 171, 214–15, 241, 256–57 Heelstone (at Stonehenge), 24 heliocentric view of the universe, 17 Hermite Island, 208 Heywood, Peter (“Pip”), 44 Hicks, Lieutenant (Cook expedition), 100 Hilleret, Paul-Gustave-Eugène, 222 Hipparchus, 4 Hiva Oa, 236n Hobart, Tasmania, 135, 162–63 Hogarth, William, 66 Hōkūle’a (double canoe), 263 Holland, Samuel, 10 Homer, 16–17 homing pigeons, 23 honeybees, 23 Hood, 36, 45, 301n1 Hook, Robert, 300n12 Hope, 180 horizontal sextant angles, 147, 239 Horror Rock, 257n hourglasses, xv Houtman, Frederick de, 51 Howard, Trevor, 1, 37 hurricanes, xv Huygens, Christiaan, 59 hydrography, xvii, 61, 85, 108, 166, 185–88.

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, air freight, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Madoff, British Empire, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, falling living standards, feminist movement, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Flynn Effect, food miles, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, haute cuisine, hedonic treadmill, Herbert Marcuse, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kula ring, Large Hadron Collider, Mark Zuckerberg, Medieval Warm Period, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, packet switching, patent troll, Pax Mongolica, Peter Thiel, phenotype, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, Productivity paradox, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Silicon Valley, spice trade, spinning jenny, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supervolcano, technological singularity, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, ultimatum game, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, Vilfredo Pareto, wage slave, working poor, working-age population, world market for maybe five computers, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

p. 82 ‘The success of human beings depends crucially, but precariously, on numbers and connections.’ Incidentally, the story of the Greenland Norse, or of the inhabitants of Easter Island, told so eloquently as tales of ecological exhaustion in Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, probably say as much about isolation as ecology. Isolated from Scandinavia by a combination of the Black Death and the worsening climate, the Greenland Norse could not sustain their lifestyles; like the Tasmanians, they forgot how to fish. Easter Island Diamond may have partly misread: some argue that its society was possibly still flourishing, despite deforestation, when a holocaust of slave traders arrived in the 1860s – see Peiser, B. 2005.

…

After a successful battle against the Midianites and a massacre of the adult males, he told them to finish the job by raping the virgins: ‘Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.’ (Numbers 31) Likewise, wherever anthropologists look, from New Guinea to the Amazon and Easter Island, they find chronic warfare among today’s subsistence farmers. Pre-emptively raiding your neighbours lest they raid you is routine human behaviour. As Paul Seabright has written: ‘Where there are no institutional restraints on such behaviour, systematic killing of unrelated individuals is so common among human beings that, awful though it is, it cannot be described as exceptional, pathological or disturbed.’

…

Abbasids 161, 178 Abelard, Peter 358 aborigines (Australian): division of labour 62, 63, 76; farming 127; technological regress 78–84; trade 90–91, 92 abortion, compulsory 203 Abu Hureyra 127 Acapulco 184 accounting systems 160, 168, 196 Accra 189 Acemoglu, Daron 321 Ache people 61 Acheulean tools 48–9, 50, 275, 373 Achuar people 87 acid rain 280, 281, 304–6, 329, 339 acidification of oceans 280, 340–41 Adams, Henry 289 Aden 177 Adenauer, Konrad 289 Aegean sea 168, 170–71 Afghanistan 14, 208–9, 315, 353 Africa: agriculture 145, 148, 154–5, 326; AIDS epidemic 14, 307–8, 316, 319, 320, 322; colonialism 319–20, 321–2; demographic transition 210, 316, 328; economic growth 315, 326–8, 332, 347; international aid 317–19, 322, 328; lawlessness 293, 320; life expectancy 14, 316, 422; per capita income 14, 315, 317, 320; poverty 314–17, 319–20, 322, 325–6, 327–8; prehistoric 52–5, 65–6, 83, 123, 350; property rights 320, 321, 323–5; trade 187–8, 320, 322–3, 325, 326, 327–8; see also individual countries African-Americans 108 agricultural employment: decline in 42–3; hardships of 13, 219–20, 285–6 agriculture: early development of 122–30, 135–9, 352, 387, 388; fertilisers, development of 135, 139–41, 142, 146, 147, 337; genetically modified (GM) crops 28, 32, 148, 151–6, 283, 358; hybrids, development of 141–2, 146, 153; and trade 123, 126, 127–33, 159, 163–4; and urbanisation 128, 158–9, 163–4, 215; see also farming; food supply Agta people 61–2 aid, international 28, 141, 154, 203, 317–19, 328 AIDS 8, 14, 307–8, 310, 316, 319, 320, 322, 331, 353 AIG (insurance corporation) 115 air conditioning 17 air pollution 304–5 air travel: costs of 24, 37, 252, 253; speed of 253 aircraft 257, 261, 264, 266 Akkadian empire 161, 164–5 Al-Ghazali 357 Al-Khwarizmi, Muhammad ibn Musa 115 Al-Qaeda 296 Albania 187 Alcoa (corporation) 24 Alexander the Great 169, 171 Alexander, Gary 295 Alexandria 171, 175, 270 Algeria 53, 246, 345 alphabet, invention of 166, 396 Alps 122, 178 altruism 93–4, 97 aluminium 24, 213, 237, 303 Alyawarre aborigines 63 Amalfi 178 Amazon (corporation) 21, 259, 261 Amazonia 76, 138, 145, 250–51 amber 71, 92 ambition 45–6, 351 Ames, Bruce 298–9 Amish people 211 ammonia 140, 146 Amsterdam 115–16, 169, 259, 368 Amsterdam Exchange Bank 251 Anabaptists 211 Anatolia 127, 128, 164, 165, 166, 167 Ancoats, Manchester 214 Andaman islands 66–7, 78 Andes 123, 140, 163 Andrew, Deroi Kwesi 189 Angkor Wat 330 Angola 316 animal welfare 104, 145–6 animals: conservation 324, 339; extinctions 17, 43, 64, 68, 69–70, 243, 293, 302, 338–9; humans’ differences from other 1, 2–4, 6, 56, 58, 64 Annan, Kofi 337 Antarctica 334 anti-corporatism 110–111, 114 anti-slavery 104, 105–6, 214 antibiotics 6, 258, 271, 307 antimony 213 ants 75–6, 87–8, 192 apartheid 108 apes 56–7, 59–60, 62, 65, 88; see also chimpanzees; orang-utans ‘apocaholics’ 295, 301 Appalachia 239 Apple (corporation) 260, 261, 268 Aquinas, St Thomas 102 Arabia 66, 159, 176, 179 Arabian Sea 174 Arabs 89, 175, 176–7, 180, 209, 357 Aral Sea 240 Arcadia Biosciences (company) 31–2 Archimedes 256 Arctic Ocean 125, 130, 185, 334, 338–9 Argentina 15, 186, 187 Arikamedu 174 Aristotle 115, 250 Arizona 152, 246, 345 Arkwright, Sir Richard 227 Armenians 89 Arnolfini, Giovanni 179 art: cave paintings 2, 68, 73, 76–7; and commerce 115–16; symbolism in 136; as unique human trait 4 Ashur, Assyria 165 Asimov, Isaac 354 Asoka the Great 172–3 aspirin 258 asset price inflation 24, 30 Assyrian empire 161, 165–6, 167 asteroid impacts, risk of 280, 333 astronomy 221, 270, 357 Athabasca tar sands, Canada 238 Athens 115, 170, 171 Atlantic Monthly 293 Atlantic Ocean 125, 170 Attica 171 Augustus, Roman emperor 174 Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony 184–5 Australia: climate 127, 241, 300, 334; prehistoric 66, 67, 69–70, 127; trade 187; see also aborigines (Australian); Tasmania Austria 132 Ausubel, Jesse 239, 346, 409 automobiles see cars axes: copper 123, 131, 132, 136, 271; stone 2, 5, 48–9, 50, 51, 71, 81, 90–91, 92, 118–19, 271 Babylon 21, 161, 166, 240, 254, 289 Bacon, Francis 255 bacteria: cross fertilisation 271; and pest control 151; resistance to antibiotics 6, 258, 271, 307; symbiosis 75 Baghdad 115, 177, 178, 357 Baines, Edward 227 Baird, John Logie 38 baking 124, 130 ‘balance of nature’, belief in 250–51 Balazs, Etienne 183 bald eagles 17, 299 Bali 66 Baltic Sea 71, 128–9, 180, 185 Bamako 326 bananas 92, 126, 149, 154, 392 Bangladesh 204, 210, 426 Banks, Sir Joseph 221 Barigaza (Bharuch) 174 barley 32, 124, 151 barrels 176 bartering vii, 56–60, 65, 84, 91–2, 163, 356 Basalla, George 272 Basra 177 battery farming 104, 145–6 BBC 295 beads 53, 70, 71, 73, 81, 93, 162 beef 186, 224, 308; see also cattle bees, killer 280 Beijing 17 Beinhocker, Eric 112 Bell, Alexander Graham 38 Bengal famine (1943) 141 benzene 257 Berlin 299 Berlin, Sir Isaiah 288 Bernard of Clairvaux, St 358 Berners-Lee, Sir Tim 38, 273 Berra, Yogi 354 Besant, Annie 208 Bhutan 25–6 Bible 138, 168, 396 bicycles 248–9, 263, 269–70 bin Laden, Osama 110 biofuels 149, 236, 238, 239, 240–43, 246, 300, 339, 343, 344, 346, 393 Bird, Isabella 197–8 birds: effects of pollution on 17, 299; killed by wind turbines 239, 409; nests 51; sexual differences 64; songbirds 55; see also individual species bireme galleys 167 Birmingham 223 birth control see contraception birth rates: declining 204–212; and food supply 192, 208–9; and industrialisation 202; measurement of 205, 403; population control policies 202–4, 208; pre-industrial societies 135, 137; and television 234; and wealth 200–201, 204, 205–6, 209, 211, 212; see also population growth Black Death 181, 195–6, 197, 380 Black Sea 71, 128, 129, 170, 176, 180 blogging 257 Blombos Cave, South Africa 53, 83 blood circulation, discovery of 258 Blunt, John 29 boat-building 167, 168, 177; see also canoes; ship-building Boers 321, 322 Bohemia 222 Bolivia 315, 324 Bolsheviks 324 Borlaug, Norman 142–3, 146 Borneo 339 Bosch, Carl 140, 412 Botswana 15, 316, 320–22, 326 Bottger, Johann Friedrich 184–5 Boudreaux, Don 21, 214 Boulton, Matthew 221, 256, 413–14 bows and arrows 43, 62, 70, 82, 137, 251, 274 Boxgrove hominids 48, 50 Boyer, Stanley 222, 405 Boyle, Robert 256 Bradlaugh, Charles 208 brain size 3–4, 48–9, 51, 55 Bramah, Joseph 221 Branc, Slovakia 136 Brand, Stewart 154, 189, 205 Brando, Marlon 110 brass 223 Brazil 38, 87, 123, 190, 240, 242, 315, 358 bread 38, 124, 140, 158, 224, 286, 392 bridges, suspension 283 Brin, Sergey 221, 405 Britain: affluence 12, 16, 224–5, 236, 296–7; birth rates 195, 200–201, 206, 208, 227; British exceptionalism 200–202, 221–2; climate change policy 330–31; consumer prices 24, 224–5, 227, 228; copyright system 267; enclosure acts 226, 323, 406; energy use 22, 231–2, 232–3, 342–3, 368, 430; ‘glorious revolution’ (1688) 223; income equality 18–19, 218; industrial revolution 201–2, 216–17, 220–32, 255–6, 258–9; life expectancy 15, 17–18; National Food Service 268; National Health Service 111, 261; parliamentary reform 107; per capita income 16, 218, 227, 285, 404–5; productivity 112; property rights 223, 226, 323–4; state benefits 16; tariffs 185–6, 186–7, 223; see also England; Scotland; Wales British Empire 161, 322 bronze 164, 168, 177 Brosnan, Sarah 59 Brown, Lester 147–8, 281–2, 300–301 Brown, Louise 306 Bruges 179 Brunel, Sir Marc 221 Buddhism 2, 172, 357 Buddle, John 412 Buffett, Warren 106, 268 Bulgaria 320 Burkina Faso 154 Burma 66, 67, 209, 335 Bush, George W. 161 Butler, Eamonn 105, 249 Byblos 167 Byzantium 176, 177, 179 cabbages 298 ‘Caesarism’ 289 Cairo 323 Calcutta 190, 315 Calico Act (1722) 226 Califano, Joseph 202–3 California: agriculture 150; Chumash people 62, 92–3; development of credit card 251, 254; Mojave Desert 69; Silicon Valley 221–2, 224, 257, 258, 259, 268 Cambodia 14, 315 camels 135, 176–7 camera pills 270–71 Cameroon 57 Campania 174, 175 Canaanites 166, 396 Canada 141, 169, 202, 238, 304, 305 Canal du Midi 251 cancer 14, 18, 293, 297–9, 302, 308, 329 Cannae, battle of 170 canning 186, 258 canoes 66, 67, 79, 82 capitalism 23–4, 101–4, 110, 115, 133, 214, 258–62, 291–2, 311; see also corporations; markets ‘Captain Swing’ 283 capuchin monkeys 96–7, 375 Caral, Peru 162–3 carbon dioxide emissions 340–47; absorption of 217; and agriculture 130, 337–8; and biofuels 242; costs of 331; and economic growth 315, 332; and fossil fuels 237, 315; and local sourcing of goods 41–2; taxes 346, 356 Cardwell’s Law 411 Caribbean see West Indies Carnegie, Andrew 23 Carney, Thomas 173 carnivorism 51, 60, 62, 68–9, 147, 156, 241, 376 carrots 153, 156 cars: biofuel for 240, 241; costs of 24, 252; efficiency of 252; future production 282, 355; hybrid 245; invention of 189, 270, 271; pollution from 17, 242; sport-utility vehicles 45 The Rational Optimist 424 Carson, Rachel 152, 297–8 Carter, Jimmy 238 Carthage 169, 170, 173 Cartwright, Edmund 221, 263 Castro, Fidel 187 Catalhoyuk 127 catallaxy 56, 355–9 Catholicism 105, 208, 306 cattle 122, 132, 145, 147, 148, 150, 197, 321, 336; see also beef Caucasus 237 cave paintings 2, 68, 73, 76–7 Cavendish, Henry 221 cement 283 central heating 16, 37 cereals 124–5, 125–6, 130–31, 143–4, 146–7, 158, 163; global harvests 121 Champlain, Samuel 138–9 charcoal 131, 216, 229, 230, 346 charitable giving 92, 105, 106, 295, 318–19, 356 Charles V: king of Spain 30–31; Holy Roman Emperor 184 Charles, Prince of Wales 291, 332 Chauvet Cave, France 2, 68, 73, 76–7 Chernobyl 283, 308, 345, 421 Chicago World Fair (1893) 346 chickens 122–3, 145–6, 147, 148, 408 chickpeas 125 Childe, Gordon 162 children: child labour 104, 188, 218, 220, 292; child molestation 104; childcare 2, 62–3; childhood diseases 310; mortality rates 14, 15, 16, 208–9, 284 Chile 187 chimpanzees 2, 3, 4, 6, 29, 59–60, 87, 88, 97 China: agriculture 123, 126, 148, 152, 220; birth rate 15, 200–201; coal supplies 229–30; Cultural Revolution 14, 201; diet 241; economic growth and industrialisation 17, 109, 180–81, 187, 201, 219, 220, 281–2, 300, 322, 324–5, 328, 358; economic and technological regression 180, 181–2, 193, 229–30, 255, 321, 357–8; energy use 245; income equality 19; innovations 181, 251; life expectancy 15; Longshan culture 397; Maoism 16, 187, 296, 311; Ming empire 117, 181–4, 260, 311; per capita income 15, 180; prehistoric 68, 123, 126; serfdom 181–2; Shang dynasty 166; Song dynasty 180–81; trade 172, 174–5, 177, 179, 183–4, 187, 225, 228 chlorine 296 cholera 40, 310 Chomsky, Noam 291 Christianity 172, 357, 358, 396; see also Catholicism; Church of England; monasteries Christmas 134 Chumash people 62, 92–3 Church of England 194 Churchill, Sir Winston 288 Cicero 173 Cilicia 173 Cisco Systems (corporation) 268 Cistercians 215 civil rights movement 108, 109 Clairvaux Abbey 215 Clark, Colin 146, 227 Clark, Gregory 193, 201, 401, 404 Clarke, Arthur C. 354 climate change 328–47, 426–30; costs of mitigation measures 330–32, 333, 338, 342–4; death rates associated with 335–7; and ecological dynamism 250, 329–30, 335, 339; and economic growth 315, 331–3, 341–3, 347; effects on ecosystems 338–41; and food supply 337–8; and fossil fuels 243, 314, 342, 346, 426; historic 194, 195, 329, 334, 426–7; pessimism about 280, 281, 314–15, 328–9; prehistoric 54, 65, 125, 127, 130, 160, 329, 334, 339, 340, 352; scepticism about 111, 329–30, 426; solutions to 8, 315, 345–7 Clinton, Bill 341 Clippinger, John 99 cloth trade 75, 159, 160, 165, 172, 177, 180, 194, 196, 225, 225–9, 232 clothes: Britain 224, 225, 227; early homo sapiens 71, 73; Inuits 64; metal age 122; Tasmanian natives 78 clothing prices 20, 34, 37, 40, 227, 228 ‘Club of Rome’ 302–3 coal: and economic take-off 201, 202, 213, 214, 216–17; and generation of electricity 233, 237, 239, 240, 304, 344; and industrialisation 229–33, 236, 407; prices 230, 232, 237; supplies 302–3 coal mining 132, 230–31, 237, 239, 257, 343 Coalbrookdale 407 Cobb, Kelly 35 Coca-Cola (corporation) 111, 263 coffee 298–9, 392 Cohen, Mark 135 Cold War 299 collective intelligence 5, 38–9, 46, 56, 83, 350–52, 355–6 Collier, Paul 315, 316–17 colonialism 160, 161, 187, 321–2; see also imperialism Colorado 324 Columbus, Christopher 91, 184 combine harvesters 158, 392 combined-cycle turbines 244, 410 commerce see trade Commoner, Barry 402 communism 106, 336 Compaq (corporation) 259 computer games 273, 292 computers 2, 3, 5, 211, 252, 260, 261, 263–4, 268, 282; computing power costs 24; information storage capacities 276; silicon chips 245, 263, 267–8; software 99, 257, 272–3, 304, 356; Y2K bug 280, 290, 341; see also internet Confucius 2, 181 Congo 14–15, 28, 307, 316 Congreve, Sir William 221 Connelly, Matthew 204 conservation, nature 324, 339; see also wilderness land, expansion of conservatism 109 Constantinople 175, 177 consumer spending, average 39–40 containerisation 113, 253, 386 continental drift 274 contraception 208, 210; coerced 203–4 Cook, Captain James 91 cooking 4, 29, 38, 50, 51, 52, 55, 60–61, 64, 163, 337 copper 122, 123, 131–2, 160, 162, 164, 165, 168, 213, 223, 302, 303 copyright 264, 266–7, 326 coral reefs 250, 339–40, 429–30 Cordoba 177 corn laws 185–6 Cornwall 132 corporations 110–116, 355; research and development budgets 260, 262, 269 Cosmides, Leda 57 Costa Rica 338 cotton 37, 108, 149, 151–2, 162, 163, 171, 172, 202, 225–9, 230, 407; calico 225–6, 232; spinning and weaving 184, 214, 217, 219–20, 227–8, 232, 256, 258, 263, 283 Coughlin, Father Charles 109 Craigslist (website) 273, 356 Crapper, Thomas 38 Crathis river 171 creationists 358 creative destruction 114, 356 credit cards 251, 254 credit crunch (2008) 8–10, 28–9, 31, 100, 102, 316, 355, 399, 411 Cree Indians 62 Crete 167, 169 Crichton, Michael 254 Crick, Francis 412 crime: cyber-crime 99–100, 357; falling rates 106, 201; false convictions 19–20; homicide 14, 20, 85, 88, 106, 118, 201; illegal drugs 106, 186; pessimism about 288, 293 Crimea 171 crocodiles, deaths by 40 Crompton, Samuel 227 Crookes, Sir William 140, 141 cruelty 104, 106, 138–9, 146 crusades 358 Cuba 187, 299 ‘curse of resources’ 31, 320 cyber-crime 99–100, 357 Cyprus 132, 148, 167, 168 Cyrus the Great 169 Dalkon Shield (contraceptive device) 203 Dalton, John 221 Damascus 127 Damerham, Wiltshire 194 Danube, River 128, 132 Darby, Abraham 407 Darfur 302, 353 Dark Ages 164, 175–6, 215 Darwin, Charles 77, 81, 91–2, 105, 116, 350, 415 Darwin, Erasmus 256 Darwinism 5 Davy, Sir Humphry 221, 412 Dawkins, Richard 5, 51 DDT (pesticide) 297–8, 299 de Geer, Louis 184 de Soto, Hernando 323, 324, 325 de Waal, Frans 88 Dean, James 110 decimal system 173, 178 deer 32–3, 122 deflation 24 Defoe, Daniel 224 deforestation, predictions of 304–5, 339 Delhi 189 Dell (corporation) 268 Dell, Michael 264 demographic transition 206–212, 316, 328, 402 Denmark 200, 344, 366; National Academy of Sciences 280 Dennett, Dan 350 dentistry 45 depression (psychological) 8, 156 depressions (economic) 3, 31, 32, 186–7, 192, 289; see also economic crashes deserts, expanding 28, 280 Detroit 315, 355 Dhaka 189 diabetes 156, 274, 306 Diamond, Jared 293–4, 380 diamonds 320, 322 Dickens, Charles 220 Diesel, Rudolf 146 Digital Equipment Corporation 260, 282 digital photography 114, 386 Dimawe, battle of (1852) 321 Diocletian, Roman emperor 175, 184 Diodorus 169 diprotodons 69 discount merchandising 112–14 division of labour: Adam Smith on vii, 80; and catallaxy 56; and fragmented government 172; in insects 75–6, 87–8; and population growth 211; by sex 61–5, 136, 376; and specialisation 7, 33, 38, 46, 61, 76–7, 175; among strangers and enemies 87–9; and trust 100; and urbanisation 164 DNA: forensic use 20; gene transfer 153 dogs 43, 56, 61, 84, 125 Doll, Richard 298 Dolphin, HMS 169 dolphins 3, 87 Domesday Book 215 Doriot, Georges 261 ‘dot-communism’ 356 Dover Castle 197 droughts: modern 241, 300, 334; prehistoric 54, 65, 334 drug crime 106, 186 DuPont (corporation) 31 dyes 167, 225, 257, 263 dynamos 217, 233–4, 271–2, 289 dysentery 157, 353 eagles 17, 239, 299, 409 East India Company 225, 226 Easter Island 380 Easterbrook, Greg 294, 300, 370 Easterlin, Richard 26 Easterly, William 318, 411 eBay (corporation) 21, 99, 100, 114, 115 Ebla, Syria 164 Ebola virus 307 economic booms 9, 29, 216 economic crashes 7–8, 9, 193; credit crunch (2008) 8–10, 28–9, 31, 100, 102, 316, 355, 399, 411; see also depressions (economic) ecosystems, dynamism of 250–51, 303, 410 Ecuador 87 Edinburgh Review 285 Edison, Thomas 234, 246, 272, 412 education: Africa 320; Japan 16; measuring value of 117; and population control 209, 210; universal access 106, 235; women and 209, 210 Edwards, Robert 306 Eemian interglacial period 52–3 Egypt: ancient 161, 166, 167, 170, 171, 192, 193, 197, 270, 334; Mamluk 182; modern 142, 154, 192, 301, 323; prehistoric 44, 45, 125, 126; Roman 174, 175, 178 Ehrenreich, Barbara 291 Ehrlich, Anne 203, 301–2 Ehrlich, Paul 143, 190, 203, 207, 301–2, 303 electric motors 271–2, 283 electricity 233–5, 236, 237, 245–6, 337, 343–4; costs 23; dynamos 217, 233–4, 271–2, 289 elephants 51, 54, 69, 303, 321 Eliot, T.S. 289 email 292 emigration 199–200, 202; see also migrations empathy 94–8 empires, trading 160–61; see also imperialism enclosure acts 226, 323, 406 endocrine disruptors 293 Engels, Friedrich 107–8, 136 England: agriculture 194–6, 215; infant mortality 284; law 118; life expectancy 13, 284; medieval population 194–7; per capita income 196; scientific revolution 255–7; trade 75, 89, 104, 106, 118, 169, 194; see also Britain Enron (corporation) 29, 111, 385 Erie, Lake 17 Erie Canal 139, 283 ethanol 240–42, 300 Ethiopia 14, 316, 319; prehistoric 52, 53, 129 eugenics 288, 329 Euphrates river 127, 158, 161, 167, 177 evolution, biological 5, 6, 7, 49–50, 55–6, 75, 271, 350 Ewald, Paul 309 exchange: etiquette and ritual of 133–4; and innovation 71–2, 76, 119, 167–8, 251, 269–74; and pre-industrial economies 133–4; and property rights 324–5; and rule of law 116, 117–18; and sexual division of labour 65; and specialisation 7, 10, 33, 35, 37–8, 46, 56, 58, 75, 90, 132–3, 350–52, 355, 358–9; and trust 98–100, 103, 104; as unique human trait 56–60; and virtue 100–104; see also bartering; markets; trade executions 104 extinctions 17, 43, 64, 68, 69–70, 243, 293, 302, 338–9 Exxon (corporation) 111, 115 eye colour 129 Ezekiel 167, 168 Facebook (website) 262, 268, 356 factories 160, 214, 218, 219–20, 221, 223, 256, 258–9, 284–5 falcons 299 family formation 195, 209–210, 211, 227 famines: modern 141, 143, 154, 199, 203, 302; pessimism about 280, 281, 284, 290, 300–302, 314; pre-industrial 45, 139, 195, 197 Faraday, Michael 271–2 Fargione, Joseph 242 farming: battery 104, 145–6; free-range 146, 308; intensive 143–9; organic 147, 149–52, 393; slash-and-burn 87, 129, 130; subsidies 188, 328; subsistence 87, 138, 175–6, 189, 192, 199–200; see also agriculture; food supply fascism 289 Fauchart, Emmanuelle 264 fax machines 252 Feering, Essex 195 Fehr, Ernst 94–6 female emancipation 107, 108–9, 209 feminism 109 Ferguson, Adam 1 Ferguson, Niall 85 Fermat’s Last Theorem 275 fermenting 130, 241 Ferranti, Sebastian de 234 Fertile Crescent 126, 251 fertilisation, in-vitro 306 fertilisers 32, 129, 135, 139–41, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149–50, 152, 155, 200, 337 Fibonacci 178 figs 125, 129 filariasis 310 Finland 15, 35, 261 fire, invention of 4, 50, 51, 52, 60, 274 First World War 289, 309 fish, sex-change 280, 293 fish farming 148, 155 fishing 62, 63–4, 71, 78–9, 81–2, 125, 127, 129, 136, 159, 162, 163, 327 Fishman, Charles 113 Flanders 179, 181, 194 flight, powered 257, 261, 264, 266 Flinders Island 81, 84 floods 128, 250, 329, 331, 334, 335, 426 Florence 89, 103, 115, 178 flowers, cut 42, 327, 328 flu, pandemic 28, 145–6, 308–310 Flynn, James 19 Fontaine, Hippolyte 233–4 food aid 28, 141, 154, 203 food miles 41–2, 353, 392; see also local sourcing food preservation 139, 145, 258 food prices 20, 22, 23, 34, 39, 40, 42, 240, 241, 300 food processing 29–30, 60–61, 145; see also baking; cooking food retailing 36, 112, 148, 268; see also supermarkets food sharing 56, 59–60, 64 food supply: and biofuels 240–41, 243, 300; and climate change 337–8; and industrialisation 139, 201–2; pessimism about 280, 281, 284, 290, 300–302; and population growth 139, 141, 143–4, 146–7, 192, 206, 208–9, 300–302 Ford, Ford Maddox 188 Ford, Henry 24, 114, 189, 271 Forester, Jay 303 forests, fears of depletion 304–5, 339 fossil fuels: and ecology 237, 240, 304, 315, 342–3, 345–6; fertilisers 143, 150, 155, 237; and industrialisation 214, 216–17, 229–33, 352; and labour saving 236–7; and productivity 244–5; supplies 216–17, 229–30, 237–8, 245, 302–3; see also charcoal; coal; gas, natural; oil; peat Fourier analysis 283 FOXP2 (gene) 55, 375 fragmentation, political 170–73, 180–81, 184, 185 France: capital markets 259; famine 197; infant mortality 16; population growth 206, 208; revolution 324; trade 184, 186, 222 Franco, Francisco 186 Frank, Robert 95–6 Franken, Al 291 Franklin, Benjamin 107, 256 Franks 176 Fray Bentos 186 free choice 27–8, 107–110, 291–2 free-range farming 146, 308 French Revolution 324 Friedel, Robert 224 Friedman, Milton 111 Friend, Sir Richard 257 Friends of the Earth 154, 155 Fry, Art 261 Fuji (corporation) 114, 386 Fujian, China 89, 183 fur trade 169, 180 futurology 354–5 Gadir (Cadiz) 168–9, 170 Gaelic language 129 Galbraith, J.K. 16 Galdikas, Birute 60 Galilee, Sea of 124 Galileo 115 Gandhi, Indira 203, 204 Gandhi, Sanjay 203–4 Ganges, River 147, 172 gas, natural 235, 236, 237, 240, 302, 303, 337 Gates, Bill 106, 264, 268 GDP per capita (world), increases in 11, 349 Genentech (corporation) 259, 405 General Electric Company 261, 264 General Motors (corporation) 115 generosity 86–7, 94–5 genetic research 54, 151, 265, 306–7, 310, 356, 358 genetically modified (GM) crops 28, 32, 148, 151–6, 283, 358 Genghis Khan 182 Genoa 89, 169, 178, 180 genome sequencing 265 geothermal power 246, 344 Germany: Great Depression (1930s) 31; industrialisation 202; infant mortality 16; Nazism 109, 289; population growth 202; predicted deforestation 304, 305; prehistoric 70, 138; trade 179–80, 187; see also West Germany Ghana 187, 189, 316, 326 Gibraltar, Strait of 180 gift giving 87, 92, 133, 134 Gilbert, Daniel 4 Gilgamesh, King 159 Ginsberg, Allen 110 Gintis, Herb 86 Gladstone, William 237 Glaeser, Edward 190 Glasgow 315 glass 166, 174–5, 177, 259 glass fibre 303 Global Humanitarian Forum 337 global warming see climate change globalisation 290, 358 ‘glorious revolution’ (1688) 223 GM (genetically modified) crops 28, 148, 151–6, 283, 358 goats 122, 126, 144, 145, 197, 320 Goethe, Johann von 104 Goklany, Indur 143–4, 341, 426 gold 165, 177, 303 golden eagles 239, 409 golden toads 338 Goldsmith, Edward 291 Google (corporation) 21, 100, 114, 259, 260, 268, 355 Gore, Al 233, 291 Goths 175 Gott, Richard 294 Gramme, Zénobe Théophile 233–4 Grantham, George 401 gravity, discovery of 258 Gray, John 285, 291 Great Barrier Reef 250 Greece: ancient 115, 128, 161, 170–71, 173–4; modern 186 greenhouse gases 152, 155, 242, 329; see also carbon dioxide emissions Greenland: ice cap 125, 130, 313, 334, 339, 426; Inuits 61; Norse 380 Greenpeace 154, 155, 281, 385 Grottes des Pigeons, Morocco 53 Groves, Leslie 412 Growth is Good for the Poor (World Bank study) 317 guano 139–40, 302 Guatemala 209 Gujarat 162, 174 Gujaratis 89 Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden 184 Gutenberg, Johann 184, 253 Guth, Werner 86 habeas corpus 358 Haber, Fritz 140, 412 Hadza people 61, 63, 87 Haiti 14, 301, 315 Halaf people 130 Hall, Charles Martin 24 Halley, Edmond 256 HANPP (human appropriation of net primary productivity) number 144–5 Hanseatic merchants 89, 179–80, 196 Hansen, James 426 hanta virus 307 happiness 25–8, 191 Harappa, Indus valley 161–2 Hardin, Garrett 203 harems 136 Hargreaves, James 227, 256 Harlem, Holland 215–16 Harper’s Weekly 23 Harvey, William 256 hay 214–15, 216, 239, 408–9 Hayek, Friedrich 5, 19, 38, 56, 250, 280, 355 heart disease 18, 156, 295 ‘hedonic treadmill’ 27 height, average human 16, 18 Heller, Michael 265–6 Hellespont 128, 170 Henrich, Joe 77, 377 Henry II, King of England 118 Henry, Joseph 271, 272 Henry, William 221 Heraclitus 251 herbicides 145, 152, 153–4 herding 130–31 Hero of Alexandria 270 Herschel, Sir William 221 Hesiod 292 Hippel, Eric von 273 hippies 26, 110, 175 Hiroshima 283 Hitler, Adolf 16, 184, 296 Hittites 166, 167 HIV/AIDS 8, 14, 307–8, 310, 316, 319, 320, 322, 331, 353 Hiwi people 61 Hobbes, Thomas 96 Hock, Dee 254 Hohle Fels, Germany 70 Holdren, John 203, 207, 311 Holland: agriculture 153; golden age 185, 201, 215–16, 223; horticulture 42; industrialisation 215–16, 226; innovations 264; trade 31, 89, 104, 106, 185, 223, 328 Holy Roman Empire 178, 265–6 Homer 2, 102, 168 Homestead Act (1862) 323 homicide 14, 20, 85, 88, 106, 118, 201 Homo erectus 49, 68, 71, 373 Homo heidelbergensis 49, 50–52, 373 Homo sapiens, emergence of 52–3 Hong Kong 31, 83, 158, 169, 187, 219, 328 Hongwu, Chinese emperor 183 Hood, Leroy 222, 405 Hooke, Robert 256 horses 48, 68, 69, 129, 140, 197, 215, 282, 408–9; shoes and harnesses 176, 215 housing costs 20, 25, 34, 39–40, 234, 368 Hoxha, Enver 187 Hrdy, Sarah 88 Huber, Peter 244, 344 Hueper, Wilhelm 297 Huguenots 184 Huia (birds) 64 human sacrifice 104 Hume, David 96, 103, 104, 170 humour 2 Hunan 177 Hungary 222 Huns 175 hunter-gatherers: consumption and production patterns 29–30, 123; division of labour 61–5, 76, 136; famines 45, 139; limitations of band size 77; modern societies 66–7, 76, 77–8, 80, 87, 135–6, 136–7; nomadism 130; nostalgia for life of 43–5, 135, 137; permanent settlements 128; processing of food 29, 38, 61; technological regress 78–84; trade 72, 77–8, 81, 92–3, 123, 136–7; violence and warfare 27, 44–5, 136, 137 hunting 61–4, 68–70, 125–6, 130, 339 Huron Indians 138–9 hurricanes 329, 335, 337 Hurst, Blake 152 Hutterites 211 Huxley, Aldous 289, 354 hydroelectric power 236, 239, 343, 344, 409 hyenas 43, 50, 54 IBM (corporation) 260, 261, 282 Ibn Khaldun 182 ice ages 52, 127, 329, 335, 340, 388 ice caps 125, 130, 313, 314, 334, 338–9, 426 Iceland 324 Ichaboe island 140 ‘idea-agora’ 262 imitation 4, 5, 6, 50, 77, 80 imperialism 104, 162, 164, 166, 172, 182, 319–20, 357; see also colonialism in-vitro fertilisation 306 income, per capita: and economic freedom 117; equality 18–19, 218–19; increases in 14, 15, 16–17, 218–19, 285, 331–2 India: agriculture 126, 129, 141, 142–3, 147, 151–2, 156, 301; British rule 160; caste system 173; economic growth 187, 358; energy use 245; income equality 19; infant mortality 16; innovations 172–3, 251; Mauryan empire 172–3, 201, 357; mobile phone use 327; population growth 202, 203–4; prehistoric 66, 126, 129; trade 174–5, 175, 179, 186–7, 225, 228, 232; urbanisation 189 Indian Ocean 174, 175 Indonesia 66, 87, 89, 177 Indus river 167 Indus valley civilisation 161–2, 164 industrialisation: and capital investment 258–9; and end of slavery 197, 214; and food production 139, 201–2; and fossil fuels 214, 216–17, 229–33, 352; and innovation 38, 220–24, 227–8; and living standards 217–20, 226–7, 258; pessimistic views of 42, 102–3, 217–18, 284–5; and productivity 227–8, 230–31, 232, 235–6, 244–5; and science 255–8; and trade 224–6; and urbanisation 188, 226–7 infant mortality 14, 15, 16, 208–9, 284 inflation 24, 30, 169, 289 influenza see flu, pandemic Ingleheart, Ronald 27 innovation: and capital investment 258–62, 269; and exchange 71–2, 76, 119, 167–8, 251, 269–74; and government spending programmes 267–9; increasing returns of 248–55, 274–7, 346, 354, 358–9; and industrialisation 38, 220–24, 227–8; and intellectual property 262–7, 269; limitlessness 374–7; and population growth 252; and productivity 227–8; and science 255–8, 412; and specialisation 56, 71–2, 73–4, 76–7, 119, 251; and trade 168, 171 insect-resistant crops 154–5 insecticides 151–2 insects 75–6, 87–8 insulin 156, 274 Intel (corporation) 263, 268 intellectual property 262–7; see also copyright; patents intensive farming 143–9 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 330, 331, 332, 333–4, 338, 342, 347, 425, 426, 427, 428 internal combustion engine 140, 146, 244 International Planned Parenthood Foundation 203 internet: access to 253, 268; blogging 257; and charitable giving 318–19, 356; cyber-crime 99–100, 357; development of 263, 268, 270, 356; email 292; free exchange 105, 272–3, 356; packet switching 263; problem-solving applications 261–2; search engines 245, 256, 267; shopping 37, 99, 107, 261; social networking websites 262, 268, 356; speed of 252, 253; trust among users 99–100, 356; World Wide Web 273, 356 Inuits 44, 61, 64, 126 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 330, 331, 332, 333–4, 338, 342, 347, 349, 425, 426, 427, 428 IQ levels 19 Iran 162 Iraq 31, 158, 161 Ireland 24, 129, 199, 227 iron 166, 167, 169, 181, 184, 223, 229, 230, 302, 407 irradiated food 150–51 irrigation 136, 147–8, 159, 161, 163, 198, 242, 281 Isaac, Glyn 64 Isaiah 102, 168 Islam 176, 357, 358 Israel 53, 69, 124, 148 Israelites 168 Italy: birth rate 208; city states 178–9, 181, 196; fascism 289; Greek settlements 170–71, 173–4; infant mortality 15; innovations 196, 251; mercantilism 89, 103, 178–9, 180, 196; prehistoric 69 ivory 70, 71, 73, 167 Jacob, François 7 Jacobs, Jane 128 Jamaica 149 James II, King 223 Japan: agriculture 197–8; birth rates 212; dictatorship 109; economic development 103, 322, 332; economic and technological regression 193, 197–9, 202; education 16; happiness 27; industrialisation 219; life expectancy 17, 31; trade 31, 183, 184, 187, 197 Jarawa tribe 67 Java 187 jealousy 2, 351 Jebel Sahaba cemeteries, Egypt 44, 45 Jefferson, Thomas 247, 249, 269 Jenner, Edward 221 Jensen, Robert 327 Jericho 127, 138 Jevons, Stanley 213, 237, 245 Jews 89, 108, 177–8, 184 Jigme Singye Wangchuck, King of Bhutan 25–6 Jobs, Steve 221, 264, 405 John, King of England 118 Johnson, Lyndon 202–3 Jones, Rhys 79 Jordan 148, 167 Jordan river 127 Joyce, James 289 justice 19–20, 116, 320, 358 Kalahari desert 44, 61, 76 Kalkadoon aborigines 91 Kanesh, Anatolia 165 Kangaroo Island 81 kangaroos 62, 63, 69–70, 84, 127 Kant, Immanuel 96 Kaplan, Robert 293 Kay, John 184, 227 Kazakhstan 206 Kealey, Terence 172, 255, 411 Kelly, Kevin 356 Kelvin, William Thomson, 1st Baron 412 Kenya 42, 87, 155, 209, 316, 326, 336, 353 Kerala 327 Kerouac, Jack 110 Khoisan people 54, 61, 62, 67, 116, 321 Kim Il Sung 187 King, Gregory 218 Kingdon, Jonathan 67 Kinneret, Lake 124 Klasies River 83 Klein, Naomi 291 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (venture capitalists) 259 knowledge, increasing returns of 248–50, 274–7 Kodak (corporation) 114, 386 Kohler, Hans-Peter 212 Korea 184, 197, 300; see also North Korea; South Korea Kuhn, Steven 64, 69 kula (exchange system) 134 !

Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To by David A. Sinclair, Matthew D. Laplante

Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Anthropocene, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Atul Gawande, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biofilm, Biosphere 2, blockchain, British Empire, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean water, creative destruction, CRISPR, dark matter, dematerialisation, discovery of DNA, double helix, Drosophila, Easter island, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fellow of the Royal Society, global pandemic, Grace Hopper, helicopter parent, income inequality, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, labor-force participation, life extension, Louis Pasteur, McMansion, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, mutually assured destruction, Paul Samuelson, personalized medicine, phenotype, Philippa Foot, placebo effect, plutocrats, power law, quantum entanglement, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, seminal paper, Skype, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Tim Cook: Apple, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, union organizing, universal basic income, WeWork, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Now that we know how life works and have the tools to change it at a genetic and epigenetic level, we can build upon this very old wisdom. And when it comes to the goal of extending healthy lifespans, the easiest measures to use are the various drugs that we already know can impact human aging. THE WORLD’S GREATEST EASTER EGG Rapa Nui, a remote volcanic island 2,300 miles west of Chile, is commonly known as Easter Island and even better known for the nearly nine hundred giant stone heads that line the island’s perimeter. What should be just as well known—and perhaps one day will be—is the story of how the island came to be the source of the world’s most effective lifespan-extending molecule. Back in the mid-1960s, a team of scientists traveled to the island.

…

If senolytics work, you could take a course of a medicine for a week, be rejuvenated, and come back ten years later for another course. Meanwhile, the same medicines could be injected into an osteoarthritic joint or an eye going blind, or inhaled into lungs made fibrotic and inflexible by chemotherapy, to give them an age-reversal boost, too. (Rapamycin, the Easter Island longevity molecule, is what’s known as a “senomorphic” molecule, in that it doesn’t kill senescent cells but does prevent them from releasing inflammatory molecules, which may be almost as good.5) The first human trials of senolytics were started in 2018 to treat osteoarthritis and glaucoma, conditions in which senescent cells can accumulate.

…

Blythe, “Professor Frank Fenner, Microbiologist and Virologist,” Australian Academy of Science, 1992 and 1993, https://www.science.org.au/learning/general-audience/history/interviews-australian-scientists/professor-frank-fenner. 10. Fenner contrasted the fate of humanity with that of the residents of Easter Island, who were decimated in the 1600s by their reliance on the forests they themselves had cut down. Dwindling food sources, followed by civil war and the arrival of foreign sailors who brought violence and disease, made its population plunge to 111 individuals by 1872. Though the numbers have since rebounded, Fenner’s views on humanity’s future did not hold up such a generous possibility, he told a reporter from the Australian.

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning by Jeremy Lent

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Atahualpa, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, complexity theory, conceptual framework, dematerialisation, demographic transition, different worldview, Doomsday Book, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, failed state, Firefox, Ford Model T, Francisco Pizarro, Garrett Hardin, Georg Cantor, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of gunpowder, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jevons paradox, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, Law of Accelerating Returns, mandelbrot fractal, mass immigration, megacity, Metcalfe's law, Mikhail Gorbachev, move 37, Neil Armstrong, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, peak oil, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Plato's cave, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Solow, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, scientific management, Scientific racism, scientific worldview, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, systems thinking, technological singularity, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing test, ultimatum game, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, wikimedia commons

The Maya, too, were brought down not just by drought but by overexploitation of their land, and the same seems to have been true for the Anasazi civilization of the American Southwest. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Jared Diamond describes the poignant example of Easter Island, where the first human arrivals colonized a fertile, forested haven and then proceeded, over centuries, to destroy every tree on the entire island. He asks the harrowing question, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?” Later in this section, we can perhaps conjecture an answer to this.16 The implications for our current civilization are immediately apparent.

…

In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Jared Diamond concludes that the collapse stemmed from the basic fact that “too many farmers grew too many crops on too much of the landscape,” leading to deforestation and depletion of soil nutrients.8 Similar stories of devastation can be found across the world, such as the collapse of the Anasazi civilization of the American Southwest, and the inhabitants of Easter Island who first colonized the forested, fertile island around 900 CE and then, over centuries, destroyed every single tree on the island, leaving their descendants with a legacy of misery and starvation. When Captain Cook discovered them in 1774, he described the few remaining cave-dwelling islanders as “small, lean, timid, and miserable.”9 Frequently, environmental degradation would be gradual, leading over generations to cycles of famine and hardship, with inexorable decline in the soil's productivity.

…

A modern version of this process has occurred in the overexploitation of fisheries, where stocks decline as a result of being overfished from one generation to the next, but people forget how things used to be and consider the situation to be normal, until the next decline. The term “shifting baseline syndrome” has been coined to describe how people get used to each new level. This, perhaps, offers an answer to Jared Diamond's question of what that Easter Islander was thinking when he cut down the last tree. Most likely, he didn't think anything of it at all because, by then, the only trees left would have been little more than weeds, good for nothing more than weaving a mat.22 Will Our Society Collapse Like Rome? It's difficult to consider the collapse of the Roman Empire without drawing parallels to our own civilization.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

Anthropocene, Apollo 11, biofilm, buy low sell high, carbon footprint, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, deep learning, discovery of penicillin, Easter island, experimental subject, Fellow of the Royal Society, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, late capitalism, low earth orbit, Mason jar, meta-analysis, microbiome, moral panic, NP-complete, phenotype, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, TED Talk, the built environment, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, traveling salesman, two and twenty

“look like fairy tales”: For the eight percent estimate see Ahmadjian (1995); for a greater area than tropical forests see Moore (2013a), ch. 1; for “hung in hashtags” see Hillman (2018); for the diversity of lichen habitats, including erratics and lichens that live on insects, see Seaward (2008); for the interview with Knudsen see aeon.co/​videos/​how-lsd-helped-a-scientist-find-beauty-in-a-peculiar-and-overlooked-form-of-life [accessed October 29, 2019]. a “clay-like” consistency: For “every monument” quote see twitter.com/GlamFuzz [accessed October 29, 2019]; for Mount Rushmore see Perrottet (2006); for Easter Island heads see www.theguardian.com/​world/​2019/​mar/​01/​easter-island-statues-leprosy [accessed October 29, 2019]. been able to form: For lichens’ approach to weathering see Chen et al. (2000), Seaward (2008), and Porada et al. (2014); for lichens and soil formation see Burford et al. (2003). to make a life: For the history of panspermia and related ideas see Temple (2007) and Steele et al. (2018).

…

In 2006, the faces of the presidents carved into Mount Rushmore were pressure hosed, removing more than sixty years of lichenous growth in the hope of extending the lifetime of the memorial. The presidents aren’t alone. “Every monument,” writes the poet Drew Milne, “has a lichen lining.” In 2019, the residents of Easter Island launched a campaign to scrub lichens off hundreds of monumental stone heads, or moai. Described by locals as “leprosy,” lichens are deforming the features of the statues and softening the rock to a “clay-like” consistency. Lichens mine minerals from rock in a twofold process known as “weathering.”

Heart: A History by Sandeep Jauhar

blue-collar work, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, Easter island, Future Shock, Honoré de Balzac, John Snow's cholera map, mass immigration, medical residency, placebo effect, publish or perish, Rubik’s Cube, selection bias, stem cell, the scientific method

In 1994, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the release of coronary stents, tiny metallic coils that are used in the clear majority of angioplasties today to keep ballooned arteries open. In the early years of the twenty-first century, stents began to be coated with chemicals that prevent scar tissue from forming. The first drug that was used was rapamycin, an antibiotic discovered in a soil mold on Easter Island that stops cell division. Nowadays, most stents used in the United States are coated with rapamycin or a similar drug, which has nearly eliminated in-stent scarring. From a self-surgery in a tiny operating room in Eberswalde, Germany, cardiac catheterization has been transformed into a hugely profitable, multibillion-dollar industry.

…

., 115 consent, 80, 100, 164, 188, 194 continuous-flow devices, 195 Cooley, Denton, 190–91 Cornish, James, 61–62, 64–65 coronary artery calcifications, see atherosclerosis; plaque coronary bypass surgery, see bypass surgery coronary thrombosis, 37, 97, 114, 129, 232, 239 cortisol, 124 Cosmopolitan magazine, 85 Cournand, André, 99, 109–10 CPR, see cardiopulmonary resuscitation Crandall (high school science teacher), 17, 18, 20 Cro-Magnons, 38 cross-circulation, 74–75, 77, 79–80, 83, 84–86, 168 CT scans, 3–4, 121, 232, 234–35, 241, 242 Dalton, Henry, 62n Damascus, 41 Dante Alighieri, 145 Darwin, Charles, 201 DeBakey, Michael, 190 defibrillators, 10, 136–38, 157, 171–76, 180, 215, 238; implantable, 53, 149–50, 163–65, 173–80, 190, 205, 207–16 De humani corporis fabrica (Vesalius), 42–43 delirium cordis, 158 dementia, 25 De motu cordis (Harvey), 44–46, 113 Dennis, Clarence, 94 depression, 24, 127–28, 215, 237 Detroit, 94 DeVries, William, 192, 193 DeWood, Marcus, 143 diabetes, 4, 24, 53, 120, 121, 132, 234, 238–40 dialysis, 196, 212 diet, 115, 118, 121–23, 127–28, 231–32, 236–37 Diseases of the Circulatory System (Osler), 131 Ditzen, Gerda, 102, 103, 105, 106 diuretics, 180, 186 Dodrill, Forest, 94 Dominican order, 22 do-not-resuscitate orders, 197, 224 Dotter, Charles, 138–41, 144 Douglass, Frederick, 62 Down syndrome, 75 dreams, 210, 220–21, 223–24 drug abuse and addiction, 28, 77n, 131 earthquakes, 25–26, 145 Easter Island, 144 Ebers Papyrus, 38 echocardiograms, 24, 52, 55–61, 71, 132, 184, 203, 233; see also ultrasound edema, 34, 82, 146, 180 Effler, Donald, 127 Egypt, 41; ancient, 11, 38 electrocardiograms (EKGs), 53–54, 73, 133, 137–38, 173, 180; in animal studies, 30, 167, 175 electrodes, 17, 19, 30, 158, 167–68, 172, 174–76, 179 electrophysiology, cardiac, 52, 153–55, 157, 161, 166, 171, 177–78, 205 Edler, Inge, 61 England, 43, 81, 87, 105, 109n, 115, 153, 166 endocarditis, 69–70, 98 endothelin blockers, 239 end-stage heart failure, 22, 36, 184, 186, 190–91, 196 enlarged heart, 77, 146 enzymes, 57, 132, 134 epidemiology, 115–16, 128; see also Framingham Heart Study Equal Rights League, 62 evolution, 18, 93, 195 exercise, 122, 232, 234, 236–37, 241, 242 experimental physiology, 104 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, The (Darwin), 201 exsanguination, 26, 89–90 Fabric of the Human Body, The (Vesalius), 42–43 facial deformities, 75 Falloppio, Gabriele, 51 falsifiability, 40, 148 family history, 4, 9, 96, 119, 121 Fargo (North Dakota), 69, 88, 97 fatigue, 70, 150, 166, 184, 192 Favaloro, René, 97 Fear Heart (Barr), 6 Feigenbaum, Harvey, 61 femoral artery, 83, 101, 142 fight-or-flight reaction, 23, 30, 40, 124 Fischer, Georg, 63n Flood, Lorraine, 207–209, 212–13, 215–16 Florence (Italy), 42 fludrocortisone, 223 fluid dynamics, 160n “foam” cells, 134 Fogarty, John, 190 Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 143, 177, 194, 196 Forssmann, Walter, 103, 109 Forssmann, Werner, 102, 102–111, 134–35, 140, 141, 161 fosinopril, 180 Framingham Heart Study, 113, 116–23, 125, 133; risk factors determined in, 4, 117–18, 120–22, 132, 237, 240 France, 153, 174 Frankfurt State Hospital, 65–66, 66 Freedmen’s Hospital (Washington, D.C.), 65 free radicals, 133 Friedman, Meyer, 126–27 Friedreich’s ataxia, 184 Friesinger, Gottlieb, 172 Galen, 40–43, 45, 63 gap junctions, 10 Garfinkel, Alan, 160 General Motors, 94 genetic heart abnormalities, 212; see also congenital heart abnormalities genetics, 35, 69, 123–24, 221, 234 Geneva, University of, 171 George III, King of England, 105 Georgia, 144 Germany, 65–68, 90, 102, 107–109, 140; in World War II, 173 Getting Over Garrett Delaney (McDonald), 17 Ghazali, al-, 41 Gibbon, John Heysham, 73, 86, 89–96 Glidden, Frances, 84, 85 Glidden, Gregory, 79–85 Glidden, Lyman, 80, 82, 85 gonorrhea, 105 grave robbing, 42 great arteries, transposition of, 81 Greatbatch, Wilson, 169–71, 174 Great Depression, 73 Greece, ancient, 38, 40 Green, Henry, 100 Groote Schuur Hospital (Cape Town), 186 Ground Zero, 201–205, 207, 210, 213 Gruentzig, Andreas, 140–44, 239 Guy’s Hospital (London), 87 Haecker, Rudolf, 68 Hahnemann Medical College, 163 Hall, Joan Lord, 21 hallucinations, 213, 223 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 23 hardening of the arteries, see atherosclerosis Harvard University, 27, 117, 172, 173 Harvey, William, 14, 43, 43–47, 63, 113 Hawaii, 123 heart attacks/myocardial infarctions, 7, 37–38, 96, 110, 114, 153–54, 185, 190; risk factors for, 4, 23–24, 118, 120–22, 127–28, 133, 231–32, 237; sudden death resulting from, see sudden cardiac death; survival of, 137–44, 169, 172, 196, 207, 211, 221, 239; symptoms of, 24–25, 74, 120, 224; see also cardiac arrest heart block, 166–71 heart cells, 10, 24, 37n, 150–51, 160 heart failure, 9, 24, 94, 148–50, 157, 163, 240; end-stage, 22, 184, 186, 190–91, 196; transplants for, 185, 189, 191; treatments for, 191–92, 196, 239; see also congestive heart failure heart-healthy lifestyle, 13, 121–22, 231–32 heart-lung machines, 70–73, 86, 88–97, 89, 95, 113, 187, 190; surgical alternatives prior to invention of, 74–75, 79–80, 83, 84–86, 168 heart transplantation, 163, 183, 186–89, 191, 192, 195, 238 heparin, 91n herbal supplements, 148, 163, 181 hereditary disorders, 184, 212 Hertz, Carl Helmuth, 61 high blood pressure, see hypertension/high blood pressure Hildegard of Bingen, 14 Hill, Luther, 68 Hinduism, 28–29, 185, 226–29, 234 HIV, 165 homeostasis, 125n Honshu (Japan), 25 hopelessness, 30–31, 163, 214, 237 Hopkinson, Mary, 91–93 hormones, 124, 185–86 hospice, 164 House Appropriations Health Subcommittee, 190 Houston, 189–91 Howard University, 64 Hugo, Victor, 186 Hunter, John, 105 hypertension/high blood pressure, 37, 115, 125n, 238; as cardiovascular risk factor, 24, 54, 120–21, 129, 132, 137, 237, 240; emotional/psychosocial factors in, 23–29, 31, 124–28, 206, 220–21; methods for control of, 139–43, 231–32, 236–238, 240 hypothermia, 77–79, 82 IBM Corporation, 93 iliac artery, 140 Illness as Metaphor (Sontag), 7 immigrants, 48, 122–24, 234 immune system, 188 India, 7–9, 26, 35–36, 122, 227, 234, 243; partition of, 28–29, 129 infections, 75, 105, 139, 148, 189, 191, 194–95, 212; postsurgical, 84, 88, 168–69, 177; of transplant patients, 186, 188 infectious diseases, 29, 37, 62, 115–17 inferior vena cava, 63 inflammation, 96, 128, 132, 168 insulin resistance, 234 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, 205 ischemia, 137 Israel, 174 Italy, 153, 195; Renaissance, 42 Ithaca (New York), 169 Jalife, José, 159 Japan, 24, 25, 188n; immigrants in U.S. from, 123–24; in World War II, 114 Jarvik, Robert, 192, 194 Jarvik-7 artificial heart, 192–94 Jauhar, Mohan, 10, 184 Jauhar, Pia, 241 Jauhar, Rajiv, 4, 221–24, 226–29 Jauhar, Sonia, 57, 235 Jefferson Medical College, 88–89 Jesus, Sacred Heart of, 22 Jewish Hospital (Louisville), 195 Johns Hopkins University, 30, 70, 91n, 118, 172, 176 Johnson, Jacqueline, 77–78 Journal of the American Medical Association, 187 Journal of Thoracic Surgery, 99 Joyce, James, 140 Jude, James, 173 Julian, Desmond, 137 Justus, Wilhelm, 65–67 Kanpur (India), 7–9, 29, 242 Kanpur Agricultural College, 7, 20 Karp, Haskell, 190–91 Kent (England), 43 Kentucky, 195 kidney failure, 53, 193 kidneys, 11n, 59, 125n, 185–86; artificial, 73, 189 King of Hearts (Miller), 68 Kirklin, John, 94 Klinische Wochenschrift, 107–108 Knickerbocker, Guy, 172–73 Koch, Robert, 116n Kolff, Willem, 189–90, 192 Kölliker, Rudolf Von, 19 Kouwenhoven, William, 172–73 Lancet, The, 114, 231 language problems, 96 learned helplessness, 214 Le Fanu, James, 73 left anterior descending (LAD) artery, 133, 142 Leonardo da Vinci, 41–42 leprosy, 117 leukemia, 77n Lewis, John, 77–78 lidocaine, 60, 101 Life magazine, 139 lifestyle, 13, 121–23, 231–32, 234, 241 Lifestyle Heart Trial, 231 “Life You Save May Be Your Own, The” (O’Connor), 69 Lillehei, C.

The Human Cosmos: A Secret History of the Stars by Jo Marchant

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Arthur Eddington, British Empire, complexity theory, Dava Sobel, Drosophila, Easter island, Eddington experiment, Edmond Halley, Eratosthenes, founder crops, game design, Great Leap Forward, Henri Poincaré, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John Harrison: Longitude, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, lone genius, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Nicholas Carr, out of africa, overview effect, Plato's cave, polynesian navigation, scientific mainstream, scientific worldview, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Searching for Interstellar Communications, Skype, social intelligence, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, technological singularity, TED Talk, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, trade route

.* Over the course of his career, Cook was amazed to find that this shared heritage stretched even further. As one anthropologist puts it, Cook essentially “discovered Polynesia,” realizing that all of the peoples on the islands in the ocean triangle bounded by Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand—specks in a vast six million square miles of sea—had the same language and culture: the same stone adzes, fishhooks, thatched houses and canoes. “It is extraordinary,” Cook wrote when he visited remote Easter Island in 1774, “that the same Nation should have spread themselves over all the isles in this vast Ocean . . . which is almost a fourth of the circumference of the Globe.” Other European explorers had also been astounded by the presence of thriving communities on the tiny, scattered islands of the Pacific, separated by hundreds if not thousands of miles.

…

But the map he left has fascinated scholars ever since. * * * Archaeologists now agree that the inhabitants of the Pacific did migrate by sea as Cook suggested, moving eastward from Southeast Asia from the second millennium BC, and fanning out in several stages to Tonga, Hawaii and Easter Island before eventually reaching New Zealand, perhaps as late as AD 1200. But although stories brought home by Cook and other explorers initially inspired romantic ideas about the Polynesians being expert ocean navigators guided by the stars, by the 1950s this was replaced by skepticism. Tupaia’s chart looked all wrong, for example.

You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves by Hiawatha Bray

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Albert Einstein, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Boeing 747, British Empire, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, crowdsourcing, Dava Sobel, digital map, don't be evil, Easter island, Edmond Halley, Edward Snowden, Firefox, game design, Google Earth, GPS: selective availability, Hedy Lamarr / George Antheil, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Harrison: Longitude, John Perry Barlow, John Snow's cholera map, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, license plate recognition, lone genius, openstreetmap, polynesian navigation, popular electronics, RAND corporation, RFID, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Thales of Miletus, trade route, turn-by-turn navigation, uranium enrichment, urban planning, Zipcar

Beginning in Southeast Asia, the Lapita people island-hopped their way to Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Bismarck Archipelago. By 1000 BC, Lapita voyagers had traveled as far east as Fiji and Samoa. Their descendants, the Polynesians, continued the oceangoing tradition, gradually finding their way across the Pacific. By the first millennium AD, the Polynesians had settled in New Zealand, Easter Island, Hawaii, and other islands, separated from one another by thousands of miles of blank blue water. These voyages, unrecorded and unrecalled, rank among the greatest of human explorations. How did they manage such remarkable journeys without so much as a compass? Sailors relied on nature, reading the subtle but plentiful signs of wind, waves, and wildlife.

…

See Advanced Research Projects Agency Darwin, Charles, 62–63 De Forest, Lee, 24 Dead reckoning, 9–10, 25, 27, 62, 69 Declination, 6, 12–14 Defense Department, US, 84, 87, 99–101 Delco Electronics, 72 Dell, Michael, 127 Delta Air Lines, 34 Desert Storm, 91 Deutschland, 53 DigitalGlobe, 167, 168 Diller, Barry, 179–180 Distortion, 36, 38, 78, 83, 107, 111 Dodgeball, 197–198, 200 Doolittle, James, 61–62, 63 Doppler effect, 72, 77–78, 83, 86, 105, 106 Draper, Charles Stark, 68, 69–70 Earth celestial navigation and, 5, 6 circumference of, 7 curvature of, 11–12 gravity field of, 84, 101 magnetic field of, 10–11, 12, 13–14 rotation of, 48, 49, 50 Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS-1), 164–165 Easter Island, 3 Easton, Roger, 94, 97–98, 100, 118–119 Efratom Elektronik, 100 Egypt, 4–5, 147 Einstein, Albert, 55, 67, 69, 101–102 Eisenhower, Dwight, 76, 79, 154, 156, 157–158, 159, 160, 161 Electricity, 20–21, 24 Electromagnetic spectrum, 21, 36, 123 Electronic Frontier Foundation, 225 Electronic Privacy Information Center, 225 Emergency services, 89–91, 113–115, 134–135, 204 England.

This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan

Easter island, invisible hand

I would bump into her in Glasgow, say walking down Queen Street, and her new boyfriend would walk on and not even stop so she would be left to say hurried hellos and then tear off after him and I would see the two of them shaking their heads as they crossed into George Square like I was just so much rubbish to be shot of. RR: You were going to tell us what happened to Dark Bathroom. I had that demo tape they made, June 1941, and it was amazing, songs like ‘Easter Island’ and ‘Harm That Foot Down’, stuff like that. SH: Yeah, okay. You know, I always wondered about that title. That was another summer, I suppose. When I get my shit together I’m going to get another band going as well. Plus I want to write a novel, a ghost story, probably. One morning I woke up really early and couldn’t get back to sleep and it was one of those weird really foggy autumn mornings and I opened the curtains and looked out the window and across the road in Katherine Park I could make out all these figures dotted about across the park, stock-still, motionless, just standing there, not looking at me but like looking away into the distance or just staring down at the ground, not even looking at each other.

