As the new year progresses, a few of those who worry and wonder where our world will go -- a few who engage in what I call futures study. But I have the feeling that not enough people are worrying, and wondering. They are somehow assured that "why worry, everything will be just fine."
I stand accused of being a nasty doomer by some, in part because I believe more people should join the ranks of those who worry and wonder. To help in that recruitment, I suggest my reading list on the Internet.
Take a look at CalculatedRisk for a good daily blog showing a graphical summary of the world of finance and economics. CR avoids the standard set of crap that comes from the MSM (Main Stream Media) and presents the pertinent information of the day in a standardized set of graphs that shows history as well as trends. He is refreshing in his candor and common sense.
Ilargi and Stoneleigh of the AutomaticEarth provide an near-doomer news summary about the financial state of our country and the rest of the world. At times their blog is hard to take because it is so down, but they do bring together a fine collection of the current news stories that reflects their concerns about the near future of our economy. On the right side of the page is a listing of their most recent posts. It is worthwhile going back over the more recent issues to catch up on what is happening.
I am concerned with Peak Resources, and the Peak Oil blog provides a good selection of the latest discussions of the associated issues. One of the more recent references is to an article by Peter Russell entitled "Is Sustainable Development Compatible with Western Civilization?" that I found to be very much to the point of where do we go from here.
For a summary of the latest thoughts on Oil and Energy in general, I recommend a daily scan of the DrumBeat by Leannan at The Oil Drum. This is intermixed with technical analyses of various subjects concerning the oil patch written by working geologists and petroleum engineers.
While I have been receiving some good reports from Agora, I have tired of having so many attempts to sell subscriptions to their newsletters that I do not include them in my recommendations. Besides, I am not in the business of buying and selling stocks and bonds right now. Check them out on Google if you can take the sales chatter.
I do suggest you sign up for John Mauldin's free newsletter. His thoughts on a variety of subjects are clear and well written. While I do not always agree with his conclusions, I do enjoy his analyses.
For those of you who enjoy the more technical side of meteorology, I recommend Jeff Masters' blog at the Weather Underground. It is especially useful during the hurricane season.
So, make a habit of perusing each of these sources at least once a week. Drop me a comment if you want to talk about any of them. And try to recruit others to worry and wonder about just where we are going, and how we will get there. We need more people who study the future.
sam
