Cultures persist because of a confidence in themselves. Common agreement binds them together, and they endure for as long as their collective understanding is based on reality. But what happens if the assumptions that they make are faulty? The incongruity between the beliefs motivating their behaviour and the actual reality in which they live instigates increasing conflicts until reality asserts itself with a dispassionate shrug and the culture experiences the discomfort of a minor reset or the trauma of a major one.
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The Lost Words – The Quadra Project
After Oxford University Press released its 2007 edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary, a keen reader noticed what was not included in its more than 10,000 entries. Some 40 common words had been removed, like dandelion, bramble, heron, leopard, oyster and newt. They all related to nature. And they were replaced with terms such as blog, bullet-point, and voice-mail.
Oxford’s explanation to inquiries about the deletions was that many children no longer live in rural environments so such words are not familiar to them. Other words that were deleted were blackberry, clover, hamster, herring, lark, minnow, almond, mussel, otter, ox, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, catkin, cowslip, cygnet, ivy, nectar, wren, raven, bramble, magpie, starling, weasel and panther in favour of analogue, graph and celebrity.
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An Owl’s Reality – The Quadra Project
As Carl Safina’s book title suggests, Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe should ostensibly be about the adventures of the author and his wife as they raise to adulthood a nearly-dead baby Eastern Screech Owl that they found on the ground. So it joined their larger family of non-humans, including two dogs, four chickens, a king snake, a parrot and a parakeet.
Alfie, a female, was eventually released to the back yard where she learned to hunt and live independently. But she remained a family member, visiting for extra mice, even establishing with her mate, Plus-One, a nest in a box on the side of the house where the pair successfully raised three chicks. Throughout the book, Safina closely documents the life of the owl and her family.
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The Quadra Project – Planetary Solvency
Actuaries are the people who compile and analyze statistics and use them to calculate insurance risks and premiums. Their studies are finely honed, and because billions of dollars of profits and losses are determined by their conclusions, they are as objective and precise as any in our modern world.
Actuaries now have a sobering view of the world’s economic future if the urgency of global climate change is not addressed. The risk is that the global economy could face a 50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090 if immediate policy action is not taken on the climate crisis.
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Economic History – The Quadra Project
History defines the present with a clarity that is unavailable by any other measure. This became particularly obvious in “The Economics of Superintelligence” and “Eureka All Day Long”, two articles in the July 26th edition of The Economist, in which the digital pundits of Silicon Valley are trying to prepare us for the possible economic impact of artificial intelligence on our modern world. But, to do this, the author or authors of the articles (unidentified) have provided us with some pertinent economic history of the West to provide an illuminating context.
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