…

, 1 dolls (see also: mannequins; dummies), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 dolmen, 1 dominatrix(es), 1, 2 doppelgängers, 1 Doray, Philippe, 1 Dors, Diana, 1 dosshouse, 1 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 1, 2, 3 dotty old dears, 1 double-mindedness (of dreams), 1 doughnut, 1 dove with a leaf between its beak (still missing), 1 Dover, 1 Downie’s Department Store, Baillieston Road, Shettleston, 1 Dr Martens (boots), 1 drag, 1 drama teacher, 1 dream, as a computation, 1 dream bride, 1, 2 dream lover, 1 dream role, 1 dream within a dream, 1 dreaming the entire thing, 1 dreams, as the language of the organs, 1 dreams of hotels, of left luggage, 1 dressed to kill, 1, 2 drinkers, heaviest, 1 driveways, red-chipped, 1 drone, 1, 2, 3, 4 drug use, indiscriminate, 1 drum machines, primitive, 1 drum stool, still vacant, 1 drums, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 drunk, again, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 drunk, pretending to be, 1 drunk and disorderly, repeated, 1 dry ice, 1 duck or emu = emu, 1 dull lefties, 1 Dumbarton Road, Partick, Glasgow, 1 dummies (see also: mannequins; dolls), 1 Dunbeth Public Park, Coatdyke, 1 dungeons, interconnecting, 1 Dungheap of the Living Flesh, 1 Dunoon, 1 dying alone, 1 Dylan, Bob, 1, 2, 3, 4 Dylan, Bob (female), 1 Dylan, Bob, ’ 1, 2 Earnest, 1 East End (of Glasgow), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Easter Everywhere, 1 ‘Easter Island’, 1 Easter Moffat Golf Club, Plains, 1, 2 eccentric characters, escaped from some kind of novel, 1 eccentricity, 1 ectoplasm, 1 Edinburgh, 1, 2, 3, 4 eggs, tortured, 1 eggs and salsa, possibility of, 1 Egyptology, 1 eighteen (inches of shared dildo), 1 ejaculate, 1, 2, 3 electromagnetic radiation, 1 electronics, home-made, 1 elegant kitten heels, 1 eleven (o’clock in the morning drinking a can), 1 Éluard, Paul, 1 empty (like a tomb), 1 empty space, 1, 2 encounters, dedication to, 1 end credits on a romance, 1 end of the world, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 endings, invented, 1, 2 endless loop, 1 endless sexy moan, 1 entry-level shit, 1, 2 Erotica, holidaying in, 1 eternity, 1, 2 Etruscan tomb, 1 eunuch, 1 Europe, 1, 2, 3 Everly Brothers, The, 1 everything is fixed, 1 Ex+ (condition), 1, 2 ex-girlfriend, 1, 2 exclamation marks, 1 excuse, lame, 1 exhibit an uncommon degree of zeal, 1 exhibition, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 existence, inexplicably mundane, 1 experimental, 1, 2 exploitation, accusations of, 1 expression, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 eye infirmary, the (Glasgow), 1 eye make-up, dramatic, 1 eye make-up, like an Egyptian goddess, 1 eye make-up, smeared, 1 eye make-up, turquoise, 1 eyebrow, weird thing with, 1 Eyeless in Gaza, 1 eyeless sockets, 1 eyelids, bulbous, 1 eyepatch, 1 eyes, big Bambi, 1 eyes, big blue, 1 eyes, dark, 1, 2, 3, 4 eyes, green, 1 eyes, like a tightrope walker over a deep dark lake, 1 eyes, like blank diamonds, 1 eyes, owl-like, staring out of the past, 1 eyes, red, 1 eyes, scientific, 1 eyes, silent, 1 eyes, sparkling, 1 eyes, with cataracts like strawberries, 1 facts, very few, 1 Fahey, John, 1, 2 failures, greatest, fairyland, 1 falling in love in slow motion, 1 family (what do I know about), 1 fantasy, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 fanzine, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ‘Fate is Only Once’, 1 father(s), drunk but loving, 1 favourite record of all time (cards on the table), 1 feather boas (as lava), 1, 2 feelings (carefree) (post-alcohol), 1 feelings (cheap), 1 feelings (shop-soiled), 1 feet, big white, 1 feet, enormous, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 feet, like flippers, 1 Feldman, Morton, 1 feline women, sex with (kidneys talking), 1 fellow hobbyists, 1, 2 Fenric Wolves, The, 1 feral child, 1 Ferris wheel, 1 fifteen (minutes), 1 fifty (per cent), 1 fifty-nine, 1 figure of the writer, the, 1 final recording, the, 1 Finlay, Ian Hamilton, 1 Finsbury Park, London, 1 Fire Engines, The, 1 fireflies (in Airdrie), 1 First Hegemony of the Pussying Father, 1 first morning on earth, resemblance to, 1, 2 first summer after high school, the, 1 fish hooks, 1 fish out of water, 1 fishers of men, 1 five (-foot-high black hole), 1 five (foot one), 1 five (hours), 1 five (pounds), 1, 2 Five Keys, The, 1 flashbacks, 1 flat(s), abandoned, 1 flat(s), grim, 1 flat(s), modern, 1, 2 ‘Flood Water Blues’, 1 Fluxus, 1 flyers, wad of, 1 Flying V (guitar), 1 foetus, 1 fog, 1, 2, 3, 4 foibles, zero, 1 footnote (now), 1 footprints, enormous, 1 ‘For the Good Times’, 1 forehead (regal), 1 forever, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 formal European romance, 1 Forrest Street, Airdrie, 1, 2, 3, 4 forty-five (degrees), 1, 2 forty-five (minutes), 1, 2 foul bread and beer (presiding demons of the east), 1 fountain in Kelvingrove Park (fucked for years), 1 fourteen (years old), 1, 2 Frankenstein, 1 freakbeat, 1 freaks, 1, 2 freckly complexion, 1 free jazz, 1, 2, 3 free jazz (German), 1 free vegetables, 1 French new wave movies, 1 fried breakfast (stale), 1 Fripp & Eno, 1 frog, leaping mechanical, 1 frog face, 1 frog torturers, 1 from out of no history, 1 fuck knows, 1 fuck off, you geek, 1 fuck off, you loser, 1 Fucked in no way, 1 fucking Atlas come to smother the world, 1 fucking barbarians, 1 fucking black box, 1 fucking cannibals, 1 fucking choirboys, 1 fucking concrete house with four windows, 1 fucking decapitate me, man, 1 fucking Dion and the Belmonts, 1 fucking Holocaust memorial, 1 fucking inflatable nightmare, 1 fucking instant hamburgers, 1 fucking job like a jail sentence, 1 fucking National Lampoon, 1 fucking skint, 1 fucking slugs, 1 fucking social experiment, 1 fucking Space Invader, 1 fucking think about it, 1 fucking top hat, 1 fucking Watts Towers, 1 fucking white leather trousers, 1 Fun House, 1, 2 funeral pace, 1 furnishings, drab, 1 Futura, 1 future, chosen representative of, 1 gah, gah, gah …, 1 Gala Day, 1, 2 Gallic tongue, 1 game of moments, 1 Gamma Productions, 1 Gang of Four, 1 gangsters (see also: toughs; hoods), 1 gaps in continuity, 1 garden, back, 1, 2, 3, 4 garden, rock, 1 gardening, 1, 2, 3 gardens, overgrown, 1 Gare de Lyon, Paris, France, 1 Gare du Nord, Paris, France, 1 garrotte, 1 Gartlea, Airdrie, 1, 2, 3 Gartlea Gallery of Geomancy and Geographic Speculation (G.G.G.G.S.), 1 garlic, romantic and sophisticated, 1 Gartness, Airdrie, 1, 2 gay magazine, 1 gay speculation, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 gays, subterranean, 1 Gaza Strip, the, 1 GBH, 1 genitals = beasts of burden with heavy eyes, 1 genitals = circus animals, 1 genitals = elephants, 1 genius, as accidental, 1 genius, as plain fucking wrong, 1 genocidal conflict (phantom), 1 George Square, Glasgow, 1, 2, 3 German history, 1 ghost(s), come back to the scene of their own murder, 1 ghost galleon, 1 ghost movie, 1 ghost story, 1, 2 ghoul, would-be, 1 Gibson, Mel, 1 giggling (over a sandwich), 1 gin, 1 Ginsberg, Allen, 1, 2, 3 girlfriend, bitchy, 1 girls, walking past, 1 giro, 1 Giuffre, Jimmy, 1 Give Us Sorrow/Give Us Rope, 1 glacier water (as blue as), 1 Glasgow, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 Glasgow Green, 1, 2 Glasgow Technical College, 1 Glasgow University, 1 Glasgow University Union, 1 glass bottle (up the ass), 1 glutinous, 1 go-go dress (short black-and-white), 1 ‘God Moves On the Water’, 1 godforsaken hellhole, 1 gods, the inscrutable way of, 1 Gogol, Nikolai, 1, 2 ‘Goin’ Down to the River’, 1 going nowhere, 1 Golden Dawn, 1 Gor (books), 1 Gorgon (in a snooker club), 1 Gothic fantasies, 1 grace, definition of, 1 grace, suspended, 1 Grahamshill Avenue, Airdrie, 1, 2 Grahamshill Street, Airdrie, 1 Granada, Spain, 1 Grant, Kenneth, 1 grass (see also: marijuana), 1, 2 grass bags, 1 Grateful Dead, The, 1 gratitude, importance of, 1 gravedigger, 1 gravestone, as a memorial device, 1 graveyard, at the bottom of the sea, 1, 2 gravitas, 1 gravity, 1, 2, 3 great gift, the, 1 Great Society, The, 1 Greek baby, the (with the big eyes), 1 Greek myth, some kind of, 1 Greengairs, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Griffin, Glasgow, The, 1 groover, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 guardian angel (holy), 1 guilt, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 guitar, played with a bow, 1 guitar, slide, 1, 2, 3 guitar chord, most beautiful of all, the, 1 guitar chord, one, 1, 2 Gulag Archipelago, The, 1 Gully, The, 1 Gun Club, The, 1 gunrunners, 1 guy, creepy-looking, 1 gymnastic displays, 1 gypsy, 1, 2, 3, 4 hacksaw (between the legs) (really gently), 1 hagiographers, 1 hair, artificial, 1 hair, blue, 1, 2, 3 hair, classic bowl cuts, 1 hair, dark, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 hair, ejaculated in (like), 1 hair, greasy, 1, 2, 3, 4 hair, greasy curly, 1 hair, like a dark silent river, 1 hair, on fire, 1, 2 hair, silver, 1, 2 hair, synthetic, long, black, 1 half Japanese, 1 half Swedish, 1 Halhul, Palestine, 1 halo, bendy, 1 hamburger patties, 1 Hamilton services, 1 Hamlet, 1 hammock, 1, 2 hand, like a flatfish from the bottom of the ocean, 1 handbag(s), tiny, 1, 2 hands, enormous, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 hands, like shovels, 1 hands, like tennis rackets, 1 hands, lily-white, made for slow strangulation, 1 hands, tied, 1 hands, tiny, 1 hangman knots, 1 hangover (daytime), 1, 2 Hansel & Gretel, 1 Happy Sad, 1 hard cases, 1 ‘Harm That Foot Down’, 1 Harvest, 1 hat, tight woolly, 1 hateful wives, 1 Hatfield and The North, 1 headcase(s), in Airdrie, in Scotland, 1 heart, as hotel, 1 heart, as left luggage, 1 heart, broken, 1 heart, failure, 1 heart, faithful, 1 heart, stalked, weighed, examined by night, 1 heart of the wood, the, 1 heartbeat, 1, 2, 3 heaven, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Heaven, London (nightclub), 1 heavy metal, 1 Hebron, Palestine, 1, 2 heels, black strappy, 1 heels, delicate buckle on, wounds inflicted by, 1 heels, held in hand, 1 heels, smacked in the head with, 1 heels, stiletto, 1 hegemony, banging on about, 1 helter-skelter, 1 Hercules (constellation), 1 hermeticists, the, 1 hermits in the desert, like, 1 Hesse, Hermann fucking, 1 Hickory Wind, 1 hieroglyphics, 1 ‘High Water Everywhere’, 1 Hindu, 1 hip flask, 1 hippies, 1, 2, 3 Hirsch, Shelley, 1 hissing of the earth, the, 1 historical gambits, 1 historical shit, 1 history buff, 1 history of drug use (implications of), 1 Hitchcock, Alfred, 1, 2 Hitler, Adolf, 1 Holehills, Airdrie, 1, 2 Holehills, Airdrie, philosophy of, 1 Hollywood Hills, the, 1 Holytown, 1 homosexual(s), strange, reclusive, 1 hoods (see also: toughs; gangsters), 1, 2 Hooker, D.

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, 23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, Anne Wojcicki, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, artificial general intelligence, Bernie Sanders, Bill Joy: nanobots, biodiversity loss, Burning Man, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, CRISPR, David Attenborough, deep learning, DeepMind, degrowth, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, ending welfare as we know it, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Flynn Effect, gigafactory, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Hyperloop, impulse control, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Bridle, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kim Stanley Robinson, life extension, light touch regulation, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, Menlo Park, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, ocean acidification, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart meter, Snapchat, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, strong AI, supervolcano, tech baron, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, traffic fines, Tragedy of the Commons, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator, Y2K, yield curve

And now we see shifts (the development of nuclear weapons, the rise of the internet) that change many of our assumptions in real time. So, the fact that even over this short span we’ve seen the routine and often sudden collapse of one civilization after another might give us pause. And in some ways, it does—books such as Jared Diamond’s Collapse intrigue us with their stories of past calamities, from Greenland to Easter Island. But these warnings also somehow seem to give us confidence, because, after all, things continued. Rome fell, and something else rose. The Fertile Crescent turned to desert, but we found other places to grow our food. The cautionary tales about transcending our limits (the apple in Eden, the Tower of Babel, Icarus) seem silly to us because we’re still here, and we keep transcending one limit after another.

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See also genetic engineering dopamine receptor D4 Doudna, Jennifer Dougie mice Dr. No (submarine) Dropbox drought Duchenne muscular dystrophy Dune Vulnerability Team (DVT) Dust Bowl Duterte, Rodrigo Dyson, Freeman Eagle Glacier Earth crust of degradation of habitability of hydrology of finite nature of great disruptions in Earth Day earthquakes Easter Island Ebell, Myron Ebola Economics of Smoking, The (Tollison and Wagner) Economist ecosystem services Eden Edison, Thomas efficiency Egypt elections 2010 2012 2016 2018 electricity, new access El Niño Emerson, Ralph Waldo employment Endangered Species Act End of Nature, The (McKibben) Ends of the World, The (Brannen) “Energy and Man” (API symposium) Energy Department energy efficiency energy poverty Enlightenment Now (Pinker) Enough (McKibben) environmentalism Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) environmental regulation Environmental Research Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Erdogan, Recep Tayyip erythropoietin (EPO) Esso Atlantic (oil tanker) estuaries ethics Ettinger, Robert Europe evolution experience sampling Extinction Rebellion Exxon Facebook facial recognition software Falcon 9 rocket famine Farmerline Fate of the Earth, The (Schell) Fauci, Anthony Federalist Society Federal Reserve feedback loops fertilizer fiberglass net Finding Nemo (film) Finland fires First Amendment fish Fisher Body floods Florida flow Flynn effect Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food supply Forbes Ford, Gerald forests Forest Service Fort McMurray, Canada Fortune 500 CEOs fossil fuels.

Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2020 by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, bike sharing, car-free, carbon footprint, Easter island, food desert, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), off-the-grid, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, sustainable-tourism, trade route

• Sarah Stocking Before landing her dream job at Lonely Planet, Sarah spent many years travelling to the farthest places she could think of in search of the greatest adventures. From kayaking with humpbacks in Antarctica to making her own costume out of a banana tree to dance in the Tapati Rapa Nui on Easter Island, she never says ‘no’ to a new experience. In addition to her work as a digital editor in Lonely Planet’s Tennessee office, Sarah has become Lonely Planet’s resident family travel expert and loves the challenge of coming up with fantastic trips for her own family and others to enjoy. • Kia Abdullah Kia Abdullah is an author and travel writer based in London, UK.

Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Our World by Greg Milner

Apollo 11, Ayatollah Khomeini, Boeing 747, British Empire, creative destruction, data acquisition, data science, Dava Sobel, different worldview, digital map, Easter island, Edmond Halley, Eratosthenes, experimental subject, Eyjafjallajökull, Flash crash, friendly fire, GPS: selective availability, Hedy Lamarr / George Antheil, Ian Bogost, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, John Harrison: Longitude, Kevin Kelly, Kwajalein Atoll, land tenure, lone genius, low earth orbit, Mars Rover, Mercator projection, place-making, polynesian navigation, precision agriculture, race to the bottom, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skinner box, skunkworks, smart grid, systems thinking, the map is not the territory, vertical integration

The Polynesians learned more about oceangoing, and extended their reach to even remoter Oceania, locating the Cook Islands and the Marquesas. Further out, the Pacific really opens up. Land is even scarcer, but the Polynesians found much of it. The islands of Polynesia—not unified politically, but closely related culturally and linguistically— eventually formed a triangle in the Pacific, with points marked by Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to the east, Aotearoa (New Zealand) to the west, and way up north, Hawai‘i, among the most isolated archipelagos on the planet, with no further land for 2,400 miles to the east and more than twice that to the west. It is difficult to overstate the immensity of this accomplishment. On the grandest scale, the establishment of Polynesia was but part of the larger Austronesian conquest of the planet.

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., 122 developmental topographical disorientation (DTD), 118 Dewey, John, 116 DGPS positioning technique, 99 Dirks, Stephen, xv Disney, Walt, 86 distance calculation, 16, 24–27 Dog of the South, The (Portis), 3 Doppler effect, 36–38, 40, 43, 44, 51, 259 Douglas Island, 138 Dover Strait, 166–67 Draper, Charles Stark “Doc,” 48 Driscoll, Ryan, 183, 184 drones, 67, 151–53, 168, 184–85 Dulles Airport, 155 Dunkirk, 246 Earth, 24, 53, 55, 262 apparent swelling (Palmdale Bulge) of, 210–11 atmosphere on, 227–30 center of, 253 compiling and sharing data on, 28 distribution of water on, 257 equatorial axis of, 246 equator of, 259 fastest circumnavigation of, 17, 126 gravitational field of, 131, 231–32, 245, 247, 250–51, 257 interior of, 206–7 latitude and longitude of, 24–27, 241, 245, 252, 253, 265 lithosphere (outer shell) of, 207 magnetism of, 27–28 measurement of, 253–54 measuring positioning, velocity, and acceleration of points on, 208–9 movement of, 202–8, 217–20 oblate spheroid shape of, 246 as only home for the human race, 209 orbiting of the sun by, 41, 228 polar regions of, 28 rotation of, 25, 43, 154, 202, 257, 261 75th meridian of, 30, 32 subduction zone of, 208 tectonic plate movement on, 3–4, 202–8, 209 topography of, 204–5 wobbling of, 257 earth-centered reference system, 253 Earth Day, 208 earthquakes, 202–4, 208–27, 232 casualties of, 215 land displacement in, 217–20, 224 magnitude of, 216–17, 219, 221–26 monitoring of, 203, 214–20, 223–24 prediction and warning of, 203, 210, 216, 224, 226 P-waves in, 223, 225 ShakeOut study of, 226–27 structural damage in, 215, 220, 221, 222, 225 S-waves in, 223 Easter Island, 4 Eastern Oblique Arc, 249 Easton, Roger, 31, 35, 39–40, 42–45, 47, 56–58, 153, 252 egalitarianism, 199 Egypt, 245 Einstein, Albert, xix, 267 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 29–30 electrical engineering, 48 electrical transmission, 158–61, 163–64 costs of, 241 disruption of, 158–59, 160 energy sources for, 160, 241 monitoring of, 159–61 electronic distance measurement (EDM), 251, 253 electronic monitoring systems, 175–77, 194–200 Electronic Route Guidance System (ERGS), 121 electronics, 85, 127 Elgin Air Force Base, 70 Elizabeth, N.J., 249 Elko County, Idaho, 136 ellipsoids, 247–49 Ellis, Roland, 63 eLoran, 166 El Segundo Air Force Base, 53 Endeavour, HMS, 7, 8–10 Enge, Per, 142, 171 England, xiv, 25–27, 104, 153 Hertfordshire County in, 197 Yorkshire County in, 113 English Channel, 166–67, 246 Enlightenment, 26 Eratosthenes, 245 Eschenbach, Ralph, 78–81, 83, 85, 87, 93 espionage, 55 Esri software company, 239 etak, 18–22, 118, 240, 262, 263, 265–66 definitions of, 18–19 Etak company, 122–23 Eurasia, 3 European Convention on Human Rights, 187 European Court of Human Rights, 187–88 European Datum 1952, 250 European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), 142 European Parliament, 104 European Space Agency, xvii European Union (EU), xvii, 144 Everest, Mount, 90 Eyjafjallajökull volcano, 230 F-4 aircraft, 59–60 Facebook, 194 Falcon Air Force Base, 62–63 Fallen Man photograph, 235–39, 235, 241–42, 248 GPS coordinates linked to, 238 location depicted in, 236, 245, 256 people and shops in, 236–38 time stamp on, 238 fascism, 177 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 140–41, 142, 151, 171 safety requirements of, 141 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 170, 178 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 200, 201 Federal Express, 143 Federal Highway Administration, U.S., Electronic Route Guidance System (ERGS) of, 121 fertilizer, 102, 103 Fiji, 4, 10 financial services industry, 161–64 Finney, Ben, 264–65 fixed-wing gunships, 50–51 fleet management industry, 183–84, 201, 282 Florida, 30, 31, 70, 90, 195–96 Fontainebleau, 246 Forbes, 127 Forlander, Abraham, 12 Fort Carson, xiii Fort Collins, Colo., 74, 75, 101 Fort Davis, Tex., 214 Fort Walton Beach, Fla., 70–71 fossils, 205 France, 158, 252, 263 Frankenstein, Julia, 130, 132 Freiburg, University of, Center for Cognitive Science at, 130 Freundschuh, Scott, 125 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, 222, 225 Fulton, Steve, 139, 279 Gable, Ralph, see Schwitzgebel, Ralph Gable, Robert, see Schwitzgebel, Robert Galileo Galilei, 29 Galileo system, xvii–xviii, 144 Gambale, Nunzio, 164–66 Garmin C550 receivers, 126 Garmin GPS Systems, 100, 126–27, 242 consumer electronics segment of, 127 Gastineau Channel, 138 Gatty, Harry, 17 General Accounting Office, 60 General Electric, 44 General Motors, 120 geochronology technologies, 207 geodesy, 245–48, 250–55, 286 geographic information systems (GIS), 239–42 GPS linked to, 239–40, 245 perception of the world shaped by, 241–42 geography, 3–4, 19, 118, 125 geoids, 247, 256 Geological Survey, U.S.

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? by Thomas Geoghegan

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, An Inconvenient Truth, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, business logic, collective bargaining, corporate governance, cross-subsidies, dark matter, David Brooks, declining real wages, deindustrialization, disinformation, Easter island, ending welfare as we know it, facts on the ground, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, income inequality, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, McJob, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, pensions crisis, plutocrats, Prenzlauer Berg, purchasing power parity, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, union organizing, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce

In his 2005 book, Collapse, the anthropologist Jared Diamond has a long section on Montana. He goes into the toxic waste, the runoff, and all the other environmental evils. Ecologically, Montana is a candidate for “collapse,” a place like Easter Island or Greenland that people one day may evacuate. Why is Germany so much less likely a candidate for collapse? I think in part it’s because it went through a version of an Easter Island–type collapse, namely, the destruction of World War II. Arguably, they had it coming, but its collapse was still fairly gruesome. In some way or other, there is an unconscious memory of this trauma, which now comes out as a horror of “Collapse,” or as a fanatic determination to be “Green.”

Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, British Empire, cotton gin, Easter island, Fellow of the Royal Society, General Motors Futurama, Great Leap Forward, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, Kitchen Debate, lateral thinking, Louis Pasteur, refrigerator car, scientific management, sexual politics, the scientific method, Upton Sinclair, Wall-E

A pleasant side effect was that the long, moist cooking made unpromising wild bulbs taste fantastically sweet. Some people were so attached to earth ovens and pit boiling that they did not see pots as superior or even necessary. The Polynesians of the early Christian era—the people who traveled to the eastern Pacific islands in the first millennium AD, arriving in Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island from Samoa and Tonga—present the fascinating spectacle of people who had known pots for a thousand years, only to abandon them. From around 800 BC, Polynesians made a range of pottery, typically earthenware fired at low heat, tempered with shell or sand. Yet when they arrived in the Marquesas Islands, around 100 AD, they abruptly gave up pottery making and chose to cook once again without pots.

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See Ovens Coal Codrington, Florence Coffee Colanders Collins, Shirley Common Sense in the Household Communism Conduction Confucius Convection Convenience food Cookbooks measurement and Cooking fire and frying gas geyser grinding and home hot-stone kitchen utensils and kitchens and knives and measurement and meat modernist one-pot open-hearth pit pottery and stone technology of See also Food The Cook’s Oracle (Kitchiner) Cooper, Joseph Copper heat conduction and pots and pans and Cordon Bleu Coryate, Thomas Cowan, Ruth Schwartz Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell, Richard Cryovac Cuisinart Culinary Innovation Culture chopsticks and forks and kitchen utensils and knives and pottery and science and technology and Darwin, Charles David, Elizabeth Day, Ivan De Groot, Roy Andries De la Reyniere, Grimod Dehillerin, E. Dehydrators Desaegher, Armand Disease Dishwashing Dixon, Tom Dolsot Domestic Encyclopedia (Webster) Doner, H. Albert Creston Donkin, Brian Donne, John The Dover Dowayo DuPont Durand, Peter Easter Island Eating chopsticks and with fingers forks and spoons and sporks and Eaton, Mary Edison, Thomas Edwardian era Eggbeaters Egg-Per’fect Eggs Egyptians Einstein, Albert Eintopf El Bulli, Spain Electric juicers Electricity blenders and cooking and food processors and ovens and refrigeration and Electrolux-Servel Elias, Norbert Elizabeth I, Queen Elizabethan Age Elizabethans Emery, John Enameled cast iron An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Economy (Webster) English cuisine knives and roasting and spoons in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) EPA.

Lonely Planet Pocket Bruges & Brussels by Lonely Planet, Helena Smith

Easter island, Ford Model T, glass ceiling, haute cuisine, non-fiction novel, Skype

Non-European Civilisations The scope of this section is impressive, taking in pre-Colombian art, American Indian headdresses, Jainist, Hindu and Buddhist deities, Chinese ceramics, rare Islamic textiles, Byzantine art and Coptic fabrics. Perhaps the most startling exhibit, though, is the woefully displaced Easter Island sculpture, a six-tonne stone giant collected on a Franco-Belgian expedition in the 1930s. Tintin Trail The museum is a must for those on the Tintin trail: a goulish skeleton mummy inspired The Seven Crystal Balls , while the Arumba fetish in The Broken Ear was based on a wooden votive figure displayed in the galleries.

Pocket Bruges & Brussels Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

Easter island, Ford Model T, glass ceiling, haute cuisine, Skype

Non-European Civilisations The scope of this section is impressive, taking in pre-Columbian art; Native American headdresses; Jainist, Hindu and Buddhist deities; Chinese ceramics; rare Islamic textiles; Byzantine art; and Coptic fabrics. Perhaps the most startling exhibit, though, is the woefully displaced Easter Island sculpture, a 6-tonne stone giant collected on a Franco-Belgian expedition in the 1930s. Tintin Trail The museum is a must for those on the Tintin trail: a goulish skeleton mummy inspired The Seven Crystal Balls, while the Arumba fetish in The Broken Ear was based on a wooden votive figure displayed in the galleries. 1Top Sights Parc du CinquantenaireE3 Musée du CinquantenaireD3 1Sights 1Musée des Sciences NaturellesB4 2EU ParliamentB3 3Square Marie-LouiseB1 4Parc LéopoldB3 5Berlaymont BuildingC2 5Eating 6L'Atelier EuropéenC2 7StirwenC4 8Au Bain MarieC3 9CapoueE3 6Drinking 10Café de l'AutobusC4 11Chez BernardC4 12Piola LibriD1 13La TerrasseE3 3Entertainment 14Arcade du CinquantenaireD3 7Shopping 15Crush WineA3 16Place Jourdan MarketC4 Sights 1Musée des Sciences NaturellesMUSEUM MAP GOOGLE MAP Thought-provoking and highly interactive, this museum has far more than the usual selection of stuffed animals.

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, bank run, basic income, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, dematerialisation, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, full employment, Future Shock, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, global village, Henri Poincaré, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, loss aversion, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Minsky moment, mobile money, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, Myron Scholes, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, price mechanism, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, smart cities, smart meter, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, the market place, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, wikimedia commons

Avoiding collapse A systems perspective makes clear that the prevailing direction of global economic development is caught in the twin dynamics of growing social inequality and deepening ecological degradation. To put it bluntly, these trends echo the conditions under which earlier civilisations – from the Easter Islanders to the Greenland Norse – have collapsed. When a society starts to destroy the resource base on which it depends, argues the environmental historian Jared Diamond, it is going to be far less adept at changing its ways if it is also stratified, with a small elite that is quite separate from the masses.

