sociology/psychology, Tag

This is a guest post by Tom Murphy. Tom Murphy is an associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. This post originally appeared on Tom's blog Do the Math.

The continued expansion of the internet has brought with it a surge in information, analysis, opinion and insight. At the same time the vast mental and social freedom in cyberspace has manifested an exponentially growing...

If an outsider were to pull back the covers and show people what is going on, what would be said of The Oil Drum and its contribution to society? How is the content perceived by others? Has the effort led to a better understanding...

This is a guest post from Ralph Faggotter (also known as fingolfin).

This is a guest post from Ralph Faggotter (also known as fingolfin).

In the resource depletion soup, one ingredient looms large – social equity. Equality is a function of population, social status aspirations and resources. With a small population, everyone can have reasonable equality....

This is a guest post by Jeffrey J. Brown, known to all of you as westexas.

(EDITORS NOTE: The below post was edited and updated in 2007 as Peak Oil - Believe it or Not) In the first two parts of this series, we looked at some of the factual reasons why people disagree on the timing and importance...

Most of us think our situation 10, 20 or 50 years from now will not be as good as today, in one or more ways--less oil, reduced wealth in general, and the possibility of many other negative changes as well--loss of electricity;...

The following is a guest post from Stoneleigh, former editor of The Oil Drum Canada, who now writes at The Automatic Earth. The essay explores the natural patterns that occur in human systems.

The following is a guest post from Vinay Kumar, who lives in the small coastal town in Southern India. Vinay has a Phd in Neuroscience from M.I.T. and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University. He works...

To me there are many parallels between Tiger Wood's situation and the broader socio-economic predicament we find ourselves in circa 2009. Tiger, until very recently arguably the most recognized, respected and wealthiest...

Many of the issues discussed on this bandwidth are large, long term, and threatening. Consider the three primary society-wide topics of analysis and discourse: climate, energy and the economy. It is my belief these 3 are...

In The Happiness Hypothesis , psychology professor Jonathan Haidt compares human brain/behavior to a man riding an elephant. There exists a complex choreography between our newer rational cortex (the 'man'), and our older,...

The following is a brief guest commentary by TheOilDrum reader "Prag" on coping with general limits to growth anxiety.