Beyond the Limits

This book sounds interesting and seems to be a classic amongst systems dynamics people as well as environmental policy people like Amory Lovins. I have heard that it has absolutely no math in it, though, so it might be a little fluffy.

Sucker for Products That Smell Good

Yesterday I splurged at Aveda, which is this skin and hair care product store founded by Horst Rechelbacher, who sounds like an interesting guy.

Here's a TIME article about the environmental beauty products movement.

I think the products work well (maybe?) but definitely, I just really like how everything smells. I am also impressed that Aveda is supposedly at the forefront of environmental business. At the same time, it is hard to tell real impact from greenwashing.

Boston Greenfest

This weekend was Boston Greenfest. It was pretty cool!

A lot of local vendors came and it was cool to see what people are working on in the area.

Shen and I talked to some HVAC and renewable energy systems designers and installers for home and commercial applications.

It was also good to hear that the green chemistry movement is going on in Boston.

System Dynamics Self Study

15.988 System Dynamics Self Study by Jay Forrester

yay for open course ware

System Dynamics Sounds Awesome

(ooo, first blog post from my new laptop)

so I was reading about system dynamics. this is a talk Professor Jay Forrester gave in Spain in 1998.

Early in the development of system dynamics, we discovered surprising
things about corporations that apply to all social systems:
· first, most difficulties arise from internal causes, although people usually blame
troubles on outside forces.
· second, actions that people take, usually in the belief that the actions are a
solution to difficulties, are often the cause of the problems being experienced,
· third, the very nature of the dynamic feedback structure of a social system tends
to mislead people into taking ineffective and even counterproductive action,
· fourth, people have enough information about a system to permit successful
modeling.

wow that sounds awesome. i am strongly considering going back to school to study this. here is another awesome except which is exactly how I feel about laws and policy-making! it is exactly why while i'm interested in policy, i feel hesitant about diving into that field.

People may dislike the idea of "designing" social systems. Designing social
systems may seem mechanistic or authoritarian. However, all social systems have
been designed. Corporate policies, computer systems, organization charts, and laws
constitute partial designs of social systems. Governments pass laws after superficial
debate. Laws redesign political and economic systems. Such redesigns are
experiments using a country as a laboratory. The experiments include no dynamic
modeling of the long-term effects. Changes in corporate policies receive even less
analysis. For example, the recent wave of corporate mergers and the reduction of
trade barriers constitute a major redesign of the world economy without adequate
consideration for the results. People have designed the systems within which they
live. The shortcomings of those systems result from defective design, just as the
shortcomings of a power plant result from erroneous design.

New Equipment

Got a new laptop today. The Acer Aspire One D250. It seemed like the one in the store had a good videocam.

East Coast Vacation This Time

This past weekend, I went to Cape Cod with Alicia and my mom, and then James caught up with us later. We to the beach, ate Four Seas ice-cream, and swam in a pond!! We also grilled and ate salmon.

Economics as a Dynamic System

paper by Jay Forrester who founded the System Dynamics Group at MIT. It's about Economics Theory in the New Millennium

Santa Cruz for Vacation

This past weekend I went to visit Santa Cruz for vacation because that is where Smark is doing an internship this summer. It was fun!

I have posted pics here.

We stayed at Alicia's dad's hotel. Fancy!

Paul Romer - Charter Cities

Paul Romer advocates for the idea of having a way to explore new rules or change rules in order to find the best solutions. His method would be to establish charter cities with new rules, which would allow people to voluntarily move to the charter city in order to experience the new rules. This is a very good idea, and is a very scientifically-based way of finding the best solution. I've thought about something similar before.