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Page numbers in italics denote illustrations A Aalborg, Denmark, 290 Abbott, Anthony ‘Tony’, 31 ABCD group, 148 Abramovitz, Moses, 262 absolute decoupling, 260–61 Acemoglu, Daron, 86 advertising, 58, 106–7, 112, 281 Agbodjinou, Sénamé, 231 agriculture, 5, 46, 72–3, 148, 155, 178, 181, 183 Alaska, 9 Alaska Permanent Fund, 194 Alperovitz, Gar, 177 alternative enterprise designs, 190–91 altruism, 100, 104 Amazon, 192, 196, 276 Amazon rainforest, 105–6, 253 American Economic Association, 3 American Enterprise Institute, 67 American Tobacco Corporation, 107 Andes, 54 animal spirits, 110 Anthropocene epoch, 48, 253 anthropocentrism, 115 Apertuso, 230 Apple, 85, 192 Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), 148 Arendt, Hannah, 115–16 Argentina, 55, 274 Aristotle, 32, 272 Arrow, Kenneth, 134 Articles of Association and Memoranda, 233 Arusha, Tanzania, 202 Asia Wage Floor Alliance, 177 Asian financial crisis (1997), 90 Asknature.org, 232 Athens, 57 austerity, 163 Australia, 31, 103, 177, 180, 211, 224–6, 255, 260 Austria, 263, 274 availability bias, 112 AXIOM, 230 Axtell, Robert, 150 Ayres, Robert, 263 B B Corp, 241 Babylon, 13 Baker, Josephine, 157 balancing feedback loops, 138–41, 155, 271 Ballmer, Steve, 231 Bangla Pesa, 185–6, 293 Bangladesh, 10, 226 Bank for International Settlements, 256 Bank of America, 149 Bank of England, 145, 147, 256 banking, see under finance Barnes, Peter, 201 Barroso, José Manuel, 41 Bartlett, Albert Allen ‘Al’, 247 basic income, 177, 194, 199–201 basic personal values, 107–9 Basle, Switzerland, 80 Bauwens, Michel, 197 Beckerman, Wilfred, 258 Beckham, David, 171 Beech-Nut Packing Company, 107 behavioural economics, 11, 111–14 behavioural psychology, 103, 128 Beinhocker, Eric, 158 Belgium, 236, 252 Bentham, Jeremy, 98 Benyus, Janine, 116, 218, 223–4, 227, 232, 237, 241 Berger, John, 12, 281 Berlin Wall, 141 Bermuda, 277 Bernanke, Ben, 146 Bernays, Edward, 107, 112, 281–3 Bhopal gas disaster (1984), 9 Bible, 19, 114, 151 Big Bang (1986), 87 billionaires, 171, 200, 289 biodiversity, 10, 46, 48–9, 52, 85, 115, 155, 208, 210, 242, 299 as common pool resource, 201 and land conversion, 49 and inequality, 172 and reforesting, 50 biomass, 73, 118, 210, 212, 221 biomimicry, 116, 218, 227, 229 bioplastic, 224, 293 Birmingham, West Midlands, 10 Black, Fischer, 100–101 Blair, Anthony ‘Tony’, 171 Blockchain, 187, 192 blood donation, 104, 118 Body Shop, The, 232–4 Bogotá, Colombia, 119 Bolivia, 54 Boston, Massachusetts, 3 Bowen, Alex, 261 Bowles, Sam, 104 Box, George, 22 Boyce, James, 209 Brasselberg, Jacob, 187 Brazil, 124, 226, 281, 290 bread riots, 89 Brisbane, Australia, 31 Brown, Gordon, 146 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 193, 194, 258 Buddhism, 54 buen vivir, 54 Bullitt Center, Seattle, 217 Bunge, 148 Burkina Faso, 89 Burmark, Lynell, 13 business, 36, 43, 68, 88–9 automation, 191–5, 237, 258, 278 boom and bust, 246 and circular economy, 212, 215–19, 220, 224, 227–30, 232–4, 292 and complementary currencies, 184–5, 292 and core economy, 80 and creative destruction, 142 and feedback loops, 148 and finance, 183, 184 and green growth, 261, 265, 269 and households, 63, 68 living metrics, 241 and market, 68, 88 micro-businesses, 9 and neoliberalism, 67, 87 ownership, 190–91 and political funding, 91–2, 171–2 and taxation, 23, 276–7 workers’ rights, 88, 91, 269 butterfly economy, 220–42 C C–ROADS (Climate Rapid Overview and Decision Support), 153 C40 network, 280 calculating man, 98 California, United States, 213, 224, 293 Cambodia, 254 Cameron, David, 41 Canada, 196, 255, 260, 281, 282 cancer, 124, 159, 196 Capital Institute, 236 carbon emissions, 49–50, 59, 75 and decoupling, 260, 266 and forests, 50, 52 and inequality, 58 reduction of, 184, 201, 213, 216–18, 223–7, 239–41, 260, 266 stock–flow dynamics, 152–4 taxation, 201, 213 Cargill, 148 Carney, Mark, 256 Caterpillar, 228 Catholic Church, 15, 19 Cato Institute, 67 Celts, 54 central banks, 6, 87, 145, 146, 147, 183, 184, 256 Chang, Ha-Joon, 82, 86, 90 Chaplin, Charlie, 157 Chiapas, Mexico, 121–2 Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), 100–101 Chicago School, 34, 99 Chile, 7, 42 China, 1, 7, 48, 154, 289–90 automation, 193 billionaires, 200, 289 greenhouse gas emissions, 153 inequality, 164 Lake Erhai doughnut analysis, 56 open-source design, 196 poverty reduction, 151, 198 renewable energy, 239 tiered pricing, 213 Chinese Development Bank, 239 chrematistics, 32, 273 Christianity, 15, 19, 114, 151 cigarettes, 107, 124 circular economy, 220–42, 257 Circular Flow diagram, 19–20, 28, 62–7, 64, 70, 78, 87, 91, 92, 93, 262 Citigroup, 149 Citizen Reaction Study, 102 civil rights movement, 77 Cleveland, Ohio, 190 climate change, 1, 3, 5, 29, 41, 45–53, 63, 74, 75–6, 91, 141, 144, 201 circular economy, 239, 241–2 dynamics of, 152–5 and G20, 31 and GDP growth, 255, 256, 260, 280 and heuristics, 114 and human rights, 10 and values, 126 climate positive cities, 239 closed systems, 74 coffee, 221 cognitive bias, 112–14 Colander, David, 137 Colombia, 119 common-pool resources, 82–3, 181, 201–2 commons, 69, 82–4, 287 collaborative, 78, 83, 191, 195, 196, 264, 292 cultural, 83 digital, 82, 83, 192, 197, 281 and distribution, 164, 180, 181–2, 205, 267 Embedded Economy, 71, 73, 77–8, 82–4, 85, 92 knowledge, 197, 201–2, 204, 229, 231, 292 commons and money creation, see complementary currencies natural, 82, 83, 180, 181–2, 201, 265 and regeneration, 229, 242, 267, 292 and state, 85, 93, 197, 237 and systems, 160 tragedy of, 28, 62, 69, 82, 181 triumph of, 83 and values, 106, 108 Commons Trusts, 201 complementary currencies, 158, 182–8, 236, 292 complex systems, 28, 129–62 complexity science, 136–7 Consumer Reaction Study, 102 consumerism, 58, 102, 121, 280–84 cooking, 45, 80, 186 Coote, Anna, 278 Copenhagen, Denmark, 124 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 14–15 copyright, 195, 197, 204 core economy, 79–80 Corporate To Do List, 215–19 Costa Rica, 172 Council of Economic Advisers, US, 6, 37 Cox, Jo, 117 cradle to cradle, 224 creative destruction, 142 Cree, 282 Crompton, Tom, 125–6 cross-border flows, 89–90 crowdsourcing, 204 cuckoos, 32, 35, 36, 38, 40, 54, 60, 159, 244, 256, 271 currencies, 182–8, 236, 274, 292 D da Vinci, Leonardo, 13, 94–5 Dallas, Texas, 120 Daly, Herman, 74, 143, 271 Danish Nudging Network, 124 Darwin, Charles, 14 Debreu, Gerard, 134 debt, 37, 146–7, 172–3, 182–5, 247, 255, 269 decoupling, 193, 210, 258–62, 273 defeat device software, 216 deforestation, 49–50, 74, 208, 210 degenerative linear economy, 211–19, 222–3, 237 degrowth, 244 DeMartino, George, 161 democracy, 77, 171–2, 258 demurrage, 274 Denmark, 180, 275, 290 deregulation, 82, 87, 269 derivatives, 100–101, 149 Devas, Charles Stanton, 97 Dey, Suchitra, 178 Diamond, Jared, 154 diarrhoea, 5 differential calculus, 131, 132 digital revolution, 191–2, 264 diversify–select–amplify, 158 double spiral, 54 Doughnut model, 10–11, 11, 23–5, 44, 51 and aspiration, 58–9, 280–84 big picture, 28, 42, 61–93 distribution, 29, 52, 57, 58, 76, 93, 158, 163–205 ecological ceiling, 10, 11, 44, 45, 46, 49, 51, 218, 254, 295, 298 goal, 25–8, 31–60 and governance, 57, 59 growth agnosticism, 29–30, 243–85 human nature, 28–9, 94–128 and population, 57–8 regeneration, 29, 158, 206–42 social foundation, 10, 11, 44, 45, 49, 51, 58, 77, 174, 200, 254, 295–6 systems, 28, 129–62 and technology, 57, 59 Douglas, Margaret, 78–9 Dreyfus, Louis, 148 ‘Dumb and Dumber in Macroeconomics’ (Solow), 135 Durban, South Africa, 214 E Earning by Learning, 120 Earth-system science, 44–53, 115, 216, 288, 298 Easter Island, 154 Easterlin, Richard, 265–6 eBay, 105, 192 eco-literacy, 115 ecological ceiling, 10, 11, 44, 45, 46, 49, 51, 218, 254, 295, 298 Ecological Performance Standards, 241 Econ 101 course, 8, 77 Economics (Lewis), 114 Economics (Samuelson), 19–20, 63–7, 70, 74, 78, 86, 91, 92, 93, 262 Economy for the Common Good, 241 ecosystem services, 7, 116, 269 Ecuador, 54 education, 9, 43, 45, 50–52, 85, 169–70, 176, 200, 249, 279 economic, 8, 11, 18, 22, 24, 36, 287–93 environmental, 115, 239–40 girls’, 57, 124, 178, 198 online, 83, 197, 264, 290 pricing, 118–19 efficient market hypothesis, 28, 62, 68, 87 Egypt, 48, 89 Eisenstein, Charles, 116 electricity, 9, 45, 236, 240 and Bangla Pesa, 186 cars, 231 Ethereum, 187–8 and MONIAC, 75, 262 pricing, 118, 213 see also renewable energy Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom, 145 Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 220 Embedded Economy, 71–93, 263 business, 88–9 commons, 82–4 Earth, 72–6 economy, 77–8 finance, 86–8 household, 78–81 market, 81–2 power, 91–92 society, 76–7 state, 84–6 trade, 89–90 employment, 36, 37, 51, 142, 176 automation, 191–5, 237, 258, 278 labour ownership, 188–91 workers’ rights, 88, 90, 269 Empty World, 74 Engels, Friedrich, 88 environment and circular economy, 220–42, 257 conservation, 121–2 and degenerative linear economy, 211–19, 222–3 degradation, 5, 9, 10, 29, 44–53, 74, 154, 172, 196, 206–42 education on, 115, 239–40 externalities, 152 fair share, 216–17 and finance, 234–7 generosity, 218–19, 223–7 green growth, 41, 210, 243–85 nudging, 123–5 taxation and quotas, 213–14, 215 zero impact, 217–18, 238, 241 Environmental Dashboard, 240–41 environmental economics, 7, 11, 114–16 Environmental Kuznets Curve, 207–11, 241 environmental space, 54 Epstein, Joshua, 150 equilibrium theory, 134–62 Ethereum, 187–8 ethics, 160–62 Ethiopia, 9, 226, 254 Etsy, 105 Euclid, 13, 15 European Central Bank, 145, 275 European Commission, 41 European Union (EU), 92, 153, 210, 222, 255, 258 Evergreen Cooperatives, 190 Evergreen Direct Investing (EDI), 273 exogenous shocks, 141 exponential growth, 39, 246–85 externalities, 143, 152, 213 Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989), 9 F Facebook, 192 fair share, 216–17 Fama, Eugene, 68, 87 fascism, 234, 277 Federal Reserve, US, 87, 145, 146, 271, 282 feedback loops, 138–41, 143, 148, 155, 250, 271 feminist economics, 11, 78–81, 160 Ferguson, Thomas, 91–2 finance animal spirits, 110 bank runs, 139 Black–Scholes model, 100–101 boom and bust, 28–9, 110, 144–7 and Circular Flow, 63–4, 87 and complex systems, 134, 138, 139, 140, 141, 145–7 cross-border flows, 89 deregulation, 87 derivatives, 100–101, 149 and distribution, 169, 170, 173, 182–4, 198–9, 201 and efficient market hypothesis, 63, 68 and Embedded Economy, 71, 86–8 and financial-instability hypothesis, 87, 146 and GDP growth, 38 and media, 7–8 mobile banking, 199–200 and money creation, 87, 182–5 and regeneration, 227, 229, 234–7 in service to life, 159, 234–7 stakeholder finance, 190 and sustainability, 216, 235–6, 239 financial crisis (2008), 1–4, 5, 40, 63, 86, 141, 144, 278, 290 and efficient market hypothesis, 87 and equilibrium theory, 134, 145 and financial-instability hypothesis, 87 and inequality, 90, 170, 172, 175 and money creation, 182 and worker’s rights, 278 financial flows, 89 Financial Times, 183, 266, 289 financial-instability hypothesis, 87, 146 First Green Bank, 236 First World War (1914–18), 166, 170 Fisher, Irving, 183 fluid values, 102, 106–9 food, 3, 43, 45, 50, 54, 58, 59, 89, 198 food banks, 165 food price crisis (2007–8), 89, 90, 180 Ford, 277–8 foreign direct investment, 89 forest conservation, 121–2 fossil fuels, 59, 73, 75, 92, 212, 260, 263 Foundations of Economic Analysis (Samuelson), 17–18 Foxconn, 193 framing, 22–3 France, 43, 165, 196, 238, 254, 256, 281, 290 Frank, Robert, 100 free market, 33, 37, 67, 68, 70, 81–2, 86, 90 free open-source hardware (FOSH), 196–7 free open-source software (FOSS), 196 free trade, 70, 90 Freeman, Ralph, 18–19 freshwater cycle, 48–9 Freud, Sigmund, 107, 281 Friedman, Benjamin, 258 Friedman, Milton, 34, 62, 66–9, 84–5, 88, 99, 183, 232 Friends of the Earth, 54 Full World, 75 Fuller, Buckminster, 4 Fullerton, John, 234–6, 273 G G20, 31, 56, 276, 279–80 G77, 55 Gal, Orit, 141 Gandhi, Mohandas, 42, 293 Gangnam Style, 145 Gardens of Democracy, The (Liu & Hanauer), 158 gender equality, 45, 51–2, 57, 78–9, 85, 88, 118–19, 124, 171, 198 generosity, 218–19, 223–9 geometry, 13, 15 George, Henry, 149, 179 Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, 252 geothermal energy, 221 Gerhardt, Sue, 283 Germany, 2, 41, 100, 118, 165, 189, 211, 213, 254, 256, 260, 274 Gessel, Silvio, 274 Ghent, Belgium, 236 Gift Relationship, The (Titmuss), 118–19 Gigerenzer, Gerd, 112–14 Gintis, Herb, 104 GiveDirectly, 200 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 87 Glennon, Roger, 214 Global Alliance for Tax Justice, 277 global material footprints, 210–11 Global Village Construction Set, 196 globalisation, 89 Goerner, Sally, 175–6 Goffmann, Erving, 22 Going for Growth, 255 golden rule, 91 Goldman Sachs, 149, 170 Gómez-Baggethun, Erik, 122 Goodall, Chris, 211 Goodwin, Neva, 79 Goody, Jade, 124 Google, 192 Gore, Albert ‘Al’, 172 Gorgons, 244, 256, 257, 266 graffiti, 15, 25, 287 Great Acceleration, 46, 253–4 Great Depression (1929–39), 37, 70, 170, 173, 183, 275, 277, 278 Great Moderation, 146 Greece, Ancient, 4, 13, 32, 48, 54, 56–7, 160, 244 green growth, 41, 210, 243–85 Greenham, Tony, 185 greenhouse gas emissions, 31, 46, 50, 75–6, 141, 152–4 and decoupling, 260, 266 and Environmental Kuznets Curve, 208, 210 and forests, 50, 52 and G20, 31 and inequality, 58 reduction of, 184, 201–2, 213, 216–18, 223–7, 239–41, 256, 259–60, 266, 298 stock–flow dynamics, 152–4 and taxation, 201, 213 Greenland, 141, 154 Greenpeace, 9 Greenspan, Alan, 87 Greenwich, London, 290 Grenoble, France, 281 Griffiths, Brian, 170 gross domestic product (GDP), 25, 31–2, 35–43, 57, 60, 84, 164 as cuckoo, 32, 35, 36, 38, 40, 54, 60, 159, 244, 256, 271 and Environmental Kuznets Curve, 207–11 and exponential growth, 39, 53, 246–85 and growth agnosticism, 29–30, 240, 243–85 and inequality, 173 and Kuznets Curve, 167, 173, 188–9 gross national product (GNP), 36–40 Gross World Product, 248 Grossman, Gene, 207–8, 210 ‘grow now, clean up later’, 207 Guatemala, 196 H Haifa, Israel, 120 Haldane, Andrew, 146 Han Dynasty, 154 Hanauer, Nick, 158 Hansen, Pelle, 124 Happy Planet Index, 280 Hardin, Garrett, 69, 83, 181 Harvard University, 2, 271, 290 von Hayek, Friedrich, 7–8, 62, 66, 67, 143, 156, 158 healthcare, 43, 50, 57, 85, 123, 125, 170, 176, 200, 269, 279 Heilbroner, Robert, 53 Henry VIII, King of England and Ireland, 180 Hepburn, Cameron, 261 Herbert Simon, 111 heuristics, 113–14, 118, 123 high-income countries growth, 30, 244–5, 254–72, 282 inequality, 165, 168, 169, 171 labour, 177, 188–9, 278 overseas development assistance (ODA), 198–9 resource intensive lifestyles, 46, 210–11 trade, 90 Hippocrates, 160 History of Economic Analysis (Schumpeter), 21 HIV/AIDS, 123 Holocene epoch, 46–8, 75, 115, 253 Homo economicus, 94–103, 109, 127–8 Homo sapiens, 38, 104, 130 Hong Kong, 180 household, 78 housing, 45, 59, 176, 182–3, 269 Howe, Geoffrey, 67 Hudson, Michael, 183 Human Development Index, 9, 279 human nature, 28 human rights, 10, 25, 45, 49, 50, 95, 214, 233 humanistic economics, 42 hydropower, 118, 260, 263 I Illinois, United States, 179–80 Imago Mundi, 13 immigration, 82, 199, 236, 266 In Defense of Economic Growth (Beckerman), 258 Inclusive Wealth Index, 280 income, 51, 79–80, 82, 88, 176–8, 188–91, 194, 199–201 India, 2, 9, 10, 42, 124, 164, 178, 196, 206–7, 242, 290 Indonesia, 90, 105–6, 164, 168, 200 Indus Valley civilisation, 48 inequality, 1, 5, 25, 41, 63, 81, 88, 91, 148–52, 209 and consumerism, 111 and democracy, 171 and digital revolution, 191–5 and distribution, 163–205 and environmental degradation, 172 and GDP growth, 173 and greenhouse gas emissions, 58 and intellectual property, 195–8 and Kuznets Curve, 29, 166–70, 173–4 and labour ownership, 188–91 and land ownership, 178–82 and money creation, 182–8 and social welfare, 171 Success to the Successful, 148, 149, 151, 166 inflation, 36, 248, 256, 275 insect pollination services, 7 Institute of Economic Affairs, 67 institutional economics, 11 intellectual property rights, 195–8, 204 interest, 36, 177, 182, 184, 275–6 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 25 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 170, 172, 173, 183, 255, 258, 271 Internet, 83–4, 89, 105, 192, 202, 264 Ireland, 277 Iroquois Onondaga Nation, 116 Israel, 100, 103, 120 Italy, 165, 196, 254 J Jackson, Tim, 58 Jakubowski, Marcin, 196 Jalisco, Mexico, 217 Japan, 168, 180, 211, 222, 254, 256, 263, 275 Jevons, William Stanley, 16, 97–8, 131, 132, 137, 142 John Lewis Partnership, 190 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 37 Johnson, Mark, 38 Johnson, Todd, 191 JPMorgan Chase, 149, 234 K Kahneman, Daniel, 111 Kamkwamba, William, 202, 204 Kasser, Tim, 125–6 Keen, Steve, 146, 147 Kelly, Marjorie, 190–91, 233 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 37, 250 Kennedy, Paul, 279 Kenya, 118, 123, 180, 185–6, 199–200, 226, 292 Keynes, John Maynard, 7–8, 22, 66, 69, 134, 184, 251, 277–8, 284, 288 Kick It Over movement, 3, 289 Kingston, London, 290 Knight, Frank, 66, 99 knowledge commons, 202–4, 229, 292 Kokstad, South Africa, 56 Kondratieff waves, 246 Korzybski, Alfred, 22 Krueger, Alan, 207–8, 210 Kuhn, Thomas, 22 Kumhof, Michael, 172 Kuwait, 255 Kuznets, Simon, 29, 36, 39–40, 166–70, 173, 174, 175, 204, 207 KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, 56 L labour ownership, 188–91 Lake Erhai, Yunnan, 56 Lakoff, George, 23, 38, 276 Lamelara, Indonesia, 105–6 land conversion, 49, 52, 299 land ownership, 178–82 land-value tax, 73, 149, 180 Landesa, 178 Landlord’s Game, The, 149 law of demand, 16 laws of motion, 13, 16–17, 34, 129, 131 Lehman Brothers, 141 Leopold, Aldo, 115 Lesotho, 118, 199 leverage points, 159 Lewis, Fay, 178 Lewis, Justin, 102 Lewis, William Arthur, 114, 167 Lietaer, Bernard, 175, 236 Limits to Growth, 40, 154, 258 Linux, 231 Liu, Eric, 158 living metrics, 240–42 living purpose, 233–4 Lomé, Togo, 231 London School of Economics (LSE), 2, 34, 65, 290 London Underground, 12 loss aversion, 112 low-income countries, 90, 164–5, 168, 173, 180, 199, 201, 209, 226, 254, 259 Lucas, Robert, 171 Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio, 124 Luxembourg, 277 Lyle, John Tillman, 214 Lyons, Oren, 116 M M–PESA, 199–200 MacDonald, Tim, 273 Machiguenga, 105–6 MacKenzie, Donald, 101 macroeconomics, 36, 62–6, 76, 80, 134–5, 145, 147, 150, 244, 280 Magie, Elizabeth, 149, 153 Malala effect, 124 malaria, 5 Malawi, 118, 202, 204 Malaysia, 168 Mali, Taylor, 243 Malthus, Thomas, 252 Mamsera Rural Cooperative, 190 Manhattan, New York, 9, 41 Mani, Muthukumara, 206 Manitoba, 282 Mankiw, Gregory, 2, 34 Mannheim, Karl, 22 Maoris, 54 market, 81–2 and business, 88 circular flow, 64 and commons, 83, 93, 181, 200–201 efficiency of, 28, 62, 68, 87, 148, 181 and equilibrium theory, 131–5, 137, 143–7, 155, 156 free market, 33, 37, 67–70, 90, 208 and households, 63, 69, 78, 79 and maxi-max rule, 161 and pricing, 117–23, 131, 160 and rational economic man, 96, 100–101, 103, 104 and reciprocity, 105, 106 reflexivity of, 144–7 and society, 69–70 and state, 84–6, 200, 281 Marshall, Alfred, 17, 98, 133, 165, 253, 282 Marx, Karl, 88, 142, 165, 272 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 17–20, 152–5 massive open online courses (MOOCs), 290 Matthew Effect, 151 Max-Neef, Manfred, 42 maxi-max rule, 161 maximum wage, 177 Maya civilisation, 48, 154 Mazzucato, Mariana, 85, 195, 238 McAfee, Andrew, 194, 258 McDonough, William, 217 Meadows, Donella, 40, 141, 159, 271, 292 Medusa, 244, 257, 266 Merkel, Angela, 41 Messerli, Elspeth, 187 Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson), 38 Mexico, 121–2, 217 Michaels, Flora S., 6 micro-businesses, 9, 173, 178 microeconomics, 132–4 microgrids, 187–8 Micronesia, 153 Microsoft, 231 middle class, 6, 46, 58 middle-income countries, 90, 164, 168, 173, 180, 226, 254 migration, 82, 89–90, 166, 195, 199, 236, 266, 286 Milanovic, Branko, 171 Mill, John Stuart, 33–4, 73, 97, 250, 251, 283, 284, 288 Millo, Yuval, 101 minimum wage, 82, 88, 176 Minsky, Hyman, 87, 146 Mises, Ludwig von, 66 mission zero, 217 mobile banking, 199–200 mobile phones, 222 Model T revolution, 277–8 Moldova, 199 Mombasa, Kenya, 185–6 Mona Lisa (da Vinci), 94 money creation, 87, 164, 177, 182–8, 205 MONIAC (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer), 64–5, 75, 142, 262 Monoculture (Michaels), 6 Monopoly, 149 Mont Pelerin Society, 67, 93 Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, The (Friedman), 258 moral vacancy, 41 Morgan, Mary, 99 Morogoro, Tanzania, 121 Moyo, Dambisa, 258 Muirhead, Sam, 230, 231 MultiCapital Scorecard, 241 Murphy, David, 264 Murphy, Richard, 185 musical tastes, 110 Myriad Genetics, 196 N national basic income, 177 Native Americans, 115, 116, 282 natural capital, 7, 116, 269 Natural Economic Order, The (Gessel), 274 Nedbank, 216 negative externalities, 213 negative interest rates, 275–6 neoclassical economics, 134, 135 neoliberalism, 7, 62–3, 67–70, 81, 83, 84, 88, 93, 143, 170, 176 Nepal, 181, 199 Nestlé, 217 Netherlands, 211, 235, 224, 226, 238, 277 networks, 110–11, 117, 118, 123, 124–6, 174–6 neuroscience, 12–13 New Deal, 37 New Economics Foundation, 278, 283 New Year’s Day, 124 New York, United States, 9, 41, 55 Newlight Technologies, 224, 226, 293 Newton, Isaac, 13, 15–17, 32–3, 95, 97, 129, 131, 135–7, 142, 145, 162 Nicaragua, 196 Nigeria, 164 nitrogen, 49, 52, 212–13, 216, 218, 221, 226, 298 ‘no pain, no gain’, 163, 167, 173, 204, 209 Nobel Prize, 6–7, 43, 83, 101, 167 Norway, 281 nudging, 112, 113, 114, 123–6 O Obama, Barack, 41, 92 Oberlin, Ohio, 239, 240–41 Occupy movement, 40, 91 ocean acidification, 45, 46, 52, 155, 242, 298 Ohio, United States, 190, 239 Okun, Arthur, 37 onwards and upwards, 53 Open Building Institute, 196 Open Source Circular Economy (OSCE), 229–32 open systems, 74 open-source design, 158, 196–8, 265 open-source licensing, 204 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 38, 210, 255–6, 258 Origin of Species, The (Darwin), 14 Ormerod, Paul, 110, 111 Orr, David, 239 Ostrom, Elinor, 83, 84, 158, 160, 181–2 Ostry, Jonathan, 173 OSVehicle, 231 overseas development assistance (ODA), 198–200 ownership of wealth, 177–82 Oxfam, 9, 44 Oxford University, 1, 36 ozone layer, 9, 50, 115 P Pachamama, 54, 55 Pakistan, 124 Pareto, Vilfredo, 165–6, 175 Paris, France, 290 Park 20|20, Netherlands, 224, 226 Parker Brothers, 149 Patagonia, 56 patents, 195–6, 197, 204 patient capital, 235 Paypal, 192 Pearce, Joshua, 197, 203–4 peer-to-peer networks, 187, 192, 198, 203, 292 People’s QE, 184–5 Perseus, 244 Persia, 13 Peru, 2, 105–6 Phillips, Adam, 283 Phillips, William ‘Bill’, 64–6, 75, 142, 262 phosphorus, 49, 52, 212–13, 218, 298 Physiocrats, 73 Pickett, Kate, 171 pictures, 12–25 Piketty, Thomas, 169 Playfair, William, 16 Poincaré, Henri, 109, 127–8 Polanyi, Karl, 82, 272 political economy, 33–4, 42 political funding, 91–2, 171–2 political voice, 43, 45, 51–2, 77, 117 pollution, 29, 45, 52, 85, 143, 155, 206–17, 226, 238, 242, 254, 298 population, 5, 46, 57, 155, 199, 250, 252, 254 Portugal, 211 post-growth society, 250 poverty, 5, 9, 37, 41, 50, 88, 118, 148, 151 emotional, 283 and inequality, 164–5, 168–9, 178 and overseas development assistance (ODA), 198–200 and taxation, 277 power, 91–92 pre-analytic vision, 21–2 prescription medicines, 123 price-takers, 132 prices, 81, 118–23, 131, 160 Principles of Economics (Mankiw), 34 Principles of Economics (Marshall), 17, 98 Principles of Political Economy (Mill), 288 ProComposto, 226 Propaganda (Bernays), 107 public relations, 107, 281 public spending v. investment, 276 public–private patents, 195 Putnam, Robert, 76–7 Q quantitative easing (QE), 184–5 Quebec, 281 Quesnay, François, 16, 73 R Rabot, Ghent, 236 Rancière, Romain, 172 rating and review systems, 105 rational economic man, 94–103, 109, 111, 112, 126, 282 Reagan, Ronald, 67 reciprocity, 103–6, 117, 118, 123 reflexivity of markets, 144 reinforcing feedback loops, 138–41, 148, 250, 271 relative decoupling, 259 renewable energy biomass energy, 118, 221 and circular economy, 221, 224, 226, 235, 238–9, 274 and commons, 83, 85, 185, 187–8, 192, 203, 264 geothermal energy, 221 and green growth, 257, 260, 263, 264, 267 hydropower, 118, 260, 263 pricing, 118 solar energy, see solar energy wave energy, 221 wind energy, 75, 118, 196, 202–3, 221, 233, 239, 260, 263 rentier sector, 180, 183, 184 reregulation, 82, 87, 269 resource flows, 175 resource-intensive lifestyles, 46 Rethinking Economics, 289 Reynebeau, Guy, 237 Ricardo, David, 67, 68, 73, 89, 250 Richardson, Katherine, 53 Rifkin, Jeremy, 83, 264–5 Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, The (Kennedy), 279 risk, 112, 113–14 Robbins, Lionel, 34 Robinson, James, 86 Robinson, Joan, 142 robots, 191–5, 237, 258, 278 Rockefeller Foundation, 135 Rockford, Illinois, 179–80 Rockström, Johan, 48, 55 Roddick, Anita, 232–4 Rogoff, Kenneth, 271, 280 Roman Catholic Church, 15, 19 Rombo, Tanzania, 190 Rome, Ancient, 13, 48, 154 Romney, Mitt, 92 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 37 rooted membership, 190 Rostow, Walt, 248–50, 254, 257, 267–70, 284 Ruddick, Will, 185 rule of thumb, 113–14 Ruskin, John, 42, 223 Russia, 200 rust belt, 90, 239 S S curve, 251–6 Sainsbury’s, 56 Samuelson, Paul, 17–21, 24–5, 38, 62–7, 70, 74, 84, 91, 92, 93, 262, 290–91 Sandel, Michael, 41, 120–21 Sanergy, 226 sanitation, 5, 51, 59 Santa Fe, California, 213 Santinagar, West Bengal, 178 São Paolo, Brazil, 281 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 43 Saumweder, Philipp, 226 Scharmer, Otto, 115 Scholes, Myron, 100–101 Schumacher, Ernst Friedrich, 42, 142 Schumpeter, Joseph, 21 Schwartz, Shalom, 107–9 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 163, 167, 204 ‘Science and Complexity’ (Weaver), 136 Scotland, 57 Seaman, David, 187 Seattle, Washington, 217 second machine age, 258 Second World War (1939–45), 18, 37, 70, 170 secular stagnation, 256 self-interest, 28, 68, 96–7, 99–100, 102–3 Selfish Society, The (Gerhardt), 283 Sen, Amartya, 43 Shakespeare, William, 61–3, 67, 93 shale gas, 264, 269 Shang Dynasty, 48 shareholders, 82, 88, 189, 191, 227, 234, 273, 292 sharing economy, 264 Sheraton Hotel, Boston, 3 Siegen, Germany, 290 Silicon Valley, 231 Simon, Julian, 70 Sinclair, Upton, 255 Sismondi, Jean, 42 slavery, 33, 77, 161 Slovenia, 177 Small Is Beautiful (Schumacher), 42 smart phones, 85 Smith, Adam, 33, 57, 67, 68, 73, 78–9, 81, 96–7, 103–4, 128, 133, 160, 181, 250 social capital, 76–7, 122, 125, 172 social contract, 120, 125 social foundation, 10, 11, 44, 45, 49, 51, 58, 77, 174, 200, 254, 295–6 social media, 83, 281 Social Progress Index, 280 social pyramid, 166 society, 76–7 solar energy, 59, 75, 111, 118, 187–8, 190 circular economy, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226–7, 239 commons, 203 zero-energy buildings, 217 zero-marginal-cost revolution, 84 Solow, Robert, 135, 150, 262–3 Soros, George, 144 South Africa, 56, 177, 214, 216 South Korea, 90, 168 South Sea Bubble (1720), 145 Soviet Union (1922–91), 37, 67, 161, 279 Spain, 211, 238, 256 Spirit Level, The (Wilkinson & Pickett), 171 Sraffa, Piero, 148 St Gallen, Switzerland, 186 Stages of Economic Growth, The (Rostow), 248–50, 254 stakeholder finance, 190 Standish, Russell, 147 state, 28, 33, 69–70, 78, 82, 160, 176, 180, 182–4, 188 and commons, 85, 93, 197, 237 and market, 84–6, 200, 281 partner state, 197, 237–9 and robots, 195 stationary state, 250 Steffen, Will, 46, 48 Sterman, John, 66, 143, 152–4 Steuart, James, 33 Stiglitz, Joseph, 43, 111, 196 stocks and flows, 138–41, 143, 144, 152 sub-prime mortgages, 141 Success to the Successful, 148, 149, 151, 166 Sugarscape, 150–51 Summers, Larry, 256 Sumner, Andy, 165 Sundrop Farms, 224–6 Sunstein, Cass, 112 supply and demand, 28, 132–6, 143, 253 supply chains, 10 Sweden, 6, 255, 275, 281 swishing, 264 Switzerland, 42, 66, 80, 131, 186–7, 275 T Tableau économique (Quesnay), 16 tabula rasa, 20, 25, 63, 291 takarangi, 54 Tanzania, 121, 190, 202 tar sands, 264, 269 taxation, 78, 111, 165, 170, 176, 177, 237–8, 276–9 annual wealth tax, 200 environment, 213–14, 215 global carbon tax, 201 global financial transactions tax, 201, 235 land-value tax, 73, 149, 180 non-renewable resources, 193, 237–8, 278–9 People’s QE, 185 tax relief v. tax justice, 23, 276–7 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), 202, 258 Tempest, The (Shakespeare), 61, 63, 93 Texas, United States, 120 Thailand, 90, 200 Thaler, Richard, 112 Thatcher, Margaret, 67, 69, 76 Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith), 96 Thompson, Edward Palmer, 180 3D printing, 83–4, 192, 198, 231, 264 thriving-in-balance, 54–7, 62 tiered pricing, 213–14 Tigray, Ethiopia, 226 time banking, 186 Titmuss, Richard, 118–19 Toffler, Alvin, 12, 80 Togo, 231, 292 Torekes, 236–7 Torras, Mariano, 209 Torvalds, Linus, 231 trade, 62, 68–9, 70, 89–90 trade unions, 82, 176, 189 trademarks, 195, 204 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 92 transport, 59 trickle-down economics, 111, 170 Triodos, 235 Turkey, 200 Tversky, Amos, 111 Twain, Mark, 178–9 U Uganda, 118, 125 Ulanowicz, Robert, 175 Ultimatum Game, 105, 117 unemployment, 36, 37, 276, 277–9 United Kingdom Big Bang (1986), 87 blood donation, 118 carbon dioxide emissions, 260 free trade, 90 global material footprints, 211 money creation, 182 MONIAC (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer), 64–5, 75, 142, 262 New Economics Foundation, 278, 283 poverty, 165, 166 prescription medicines, 123 wages, 188 United Nations, 55, 198, 204, 255, 258, 279 G77 bloc, 55 Human Development Index, 9, 279 Sustainable Development Goals, 24, 45 United States American Economic Association meeting (2015), 3 blood donation, 118 carbon dioxide emissions, 260 Congress, 36 Council of Economic Advisers, 6, 37 Earning by Learning, 120 Econ 101 course, 8, 77 Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989), 9 Federal Reserve, 87, 145, 146, 271, 282 free trade, 90 Glass–Steagall Act (1933), 87 greenhouse gas emissions, 153 global material footprint, 211 gross national product (GNP), 36–40 inequality, 170, 171 land-value tax, 73, 149, 180 political funding, 91–2, 171 poverty, 165, 166 productivity and employment, 193 rust belt, 90, 239 Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 92 wages, 188 universal basic income, 200 University of Berkeley, 116 University of Denver, 160 urbanisation, 58–9 utility, 35, 98, 133 V values, 6, 23, 34, 35, 42, 117, 118, 121, 123–6 altruism, 100, 104 anthropocentric, 115 extrinsic, 115 fluid, 28, 102, 106–9 and networks, 110–11, 117, 118, 123, 124–6 and nudging, 112, 113, 114, 123–6 and pricing, 81, 120–23 Veblen, Thorstein, 82, 109, 111, 142 Venice, 195 verbal framing, 23 Verhulst, Pierre, 252 Victor, Peter, 270 Viner, Jacob, 34 virtuous cycles, 138, 148 visual framing, 23 Vitruvian Man, 13–14 Volkswagen, 215–16 W Wacharia, John, 186 Wall Street, 149, 234, 273 Wallich, Henry, 282 Walras, Léon, 131, 132, 133–4, 137 Ward, Barbara, 53 Warr, Benjamin, 263 water, 5, 9, 45, 46, 51, 54, 59, 79, 213–14 wave energy, 221 Ways of Seeing (Berger), 12, 281 Wealth of Nations, The (Smith), 74, 78, 96, 104 wealth ownership, 177–82 Weaver, Warren, 135–6 weightless economy, 261–2 WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic), 103–5, 110, 112, 115, 117, 282 West Bengal, India, 124, 178 West, Darrell, 171–2 wetlands, 7 whale hunting, 106 Wiedmann, Tommy, 210 Wikipedia, 82, 223 Wilkinson, Richard, 171 win–win trade, 62, 68, 89 wind energy, 75, 118, 196, 202–3, 221, 233, 239, 260, 263 Wizard of Oz, The, 241 Woelab, 231, 293 Wolf, Martin, 183, 266 women’s rights, 33, 57, 107, 160, 201 and core economy, 69, 79–81 education, 57, 124, 178, 198 and land ownership, 178 see also gender equality workers’ rights, 88, 91, 269 World 3 model, 154–5 World Bank, 6, 41, 119, 164, 168, 171, 206, 255, 258 World No Tobacco Day, 124 World Trade Organization, 6, 89 worldview, 22, 54, 115 X xenophobia, 266, 277, 286 Xenophon, 4, 32, 56–7, 160 Y Yandle, Bruce, 208 Yang, Yuan, 1–3, 289–90 yin yang, 54 Yousafzai, Malala, 124 YouTube, 192 Yunnan, China, 56 Z Zambia, 10 Zanzibar, 9 Zara, 276 Zeitvorsoge, 186–7 zero environmental impact, 217–18, 238, 241 zero-hour contracts, 88 zero-humans-required production, 192 zero-interest loans, 183 zero-marginal-cost revolution, 84, 191, 264 zero-waste manufacturing, 227 Zinn, Howard, 77 PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Illustrations are reproduced by kind permission of: archive.org

Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis by Beth Macy

2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, defund the police, Donald Trump, drug harm reduction, Easter island, fake news, Haight Ashbury, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, Laura Poitras, liberation theology, mandatory minimum, mass incarceration, medical malpractice, medical residency, mutually assured destruction, New Journalism, NSO Group, obamacare, off grid, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, pill mill, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, single-payer health, social distancing, The Chicago School, Upton Sinclair, working poor, working-age population, Y2K, zero-sum game

How dare a lowly journalist question the judgment of an Ivy League–trained federal judge? If public shaming didn’t sit so well with the prickly judge, Quinn predicted it would at least impact the Sacklers. “By 2023, how are the Sacklers going to hide from what they’ve done?” he said. “They’re gonna be next to Easter Island, in a small boat. They’ll have different names. It’ll be like, ‘Table for three, Seckler.’” The eight Sacklers named in the litigation were estimated to be worth $13 billion—investigators were still trying to tally the family’s offshore assets. They owned multiple homes on multiple continents, including a sprawling $7.4 million Florida mansion where David Sackler had recently retreated, knowing that the state constitution allows families to retain a principal residence (and up to 160 acres of property) against creditors’ claims.

