Monthly Archives: July 2009

I’m splitting Day 3 in two, as there were three presentations later in the day in addition to the regular papers. They’ll take at least another hour to write up, and right now, I want to sleep. Here’s the papers, three on insurgencies, one on biology: The Role of Influence Operations in a Counterinsurgency Battle… Read More »

I saw six presentations today, three of which were interesting enough to write about: Simulating Pollution from Urban Stormwater in Project Twin Streams Catchment, Auckland, New Zealand by Ines Winz, Gary Brierley As far as I’m aware, the author of this paper was the only other person from NZ at the conference, though I haven’t… Read More »

The day begun with a keynote by Dennis Meadows on his ‘Limits to Growth’ work. I came away the following ideas: There’s a distinction between global problems and universal problems. Global problems affect everyone and cannot be solved without cooperation from everyone, whereas universal problems affect everyone but can be solved by local groups. Some… Read More »

Sunday was the PhD colloquium. It was smaller than the full conference has been, but there were still about 50-100 people in attendance. In the morning, there were several presentations, 3 of which I unfortunately missed due to my late arrival the night before, followed by a luncheon. Then, in the afternoon, there was a… Read More »

So, I’m at the 27th International System Dynamics Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the moment and, like any wannabe writer with a blog, I’m going to make an attempt at live blogging it. My flights were nice and comfortable, though the second one, from Phoenix to Albuquerque was seriously delayed. At first, this was… Read More »

Yesterday was very strange. Do you ever have those days where you just can’t get anything done? Where all of the things you know are important just seem silly and pointless? Where a Herculean effort is required even to force yourself to put your laundry away? Of course you do. Everyone has bad days. If… Read More »

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and if that’s not worth celebrating, I really don’t know what is. Lots of people are celebrating, of course. Here’s a few sites worth checking out: “Remembering Apollo 11“, a photo set from the Boston Globe’s Big Picture feature. NASA’s official 40th anniversary page,… Read More »

This is the third in a series of posts about music appreciation. In previous posts, I argued that: Explaining our preferences with ‘taste’ doesn’t help a lot. All it really does is hide their complexities and protect us from the challenge of having to explain ourselves. Preferences are better explained using ‘facets’ of appreciation that… Read More »