With Both Hands

Sign in Subscribe

Demography

The Long View 2006-07-19: The Road to Perdition

I recently read that Tenochtitlán, unlike almost all other pre-modern cities, was a population source instead of a population sink. This was due to a combination of the productivitiy of the floating farms, and a lack of the nasty diseases typical in cultures that have been farming for longer periods

The Long View 2006-05-24: The Next America

Here are a couple of graphs to help illustrate John Reilly's points here. If we would really like to emulate the success of the last large wave of immigration to the United States, from roughly 1840 to 1930, it would be prudent of us to stop, and give

The Long View 2006-05-12: Three Presidents

From the Wikipedia article, Demographics of Russia, it would appear that whatever changed in Russia in 2006 had pretty much the desired effect. Three Presidents President Putin's State of the Nation Address this week bears comparison with the major speeches of FDR, one of which it apparently cites.

The Long View 2006-01-18: Suicide, Iran & Environmental Collapse? Damn the Demographics!

I was first introduced to James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis' work with the Gaia Hypothesis through the simulation game SimEarth. A year ago I posted to an interview with Lovelock, and at the time I assumed that he was crazy things because he was old. I can now see

The Long View 2006-01-03: The Perennial Stones; the Implosion of the NYT; A Critique of Steyn

John felt in 2006 that new ownership was needed for the New York Times. In 2008, Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico, and occasionally the world, bought an 8% stake, later increased to 17.4%, making him the largest shareholder at present of the most influential newspaper in the

The Long View 2006-01-01: Notes on 2006

John makes some predictions for 2006 here, which makes it easy to assess his track record: * John completely missed Barack Obama's rising star in 2006. President Obama's 2004 keynote address didn't impress John, but it sure did wonders for everyone else. * This isn'

The Long View: America Alone

If the National Intelligence Council really predicted that the EU will collapse by 2020, their prediction is looking like a real long shot at this point. Maybe that is why DARPA funded Philip Tetlock's superforecaster project: to improve the accuracy of things like this. To be fair, if