…

their wealth intact: Posner and Brubaker, “The Sacklers Could Get Away With It.” calling Posner a “numbskull”: Aaron Keller, “Purdue Pharma Judge Throttles ‘Misinformed,’ ‘Numbskull’ New York Times Opinion Writers,” Law & Crime, July 29, 2020, https://lawandcrime.com/federal-court/purdue-pharma-judge-throttles-misinformed-numbskull-new-york-times-opinion-writers/. “Easter Island”: Mike Quinn, author interview, February 17, 2021. against creditors’ claims: Alexandra Clough, “EXCLUSIVE: Sackler family company pays $7 million for mansion near Boca Raton,” Palm Beach Post, October 25, 2019, https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20191025/exclusive-sackler-family-company-pays-7-million-for-mansion-near-boca-raton.

The Atlas of Disease by Sandra Hempel

clean water, coronavirus, Easter island, Edward Jenner, global pandemic, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, out of africa, trade route, wikimedia commons

In fact, while the first confirmed case is dated to May 2015, later studies placed the virus’s entry to 2013. Further work indicated cases in Haiti as early as December 2014, although the outbreak was not detected until 2016. The French Polynesia virus appears to have entered the Americas by way of Easter island. Spreading throughout Latin America Once it had established a foothold in Brazil, zika spread fast throughout the country and then Latin America and the Caribbean. Within a year, the virus was in nearly every country or territory infested with Aedes aegypti, the main species of mosquito that transmits zika as well as yellow fever and dengue.

The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution by Marc Weingarten

1960s counterculture, Bonfire of the Vanities, British Empire, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, Donner party, East Village, Easter island, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Haight Ashbury, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, New Journalism, non-fiction novel, Norman Mailer, post-work, pre–internet, public intellectual, rent control, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Stewart Brand, upwardly mobile, working poor, yellow journalism

He called the Teen Fair a “Plato’s Republic for teenagers” and wrote that the cars meant more “to these kids than architecture did in Europe’s great formal century, say 1750 to 1850. They are freedom, style, sex, power, motion, color—everything is right there.” Wolfe framed Barris and Ed Roth, the other major customizer in L.A., as outsider artists working under the cultural radar. “They’re like Easter Islanders,” Wolfe wrote of their custom cars. “Suddenly you come upon the astonishing objects, and then you have to figure out how they got there and why they’re there.” Everywhere he looked on the streets of Los Angeles, Wolfe found vernacular art. The city’s buildings were “shaped not like rectangles but like trapezoids, from the way the roofs slant up from the back and the plate-glass fronts slant out as if they’re going to pitch forward on the sidewalk and throw up.”

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“Here you are, boy, put your name right there”: Tom Wolfe, “The Marvelous Mouth,”Esquire, October 1963. “It’s the automobile that’s the most important story”: Emile Capouya, “True Facts and Artifacts,”Saturday Review, July 31, 1965. “I don’t mind observing”;“Plato’s Republic for teenagers”;“They’re like Easter Islanders”;“shaped not like rectangles”: Thomas K. Wolfe, “There Goes (VAROOM! VAROOM!) that Kandy-Kolored (THPHHHHHH!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (RAHGHHHH!) Around the Bend (BRUMMMMMMMMMMM …),”Esquire, November 1963. 4. TOM WOLFE ON ACID “he appeared in a white-on-white”: Elaine Dundy, “Tom Wolfe … But Exactly, Yes!”

The Rough Guide to Norway by Phil Lee

banking crisis, bike sharing, car-free, centre right, company town, Easter island, glass ceiling, Nelson Mandela, North Sea oil, out of africa, place-making, sensible shoes, sustainable-tourism, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, walkable city, white picket fence

Heyerdahl’s account of the Kon-Tiki expedition aroused huge interest when it was first published, and it remains a ripping yarn – though surprisingly few people care to read it today. Heyerdahl’s further exploits are related in The Ra Expeditions and The Tigris Expedition as is his long research trip to Easter Island in Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island. Roland Huntford Scott and Amundsen: The Last Place on Earth. There are dozens of books on the polar explorers Scott, Amundsen and Nansen, but this is one of the more recent, describing with flair and panache the race to the South Pole between Scott and Amundsen.

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Heyerdahl went on to attempt several other voyages, sailing across the Atlantic in a papyrus boat, Ra II, in 1970, to prove that there could have been contact between Egypt and South America. Ra II is also displayed here and the exploit is recorded in another of Heyerdahl’s books, The Ra Expeditions. Preoccupied with transoceanic contact between prehistoric peoples, Heyerdahl organized two major archeological expeditions to Easter Island, one in 1955–56 and again in 1986–88. Heyerdahl was keen to demonstrate that there had been contact between the island and the mainland of South America and, although many still dispute his theory, it has now received a degree of acceptance. Perhaps more importantly, Heyerdahl undertook invaluable work in restoring the island’s giant statues – the Moai – and the museum gives the lowdown.

Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frederic Laloux, Ken Wilber

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, augmented reality, blue-collar work, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon footprint, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, different worldview, driverless car, Easter island, failed state, fulfillment center, future of work, hiring and firing, holacracy, index card, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kenneth Rogoff, meta-analysis, ocean acidification, pattern recognition, post-industrial society, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, radical decentralization, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, the market place, the scientific method, Tony Hsieh, warehouse automation, zero-sum game

In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond reviews cases of societies that broke down from environmental degradation they brought upon themselves. The Maya, a once-vibrant civilization of at least 3 million people in 900 AD had lost 99 percent of its population and dwindled to 30,000 people by 1524 when Cortez arrived. Easter Island changed from a well-populated and prosperous island society to being barren and uninhabitable. How could the Easter Islanders push deforestation so far as to rob themselves of a future, we wonder? But then again, after just a bit more than a century of modern living, 95 percent of the large fish are gone, along with 75 percent of the forests and about 50 percent of the oil.

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester

Alfred Russel Wallace, British Empire, cable laying ship, company town, Easter island, global village, God and Mammon, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, lateral thinking, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, seminal paper, South China Sea, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, trade route, undersea cable

.* This is where the heavy basaltic Nazca Plate collides with the lighter granitic-and-sedimentary-rock South American Plate. (It does so simply because it is at the same time splitting itself away from its neighbour, the Pacific Plate, along what is called the East Pacific Rise – close to where the Isla de Pascua, Easter Island, is hoisted above the ocean surface.) The subduction factory that results is a classic of its kind, creating dozens of volcanoes running from the Andean peaks of Ruiz and Galeras in the north, in Colombia, via Chacana, Cotopaxi and Sangay in Ecuador, Huaynaputina† in Peru, Lascar in Chile, Llaima and Villarica on the frontier between Argentina and Chile, and, at the southern tip of the continent, Monte Burney and Cerro Hudson, this last volcano erupting massively in 1991.

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Thomas (American brig) 157 Arabia 14, 40, 74, 331, 333, 339 Arabian Sea 190, 191 Arabism 331 Arabs 22, 40, 144, 325, 331, 332 Archer (Australian passenger steamship) 157 Arctic 24, 79, 80, 85 Arctic Circle 80 Aristotle 371 Arles, France 40 art 282–5 arthropods 369 Ascroft, William 284–5, 290, 291 Asia 13n, 21, 42, 68, 74, 112, 116, 271 Asia Plate 317, 320 Asians, Portuguese-speaking (Mardijkers) 44 asthenosphere 109 Athens 34 Atlantic Monthly 220n Atlantic Ocean 14, 19, 59, 67, 87, 97n, 105, 107, 196 Atlantis 73 atmospheric pressure 268 Australia 55, 64, 65, 69, 74, 114, 115, 116, 189, 319 Australian Oceanic Plate 316–17, 320 Avallone, M. 394n Azores 306 Backer, Cornelis Andries 364–7 Bacon, Francis 72n Baird, Major A.W. 276 Baker, Diane 394 Bali, Balinese 17, 44, 55, 66, 69 manuscript style 127 bombings (2002) 343 Balkans 112 ballooning spiders 356–9, 357, 361–2 balloons 72 Baluchistan 190 Banda, sultan of 32 Banda Islands 23, 31, 33 Banda Sea 29 Bandung, Java 153, 376, 377, 379 Bangkok 264 Bangladesh 331 Banjoewangie, Java 189 Banka Island 148 Banks, Sir Joseph 120 Banquey Island, near Borneo 265 Bantam, Java 25, 126, 237 Bantam, king of 121 Bantam, Resident of 167 Banten, Java 201 a pepper port 15, 29, 322 skirmish with the fleet from Goa 18, 19 described 20–21 flood destruction of 1883 127 piety of the people 325 Islam established 332 the haj 333n signs of the Mahdi's imminent arrival 336–7 Banten, Java, sultan of 17, 31, 34, 35, 40 Banten Peasants' Revolt (1888) 331 importance of 323–4 Islamic-inspired and Islamic-led 340 attack on Sanedja 340–41 Dutch repeating rifles finish the rebellion 341 the hajis' victims 341–2 fades in popular memory 342 and Indonesian independence 342 a warning of future events 343 Bantenese 321, 332, 333, 335, 338 Barents Sea 24 Barnum & Bailey 243n barographs 267–70, 274, 275 barometers 267, 270 barometric pressures 293 basalt 84–8, 96, 102, 104, 112, 113, 297, 306, 308, 319 Batavi tribe 37 Batavia (Dutch steamship) 231 Batavia (previously Jayakarta, then Jakarta) 6, 28, 145, 172n so-named by the Dutch 36, 37 concentration of scientists in 36 Dutch proud of 37 Dutch compelled to leave (1949) 38 golden era 38 Dutch building 39–40, 41–2 the VOC 42, 47, 135, 139 employment in 42–3, 45 population 44, 144 Town Hall (Stadthuis; now Jakarta History Museum) 46–7, 142 Dutch life in 135–6 and war with Britain 139, 141 becomes a capital city 141 old Batavia closed down 141–3 new Batavia 141, 142, 143 communications 146–7, 196, 197, 225, 226, 237, 264n gasworks 147, 217–19, 218, 233, 248, 252 iceworks 147 's Jacob appointed governor-general 148–9 the circus visits 199–201, 201, 321 Plant and Animal Garden 201–2 clubs 202–4, 203 receives information from Anjer (August 1883) 215 air waves arrive in 233 four gigantic explosions 233–5 sounds not heard by everyone 266 tide-meter 277–8 change in temperature after the eruption 293 Batavia Standard Time 219, 248 Batavia Castle 51, 135, 142 day-register 49, 50 Batavia Cricket Club 205 Batavia Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory 154, 162, 216 Batavia Port Authority 157 Bates, Henry Walter: ‘On Coleopterous Insects Frequenting Damp Places' 58 bathymetric survey data 105 Batuwara, Mount 125, 126 Bay of Bengal 18n, 191 Bay of Biscay 192, 281 Bay of Naples (Welsh cargo vessel) 231, 299 Beale HMS 60 beetles 58, 60 Behaim, Martin 22 Belfast 220 Belgium, Kingdom of 29n Bengalen 49 bentonite 297 Berbice (German paraffin-carrier) 223 Berdichew, Poland 190 Berkowitz, Rickey 379 Berlin 190 Berouw (paddle-steamer) 230, 231, 251, 255–8, 256, 259 Beyerinck, Mrs 165, 166, 226–9, 251 Beyerinck, Willem, controller of Ketimbang 156, 165, 166–7, 176, 226–30, 245, 246, 247, 251 Billiton Island 148 Billiton Tin Company 148 Bintaing (hopper) 157, 245 biogeography 54, 73 biology 54, 69, 369, 372 biosphere 302 biota 54 birds geographical distribution 54–6, 64 Wallace's collection 60 repopulation of Krakatoa Island 360 sent to Europe 155 on Anak Krakatoa 370–71 Bird's Head, New Guinea 309 Bishop, Reverend Sereno 285n, 290 ‘Bishop's Rings’ 285, 289 Black Sea coast 190 Blaeu, John 25 Blair, Lawrence 395 Blair, Lorne 395 Blavatsky, Helena 53n Blosseville Coast 80 Blundell D.F. 52 Bogor, Java 142n Bogota, Colombia 273 Boing (a guide) 380, 386–9 Bombay 90, 191, 270, 276 Bonaparte, Louis, King of Holland 141 Bonney, Thomas 273n Borjild (Norwegian barque) 230–31 Borneo 22, 23, 66, 69, 132, 137, 188, 272 Borobudur temple, Java 123n, 142n Bo'sun's Rock (Bootsmans Rots) 346, 348, 383, 387 botany 54, 187, 354n, 364, 372 Bothwell Castle (ship) 299 Brani (ship) 285 Brazil 13n, 14, 71, 148, 224 Brazzi, Rossano 394 Brewer, W. 196, 197 Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable 199 Bristowe, William Syer 361, 368 Britain, British and Pulau Rann competition with the Dutch 29 official sanctioning of trading cooperatives 30 colonial intentions for Java and Sumatra 34 and the Portuguese 34 abandons siege of Ambon fort 35 Runcorn's rock magnetism studies 92 at war (1780s) 139, 141 presence on Rodriguez 261–2 on the Andamans 265 in India 326 imperialism 334 see also England British Army 35 British Empire (ship) 285 British Ornithologists' Club 53 British-Australian Telegraph Company 189 Brito, Don Lourenzo de 18 Bromo, Mount, Java 48, 155, 303 Brunhes, Jean 96 Brussels 195 Buddhism 123 Buenos Aires 289 Buffon, Comte de 72n Bugis 137, 138 Buijs, Thomas 211n Buitenzorg, Batavia 144, 146, 147, 150, 152, 201, 266 Botanical Gardens 148, 224, 364, 367 Bullard, Teddy (later Sir Edward) 90 Burma 34n, 44 butterflies 58, 60 Button Island 222 Byron, George Gordon, Lord: ‘Darkness’ 295–6 Cabele & Wireless 100 Cabral, Pedro Alvarez 13–14 Cailendra Dynasty 123, 134 Cailendra Seven 123 Cairo 116 Calais 187 Calapa 25 Calcutta 276, 280 Calicut 13 California 13n, 290, 295 California Institute of Technology (Caltech) 93 Calmeyer Island 314, 347n Calvinism 33 Cambodia 34n Cambridge University 105, 276 Cameron, Consul Alexander Patrick 152, 235–9, 236, 259, 260n, 272 Canada 290 Canary Islands 289 Cape Colony, southern Africa 34n Cape of Good Hope 14 19 30 Cape Mendocino, California 93 Cape Race 196 Cape Town, South Africa 281 Cape Verde Islands 13n caitalism 30 carbon 302 carbon dioxide 243, 301, 302, 317 carbon-14 isotope 134 Carcavelos, Portugal 191 Cargados Carajos 280 Caribbean Signal Service 287 Carita Java 373, 375, 379–80 Carita Beach Hotel 390 casowaries 116, 137n Caucasus 112 Cavendish, Sir Thomas 34 Cayman Brac 265 Celebes 23, 66, 69 Central America 133 Cerro Hudson volcano 308 Ceylon (later Sri Lanka) 11, 22, 264 Ceylon Observer 279 Chacana volcano, Ecuador 308 Chamberlin, Thomas 76 Champa Kingdom, Vietnam 128 Channel Four 133n, 395 Charles Bal (cargo-carrying barque) 220, 246, 299 Chaumont Bay, Lake Ontario 283–4 Chefoo (later Yantai), China 287 Chelsea, London 284, 290, 291 chemistry 305–6 chemolithoautotrophic hyperthermophilic archaebacteria 367n Cherbourg 282 Chile 13n, 289, 308, 309 China, Chinese 22 and spices 10 rule of Macau 19 mapping 23, 24 coolies 42, 213, 228 merchants 42 Coen and 42–3 Batava population 44, 144, 215 and tectonic plates 111 and possible eruption of AD 535 131 records of sea captains 131–2 anti-Chinese riots (1998) 138 and the 1883 eruption 215, 246–7, 250 China Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO) 381 Christianity, Christians and the 1883 eruption 163 and Muslims 32 Protestant 44 Christie, Mr (in Ceylon) 264 Christmas Island 89, 114 Church, Frederic Edwin 283–4 Niagara 283 Sunset over the Ice on Chaumont Bay, Lake Ontario 284 Twilight in the Wilderness 283 Ciliwung River 34, 38, 39 cinnamon 18, 31, 330 Ciparis (Sylbaris), Louis-Auguste 243n Claw, Iceland 82 Cloos, Hans 75–6 cloves (Syzygium aromaticum) 10, 11, 18, 29, 31, 65, 297n, 330 Cochin 11 cochineal 330 cockatoos 55, 65, 65, 66, 68, 137n cock's tail' jets 352 Cocos (Keeling) Island 114, 190n Coen, Jan Pieterszoon 33, 142 appearance 32 personality 33, 35 founder of the Dutch East Indies 33–4, 36 governor-general of the East Indies 33, 34 decides to eject the British 34 and the Chinese 42–3 coffee 10, 141, 148, 182, 188, 238–9 Cold War 106–7, 266, 275 Coleoptera 58 College of Delft 156n Collocalia 21 Cologne Cathedral 297 Colombia 308, 309 Colombo 288 Columbia University 107 Compagnie van Verre 15 Concordia Military Club, Batavia 147, 153, 172, 202, 203–4, 203 Conrad (Dutch mailboat) 157, 167–8 Conrad, Joseph: Lord Jim 12–13 conservative plate boundary 113 Constantinople 10 continental drift 171 Wegener's theory 71–8 in basalts of east Greenland 87 and convection 90, 91, 97–8 and earth's magnetism 92, 97 dating of 97 and plate tectonics 91, 101, 315 reacceptance of 101, 102 Wilson's conclusions 104–5 Jeffreys opposes the concept 304n continental plate collision 112–13, 307 continental shrinking 73 continental tectonic material 112, 113, 114 controllers 156 convection 90, 91, 97–8, 109, 302 Cook, Captain James 119–20, 121, 122, 298, 354 Copenhagen 80, 82, 196 Cotopaxi volcano, Ecuador 308 Cotteau, Edmond 356, 358, 360 ‘ country trading' 31–2 Court Javanese language 124n, 127 Creole language 261 Cressonnier, Louis 208, 209 Cretaceous Quiet Zone 96 Crete 244 Cribb, Robert: The Historical Atlas of Indonesia 28n cricket 153 Crimea 190 Cuba 265 Culemborg bastion, Sunda Kelapa 137 Curie, Pierre 92n Curie point 84, 92n currency 11, 14 cycad 365n da Gama, Vasco 13 Daendels, Herman Willem 141–2, 143 Daily Eagle 291–2 Dalby, R.J. 175 Daly Waters, south of Darwin 264 Damavand, Mount 112 Dammerman, Karel 367, 369 Danan cone, Krakatoa xv, 121, 158n, 318, 347 erupts (August, 1883) 176, 177 disappearance of 313, 346 Danes 196 Dark Ages 133 Darwin, Charles 61, 276 pioneers evolution science 57, 62, 63 natural selection theory 59 Wallace influences 60–61, 62 Wallace's loyalty to 63 On the Origin of Species 58, 62 Darwin, Sir George 276, 305n Darwinism 63 Day, Arthur Louis 304–5 Dayaks 265 de Vries, Mr (a pilot) 214–15 decibel-meters 266 declinometer 162–3 deer 65, 66, 146 Dekker, Eduard Douwes (‘Multatuli’) 328, 330 Max Havelaar 328, 329, 330 Delft Technical University 88 Demak, Java 332 Denmark 290 Denmark Strait 80 Descartes, Rene 305 Deventer, central Holland 337 Devonport 282 Dewey, John 105, 106 Diamond Head, Oahu 102 Dickinson, William 107n Diego Garcia 53, 263–4 Disappearing Island 102 Discovery, HMS 121 Djaman, Umar 324 Dover 187, 282 Dowd, Charles 219n Down House, Downe, Kent 62, 64 Drake, Sir Francis 34 duck-billed platypus 65 Dumas (a clerk in Sanedja) 340 Dumas, Mrs 340, 341 Durant, Will 301 Durban, South Africa 281n dust particles 285–6 Dutch builds Anjer lighthouse 3, 258–9 spice trade 12, 14–16, 23, 141 Portuguese driven out 15, 19, 29 first expedition to Java 15–18 first treaty with Java 16 relations with the local population 16, 17, 32, 323 Dutch fleets start to go East 19–20, 29 cartographers 21, 23, 27 outposts run from the Javanese HQ 34n and Indonesian independence 38, 342, 380n building of Batavia 39–40 and slavery 42 Batavia population 44 Treaty of Paris 139, 141 guerrilla war in Aceh 147 response to impending eruption (1883) 164 dual administrative rule 253n relief operations after the 1883 eruption 321, 323 momentary faltering in the region 327–8 impact of Max Havelaar 328 Kultuurstelsel (Cultivation System) 328–9, 333 Ethical Policy 330 reforms after the Peasants' Revolt 342 Dutch Cemetery, Madaascar 16 Dutch Colonial Police 339 Dutch East Indies (later Indonesia) Coen founds 36 slavery abolished 44 Wallace's fascination with 59 Dutch government takes charge (1799) 141 and submarine telegraph cables 189 Dutch-Javanese relations 212 revolts and restlessness in 326 Kultuurstelsel 328–9 Ethical Policy 330 Dutch East Indies Post and Telegraph Office 186 Dwars-in-den-weg/Thwart-the-Way Island 237–8, 260 earth gravitational field 88–91, 301 magnetism 91, 95 hotspot 103 siting 301 size of 301 heat and thermal decay within 302 earthquakes 112–13, 154, 162, 207, 208, 242n, 243, 246, 268, 318 East Africa: rift valleys 306 East Anglia 190 East India Company 47 East Indies 2, 29, 31, 32, 54, 59, 139, 325, 326 East Pacific Rise 308 Easter Island 308 Eastern Telegraph Company 189, 193, 197 ecological interdependence 271 Ecuador 308 Edinburgh (cable-laying ship) 189 Ega, Brazil 58 Egeron (ship) 170, 171 elephants 116, 307n Elisabeth (German warship) 157–60, 183, 213 Emden (German surface raider) 190n Emden, Germany 190 England 290 spice trade 12, 14 see also Britain English Channel 276, 282 Enkhuizen 20 Equatorial Smoke Stream 290 Eskimos 82 ethogeological prediction 207 Etna, Mount 112, 303, 393 Eugenia caryophyllata 10n Eurasian Plate 112, 116 Eurasians 144 Europe, Europeans 74 invasion by barbarians 133 drowned in the eruption of 1883 238, 252 temperature 295–6 expulsion from the region (1949) 325 Evelina (ship) 280 evolution science 57 62, 63, 64 Ewing, Maurice 90 Faeroes 87 Faircloth, Captain 287–8 Falkland Islands 111 Falmouth weather observatory 270 Far East 24, 26 Ferzenaar, Captain H.J.G. 176–8, 177, 207 Fiado (British steamship) 202 Fielder, Mr (in Ceylon) 264 Fingal's Cave, Staffa 84 First Point, Java 155, 161n, 185, 220, 299 Fiske, Richrd S. 396 Flat Corner, Java 170 Flint, Dr Earl 287 Flores 19, 29 Foley (on Cayman Brac) 265–6 Folkestone Harbour 191 Forbes H.O. 175 Forbes (tea-planter) 168 Formosa 34n Fort Speelwijk, Java 20, 21 Fourth Pacific Science Congress (Batavia, 1928) 350–51 Fourth Point lighthouse, Anjer 221, 234, 238, 258–9, 260, 321 France, French 197 makes peace with Britain 139n sugar plantations 261 imperalism 334 Franklin, Benjamin 294 Freuchen, Peter 79 Friesland 29n, 44 Fujian province 42 Fukoto Kuokanaba 384n fumaroles 176–7 Furneaux, Rupert: Krakatoa 316n, 396 gabbros 297 Galapagos 60 Galeras volcano, Colombia 308 Galileo Galilei 77–8 Galle, Ceylon 31, 279 Galton, Sir Francis 63 gamelan orchestras 124, 227 Gede volcano (Kamula), Java 126 Geikie, Archibald 273n Genesis, Book of 69 geography 54, 187 Geological Society of London 304,315 Geological Survey of Indonesia 375 geology unpredictable nature in the East 36 Wallace and 66–8 and religion 69 Georia 190 Gérard, Max 344 German Imperial Navy 159 Far Eastern Station 157 Germany 197, 295 Giant's Causeway, County Antrim 84 Gibbon, Edward 10 Gibraltar 191, 325 glaciers 244 Gladstone, William Ewart 236 Glasgow weather observatory 270 Global Positioning System 319 global village, birth of 6–7, 184–5, 198 lobal warming 271 Glodok, Jakarta 138 Goa 16, 18, 19, 25, 29 Gogh, Vincent van 40, 329 Gondwanaland 72n, 73–6, 74, 90 Gouverneur-Generaal Loudon (excursion vessel) 172–4, 213–14, 216, 219, 228, 234, 245–6, 251, 256, 257, 299, 337 Graaff-Reinet, South Africa 287 Granville, Earl 236, 236 graptolitic shales 73 gravimeters 89, 101 gravity 88–90 Great Chain of Being 371–2 Great Northern Telegraph Company 196 Great Plague 133 Great White, The 83 Greeks 303, 304 greenhouse gases 271 Greenland 74, 81 Wegener in 72, 76–7 Oxford University expedition 79–86, 91 volcanic 83 basalts 83–8 proof of continental drift 87–8 acid snows 133 ice-cores 308n Greenlandic language 81 Greenwich Mean Time 275 Greenwich Observatory 270, 275, 282 Gresik, east Java 332 Grytviken whaling station 281 Gubbels, Dora 341 Gubbels, Elly 341 Gubbels, Johan Hendrik 341 Guild of Pepperers 12 Gulf of Mexico 289 gutta-percha 187, 189 Haag (Dutch barque) 157 Hades 303 Hadhramaut Yemen 339, 342 haj 332, 333 Halifax, Nova Scotia 196 Hall, R. and Blundell, D.J.: Tectonic Evolution of Southeast Asia 52 Halmahera 61 Hambantota, Ceylon 279 Hamburg, Mr (ship passenger) 174 Hammersley Range, western Australia 264 Handl, Johann 360–61 Handl's Bay, Krakatoa Island 356 Hapsburgs 29n Harmonie club, Batavia 147, 153, 172, 202–3 Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 274 Hatfield, Oscar 152, 234 Haughton, Mr (in Ceylon) 287 Hawaii Island (Big Island) 102, 103, 104 Hawaiian Islands 102–5, 121, 306, 354n Heims, Father 159–60 Helen (a square-rigger) 59 Her Majesty K II submarine 89 Her Majesty K XIII submarine 89 Hermak, Baluchistan 190 Hess, Professor Harry 90, 91, 92, 97–100 ‘ History of Ocean Basins’ 98n Hesse, Elias 49–50, 135 Hevea brasiliensis (Brazilian rubber) 224, 225 Hibernia (converted cargo ship) 189 High Court, London 263n Himalayan Mountains 74, 112 Hinduism 128, 332 Holland 29n, 44 see also Dutch; Netherlands Hollandsche Thuyn (long-rangepacket) 48 Hollmann, Captain 158–9 Hollwood 113, 393, 394 Holtan community 132 Holtum, John (‘Cannonball King’) 205–6 Holy War (perang sabil) 336, 337, 340, 342 Homo erectus 116 Hondius, Henricus 25 Hong Kong 220, 278 Honolulu 289 Hooghly River 276 Hooker, Sir Joseph 62, 63 Hoorn, Zuider Zee 20, 33 Hope (a barque) 175 Hopkins, Gerard Manley 288 Hôtel des Indes, Batavia 206, 207, 208–9 hotspots 103, 104, 347n House of Orange 151 Houtman, Cornelis de 15–18 Houtman, Frederik de 15 Huaynaputina volcano, Peru 308 Hudson, USA 283 Hudson River School 283 Hudson's Bay Company 30 human sacrifice 303 humongous explosion 309, 312 Hurgronje, Snouck 41, 333–4 Hutton, James 69 Huxley, Sir Thomas 63 hydrochloric acid 243 ice cores 129, 131, 133, 296, 308n Iceland 82, 96, 306 Illustrated London News 155n Imperial Beacons & Coastal Lighting Service 170 India 11, 13, 22, 24, 40, 44, 55, 74, 112, 144, 191, 197, 276, 280, 325, 326, 331, 332 India Rubber, Gutta Percha & Telegraph Works Company 187–8, 197 Indian Mutiny 326n Indian Ocean 2, 21, 53, 114, 161n, 182, 182, 231, 261, 264, 278, 280, 285 indigo 330 Indo-Australian Plate 111, 115, 116 Indonesia (formerly Dutch East Indies) xiv, 63, 68, 116, 137, 145–6, 308, 309, 325, 331 independence 38, 342 International Date Line 112, 219n International Meridian Conference (Washington, DC, 1884) 219n Io 302 Iran 112, 331 Ireland 188, 196, 264 Irian 55, 61 iron oxide compounds 84, 85 Isla de Pascua 308 Islam Sumatra and Java Islamicized 17 rigid formalisms 32 local form of 40–41, 332–3 orthodox 40, 41 birth of 133 and the 1883 eruption 321 becomes entwined with local political developments 325 power of 325 upsurge in Islamic zealotry in the East Indies 325 stand against colonialism 327 number of Muslims in Indonesia 331 an imperial religion 331 collision with the West 331 first comes to the East Indies 331–2 the haj 332, 333 threatened by Western imperialism 334 fundamentalism 339 Isonandra gutta 187 Istanbul 378 Italy 22, 242 I wo Jima 384n ‘s Jacob, Governor-General Frederik 148–9, 149, 150–53, 169, 172, 201, 215 ‘s Jacob, Leonie 151 Jakarta History Museum, Java 46n Jakarta (previously Jayakarta and Batavia) 2, 21, 38, 126, 137, 373, 379 Jakarta Radio 9 James I, King 12 Jammersley Range, New Guinea 264 Japan 34n, 42, 44, 196, 244, 308, 309 Java 1, 2, 6, 7, 66, 78, 242 coffee 10, 141 spice-trading 10, 11, 31 first treaty with the Dutch 16 colonization 16 Islamicized 17, 40 mapping 22, 24 British colonial intentions 34 described 40–41 and slavery 44 volcanic 83 and the Java Trench 89 volcanically unstable 114–15 splits from Sumatra 126, 155 anti-Chinese riots 91998) 138 earthquakes 154 response to impending eruption (1883) 164 and gutta-percha 188 explosion sounds not heard by all 266 number of active volcanoes 309, 326 attacks by white-robed figure 323–4, 325, 337 First Military Region 324 Islam 325, 342 mysticism 327 Java Bode 162, 255 Java Head 155, 161n, 182, 220, 231, 379n Java Major 25, 25, 26 Java Man 116 Java Minor 22 Java Pars. 27 Java Sea 45, 172 Java Trench 89, 111, 114 Javasche Courant 153 Jayabaya 128 Jayakarta (later Batavia, then Jakarta) 34, 38 Jeffreys, Sir Harold 76, 304 jetstream 290 Jogjakarta, Java 2, 153 joint-stock companies 30 jökulhlaups 244 Judd, John 315–16 Volcanoes 315 Julius II, Pope 13n Jupiter 302 Jurassic period 96 Kaimeni 347 Kamchatka Peninsula 309 Kamula volcano, Java (Gede) 126 kangaroos 65, 65, 116, 137n ‘Kapi, Mount’ (in Ranggawarsita's history) 125, 126, 129 Karachi 190, 280 Karim, Haji Abdul 334–5, 337, 338, 339, 341 Kartodirdjo, Sartono: The Peasants' Revolt of Bantenin 1888 322 Katmai, Mount, Alaska 5 Kauai Island 102–3, 104 Kaula 102 Kavachi 384n Kedirie (ship) 299, 313 Keith, Brian 394 Kennedy, Henry George 235, 272 Kerala 44 Kerm-an, Teheran 190 Kertsch, Crimea 190 Ketimbang, Sumatra 156, 164–5, 167, 226–30, 233, 245, 251, 259 Kew weather observatory, Surrey 270 Keys, David: Catastrophe 132, 133, 134,395–6 Kilauea: Halemaumau Crater, Hawaii 1093 Kinematics, Inc. 376, 378, 386 King of the Netherlands, The (steam-yacht) 323 Kiribati, Republic of 100 kites 72 Kittery Island 102 Knossos, Crete 244 Koeripan River 256, 257, 258 Kokkulai, Ceylon 287 Kosrae Island, Pacific Micronesia 298 Kowalski, Bernard 394 Krakatoa archipelago 379 Krakatoa Committee, Royal Society 272–3, 275, 276, 286–7 Krakatoa, East of Java (film) 2, 394–5 Krakatoa Iron & Steel Works 340n Krakatoa Island present remains of 1–2 van Linschoten describes 25–6 first mentioned by its current name 27 derivation of the name 27–8 cultivation 120–21 lush coastal jungle 122, 354–5 Schuurmann describes 173 Ferzenaar visits (August 1883) 176–8 disappearance of 178, 237, 239, 240, 260, 300, 337, 338 surrounded by small faults and zones of weakness 320 purity after the 1883 eruption 355–6 repopulation of 356–66, 372 Krakatoa Islands xv Krakatoa Problem 364, 366 Krakatoa Time 219, 248, 275 Krakatoa Volcanic Observatory 375, 376, 389 Krakatoa volcano (general refernces) see also Danan cone; Perboewatan cone; Rakata cone and the Wallace Line 57, 64 notoriety 68, 116, 286, 393 number of eruptions 117–18 ruins compared with Anak Krakatoa 353, 354 Krakatoa volcano ( possible eruption of AD 416) 123–9, 133 Krakatoa volcano (the confusions of AD 416 or AD 535) 129–31 Krakatoa volcano (the likely eruption of AD 535) 123, 131–4 Krakatoa volcano (the near-certain eruption of 1680) 123, 134–9 Batavians and seamen unaware of potential danger 45–6 first recorded eruption 46, 47 Vogel's report 48–9 Hesse's report 49–50 Schley's painting 138–9, 140 Krakatoa volcano (before the certain eruption of 1883) 139–49 Krakatoa volcano (eruption of 27 August 1883) 4–5, 28, 123, 134, 209 the event 210–39, 240 the effects 241–61 the experiences 261–321 death statistics 5, 313 telegraphy 5, 7, 28n, 146, 167,184–7, 192–4, 215 undersea cables 5, 6, 184, 187, 189 lack of geological knowledge at the time 5–6 religious fears 6 and birth of global village 6–7 impact on climate 7 a Plinian eruption 12 and subduction zones 111 Banten flood destruction 127 warnings of forthcoming eruption 154–63 Perboewatan erupts 167–9, 175, 176, 180, 184–5, 193–4 excursions to visit 172–4 Danan erupts 176, 177 statistics of deaths and injuries 242 the sound of 262–8 progress of the shock waves 273–5, 313 art and 282–5 and temperature 293–6 floating bodies 296–300 existed above a large chamber of magma 318–19 burial of the dead 321, 322 rebuilding after 321, 323 political and religious consequence 321, 342–3 reluctance to settle near the volcano 379 Kramat 260 Kultuurstelsel (Cultivation System) 328–9, 333 Kurile Islands 309 Kurrachee 276 Kyoto 297 Labuan, Java 337 lahars (volcanic mud and water slurry) 243 Lakagígar (Hekla), Iceland 294 Lamongan 155 Lampong Bay 166, 216, 219, 228, 234, 247, 249, 250, 251 Lancaster, James 34 Lang Island, Krakatoa (previously Panjang, now Rakata Kecil) xv, 118n, 158n, 314, 318, 354 Laos 34n Lascar volcano, Chile 308 Laurasia 73, 74, 75 lava flows 369 Laysan Island 102 Le Havre 282 Leicestershire 57, 58 Lemuria 53n Liciala spinosa 355 Lincoln, President Abraham 196, 219n Lindeman, Captain T.H. 173, 174, 216, 219, 230 Linnean Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London 52–3, 54, 62, 64, 65 Linschoten, Jan Huyghen van 23–6, 26 Itinerario 24, 25 Lippincott Gazetteer 190n Lisbon 14, 15, 191 Lisianski Island 102 lithosphere 109–10, 302 Llaima volcano 308 Lloyd's of London 161, 168, 180–83, 186, 193, 232, 261 Committee 182, 197 Foreign Intelligence Office 193 Lochart, Nanette 208, 209 Locomotive 151 Lodewijcksz, Willem 25, 26 Logan, Captain William 223–4 Lombok Island 61, 66, 69 Lomu, Jonah 384n London 19, 179–80, 189, 190, 191, 196, 197, 270, 284 London Station 193 Londonderry 196 long waves 278, 279–80 Los Angeles 200 Luzon 24 Lyell, Sir Charles 62, 63, 69 Macassar, Celebes, Macasserese 31, 44, 265, 326 Macau 19 McColl, Mr (Lloyd's agent) 181, 259–60 mace (aril) 11, 18 MacKenzie, Captain 157, 161 McLuhan, Marshall 184, 198 Madagascar 16, 53 Madras 190, 191, 280 Madura 17 Magellan, Ferdinand 23 Magellan Strait 19 magma 84, 103, 104, 305, 315, 316,318–20 magnetic airborne detector (MAD) 93n magnetism and basalts 84, 85 moon's surface 100 remanent 91–2, 96, 97, 102 underwater 93–5 magnetite 84–5, 85, 92n magnetometers 93–6, 97, 101, 107 Magpie, HMS 265, 272 Mahdi 322, 335, 336, 337, 342 Malabar Coast 11 Malacca 11, 18, 22, 29, 34, 44 Malaku 61 see also Moluccas Malay Archipelago 59, 60, 190 Australian (eastern) end of 55, 64, 65 Indian (western) end of 55, 64, 65 Wallace's preferred term 59 Malay language 59 Malaya peninsula 22, 24, 29, 31, 40, 53, 190, 326, 331 Maldives 23 Malta 191 Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society 294 Manchus 157n Manhattan, New York City 295 Manila 196, 264 Manley, Reverend W.R. 288 maps 21–7, 26, 155 Mardijkers 44 Marie (Danish salt-carrying barque) 219–20, 230, 234, 246 Mars 302 Mason, Ron 93–5 Massachusetts Bay Company 30 Mataram sultan of 40 Matuyama, Motonari 96 Maui Island 103 Mauk 260 Maurice of Nassau, Prince 16n Mauritius 16n, 34n, 261, 263n, 270 Maan civilization 133 Mayon, Mount 266 Mecca 332–5, 336, 337, 342 Mecca's Plain of Arafat 333n Medea (British ship) 216, 231 Mediterranean 14, 23, 191 Mediterranean region 133 Mekong 24 Melbourne 270 Merak, Java 160, 222, 225, 238, 246, 249n, 250, 252–3, 259, 260, 337 Merapi, Mount 48, 155 Merbapu, Mount 48, 155 Mercator, Gerardus 71 Merchant Adventurers 30 Merchant Staplers 30 Meteorological Council 270 meteorology 70, 76, 275, 290.

The Fast Diet Revised and Updated by Michael Mosley, Mimi Spencer

caloric restriction, caloric restriction, cognitive bias, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, Easter island, life extension, meta-analysis, mouse model, randomized controlled trial, stem cell

This in turn, as we’ve seen, seems to protect the brain against the ravages of ageing. The hope is that Byetta or a related drug will, if not prevent dementia, at least significantly slow its progression. Another interesting candidate is the drug rapamycin, first isolated from bacteria found in the soil of Easter Island. Rapamycin, like fasting, acts on something called the mTor pathway, which regulates protein synthesis and cell growth. It is implicated in a range of common diseases, including diabetes, obesity, depression and some cancers. Pharmaceutical companies are currently creating and testing modified versions of rapamycin.

The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind by Jan Lucassen

3D printing, 8-hour work day, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, anti-work, antiwork, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, basic income, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, commoditize, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, demographic transition, deskilling, discovery of the americas, domestication of the camel, Easter island, European colonialism, factory automation, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fixed income, Ford Model T, founder crops, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, knowledge economy, labour mobility, land tenure, long peace, mass immigration, means of production, megastructure, minimum wage unemployment, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, new economy, New Urbanism, out of africa, pension reform, phenotype, post-work, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, reshoring, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, stakhanovite, tacit knowledge, Thales of Miletus, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, two and twenty, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, women in the workforce, working poor

A great leap of 800 kilometres, from Vanuatu to Fiji, took place between 1050 and 950 BCE; a century later, it was the turn of Samoa and Tonga. A discovery interval of some two thousand years then ensued, during which the simpler sailing canoe with outrigger was perfected and turned into the large ocean-going double-hulled sailing canoe. This eventually led to the colonization of New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island around 1200 CE. Long before, in the first half of the third millennium BCE, there was already an intensive merchant shipping trade (particularly of cedarwood from Lebanon) between Byblos and Egypt.10 Thus, we can add the seafarer to our still concise list of early professions that includes hunter-gatherer-fisher, arable farmer and livestock breeder (and all combinations thereof).

…

Hawaii was finally reached in 800 CE and New Zealand between 1250 and 1300. Some even ‘commuted’ between Polynesia and South America, centuries before the ‘great’ European voyages of discovery. This is demonstrated by the spread of the sweet potato and possibly also of the bottle gourd from America to Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand. (The debate about possible Polynesian contributions to American cultures is ongoing.1) This required crossing thousands of kilometres of water and therefore sophisticated watercraft (outrigger sailing canoes) and exceptional navigational abilities. From the very first discoveries, regular contacts now became possible between these widely divergent islands.

…

(i), (ii), (iii)n178, (iv)n84 New Caledonia (i) Newcomen, Thomas (i) New Guinea (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)n65 Ain cult (i) Boven-Digoel (i)n65 Enga people (i) Kepele cult (i) New Zealand (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) Nicholas V (i) Nigeria (i), (ii) Biafra (i) Hausa people (i)n81 Jos Plateau (i) Kano (i) Kofyar people (i) Sokoto Caliphate (i), (ii) Nubia (i) Oastler, Richard (i) occupations (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv)n57, (xxvi)n42 artisan/craft (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii), (xxviii), (xxix), (xxx), (xxxi), (xxxii), (xxxiii), (xxxiv), (xxxv), (xxxvi), (xxxvii), (xxxviii), (xxxix), (xl), (xli), (xlii), (xliii), (xliv), (xlv), (xlvi), (xlvii), (xlviii), (xlix), (l), (li), (lii), (liii), (liv), (lv), (lvi), (lvii), (lviii), (lix), (lx), (lxi), (lxii)n67, (lxiii)n49, (lxiv)n88, (lxv)n188, (lxvi)n80 artistic (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii) blue-collar/white-collar (i), (ii) brick and pottery making (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii), (xxviii)n84, (xxix)n91 construction (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii), (xxviii), (xxix), (xxx), (xxxi), (xxxii), (xxxiii), (xxxiv), (xxxv)n151 domestic service (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii)n105, (xxiii)n109 fishing (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii)n61 intellectual (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii)n26 maritime (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv)n7, (xxvi)nn99&106, (xxvii)n37, (xxviii)n46 medical/corporal care (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi)n17 metal-working (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi)n15 military (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii), (xxviii), (xxix), (xxx), (xxxi), (xxxii), (xxxiii), (xxxiv), (xxxv), (xxxvi), (xxxvii), (xxxviii), (xxxix), (xl), (xli), (xlii), (xliii), (xliv), (xlv), (xlvi), (xlvii), (xlviii), (xlix)n33, (l)n249, (li)nn45&51 mining (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv)n254 sexual service (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi)n82, (xvii)nn105&116 shipbuilding (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)n91 teaching (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx) textile (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii), (xxviii), (xxix), (xxx), (xxxi), (xxxii), (xxxiii), (xxxiv), (xxxv), (xxxvi), (xxxvii), (xxxviii), (xxxix), (xl), (xli), (xlii), (xliii), (xliv), (xlv), (xlvi)n105, (xlvii)n22, (xlviii)nn61&72, (xlix)n131, (l)n2, (li)n96 trade (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi)n45, (xxvii)n179 see also agriculture; hunting-gathering Oceania see Pacific, and separate countries Odysseus (i) Oluale Kossola (i), (ii) Ordzhonikidze, Sergo (i) Pacific/Oceania (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv)n88 Austronesian languages (i) Bismarck Archipelago (i) Easter Island (i), (ii) Fiji (i) Hawaii (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)n88 Kanaka people (i) Lapita culture (i) Polynesia (i), (ii) Samoa (i) Solomon Islands (i) Tonga (i) Vanuatu (i) Yap (i)n2 see also separate countries Paes, Domingo (i) Pakistan (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Harappa culture (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Lahore (i) Mohenjo Daro culture (i), (ii) Multan (i) Rohri Hills (Sind) (i) Paleologo Zaccaria (i) Palestine (i) Pamirs (i) Panama (i)n185 Isthmus (i)n185 Portobelo (i)n185 Paraguay (i), (ii), (iii) Asunción (i) Peckham, Rufus Wheeler (i), (ii) Pericles (i) Peru (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)n185 Chimu (i) Cuzco (i) La Paloma (i) Lake Titicaca (i) Lima (i) Peter the Great (i) Petriglieri, Gianpiero (i) Philippines (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) Agta people (i) Luzon (i) Piketty, Thomas (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)n109, (vi)n7 Plato (i), (ii) Plockhoy, Pieter Cornelisz (i) Po Chü-I (i), (ii) Polak, Barbara (i) Poland (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) Auschwitz (i) Polanyi, Karl (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)n6, (v)n22, (vi)n49, (vii)n156, (viii)n1 Polo, Marco (i) Pol Pot (i), (ii), (iii) Pomeranz, Kenneth (i)n143 Pope, Alexander (i)n39 Portugal (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii)n27, (xviii)n147 Algarve (i) Azores (i) Lisbon (i) Madeira (i), (ii) Poujade, Pierre (i) Prak, Maarten181 Price, T.

A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester

Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Asilomar, butterfly effect, California gold rush, content marketing, Easter island, Elisha Otis, Golden Gate Park, index card, indoor plumbing, lateral thinking, Loma Prieta earthquake, Menlo Park, Neil Armstrong, place-making, risk tolerance, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, supervolcano, The Chicago School, transcontinental railway, wage slave, Works Progress Administration

Central Iceland is divided from central California by 6,000 miles – a distance that marks, at this place in the world, the width of the entirety of one of the greatest and most important geological entities of all. * The abutment of the bridge that stands closer to Parkfield is on the massive North American Plate; the abutment on the other end stands on the Pacific Plate, the equally massive and ever-moving part of the world that underlies such faraway places as Hawaii and Tonga, Pitcairn Island, Easter Island and the South Island of New Zealand. Another part of the world begins right here. And the line that divides the two plates, the place that geologists like to call the plate abutment, or the plate boundary, coincides with the visible surface manifestation of what is perhaps the best-known geological fault that can be seen anywhere.

…

It can be summarized, however, and in essence it appears that the mechanisms that gave rise to the fault can conveniently be said to have begun about 150 million years ago, out on the edges of a Pacific Ocean that was very much larger than it is today. A submarine chart of the ocean today shows a line of relatively shallow water that extends southwards for several thousand miles from a point close to the west coast of Mexico, and then proceeds via the Galapagos Islands and Easter Island and the Juan Fernandez Islands,* all the way down to the Antarctic. The island groups that lie along it are volcanoes, some active and some not; these, and the submarine ridge of which they are the visible peaks, are the manifestations (just as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a manifestation on the farther side of the world) of a part of the earth that is splitting open, where plates are moving away from one another, and where new material is being oozed out on to the planetary surface (in this case most of it invisibly, beneath the sea).

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 9 dash line, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Basel III, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, capital controls, Carl Icahn, charter city, circular economy, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital map, disruptive innovation, diversification, Doha Development Round, driverless car, Easter island, edge city, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, failed state, Fairphone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, forward guidance, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, ice-free Arctic, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, industrial robot, informal economy, Infrastructure as a Service, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, Khyber Pass, Kibera, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, low cost airline, low earth orbit, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass affluent, mass immigration, megacity, Mercator projection, Metcalfe’s law, microcredit, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Monroe Doctrine, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, openstreetmap, out of africa, Panamax, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Planet Labs, plutocrats, post-oil, post-Panamax, precautionary principle, private military company, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Quicken Loans, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, the built environment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero day

Map 38, corresponding to this chapter, appears in the map insert. But technological prowess and resource abundance should not lead to hubris. Anthropologists such as Jared Diamond have asserted that the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island committed ecological suicide through rapid deforestation (using trees to transport their massive stone statues known as moai) and the resulting soil erosion that made the island agriculturally unsustainable. The fate of Easter Island now serves as the classic warning of the consequences of disrespect for nature’s complexity. Are Asia’s skyscrapers the moai of the twenty-first century? While their towering architecture similarly exudes power over terrestrial dynamics, their geography betrays existential vulnerability.

The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris by Mark Honigsbaum

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Asian financial crisis, biofilm, Black Swan, Boeing 747, clean water, coronavirus, disinformation, Donald Trump, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, indoor plumbing, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, moral panic, Pearl River Delta, Ronald Reagan, Skype, the built environment, the long tail, trade route, urban renewal, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

Fortunately, most of these cases resolved with time, but if the world needed another wake-up call that Zika deserved to be taken seriously, this was it. That is not what happened, however. Instead, as Zika continued its westerly spread across the Pacific, reaching New Caledonia in March 2014 and Rapa Nui (Easter Island), a territory of Chile, soon after, the world’s attention was seized by a far more visible emerging disease threat: the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The result was that when at some point in 2014 Zika arrived in Brazil, no one noticed. BY APRIL 2015 Brito and Luz were becoming increasingly convinced that Zika was responsible for the spate of rashes and fevers in the northeast, but in order to convince the Pernambuco health authorities and Brazil’s Ministry of Health that these were not “dengue light” cases, they needed hard laboratory evidence.

…

This seemed plausible, particularly as one of the host cities had been Natal, until it was pointed out that no Pacific countries had sent teams to the competition. The next suggestion was that the virus may have been introduced during the Va’a World Sprint Championship held in Rio de Janeiro in August of the same year. This was more likely, as four Pacific countries (French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Cook Islands, and Easter Island) had sent canoe squads to the competition. However, this theory was undermined by a letter published in Nature in May 2017 in which an international team of scientists announced they had collected fifty-eight Zika virus isolates from Brazil and other countries in the Americas and sequenced their genomes.

Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities by Vaclav Smil

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apollo Guidance Computer, autonomous vehicles, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon tax, circular economy, colonial rule, complexity theory, coronavirus, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Easter island, endogenous growth, energy transition, epigenetics, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, general purpose technology, Gregor Mendel, happiness index / gross national happiness, Helicobacter pylori, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Hyperloop, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, knowledge economy, Kondratiev cycle, labor-force participation, Law of Accelerating Returns, longitudinal study, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, market bubble, mass immigration, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, meta-analysis, microbiome, microplastics / micro fibres, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, old age dependency ratio, optical character recognition, out of africa, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, power law, Productivity paradox, profit motive, purchasing power parity, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Republic of Letters, rolodex, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, South China Sea, synthetic biology, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, three-masted sailing ship, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, trade route, urban sprawl, Vilfredo Pareto, yield curve

Others yet ceased to exist because of political intrigues and military conquest or survived as greatly diminished and largely impotent entities only to be restored or resurrected as circumstances changed in their favor and as they embarked on yet another territorial or economic expansion. There is no shortage of examples of rapid societal demise, ranging from small islands to expansive empires. Rapa Nui (Easter Island) has presented perhaps the most persistent case of postgrowth mysteries. Why was a society that erected hundreds of moai, impressively sized stone sculptures, reduced to a small number of inhabitants? In a much-cited explanation, Diamond (2011) attributed this societal collapse to reckless deforestation of the island.

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The History of the Industrial Gas Turbine (Part 1 The First Fifty Years 1940–1990). Bedford: Institution of Diesel and Gas Turbine Engineers. http://www.idgte.org/IDGTE%20Paper%20582%20History%20of%20The%20Industrial%20Gas%20Turbine%20Part%201%20v2%20%28revised%2014-Jan-11%29.pdf. Hunt, T. L. 2006. Rethinking the fall of Easter Island. American Scientist 94:412–419. Hunter, L. C., and L. Bryant. 1991. A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1780–1930, vol. 3: The Transmission of Power. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hurnik, F., et al. 1991. Recommended Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Farm Animals: Beef Cattle.

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Prost and G. Vincent, eds., A History of Private Life, vol. 5. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, pp. 1–103. Psenner, R., and B. Sattler. 1998. Life at the freezing point. Science 280:2073–2074. Puleston, C. O., et al. 2017. Rain, sun, soil, and sweat: A consideration of population limits on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) before European contact. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 5:69. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2017.00069. Quetelet, A. 1835. Sur l’homme et le développement de ses facultés, vol. 2. Paris: Bachelier. Quetelet, A. 1846. Lettres a S. A. R. le duc régnant de Saxe-Cobourg et Gotha: Sur la théorie des probabilités.

Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons by Peter Barnes

Albert Einstein, car-free, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, cotton gin, dark matter, digital divide, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, hypertext link, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, jitney, junk bonds, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, money market fund, new economy, patent troll, precautionary principle, profit maximization, Ronald Coase, telemarketer, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, War on Poverty, Yogi Berra

The difference is that, while the dinosaurs’ extinction was triggered by a freak event, the current extinctions are being caused by our everyday activities. And it’s not just other species we’re endangering. As anthropologists Jared Diamond and Ronald Wright recently reminded us, past human civilizations (Sumer, Rome, the Maya, Easter Island) did on a smaller scale what our own economic system seems bent on doing planet-wide: they destroyed their resource bases and crashed. The pattern is hauntingly familiar. First, the civilization finds a formula— agriculture, irrigation, fishing, capitalism—for extracting value from ecosystems.

The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps by Edward Brooke-Hitching

digital map, Easter island, Edmond Halley, European colonialism, Fellow of the Royal Society, John Harrison: Longitude, Livingstone, I presume, Thales of Miletus, trade route, UNCLOS

Several ventures in search for Davis Land were also inspired by the accounts of Wafer and Dampier (see Pepys Island entry here for more on these two). The Dutch West India Company dispatched three ships to the area in 1721 under the command of Jacob Roggeween. Though unable to find the island, Roggeveen and his crew stumbled across a hitherto unknown land mass that did exist – Easter Island. It is thought that this was the land mass spotted by Davis and his crew, and because of some erroneous calculations they wrongly recorded their actual position. Nevertheless, towards the end of the eighteenth century, British and French ships were still searching in vain for Davis Land. * * * * The word ‘buccaneer’ originates from the cooking technique adopted from the Caribbean locals by the Europeans.

Natural Language Processing with Python and spaCy by Yuli Vasiliev

Bayesian statistics, computer vision, data science, database schema, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, loose coupling, natural language processing, Skype, statistical model

Appendix: Linguistic Primer Contains a brief guide to the grammar and syntax elements discussed most frequently in the book. Readers who don’t come from linguistic backgrounds can use it as a reference. 1 HOW NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING WORKS In the 19th century, explorers discovered rongorongo, a system of mysterious glyphs on the island of Rapa Nui (commonly known as Easter Island). Researchers have never succeeded in decoding rongorongo inscriptions or even figuring out whether those inscriptions are writing or proto-writing (pictographic symbols that convey information but are language independent). Moreover, although we know that the creators of the glyphs also erected Moai, the large statues of human figures for which the island is most famous, the builders’ motivations remain unclear.

Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Jerry Kaplan

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Web Services, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, bank run, bitcoin, Bob Noyce, Brian Krebs, business cycle, buy low sell high, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, combinatorial explosion, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, driverless car, drop ship, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, estate planning, Fairchild Semiconductor, Flash crash, Gini coefficient, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, haute couture, hiring and firing, income inequality, index card, industrial robot, information asymmetry, invention of agriculture, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kiva Systems, Larry Ellison, Loebner Prize, Mark Zuckerberg, mortgage debt, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Own Your Own Home, pattern recognition, Satoshi Nakamoto, school choice, Schrödinger's Cat, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, software as a service, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, Turing test, Vitalik Buterin, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Shoppers aren’t stupid; they will go where they get the best all-around deal, including convenience, service, and other factors. They aren’t concerned with whether their short-term purchasing behavior may restructure the retailing landscape to the detriment of future consumers any more than the original residents of Easter Island worried about whether the trees they chopped down for firewood might contribute to a desolate, bleak landscape for their descendants. But when the river of prices starts to rise and the profits pour in, the familiar competitive reference points with which to judge the value received will have long been submerged or swept away.

Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell

California gold rush, Easter island, index card, Maui Hawaii, polynesian navigation, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Steve Jobs, trade route

So when he first sailed into the harbor at Waimea, on Kauai, in 1778 he and his men could communicate on a rudimentary level with the Hawaiians because the language, one of the expedition’s surgeons wrote, was “much the same as that of [Tahiti].” This led to one of Cook’s most intriguing insights, the identification of what is now called the Polynesian Triangle, that immense stretch of ocean between New Zealand, Easter Island, and Hawaii—including Samoa, Tonga, and Tahiti—with related dialects and customs. For instance, the New Zealand natives call themselves Maori, while native Hawaiians’ name for themselves is Kanaka Maoli. “Same language, same people, same culture,” the Hawaiian activist Kekuni Blaisdell told me.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

Albert Einstein, complexity theory, David Sedaris, East Village, Easter island, Great Leap Forward, index card, means of production, rent control

Inside the theater you’re warmly greeted by a hostess who examines your stub and tears it just enough to make her presence felt. Somewhere along the line someone decided that this activity is worthy of a tip, so you give the woman some change, though I’ve never known why. It’s a mystery, like those big heads on Easter Island or the popularity of the teeny-weeny knapsack. I’m so grateful such theaters still exist that I’d gladly tip the projectionist as well. Like the restaurants with only three tables, I wonder how some of these places manage to stay open. In America the theaters make most of their money at the concession stand, but here, at least in the smaller places, you’ll find nothing but an ice-cream machine tucked away between the bathroom and the fire exit.

Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive History's Most Iconic Extinct Creature by Ben Mezrich

butterfly effect, CRISPR, Danny Hillis, double helix, Easter island, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, General Motors Futurama, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, life extension, Louis Pasteur, mass immigration, microbiome, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, Recombinant DNA, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology

Needing money, and wanting to do something in genetics and biology, he’d found a job at a start-up in Cambridge called Warp Drive. Warp Drive, one of the many companies that Church had cofounded, was focused on applying synthetic biology to organisms mined from nature for medicinal uses. The company scoured isolated places like the Amazon and the island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), then used genetic engineering to turn natural bacteria and plants into medical treatments and cures. Quinn had found a place in the genetic engineering department, learning the ins and outs of molecular modification as he went. So even though he didn’t have the schooling of the other Revivalists at the table, he was far from a novice at genetic engineering.

The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History by Greg Woolf

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, capital controls, classic study, Columbian Exchange, demographic transition, Dunbar number, Easter island, endogenous growth, Eratosthenes, European colonialism, global village, invention of agriculture, invention of writing, joint-stock company, mass immigration, megacity, New Urbanism, out of africa, Scramble for Africa, social intelligence, social web, the strength of weak ties, trade route, urban planning, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

Some of the most spectacular of prehistoric monuments were built by early farmers. The great megalithic tombs of Atlantic Europe, built in a range of styles from northern Spain to Brittany, Britain and Ireland, and southern Scandinavia belong to this period. Stone Age farmers also built Stonehenge and the other great earthworks of Wessex, raised the Moai on Easter Island, and created the mounds of the Mississippi. Some of these were temples, but many were burial sites that express the new long-sightedness of human societies, societies that now thought about a deep past and a far future as well as from one season to another. Was there some connection between a tacit understanding of generation following generation, the placing of the dead in the ground, and the annual replanting of seeds?

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Most were spectacular not in scale, but compared to what had gone before and in the impact they had on their residents and especially on visitors. They were not the first spectacular monuments to be built by human beings. It was foragers who created the great megaliths of Göbekli Tepe, farmers who built Stonehenge, and gardeners who set up the Moai, the great stone heads of Rapa Nui on Easter Island. It is not always easy to distinguish traces of great ceremonial centres like these from the remains of ancient and nearly forgotten urban experiments. There are some major differences between the ceremonial centres of nonurban societies and those of cities. One is a matter of possession. Whoever organized the creation of great prehistoric megalithic projects—and someone must have done so, whether it was priests, chieftains, or charismatic individuals—they were built by entire peoples.

A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian

Cass Sunstein, Easter island, Filter Bubble, Henri Poincaré, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Nick Bostrom, Ray Kurzweil, selection bias, Socratic dialogue, stem cell, the scientific method

Specifically, I ask why they don’t believe that proposition on the basis of faith, especially given that there’s overwhelming evidence that Muhammad was an historical figure. Conceptually distancing oneself from a faith tradition often helps the subject examine what constitutes extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary claim. (This is a variation on John W. Loftus’s idea of the outsider test for faith.) Examples include the Anasazi, Easter Islanders, Mayan, and Norse Greenlanders. Among the reasons the Norse outpost in Greenland failed, for example, was because Norse religious teachings prohibited eating shellfish and other common, locally available foodstuffs. In short, religious dietary prohibitions (like Jews’ and Muslims’ prohibitions on pork) were the difference between success and failure.

Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy by David A. Mindell

Air France Flight 447, air gap, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apollo Guidance Computer, autonomous vehicles, Beryl Markham, Boeing 747, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Charles Lindbergh, Chris Urmson, digital map, disruptive innovation, driverless car, drone strike, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fudge factor, Gene Kranz, human-factors engineering, index card, John Markoff, low earth orbit, Mars Rover, Neil Armstrong, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, telepresence, telerobotics, trade route, US Airways Flight 1549, William Langewiesche, zero-sum game

Most of ABE’s early dives were conducted on Alvin cruises, from Alvin’s mother ship at night, while the sub was on deck charging its batteries. Alvin even came to ABE’s rescue when it failed to return from one of its early dives. In 1999, on a cruise to the East Pacific Rise, two days’ sail from Easter Island, it all came together. Yoerger had planned a series of measurements to gather magnetic data across a ridge. But geologist Bill Ryan, originally trained as an engineer, pushed Yoerger to program ABE to do more systematic surveys than local measurements. ABE went down 2,600 meters (nearly 8,500 feet), followed about 20 meters (65 feet) above the rough volcanic terrain, collected sonar and photographic data, and returned to the surface before dawn.

But What if We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present as if It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman

a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, British Empire, citizen journalism, cosmological constant, dark matter, data science, Easter island, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, George Santayana, Gerolamo Cardano, ghettoisation, Golden age of television, Hans Moravec, Higgs boson, Howard Zinn, Isaac Newton, Joan Didion, Large Hadron Collider, Nick Bostrom, non-fiction novel, obamacare, pre–internet, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Ray Kurzweil, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, the medium is the message, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, Y2K

Take something like skiffle music—a musical genre defined by what it added to early-twentieth-century jazz (rhythmic primitivism) and by those individuals later inspired by it (rock artists of the British Invasion, most notably the Beatles). We think about skiffle outside of itself, as one piece of a multidimensional puzzle. That won’t happen with television. It seems more probable that the entrenched memory of television will be like those massive stone statues on Easter Island: monoliths of creative disconnection. Its cultural imprint might be akin to the Apollo space program, a zeitgeist-driving superstructure that (suddenly) mattered more than everything around it, until it (suddenly) didn’t matter at all. There won’t be any debate over the importance of TV, because that has already been assured (if anything, historians might exaggerate its significance).

Better Than Fiction by Lonely Planet

airport security, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, Easter island, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, transcontinental railway

said twenty of us, and so we had prepaid the necessary extra ferry fees and beachside motel accommodation and transport costs. However after Tahiti-nui, a lot of us were having second thoughts.... Three good things had happened in Tahiti-nui. We had seen the small but wonderful group of performers from Easter Island/Te Pito o te Ao: ‘Goodness!’ I’d thought as they’d come out –male with topknot, females calling, loincloth and thatchy cloaks – ‘That’s my lot from the far south, 200 years ago.’ (And I could understand quite a bit of their dialect.) And the Fijian contingent had invited us all for a kai. Their quarters were even more spartan than ours.

Chasing My Cure: A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope Into Action; A Memoir by David Fajgenbaum

Atul Gawande, Barry Marshall: ulcers, crowdsourcing, data science, Easter island, friendly fire, medical residency, personalized medicine, phenotype, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, the scientific method

Of course, that meant patients on sirolimus were susceptible to infections due to a weakened immune system, but sirolimus had a much better side effect profile than the other two drugs I was considering. It had never been used to treat anyone with iMCD. Sirolimus is also known as rapamycin in homage to its discovery on the island of Rapa Nui. You might know Rapa Nui as Easter Island or “that Pacific island with the giant stone figures.” Rapamycin is a metabolite naturally produced by a bacterium found in the soil of that island. A pharmaceutical company called Ayerst had been collecting soil samples from islands all over the Pacific in hopes of identifying antifungal agents when they came across this compound on Rapa Nui, more than one thousand miles from its nearest neighbor.

The Iceberg by Marion Coutts

Easter island, Eyjafjallajökull, green transition

In solid counterpart to all this grief, I learn about the lengths nurses are prepared to go to assist a purely recreational and ambitious project by one of their patients. In the gallery the works are drawn inward. The display is as concentrated as its subject. Cézanne’s farm workers hunch like Easter Island statues: the one from the Met, the one from the Courtauld, the one from the Musée d’Orsay and a clutch of other canvases. We have a long hour. Tom says, You must do it. This means he can’t initiate the conversation but if I begin, he can join in. I move into mode beside the chair with our friends as outriders and we go slowly from painting to painting and back and forth between them.

Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto by Mark Helprin

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, carbon footprint, computer age, cotton gin, crowdsourcing, Easter island, hive mind, independent contractor, invention of writing, Jacquard loom, lateral thinking, plutocrats, race to the bottom, semantic web, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, the scientific method, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Eventually, as it was perfected, pages would be turned by placing your fingers on them and doing almost exactly what you do with a real book. The pressure and direction of a sweep of the hand would be read and obeyed. You could also turn pages by commanding it verbally to do so. You could tell it to search for a particular word or phrase, or assemble, for instance, all mentions of feldspar, the guillotine, or Easter Island. You could make a concordance or ask for a dictionary definition or a citation from another work, and these would appear. Inside would be not merely one book but dozens, or scores. You could replace them by plugging and unplugging modules the size of Chiclets.™ Eventually, you would have access to the contents of the entire Library of Congress—by radio.

Culture Shock! Costa Rica 30th Anniversary Edition by Claire Wallerstein

anti-communist, bilateral investment treaty, call centre, card file, Day of the Dead, Easter island, fixed income, Kickstarter, liberal capitalism, out of africa, Silicon Valley, sustainable-tourism, trade route, urban sprawl

Made mostly from sandstone, some of these stones have even been found more than 20 km (12.5 miles) from the quarries where they were carved between the years 500 and 1500 CE. It has been suggested the spheres were used as grave markers, navigation tools, or ancient star charts—but just like Stonehenge and the stone heads of Easter Island, their real purpose remains unknown. Columbus Christopher Columbus landed in Costa Rica on his fourth and final voyage to the New World in his quest to find a sea passage to Asia. On 18 September 1502, he dropped anchor at Isla Uvita, just off the shores of Puerto Limón, to repair his storm-damaged fleet.

In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer's by Joseph Jebelli

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Apollo 13, Berlin Wall, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, CRISPR, double helix, Easter island, Edward Jenner, epigenetics, global pandemic, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, parabiotic, phenotype, placebo effect, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Skype, stem cell, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, traumatic brain injury

Wanting to offer me something constructive, he leaned back in his chair and rummaged through a nearby bookshelf, pulling out books and papers by other unconventional thinkers. He told me about a group in Seattle, Washington, who are studying brain ageing in domestic dogs–the rationale being that because dogs share our living space and also succumb to dementia, they may hold a clue that mice and humans do not. He also spoke about a substance found in the soil of Easter Island by Canadian scientists in 1964, called Rapamycin, which has been shown to extend the lifespan of mice by 14 per cent.8 Amid all these arresting developments, though, Nikolich stressed a crucial message: the mission, he said, is extended healthspan, not lifespan. Because even if we all live to 150, ‘nobody wants to live long as a vegetable,’ he bluntly concluded.

The Iceberg: A Memoir by Marion Coutts

Easter island, Eyjafjallajökull, green transition

In solid counterpart to all this grief, I learn about the lengths nurses are prepared to go to assist a purely recreational and ambitious project by one of their patients. In the gallery the works are drawn inward. The display is as concentrated as its subject. Cézanne’s farm workers hunch like Easter Island statues: the one from the Met, the one from the Courtauld, the one from the Musée d’Orsay and a clutch of other canvases. We have a long hour. Tom says, You must do it. This means he can’t initiate the conversation but if I begin, he can join in. I move into mode beside the chair with our friends as outriders and we go slowly from painting to painting and back and forth between them.

The End of Growth by Jeff Rubin

Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bakken shale, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deal flow, decarbonisation, deglobalization, Easter island, energy security, eurozone crisis, Exxon Valdez, Eyjafjallajökull, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, flex fuel, Ford Model T, full employment, ghettoisation, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Hans Island, happiness index / gross national happiness, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, illegal immigration, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, Kickstarter, low interest rates, McMansion, megaproject, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, new economy, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, traumatic brain injury, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

While most economists now acknowledge that expensive energy curtails GDP, the majority also believe that technological innovations will allow us to leap over the hurdles presented by resource scarcity. Historians take a different view. The decline of the Roman Empire has captured the world’s imagination for centuries, as has the collapse of Mayan society and the disappearance of people from Easter Island. Indeed, history is the story of the rise and fall of civilizations large and small. The exact reasons for social collapse are rarely known, but many theories cite resource scarcity as a contributing factor. Whether constraints on resources, such as food and water, is the driving reason behind societal failures will remain lost in the mists of time, but one thing is indisputable: civilizations that once flourished have eventually floundered.

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown

Easter island, indoor plumbing, Kuiper Belt, Neil Armstrong, Pluto: dwarf planet

Rapa Nui was first visited by Europeans on Easter Sunday, 1722, precisely 283 years before the discovery of the Kuiper belt object now known as Makemake. Because of this first visit, the island is known in Spanish (it is a territory of Chile) as Isla de Pascua, but around here, it is far better known by its English name of Easter Island. • • • The name Makemake was accepted quite quickly and with a modest fanfare by the IAU; as predicted, a decision on Santa was soon rendered, only two years after the initial proposals had been submitted. This time there was no fanfare, no press release, no official pronouncements. The name just appeared on the official IAU list of names one day as Haumea.

The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success by Ross Douthat

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, Apollo 13, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 747, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, centre right, Charlie Hebdo massacre, charter city, crack epidemic, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Graeber, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, Donald Trump, driverless car, East Village, Easter island, Elon Musk, fake news, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, ghettoisation, gig economy, Golden age of television, green new deal, Haight Ashbury, helicopter parent, hive mind, Hyperloop, immigration reform, informal economy, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Islamic Golden Age, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Joan Didion, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, life extension, low interest rates, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, megacity, meritocracy, microaggression, move fast and break things, multiplanetary species, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, Norman Mailer, obamacare, Oculus Rift, open borders, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, out of africa, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paris climate accords, peak TV, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, pre–internet, private spaceflight, QAnon, quantitative easing, radical life extension, rent-seeking, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Snapchat, Snow Crash, Social Justice Warrior, social web, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wage slave, WeWork, women in the workforce, Y2K

Of course, one of the recurring critiques of the decadent society is that its stability is an illusion, that sustainable decadence is a contradiction in terms, and that decadence always makes a civilization uniquely vulnerable to crisis, invasion, destruction—in which case it’s better to gamble on the revolution, risks and all, than just sit waiting for the inevitable coup de grace. But giving decadence its due also requires noting that dynamic societies are perfectly capable of bringing destruction upon themselves, when they hit some ecological limit without realizing it (there was nothing decadent about the Easter Islanders, nobody more dynamic than the Once-ler in Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax) or gain some technical mastery they are ill-equipped to handle. It was not decadence but the dynamism of the atomic age that almost destroyed the world in 1962 and in a few close calls thereafter. It will not be decadence but dynamism—the dynamism of the still-developing world, where carbon emissions are rising even as they dip in the slow-growth West—that gives us a climate catastrophe, should one ultimately come.

Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History by Alex von Tunzelmann

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", anti-communist, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, colonial rule, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Donald Trump, double helix, Easter island, European colonialism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, George Floyd, global pandemic, Google Earth, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Suez crisis 1956, the map is not the territory, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, W. E. B. Du Bois

Statues are much older than recorded history, dating back to the Palaeolithic era and the dawn of humanity. The oldest confirmed statues are both German. They are made of ivory, and were found in caves and assessed as being between 35,000 and 40,000 years old: the Lion Man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel and the Venus of Hohle Fels. Forms of statuary can be found on every inhabited continent, from the Easter Island moai of Polynesia to the Terracotta Warriors of China, to the Nok sculptures of Nigeria, to the colossal Olmec heads of Mexico. The history of destroying statues is itself extremely ancient. It was common for Egyptian pharaohs to smash statues of their predecessors and rivals. Deuteronomy 12:3 mandates the destruction of idols: ‘And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.’

Hawaii Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, back-to-the-land, big-box store, bike sharing, British Empire, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, Charles Lindbergh, company town, Easter island, Food sovereignty, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, James Watt: steam engine, Kula ring, land reform, Larry Ellison, machine readable, Maui Hawaii, off-the-grid, Peter Pan Syndrome, polynesian navigation, Silicon Valley, tech billionaire

Just beware any time the surf’s up. 1Sights & Activities Polynesian Cultural CenterTHEME PARK (PCC; MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %808-293-3333; www.polynesia.com; 55-370 Kamehameha Hwy; adult/child from $50/40; h11:45am-5pm Mon-Sat; c) A nonprofit cultural park owned by the Mormon Church, the PCC revolves around eight Polynesian-themed ʻvillages’ representing Hawaii, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Samoa, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Fiji, Tahiti and Tonga. The admission price is steep, but this includes frequent village shows and a park-wide boat parade showcasing native dances. BYUH students dressed in native garb demonstrate poi pounding, coconut-frond weaving, handicrafts, music and games.

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Smith's Tropical ParadiseGARDENS ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %808-821-6895; www.smithskauai.com; adult/child 3-12yr $6/3; h8:30am-4pm; c) Other gardens might have fancier landscaping, but you can’t beat Smith’s for value. Take a leisurely stroll along a mile-long loop trail past a serene pond, grassy lawns and island-themed gardens. The setting can seem Disney-esque, with an Easter Island moai statue replica, but it’s appealingly unpretentious. Keahua ArboretumPARK ( MAP GOOGLE MAP )F Sitting prettily at the top of Kuamoʻo Rd, this arboretum has grassy fields, a gurgling stream and groves of rainbow eucalyptus and other towering trees. Locals come here to picnic and to swim in the freshwater stream and pools, but beware the water is infected with leptospira bacteria.

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For 80 million years, a ʻhot spot' beneath the earth's mantle has operated like a volcanic conveyor belt here, manufacturing a 1500-mile string of shield volcanoes that bubble out of the sea in the most geographically isolated spot on the planet, almost 2000 miles from the closest continent. This profound isolation has created a living textbook of evolution, with incredible biodiversity unmatched by anywhere else in the US. Hawaii is the northernmost point of the triangle of Pacific islands known as Polynesia (many islands); the other points are New Zealand and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). A Hot Spot for Volcanoes The Hawaiian archipelago embraces more than 50 volcanoes (and 137 islands and atolls), part of the larger, mostly submerged Hawaiian–Emperor Seamount chain that extends 3600 miles across the ocean. Hawaii's volcanoes are created by a rising column of molten rock – a 'hot spot' – under the Pacific Plate.

Pauline Frommer's London: Spend Less, See More by Jason Cochran

Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, British Empire, congestion charging, context collapse, David Attenborough, Easter island, electricity market, Etonian, Frank Gehry, glass ceiling, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Multics, Nelson Mandela, Skype, Stephen Fry, urban planning

LONDON budget travel redefined pauline frommer’s Winner of Best Guidebook, North American Travel Journalists Association $16.99 USA/$18.99 CAN/£11.99 UK www.frommers.com/pauline 2nd edition pauline frommer’s LONDON spend less see more SECO N D F L O O R Area code: 020 67 To call London from another country: Dial the international access code (U.S. or Canada 011, UK or New Zealand 00, Australia 0011), plus the country code (44), plus the area code with the first zero omitted (20), plus the local number. 66 60 61 59 1 Egyptian Rooms 2 Portland Vase and Warren Cup 58 62 1 63 57 56 64 55 To make a direct international call from London: Dial 00, wait for dial tone, then the country code (U.S. or Canada 1, UK 44, Australia 61, New Zealand 64), the area code, and the local number. 65 54 53 73 52 To charge international calls: Dial AT&T USA Direct at 0800/890011; Sprint at 0800/890877; MCI at 0800/890222. 72 51 To call within London: Dial the local 7- or 8-digit number. 3 Lindow Man 4 Treasures of Sutton Hoo 3 71 50 5 Lewis Chessmen SECOND FLOOR To call London from elsewhere in Britain: Dial the area code, including the 0, plus the local number. Operator Assistance: dial 155 for international calls or 192 for calls within England. 2 6 Clocks and Watches 70 7 Asia Galleries 49 8 Easter Island statue 4 9 Mausoleum of Halikarnassos 69a 10 Elgin Marbles 36 69 68 40 41 42 5 43 44 6 37 11 Rosetta Stone 47 12 Enlightenment Gallery 46 45 100˚F 48 13 Gallery Café To convert..................... multiply by 110˚F 90˚F MAIN FLOOR 70˚F Ancient Near East 34 24 Money 27 50˚F 33b 20 World cultures 10 32˚F 21 35 9 19 Temporary Exhibits 17 23 10˚F 8 4 1 MAIN FLOOR To convert..................... multiply by 0˚C 0˚F -10˚C -18˚C -10˚F -20˚F GREAT C OURT 13 13 10˚C Inches to centimeters...................2.54 Centimeters to inches......................39 Feet to meters................................ .30 Meters to feet...............................3.28 Yards to meters.............................. .91 Meters to yards.............................1.09 Miles to kilometers.......................1.61 Kilometers to miles........................ .62 1 ft. = .30m 1 mile = 1.6km 1m = 3.3 ft. 1km = .62 mile -30˚C 7 14 12 READING ROOM 11 16 15 10 20˚C 20˚F 12 22 18 1 liter = .26 U.S. gallon 1 U.S. gallon = 3.8 liters 40˚F 9 Greece & Rome Asia 26 U.S. gallons to liters....................... 3.8 Liters to U.S. gallons...................... .26 U.S. gallons to imperial gallons.... .83 Imperial gallons to U.S. gallons...1.20 Imperial gallons to liters..............4.55 Liters to imperial gallons............... .22 60˚F 8 Egypt 30˚C 80˚F 33 7 33a Britain & Europe 40˚C 2 6 11 Dining 5 Information MA IN ENTRANCE Great Ru ssell St.

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Sushi, 119–121 SECO N D F L O O R Area code: 020 67 To call London from another country: Dial the international access code (U.S. or Canada 011, UK or New Zealand 00, Australia 0011), plus the country code (44), plus the area code with the first zero omitted (20), plus the local number. 66 60 61 59 1 Egyptian Rooms 2 Portland Vase and Warren Cup 58 62 1 63 57 56 64 55 To make a direct international call from London: Dial 00, wait for dial tone, then the country code (U.S. or Canada 1, UK 44, Australia 61, New Zealand 64), the area code, and the local number. 65 54 53 73 52 To charge international calls: Dial AT&T USA Direct at 0800/890011; Sprint at 0800/890877; MCI at 0800/890222. 72 51 To call within London: Dial the local 7- or 8-digit number. 3 Lindow Man 4 Treasures of Sutton Hoo 3 71 50 5 Lewis Chessmen SECOND FLOOR To call London from elsewhere in Britain: Dial the area code, including the 0, plus the local number. Operator Assistance: dial 155 for international calls or 192 for calls within England. 2 6 Clocks and Watches 70 7 Asia Galleries 49 8 Easter Island statue 4 9 Mausoleum of Halikarnassos 69a 10 Elgin Marbles 36 69 68 40 41 42 5 43 44 6 37 11 Rosetta Stone 47 12 Enlightenment Gallery 46 45 100˚F 48 13 Gallery Café To convert..................... multiply by 110˚F 90˚F MAIN FLOOR 70˚F Ancient Near East 34 24 Money 27 50˚F 33b 20 World cultures 10 32˚F 21 35 9 19 Temporary Exhibits 17 23 10˚F 8 4 1 MAIN FLOOR To convert..................... multiply by 0˚C 0˚F -10˚C -18˚C -10˚F -20˚F GREAT C OURT 13 13 10˚C Inches to centimeters...................2.54 Centimeters to inches......................39 Feet to meters................................ .30 Meters to feet...............................3.28 Yards to meters.............................. .91 Meters to yards.............................1.09 Miles to kilometers.......................1.61 Kilometers to miles........................ .62 1 ft. = .30m 1 mile = 1.6km 1m = 3.3 ft. 1km = .62 mile -30˚C 7 14 12 READING ROOM 11 16 15 10 20˚C 20˚F 12 22 18 1 liter = .26 U.S. gallon 1 U.S. gallon = 3.8 liters 40˚F 9 Greece & Rome Asia 26 U.S. gallons to liters....................... 3.8 Liters to U.S. gallons...................... .26 U.S. gallons to imperial gallons.... .83 Imperial gallons to U.S. gallons...1.20 Imperial gallons to liters..............4.55 Liters to imperial gallons............... .22 60˚F 8 Egypt 30˚C 80˚F 33 7 33a Britain & Europe 40˚C 2 6 11 Dining 5 Information MA IN ENTRANCE Great Ru ssell St.

How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson

Albert Einstein, Alexander Shulgin, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, call centre, David Attenborough, David Brooks, deskilling, Easter island, financial independence, full employment, Gordon Gekko, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Lao Tzu, liberal capitalism, moral panic, New Urbanism, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, spinning jenny, three-martini lunch, Torches of Freedom, trade route, wage slave, work culture

Absinthe was banned in 1 9 1 4 following a moral panic but over the following decades the custom of the Green Hour evolved into the cocktail hour (and its vulgar kid brother, the so-called Happy Hour) . In The Book of Tiki: The Cult of Polynesian Pop in Fifties America (2000) , anthropologist Sven A. Kirsten reveals how, in the mid twentieth century, first California and then the whole of America began to adopt the primitive styles of Polynesia and Hawaii, of the Easter Islands and the South Seas islands, as symbolic of an earthly paradise, free of work and responsibility, an antidote to the civilized Western world. By the 1 950s, America was entering a new period of material prosperity, but the work-ethic-Ioving Americans needed to be told how to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever

Albert Einstein, carbon footprint, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, company town, Easter island, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Exxon Valdez, Mason jar, Medieval Warm Period, ocean acidification, refrigerator car, San Francisco homelessness, South China Sea, Thales of Miletus, the scientific method, University of East Anglia

The drop in pressure is accompanied by a drop in temperature. The whole mass spills outward from the equator. Along the way, water vapor carried in the air mass grows cool enough to condense and tumble downward as liquid water. Around the latitude of Shanghai and Jacksonville in the Northern Hemisphere and Easter Island and Cape Town in the Southern Hemisphere, and moderated by local geography and the myriad factors that affect air movements, it tumbles down. George Hadley imagined these global patterns in 1735, before satellites, before computers, before reasonable maps of the world. The global loops of rising and cooling air near the equator became known as Hadley cells.

The 100 Best Vacations to Enrich Your Life by Pam Grout

Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Apollo 11, Buckminster Fuller, clean water, complexity theory, David Brooks, East Village, Easter island, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, global village, Golden Gate Park, if you build it, they will come, Maui Hawaii, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, off-the-grid, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, SpaceShipOne, supervolcano, transcontinental railway, two and twenty, urban sprawl, Yogi Berra

The archaeological excavation at Mount Vernon is one of more than 250 fieldwork projects listed in the bulletin put out each year by the Archaeological Institute of America. If you want to volunteer for an archaeological excavation, the Archaeological Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin is the best place to start. It lists hundreds of excavations from a Stone Age site in South Africa to a site on Easter Island in Chile. Each listing provides an in-depth description, including accommodations, price, and contact information. The yearly volume can be accessed on the institute’s website (www.archaeological.org); a paperback version is also available each year from Oxbox/David Brown Books, 800-791-9354. * * * And take over they did.

There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years by Mike Berners-Lee

air freight, Anthropocene, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, cloud computing, dematerialisation, disinformation, driverless car, Easter island, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, fake news, food miles, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global village, Hans Rosling, high-speed rail, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jevons paradox, land reform, microplastics / micro fibres, negative emissions, neoliberal agenda, off grid, performance metric, post-truth, profit motive, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Stephen Hawking, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trickle-down economics, urban planning

There are two problems with this line of argument. Firstly, humans have inflicted some very hard times on themselves in the past, sometimes wiping out whole communities. Now that we are a global village, like it or not, it would be a great shame if our community got into as much trouble as the people on Easter Island who chopped down the last tree. The second problem with this line of reasoning is that it actually says nothing at all, because every member of every species that ever lived could say, during their lifetime, that their species had always survived. Is it optimism bias that tells me we have everything to play for?

Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Alfred Russel Wallace, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Brexit referendum, butterfly effect, California gold rush, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, confounding variable, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dava Sobel, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Firefox, Ford Model T, General Magic , George Akerlof, gig economy, Google Chrome, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Hyperloop, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, IKEA effect, information asymmetry, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, James Dyson, John Harrison: Longitude, loss aversion, low cost airline, Mason jar, Murray Gell-Mann, nudge theory, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, race to the bottom, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Rory Sutherland, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, the map is not the territory, The Market for Lemons, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, ultimatum game, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, US Airways Flight 1549, Veblen good, work culture

It seems that competition over antler size – which led to them ultimately growing to insane proportions – may have led to the extinction of the Irish elk. The same competition can be just as damaging to humans when it manifests itself in unrestrained competition through extreme behaviour. Some academics have suggested that the Easter Island human civilisation might have been destroyed by competition between tribes over who could construct the largest and most numerous stone heads. There is no competition to build giant stone heads among modern humans,* but are car showrooms, DIY centres, women’s clothes shops and shopping malls, or the preference for taking more expensive holidays, simply consumerist manifestations of the same uncontrolled competitive drive?

Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are Thekeys to Sustainability by David Owen

A Pattern Language, active transport: walking or cycling, big-box store, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, congestion charging, congestion pricing, delayed gratification, distributed generation, drive until you qualify, East Village, Easter island, electricity market, food miles, Ford Model T, garden city movement, hydrogen economy, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, linear programming, McMansion, megaproject, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, Murano, Venice glass, Negawatt, New Urbanism, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, PalmPilot, peak oil, placebo effect, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, Ted Nordhaus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas L Friedman, unemployed young men, urban planning, urban sprawl, walkable city, zero-sum game

One important fact about the economics of oil, emphasized by Goodstein and others but often overlooked, at least in media reports, is that the world will never actually run out, in the sense of pumping the final barrel out of the ground—in contrast to the moment, poignantly described by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse, when some anonymous Easter Islander cut down his island’s last palm tree, bringing his culture to a permanent end.11 At some point long before the earth has literally gone dry, extracting the remaining crude will cease to be economically rational, and production will essentially stop—either because, as Amory Lovins and others have predicted, increased energy efficiency and competition from solar, wind, and other renewables will have driven the price of oil so low that people will no longer bother with it (just as we no longer bother to hunt whales for fuel to light our houses), or because, as seems vastly more likely, finding and pumping petroleum will have become so expensive that the world will have switched almost entirely to burning more plentiful carbon-based alternatives and their derivatives—natural gas, coal, trash, wood, the petroleum extractable from so-called oil sands—and to making more use of nuclear power.

The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis by Ruth Defries

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Columbian Exchange, demographic transition, double helix, Easter island, European colonialism, food miles, Francisco Pizarro, gentleman farmer, Gregor Mendel, Haber-Bosch Process, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Jevons paradox, John Snow's cholera map, out of africa, planetary scale, premature optimization, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, social intelligence, Thomas Malthus, trade route, transatlantic slave trade

A twist of nature for more food is followed by a society with more and more mouths to feed. At some point, nature reacts. A crash follows. The American sociologist William Catton Jr. described this pattern in his 1980 book Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. From a short lens, history illustrates many individual examples of overshoot. Towering statues of Easter Island, Mayan cities, the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi in the American Southwest, and the massive temple complexes of Angkor Wat in Cambodia all convey the demise of civilizations that once prospered. Some complicated combination of political strife, unexpected climate, social upheaval, or soils run dry of nutrients, as well as many unknowable factors, no doubt contributed.

Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing by Hod Lipson, Melba Kurman

3D printing, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, additive manufacturing, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, DIY culture, dumpster diving, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, factory automation, Free Software Foundation, game design, global supply chain, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, lifelogging, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, microcredit, Minecraft, Neal Stephenson, new economy, off grid, personalized medicine, planned obsolescence, printed gun, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, stem cell, Steve Jobs, technological singularity, TED Talk, the long tail, the market place

Yet, like any other plastic object, whether it be custom-made or mass manufactured, most 3D printed products that reach the end of their lifecycle will be tossed into the garbage can. 3D printing pioneer and outspoken visionary Joris Peels points out that if we continue to consume and discard products at our current global rate of consumption, we will choke to death in our own waste. In a blog article entitled “3D Printing vs. Mass Production: A More Beautiful Landfill,” he wrote, “My fear is that eventually mass production could lead to mass extinction . . . I really believe we’re headed to the path to extinction . . . Like the Easter Islanders we’re also going to cut down the last tree.”10 Plastic is environmentally devastating. Yet plastic has also been a great democratic equalizer, enabling nearly everyone to own household items that used to be reserved for the rich. Plastic objects are found in nearly every aspect of our lives, from mundane plastic toys to lifesaving lightweight plastic tubes used to give blood transfusions.

How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day

Airbnb, country house hotel, Desert Island Discs, disintermediation, Easter island, fail fast, fear of failure, financial independence, gender pay gap, Kintsugi, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, pre–internet, Rosa Parks, San Francisco homelessness, stem cell, Stephen Fry, TED Talk, unpaid internship

I had passed my theory test after swotting up on motorway lights and highway road signs. All that was left was the practical element – and how hard could that be? Pretty hard, as it turned out. I was paired with a stern-faced female examiner, the sort of person whose head seemed to have been chipped off an Easter Island statue, except less expressive. She was impervious to any effort at small talk or charm. Well, that’s fine, I thought, I’ll just drive brilliantly and she’ll be forced to crack a smile by the end. For the first twenty minutes, everything went according to plan. I can honestly say, with the benefit of over two decades of driving cars, that it was quite possibly the best bit of driving I have ever done.

The Science and Technology of Growing Young: An Insider's Guide to the Breakthroughs That Will Dramatically Extend Our Lifespan . . . And What You Can Do Right Now by Sergey Young

23andMe, 3D printing, Albert Einstein, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, basic income, Big Tech, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, brain emulation, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, deep learning, digital twin, diversified portfolio, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Easter island, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, European colonialism, game design, Gavin Belson, George Floyd, global pandemic, hockey-stick growth, impulse control, Internet of things, late capitalism, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microbiome, microdosing, moral hazard, mouse model, natural language processing, personalized medicine, plant based meat, precision agriculture, radical life extension, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, TED Talk, uber lyft, ultra-processed food, universal basic income, Virgin Galactic, Vision Fund, X Prize

While many still do believe that moderate red wine consumption offers health benefits, the amount of wine you would need to drink to make a noticeable impact on your lifespan would easily exceed what anyone is recommending. So, our search for longevity molecules continues. LONGEVITY OUT FROM UNDER A ROCK Easter Island sits more than two thousand miles west of continental Chile. It is known to its Polynesian native inhabitants as Rapa Nui. The island was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site on account of the almost one thousand monolithic moai human figure statues that dot the island’s undulating expanse of green hills.

Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex by Rachel Feltman

COVID-19, disintermediation, double helix, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Internet Archive, longitudinal study, Louis Daguerre, Louis Pasteur, microbiome, moral panic, Pepto Bismol, phenotype, placebo effect, stem cell, TikTok, University of East Anglia, white flight

The Talmud, meanwhile, recommended a spongy material called mokh soaked in vinegar for women too young or frail to get pregnant safely; this actually persisted as a common birth control method among Jewish women through the sixteenth century. Time and space are crammed with tales of women cramming things up against the cervix to prevent pregnancy: seaweed on Easter Island, bronze pessaries in ancient Rome, oiled paper discs for Japanese prostitutes throughout antiquity, carved wooden caps in America at the turn of the twentieth century, and, finally (thankfully), the silicone diaphragms smeared with spermicide enjoying a resurgence today. And you can stop thanking that jabroni Casanova for male condoms, while you’re at it.

Fodor's Big Island of Hawaii by Fodor’s Travel Guides

Airbnb, carbon footprint, company town, COVID-19, Easter island, Lyft, Maui Hawaii, off-the-grid, polynesian navigation, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft

They didn’t just flail around and land here by accident; they understood the deep nuances of celestial navigation and were masters of the craft. From western Polynesia, they traveled back and forth between Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and the Society Isles, settling on the outer reaches of the Pacific, Hawaii, and Easter Island, as early as AD 300. The golden era of Polynesian voyaging peaked around AD 1200, after which the distant Hawaiian Islands were left to develop their own unique cultural practices and subsistence in relative isolation. The Islands’ symbiotic society was deeply intertwined with religion, mythology, science, and artistry.

Frommer's Hawaii 2009 by Jeanette Foster

airport security, California gold rush, Charles Lindbergh, Easter island, glass ceiling, gravity well, haute couture, haute cuisine, indoor plumbing, machine readable, Maui Hawaii, off-the-grid, place-making, polynesian navigation, retail therapy, South China Sea, sustainable-tourism, urban renewal, urban sprawl, white picket fence, Yogi Berra

This golden crescent with swaying palms is protected from strong winds and currents by two outstretched lava-rock promontories. Its calm waters are perfect for snorkeling, swimming, and kayaking. Facilities 21˚ N JAPAN S AU TR AL IA 160˚ W Sydney UN I T Cook Islands Samoa Islands Equator S C STA TE ai ha e nn l 159˚ W Easter Island P A C I F I C O C E A N Honolulu–Mexico City 3,791 miles Tahiti Tahiti Pearl Harbor Makaha Haleiwa Kailua Honolulu Waikiki i w Laie OAHU 158˚ W 158˚ W MOLOKAI 156˚ W 0 0 O C E A N Pailolo Channel P A C I F I C 157˚ W 157˚ W O C E A N 156˚ W Captain Cook Kailua-Kona Keahole Point Point 155˚ W Kilauea Crate Crater raterr Hawaii Volcanoes National Park Hilo HAWAII “The Big Island” Ka Lae (South Point) Point Mauna Loa 155˚ W 50 mi Airport Mountain 50 km Mauna Kea Kea Waimea i K a Kaunakakai Kaanapali Kahului MAUI hi Channel MAUI Kalo Lahaina Lanai City Hana LANAI Kihei ki ahi el k i la Haleakala el nn Kea hann National Park ha C C KAHOOLAW KAHOOL KAHOOLAWE AWE E ha ha ui n e Hawi Al P A C I F I C Honolulu–Los Angeles 2,556 miles Los Angeles ED K au Hawaii Honolulu New Zealand Tonga Fiji Honolulu–Sydney 5,065 miles Poipu Lihue KAUAI KAUAI Princeville 159˚ W au l Aua n n e Ch 19˚ N a Hanalei Honolulu–Tokyo 3,862 miles NIIHAU NIIHAU Puuwai 160˚ W ak LI NE 22˚ N ul el AL DAT E Ka 19˚ N 20˚ N 21˚ N 22˚ N 10:29 PM INTERNATION nel nn an hi a Ch 8/11/08 Ch 05_285558-ch01.qxp Page 5 THE BEST BEACHES 5 The Hawaiian Islands 05_285558-ch01.qxp 6 8/11/08 10:29 PM Page 6 CHAPTER 1 .

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The question still remains unanswered. 2 Looking Back at Hawaii Paddling outrigger canoes, the first ancestors of today’s Hawaiians followed the stars and birds across the sea to Hawaii, which they called “the land of raging fire.” Those first settlers were part of the great Polynesian migration that settled the vast triangle of islands stretching between New Zealand, Easter Island, and Hawaii. No one is sure exactly when they came to Hawaii from Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands, some 2,500 miles to the south, but a bone fishhook found at the southernmost tip of the Big Island has been carbon-dated to A.D. 700. Chants claim that the Mookini Heiau, also on the Big Island, was built in A.D. 480.

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Keck Observatory (Big Island), 336 Wood Valley Temple & Retreat Center (Big Island), 349 World Botanical Gardens (Big Island), 338–339 World Fire-Knife Dance Championships & Samoa Festival (Oahu), 56 World War II, 32 Y ama’s Fish Market (Honolulu), 240 Yat Tung Chow Noodle Factory (Honolulu), 216 Yellowfish Trading Company (Kauai), 628 Yokohama Bay (Oahu), 184 Yorman’s by the Sea (Maui), 490 Z oos Honolulu Zoo (Oahu), 212 Panaewa Rainforest Zoo (Big Island), 343–344 17_285558-badvert01.qxp 8/11/08 10:53 PM Page 661 FROMMER’S® COMPLETE TRAVEL GUIDES Alaska Amalfi Coast American Southwest Amsterdam Argentina Arizona Atlanta Australia Austria Bahamas Barcelona Beijing Belgium, Holland & Luxembourg Belize Bermuda Boston Brazil British Columbia & the Canadian Rockies Brussels & Bruges Budapest & the Best of Hungary Buenos Aires Calgary California Canada Cancún, Cozumel & the Yucatán Cape Cod, Nantucket & Martha’s Vineyard Caribbean Caribbean Ports of Call Carolinas & Georgia Chicago Chile & Easter Island China Colorado Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Denmark Denver, Boulder & Colorado Springs Eastern Europe Ecuador & the Galapagos Islands Edinburgh & Glasgow England Europe Europe by Rail Florence, Tuscany & Umbria Florida France Germany Greece Greek Islands Guatemala Hawaii Hong Kong Honolulu, Waikiki & Oahu India Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Kauai Las Vegas London Los Angeles Los Cabos & Baja Madrid Maine Coast Maryland & Delaware Maui Mexico Montana & Wyoming Montréal & Québec City Morocco Moscow & St.

Escape From Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity by Walter Scheidel

agricultural Revolution, barriers to entry, British Empire, classic study, colonial rule, conceptual framework, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, dark matter, disruptive innovation, Easter island, Eratosthenes, European colonialism, financial innovation, financial intermediation, flying shuttle, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, means of production, Multics, Network effects, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, peer-to-peer lending, plutocrats, principal–agent problem, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, Republic of Letters, secular stagnation, South China Sea, spinning jenny, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transaction costs, vertical integration, zero-sum game

In the course of the first millennium CE, riding their outrigger canoes, these Polynesians reached and populated New Zealand, Easter Island (2,600 kilometers east of the closest staging post, Mangareva, and 6,700 kilometers from Samoa), and Hawai’i (3,500 kilometers north of the Marquesas). Their zone of transfers eventually spanned some 9,000 kilometers from Hawai’i in the north to the Auckland Islands south of New Zealand. East to west, dispersal extended across 25,000 kilometers from Madagascar to Easter Island.27 Back in Europe, meanwhile, the Norse of the ninth and tenth centuries advanced from Scandinavia to Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland in the New World.

Will Storr vs. The Supernatural: One Man's Search for the Truth About Ghosts by Will Storr

Easter island, income inequality, invisible hand, Jon Ronson, place-making, quantum entanglement

‘To the spirit that may hear my voice, we ask that you now go back from whence you came. With love and light, we are very, very grateful. Thank you, spirit, thank you. Please stand back. Thank you. Please, please, please stand back. OK, everybody, it’s fine. Let’s release.’ We let go of each other’s hands. ‘Did you see him?’ says Big S with a torch shining up on his Easter Island face. ‘Yeah,’ says everybody. ‘Um … I didn’t,’ I say. I feel like I’m ruining the party, like I’ve just put my cigarette out in the middle of the wedding cake. ‘There was this gentleman standing right there,’ says Big S, aiming his torch at the wall. ‘And you all saw this guy?’ I say. ‘Everyone seen it and felt it, didn’t we?

Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker

8-hour work day, active transport: walking or cycling, barriers to entry, book value, buy and hold, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, delayed gratification, discounted cash flows, diversification, dogs of the Dow, don't be evil, dumpster diving, Easter island, fake it until you make it, financial engineering, financial independence, game design, index fund, invention of the steam engine, inventory management, junk bonds, lateral thinking, lifestyle creep, loose coupling, low interest rates, market bubble, McMansion, passive income, peak oil, place-making, planned obsolescence, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, power law, psychological pricing, retail therapy, risk free rate, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, time value of money, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, wage slave, working poor

When future archaeologists dig through the remains of our civilization, one of the things they will find are the ceramics, since ceramics are very stable compounds. Some of the biggest and most solid ceramic objects in our landfills just happen to be toilet bowls. This may be our legacy, our equivalent to the statues on Easter Island. (7) Frogs are a leading pollution indicator and are becoming threatened by extinction at an alarming rate. (8) On the other hand, there have been a few examples of the converse holding--if you buy your way into a top-ranked university, you can still succeed (make a lot of money) despite obvious lack of talent

The Moon: A History for the Future by Oliver Morton

Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Charles Lindbergh, commoditize, Dava Sobel, Donald Trump, Easter island, Elon Musk, facts on the ground, gravity well, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, Late Heavy Bombardment, low earth orbit, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Society, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, multiplanetary species, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Norman Mailer, Pierre-Simon Laplace, planetary scale, Pluto: dwarf planet, plutocrats, private spaceflight, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, space junk, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, Ted Nordhaus, UNCLOS, Virgin Galactic, Whole Earth Catalog, X Prize

When President Barack Obama’s administration tried to stop NASA from building big rockets, the Senate would not let it. Though it is not strictly necessary, the senators would like the SLS eventually to have something to do; even Mr Shelby would baulk at simply lining the things up on the bluffs above the Tennessee River like Easter Island statues. So, they have assured it a role. For the time being, NASA’s plans for returning people to the Moon are centred on the SLS. If the government were to give up on the SLS, the BFR would be perfectly positioned to mop up NASA contracts for future Moon-taxi services, just as the Falcon 9 and Dragon did for space station supply runs.

Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David Christian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Arthur Eddington, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cepheid variable, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, Columbian Exchange, complexity theory, cosmic microwave background, cosmological constant, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, demographic transition, double helix, Easter island, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Ernest Rutherford, European colonialism, Francisco Pizarro, Haber-Bosch Process, Harvard Computers: women astronomers, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Large Hadron Collider, Late Heavy Bombardment, Marshall McLuhan, microbiome, nuclear winter, Paris climate accords, planetary scale, rising living standards, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, trade route, Yogi Berra

The third-largest world zone, in the Americas, was settled at least by fifteen thousand years ago but was largely cut off from Eurasia when the Bering Strait was flooded at the end of the last ice age. In recent millennia, a fourth zone would emerge in the Pacific. Western islands such as the Solomons may have been settled as early as forty thousand years ago, but islands farther to the east and south (including New Zealand, Hawaii, and Easter Island) were settled during a remarkable series of seaborne migrations that began just thirty-five hundred years ago. The existence of different world zones set up a fascinating natural experiment because, as we look back, we can watch how human history played out in different arenas.2 There were important similarities in the histories of the world zones.

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans by Mark Lynas

Airbus A320, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Easter island, Eyjafjallajökull, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, megacity, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Negawatt, New Urbanism, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, peak oil, planetary scale, precautionary principle, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, special drawing rights, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, Tragedy of the Commons, two and twenty, undersea cable, University of East Anglia, We are as Gods

The consequent nationwide effects over the United States’ entire 6.2-million-kilometer road network can only be guessed at.3 While busy paved roads are a recent phenomenon, general human transformation of the land surface has been accelerating for millennia. The Roman Empire deforested large areas around the Mediterranean, contributing to soil erosion and declining fertility. Unsustainable land-use change has been associated with the collapse of entire civilizations, from Easter Island in the Pacific to the Maya of Central America, as Jared Diamond documents in his book Collapse.4 The European continent’s landscape changed dramatically between A.D. 500, when it was still four-fifths covered by swamp and woodland, and A.D. 1300, when half of this natural land had already been converted to agriculture.

Your Own Allotment : How to Find It, Cultivate It, and Enjoy Growing Your Own Food by Russell-Jones, Neil.

Berlin Wall, British Empire, carbon footprint, Corn Laws, David Attenborough, discovery of the americas, Easter island, information retrieval, Kickstarter, mass immigration, spice trade

In Victorian times, placing a paving stone below trees was a technique used to limit root growth. Bonsai trees are bred small by keeping the roots very small. 12 • The Life Cycle of a Plant 133 Root benefits The roots of trees and other plants often help in binding soil together. In many areas (Easter Island, for example) where all trees were cut down, the soil was eroded by wind and rain and the land became uncultivable. This is still happening in many parts of the world today, especially in rainforests, with devastating effects on wildlife. Plants from the legume family – beans, peas and so on – have special nodules that absorb nitrogen and then fix it in the soil, thus improving it.

Why the Dutch Are Different: A Journey Into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the Acclaimed Guide to Travel in Holland by Ben Coates

Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bike sharing, British Empire, centre right, clean water, colonial rule, company town, drug harm reduction, Easter island, failed state, financial innovation, glass ceiling, invention of the printing press, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, megacity, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, short selling, spice trade, starchitect, trade route, urban sprawl, work culture

Elsewhere in the US were numerous small towns called Holland, an Amsterdam in upstate New York, a Rotterdam, a Dutch Harbor, a Nassau and a Nederland, and at least four Batavias. Further afield, South Africa had Delft, Gouda, Middelburg and Utrecht; Suriname Nieuw Amsterdam, Groningen and Lelydorp; and Australia Arnhem Land, Groote Eyland and Cape Leeuwin. The Dutch port of Hoorn lent its name to Cape Horn, near the southernmost tip of Latin America, while Easter Island, home of Chile’s famous giant stone heads, was christened thus by the Dutch explorers who arrived there on Easter Sunday. Closer to home, the Netherlands’ colonial history was evident on the country’s dining tables and restaurant menus, with Indonesian cuisine offering a rare bright spot among otherwise dire food options.

Fire and Ice: The Volcanoes of the Solar System by Natalie Starkey

active measures, carbon-based life, COVID-19, Easter island, Eyjafjallajökull, global pandemic, Kickstarter, Kuiper Belt, Late Heavy Bombardment, lockdown, planetary scale, Pluto: dwarf planet, supervolcano

One of the larger organisms is the Yeti crab, so-called because of its very hairy legs. This blind species (after all, there’s no need for eyes at these depths when there’s no light) measures around 15 centimetres (6 inches) long and was first observed by marine biologists in March 2005 on the Alvin submersible along the Pacific–Antarctic ridge, south of Easter Island. The Yeti crab was living at depths of about 2,200 metres (7,200 feet); as yet, the scientists are still not sure exactly how it survives down there. While it was noted that the crab appeared to be eating mussels, which would certainly provide it with nutrition, the scientists also think that its hairy legs are home to large colonies of filamentous bacteria and that it might be ‘farming’ them for food.

The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication From Ancient Times to the Internet by David Kahn

anti-communist, Bletchley Park, British Empire, Charles Babbage, classic study, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer age, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, Easter island, end-to-end encryption, Fellow of the Royal Society, heat death of the universe, Honoré de Balzac, index card, interchangeable parts, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Louis Daguerre, machine translation, Maui Hawaii, Norbert Wiener, out of africa, pattern recognition, place-making, planned obsolescence, Plato's cave, pneumatic tube, popular electronics, positional goods, Republic of Letters, Searching for Interstellar Communications, stochastic process, Suez canal 1869, the scientific method, trade route, Turing machine, union organizing, yellow journalism, zero-sum game

During World War II, HroznÝ, then in his dotage, mounted an attack upon all the undeciphered scripts of the world and announced a decipherment of the approximately 250 signs of the Indus Valley script, but other scholars have discredited it. Some investigators see a resemblance between this script and that of the “talking boards” of Easter Island. A number of the signs do look surprisingly alike, but their enormous separation in time and space makes it most unlikely that they have any connection. Easter Island natives call the writing rongo-rongo, and their tradition holds that bards merely used the little figures of what appear to be men and plants as cues for a whole line in a story. None of the native informants could actually explain the 500 symbols when they were discovered in 1870, but Thomas S.

…

Dacier… (Paris: Firmin Didot Père et fils, 1822), 2, 3-4. 912 cuneiform: Friedrich, 29-67; Cleator, 64-112; Pedersen, 154-160; Aalto, 4-5. 914 Hittite cuneiform: Friedrich, 69-79; Cleator, 118-119. 914 Meroitic, Lycian, Lydian, Libyan, Iberian, Sabaean, Safaitic, Pahlavī, Brahmī, Sogdian, Mon, Khmer, Gupta: Friedrich, Pedersen, Diringer, Gelb. 916 Kök-Turki: Pedersen, 196-199; Doblhofer, 271-293. 916 Etruscan: Friedrich, 137-143; M. Pallottino, The Etruscans, trans. by J. Cremona (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1955), 229-280. 916 Indus Valley, Easter Island: Friedrich, 169-173; Gelb, 90-91; Doblhofer, 301-311; Thomas S. Barthel, “The ‘Talking Boards’ of Easter Island,” Scientific American, CXCVIII (June, 1958), 61-68. 917 Phaistos Disk: Diringer, 78; Gelb, 155-157; Aalto, 6. A very full bibliography in E. Grumach, Bibliographic der kretisch-mykenischen Epigraphik (Munich and Berlin, 1963). 917 Maya: E.

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich

23andMe, agricultural Revolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, carbon credits, Easter island, European colonialism, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, invention of agriculture, invention of the wheel, invention of writing, mass immigration, meta-analysis, new economy, out of africa, phenotype, Scientific racism, sparse data, supervolcano, the scientific method, transatlantic slave trade

After thirty-three hundred years ago, ancient peoples making pottery in a style called Lapita appeared just to the east of New Guinea and soon afterward started expanding farther into the Pacific, quickly reaching Vanuatu three thousand kilometers from New Guinea. It took only a few hundred more years for them to spread through the western Polynesian islands including Tonga and Samoa, and then, after a long pause lasting until around twelve hundred years ago, they spread to the last habitable Pacific islands of New Zealand, Hawaii, and Easter Island by eight hundred years ago. The Austronesian expansion to the west was equally impressive, reaching Madagascar off the coast of Africa nine thousand kilometers to the west of the Philippines at least thirteen hundred years ago, and explaining why almost all Indonesians today as well as people from Madagascar speak Austronesian languages.44 Mark Lipson in my laboratory identified a genetic tracer dye for the Austronesian expansion—a type of ancestry that is nearly always present in peoples who today speak Austronesian languages.

Skyfaring: A Journey With a Pilot by Mark Vanhoenacker

Airbus A320, Boeing 747, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, computer age, dark matter, digital map, Easter island, Edmond Halley, Joan Didion, John Harrison: Longitude, Louis Blériot, Maui Hawaii, Nelson Mandela, out of africa, phenotype, place-making, planetary scale, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, the built environment, transcontinental railway, Year of Magical Thinking

This no-man’s-sky splits Norway’s Bodø and Russia’s Murmansk like a knife, as if it were created by some blistering of the skies since they were first charted, or in an aerial version of how new islands rise from volcanoes in the sea. Another remaining nameless realm of sky lies in the Pacific, west of the Galapagos, north of the sky land Isla da Pascua—Easter Island. These blank spots are not what we would expect to find in the realm of the airplanes more often associated with the dispelling of the world’s final mysteries of place. In Africa the region Brazzaville answers to Brazza. The quality of radio transmissions is not always good here and it is often said twice, loudly.

Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica by Nicholas Johnson

Apollo 13, Easter island, intentional community, Joan Didion, job satisfaction, Milgram experiment, Neil Armstrong, Oklahoma City bombing, PalmPilot, post-work, Ronald Reagan, telerobotics, trade route, young professional

About a week after New Year’s, a strange expedition arrived in snowbugs. They included a Mir cosmonaut who planned to be the first to fly a hot air balloon over the South Pole, and a Russian orthodox priest who wanted to be the first to hold a mass at both Poles. A few weeks before they arrived, Rex and some friends had built a 12-foot-tall snow replica of an Easter Island head near the geographic pole. Rex wrote in an email: “The priest was very disturbed by the sculpture. He felt it was pagan in nature and did not want to hold a mass in its presence. We explained that it was only for fun and that we did not worship it. He was wary however.” While tourists on plane flights are generally either ignored or treated to hairt-rigger courtesy, Polies are more enthusiastic about cross-continent expeditioners who actually work for their glory.

Lost at Sea by Jon Ronson

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Columbine, computer age, credit crunch, Douglas Hofstadter, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, East Village, Easter island, Etonian, false memory syndrome, Gödel, Escher, Bach, income inequality, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Jon Ronson, Kickstarter, late fees, Louis Pasteur, obamacare, Peter Thiel, Saturday Night Live, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Skype, subprime mortgage crisis, telemarketer

“You don’t really hate her mom. But for this moment when you’re trying to fuck this girl, fuck her! And that’s what we mean when we say fuck scientists. Sometimes they kill all the cool mysteries away. When I was a kid, they couldn’t tell you how pyramids were made. . . .” “Like Stonehenge and Easter Island,” says Shaggy. “Nobody knows how that shit got there.” “But since then, scientists go, ‘I’ve got an explanation for that.’ It’s, like, fuck you! I like to believe it was something out of this world.” Violent J’s real name is Joseph Bruce, Shaggy’s is Joseph Utsler. They’re in their late thirties.

Discover Kaua'i Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

carbon footprint, Easter island, G4S, haute couture, land reform, Maui Hawaii, off-the-grid, out of africa, Peter Pan Syndrome, polynesian navigation, profit motive, union organizing, white picket fence

SMITH’S TROPICAL PARADISE Gardens ( 821-6895; www.smithskauai.com/tropi cal_garden.html; Wailua River Marina; adult/child 3-12 $6/3; 8:30am-4pm) Other gardens might have fancier landscaping or loftier goals, but you can’t beat Smith’s for value. For $6, you can leisurely stroll a loop trail past a serene pond, grassy lawns and island-themed gardens. The setting can seem Disney-esque, with an Easter Island replica and tour trams, but it’s appealingly unpretentious and large enough to accommodate all. The Smith’s family-run luau ( Click here ) is held on the garden grounds. KAMOKILA HAWAIIAN VILLAGE Village Offline map ( 823-0559; Kuamo'o Rd; self-guided tour adult/child 5-12 $5/3; 9am-5pm; ) While not a must-see, this replica village is a pleasant diversion, especially for kids.

The new village green: living light, living local, living large by Stephen Morris

Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, back-to-the-land, Buckminster Fuller, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbine, Community Supported Agriculture, company town, computer age, cuban missile crisis, David Sedaris, deindustrialization, discovery of penicillin, distributed generation, Easter island, energy security, energy transition, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial independence, Firefox, Hacker Conference 1984, index card, Indoor air pollution, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John Elkington, Kevin Kelly, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, McMansion, Menlo Park, messenger bag, Negawatt, off grid, off-the-grid, peak oil, precautionary principle, rolodex, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review

Many experts also blame the collapse of the great Mayan civilization and the peaceful Harappan society of the Indus valley on soil exhaustion and erosion, resulting from agricultural practices and clear-cutting of forests. According to Jared Diamond, a UCLA professor and author of the books Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, 90 percent of the people inhabiting Easter Island in the Pacific died because of deforestation, erosion and soil depletion. In Iceland, farming and human activities caused about 50 percent of the soil to end up in the sea, explains Diamond. “Icelandic society survived only through a drastically lower standard of living,” he says. Not surprisingly, the practice of destroying soils by torching or salting farms and fields has been employed by armies in wars, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon.

B Is for Bauhaus, Y Is for YouTube: Designing the Modern World From a to Z by Deyan Sudjic

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon footprint, clean water, company town, dematerialisation, deskilling, Easter island, edge city, Elon Musk, Frank Gehry, General Motors Futurama, Guggenheim Bilbao, illegal immigration, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, Kitchen Debate, light touch regulation, market design, megastructure, moral panic, New Urbanism, place-making, QWERTY keyboard, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, the scientific method, University of East Anglia, urban renewal, urban sprawl, young professional

The more superficially sophisticated that the world appears to become, the more its public rituals signal that its underlying preoccupations remain as intoxicatedly atavistic as they have ever been. Like the Olympic Games and the Grand Prix circuit, the expo movement comes wrapped in the appearance of a glossy sense of modernity. For all the alibis of urban renewal, the real significance of the expo is closer to the motivations of the Easter Island head builders, or the ritual festivals of the Mayans. They are massively profligate undertakings that involve pouring huge resources into events that in the case of the Grand Prix races last less than two hours. The calculations of everyday reality do not apply. These are events that are to be understood as reflecting national prestige, or the imposition of cohesion, or else the rampant pursuit of sheer spectacle for the sake of spectacle.

A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order by Judith Flanders

computer age, death from overwork, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, index card, Index librorum prohibitorum, invention of movable type, invention of the wheel, invention of writing, trade route, Y2K

Josephine Bacon, Deke Dusinbere and Ian McMorran ([Paris], Flammarion, 2002), pp. 45ff; Henry George Fischer, ‘The Origin of Egyptian Hieroglyphs’, in Senner, The Origins of Writing, pp. 59–76. 6. Peter T. Daniels, ‘Grammatology’, in Daniels and Bright, The World’s Writing Systems, pp. 1–2. The three he lists are Sumerian/Egyptian, Chinese and Mesoamerican. There is some question around the runes of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). These RongoRongo glyphs have yet to be deciphered, and it is not certain that they are a full writing script. If they are, they are the sole independent Polynesian script, and a fourth to be added to the above list. 7. William G. Bolts, ‘Early Chinese Writing’, in Daniels and Bright, The World’s Writing Systems, pp. 191–4. 8.

Gene Eating: The Science of Obesity and the Truth About Dieting by Giles Yeo

23andMe, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, delayed gratification, Drosophila, Easter island, Gregor Mendel, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microbiome, nudge theory, post-truth, publish or perish, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, twin studies, Wall-E, zoonotic diseases

These tended to be processed, higher in sugar and refined flour and therefore much more calorically dense, and critically, a world away from their traditional diet. This mix of Pima genes with the new diet resulted in a rapid increase in levels of obesity. Colonisation of the Polynesian Islands took place over nearly three millennia, beginning in the Philippines and New Guinea in around 1500 BC, Samoa in 800 BC, Hawaii and Easter Island not until 900 AD, with New Zealand the last to be colonised in 1200 AD. Given the geographic isolation of these tiny islands in an absolutely enormous area of the South Pacific, their colonisation is really a testament to human endeavour. The early Polynesians would first have had to survive canoe journeys of many weeks, and then, having arrived on small Pacific islands (atolls even), they would have to live and thrive.

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever

anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, Brexit referendum, British Empire, colonial rule, company town, COVID-19, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Easter island, European colonialism, flag carrier, gentrification, glass ceiling, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, Kibera, low cost airline, megacity, off-the-grid, Pier Paolo Pasolini, place-making, ride hailing / ride sharing, spice trade, tech bro, trade route, walkable city, women in the workforce

If you see four police officers or construction workers crouched up on plastic stools at a noodle stall, that’s the place to go.” PLAIN OF JARS * * * The Plain of Jars is a collection of thousands of massive limestone cups whose origins remain unknown, scattered over a wide area of Laos’s Xiangkhoang Province. It’s no surprise that the plain, which is reminiscent of Stonehenge or Easter Island, but far less visited, piqued Tony’s interest. “From the first time I ever read about Laos, the Plain of Jars sounded so mysterious and enticing. You want to know, right away, ‘What does that look like? Where is it? What is it?’ The very name resonated in my overheated imagination as a young man reading of Colonel Kurtz–like spies leading opium-growing hill tribes in a battle, in a secret conflict.”

Business Lessons From a Radical Industrialist by Ray C. Anderson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, biodiversity loss, business cycle, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centralized clearinghouse, clean tech, clean water, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, dematerialisation, distributed generation, do well by doing good, Easter island, energy security, Exxon Valdez, fear of failure, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, invisible hand, junk bonds, late fees, Mahatma Gandhi, market bubble, music of the spheres, Negawatt, Neil Armstrong, new economy, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old-boy network, peak oil, precautionary principle, renewable energy credits, retail therapy, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, subprime mortgage crisis, supply-chain management, urban renewal, Y2K

In 2020, through natural design, Interface is the first name in restorative commerce; a place where everything connects. Reading those results added another proudest moment to my list, and I think you can see why. In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond makes the point that the forces that rose up and overwhelmed such diverse societies as the Greenland Norse and the Polynesians of Easter Island—environmental destruction, population overshoot, and resource depletion—need not be our fate. “Collapse isn’t inevitable,” he wrote, “but depends on a society’s choices.” I’ve made mine, and I’ve never had a reason to turn back. Look at those six “2020 statements” and imagine your company, your university, your town’s name instead of ours.

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, back-to-the-land, biofilm, borderless world, Buckminster Fuller, business process, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, conceptual framework, Danny Hillis, dark matter, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, digital divide, Easter island, Elon Musk, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, glass ceiling, Google Earth, Hans Rosling, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, informal economy, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, Jane Jacobs, jimmy wales, Kevin Kelly, Kibera, land tenure, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, low earth orbit, M-Pesa, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, megaproject, microbiome, military-industrial complex, New Urbanism, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, out of africa, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, precautionary principle, Recombinant DNA, rewilding, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, We are as Gods, wealth creators, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, William Langewiesche, working-age population, Y2K

Two celebrated commentators worth analyzing are Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001), and Amory Lovins. I once heard a Lomborg fan ask Jared Diamond what he thought of Lomborg’s book. Diamond’s answer, as I recall it, was: “The problem is, Lomborg argues from details. He says the ecological collapse of Easter Island offers no general lessons because it was due to the fragility of one kind of palm tree. Arguing with that kind of reasoning is like arguing with a Creationist about some inverted geology they’ve found in Texas that they say disproves Darwin. If you take the time to research their example and disprove their interpretation, you find out it doesn’t matter.

Chasing the Moon: The People, the Politics, and the Promise That Launched America Into the Space Age by Robert Stone, Alan Andres

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apollo Guidance Computer, Charles Lindbergh, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, Easter island, feminist movement, Gene Kranz, General Motors Futurama, invention of the telephone, Lewis Mumford, low earth orbit, military-industrial complex, more computing power than Apollo, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, operation paperclip, out of africa, overview effect, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, the scientific method, traveling salesman, Works Progress Administration

The Saturn V was the physical creation of the mind and hand of the human species, a work of imagination conceived by beings composed of living cells, beings who evolved from aquatic life on a small planet orbiting a minor star. The launch of Apollo 11 followed in the tradition of the early explorers who expanded out of Africa’s Great Rift Valley and extended their presence to nearly every part in the world. Like Stonehenge, the Pyramids, the great cathedrals, and the statues on Easter Island, Apollo was an enterprise guided by the human genetic code, which over the course of hundreds of thousands of years had favored those who could dream, reason, persist, and create. A technological marvel, a manifestation of political will, or, perhaps, a work of cosmic conceptual art, Apollo 11 defined what it was to be human.

Wireless by Charles Stross

air gap, anthropic principle, back-to-the-land, Benoit Mandelbrot, Buckminster Fuller, Cepheid variable, cognitive dissonance, colonial exploitation, cosmic microwave background, Easter island, epigenetics, finite state, Georg Cantor, gravity well, hive mind, hydroponic farming, jitney, Khyber Pass, Late Heavy Bombardment, launch on warning, lifelogging, Magellanic Cloud, mandelbrot fractal, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Neil Armstrong, peak oil, phenotype, Pluto: dwarf planet, security theater, sensible shoes, Turing machine, undersea cable

Here is what the expedition has been looking for all along, the evidence that they are not alone. “My God.” Misha swears, shocked into politically incorrect language. “Marx,” says Gagarin, studying the craggy features of the nearest head. “I’ve seen this before, this sort of thing. The Americans have a memorial like it. Mount Rushmore, they call it.” “Don’t you mean Easter Island?” asks Misha. “Sculptures left by a vanished people . . .” “Nonsense! Look there, isn’t that Lenin? And Stalin, of course.” Even though the famous moustache is cracked and half of it has fallen away from the cliff. “But who’s that next to them?” Gagarin brings his binoculars to focus on the fourth head.

The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality by Angus Deaton

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, carbon tax, clean water, colonial exploitation, Columbian Exchange, compensation consultant, creative destruction, declining real wages, Downton Abbey, Easter island, Edward Jenner, end world poverty, financial engineering, financial innovation, Ford Model T, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, John Snow's cholera map, knowledge economy, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, new economy, off-the-grid, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, very high income, War on Poverty, zoonotic diseases

Many threats could bring us down. Climate change is the most obvious, and there is no clear solution that is politically feasible. That private interest can triumph over public need is unforgettably captured in Jared Diamond’s musing about what might have been going on in the head of the person who cut down the last tree on Easter Island.1 Wars have not ceased. Dangerous politics are everywhere. Imagine the convulsion that could consume the Chinese leadership when China’s economic growth comes to a stop, as history suggests it will. An invasion of Taiwan is not a far-fetched response, and it could be a fatal misadventure. The world has changed much in the past fifty years, but the nature of the Chinese leadership has changed much less, and we should not rule out another disaster as bad as Mao Zedong’s Great Famine.

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, ASML, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bioinformatics, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boston Dynamics, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, ChatGPT, choice architecture, circular economy, classic study, clean tech, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, drone strike, drop ship, dual-use technology, Easter island, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, energy transition, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ernest Rutherford, Extinction Rebellion, facts on the ground, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, future of work, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, global pandemic, GPT-3, GPT-4, hallucination problem, hive mind, hype cycle, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, lab leak, large language model, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, license plate recognition, lockdown, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, meta-analysis, microcredit, move 37, Mustafa Suleyman, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Nikolai Kondratiev, off grid, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, plutocrats, precautionary principle, profit motive, prompt engineering, QAnon, quantum entanglement, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, satellite internet, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, space junk, SpaceX Starlink, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Fry, Steven Levy, strong AI, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, tail risk, techlash, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, the long tail, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, TSMC, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, warehouse robotics, William MacAskill, working-age population, world market for maybe five computers, zero day

All the most historically extreme parts of our existence appear utterly banal, and so for the most part we carry on our lives as if they can go on indefinitely. Most of those around us, up to and including our leaders, do the same. And yet, nothing lasts forever. Throughout history societal collapses are legion: from ancient Mesopotamia to Rome, the Maya to Easter Island, again and again it’s not just that civilizations don’t last; it’s that unsustainability appears baked in. Civilizations that collapse are not the exception; they are the rule. A survey of sixty civilizations suggests they last about four hundred years on average before falling apart. Without new technologies, they hit hard limits to development—in available energy, in food, in social complexity—that bring them crashing down.

Lonely Planet Kauai by Lonely Planet, Adam Karlin, Greg Benchwick

call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Easter island, land reform, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, Paradox of Choice, Peter Pan Syndrome, polynesian navigation, retail therapy, ride hailing / ride sharing, union organizing

Kamokila Hawaiian Village, Wailua | Peter Bischoff/Stringer/Getty Images © Smith's Tropical ParadiseGARDENS ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %808-821-6895; www.smithskauai.com; adult/child 3-12yr $6/3; h8:30am-4pm; c) Other gardens might have fancier landscaping, but you can’t beat Smith’s for value. Take a leisurely stroll along a mile-long loop trail past a serene pond, grassy lawns and island-themed gardens. The setting can seem Disney-esque, with an Easter Island moai statue replica, but it’s as appealing as it is unpretentious. Keahua ArboretumPARK ( MAP GOOGLE MAP )F Sitting prettily at the top of Kuamoʻo Rd, this arboretum has grassy fields, a gurgling stream and groves of rainbow eucalyptus and other towering trees. Locals come here to picnic and to swim in the freshwater stream and pools, but be aware that the water is infected with leptospira bacteria.

The Next Great Migration by Sonia Shah

Anthropocene, Berlin Wall, British Empire, climate change refugee, colonial rule, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Donald Trump, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, failed state, Fellow of the Royal Society, Garrett Hardin, GPS: selective availability, Gregor Mendel, hive mind, illegal immigration, immigration reform, index card, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Ken Thompson, Lewis Mumford, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, open borders, out of africa, Scientific racism, sensible shoes, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, TED Talk, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, urban sprawl

Linguistic, archaeological, and ancient DNA evidence45 has shown that prehistoric people migrated from Southeast Asia into the Pacific in at least three distinct waves. First, people crossed from China to Taiwan and the Philippines. Then they covered the open ocean to reach Vanuatu and Samoa. Finally, they reached the remotest islands of Polynesia, such as Hawaii and Easter Island. They hadn’t come from Peru, and they hadn’t arrived by accident. The anthropologist Ben Finney estimates that over the millennia of prehistoric migrations into Polynesia, upward of a half-million migrants likely lost their lives at sea. But Homo migratio pressed onward regardless. Experts now widely recognize their migration46 as “arguably the most expansive and ambitious maritime dispersal of humans across any of the world’s seas or oceans,” as a 2016 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences put it.

It's Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, British Empire, clean water, colonial rule, disinformation, Doha Development Round, Easter island, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, foreign exchange controls, Kibera, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, out of africa, profit motive, Ronald Reagan, structural adjustment programs, upwardly mobile, young professional, zero-sum game, éminence grise

It was a bully's physique, but no bully ever walked with his tentative, splay-footed step, the step of a man anxious not to tread on smaller mortals milling below. He wore his hair very short, snipped to virtual baldness to reveal a bull neck and a formidable jaw, something of a family feature. Faces in the Githongo family, I would later discover, had the all-weather implacability of Easter Island sculptures. He was a Kikuyu, but his enemies would later claim that he didn't look as though he belonged: too big, too tall, too dark. He photographed supremely badly – I never saw a photograph of John that made him look anything but stolid, loutish, slightly thick. Still only in his thirties, he looked older than his years, thanks to the receding hairline, deep baritone and seeming gravitas.

Hope for Animals and Their World by Jane Goodall, Thane Maynard, Gail Hudson

carbon footprint, clean water, David Attenborough, Easter island, Google Earth, Maui Hawaii, Nelson Mandela, new economy, out of africa

There were, of course, many letters from people who understood the importance of protecting the environment, even if they did not understand the reasons in detail. Theresa, for example, wrote: “It amazes me how spoiled-rotten Americans are, with our gas-guzzling SUVs and oversized … everything! If we don’t nurture our habitat, our entire world will become one big Easter Island!” (The full story of the fight to save the Salt Creek tiger beetle can be found on our Web site.) It is indeed true that the expense of saving an endangered species can be exorbitant, so it is fortunate that in many countries there are laws protecting life-forms threatened with extinction. Else the damage inflicted on the natural world would be even greater.

The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future by Laurence C. Smith

Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, clean water, climate change refugee, Climategate, colonial rule, data science, deglobalization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Easter island, electricity market, energy security, flex fuel, G4S, global supply chain, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, guest worker program, Hans Island, hydrogen economy, ice-free Arctic, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invisible hand, land tenure, Martin Wolf, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, New Urbanism, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, side project, Silicon Valley, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, standardized shipping container, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, urban planning, Washington Consensus, Y2K