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“Stumbling”: the new Googling?
Dissatisfied with the Bush administration’s energy policy? Well, you could always try to roll your own. After reading my recent piece on political games, Michael Bean of Forio — a company that makes simulations of complex situations — emailed me the URL for an oil-policy simulator he recently created. You pick a bunch of conservation and fuel-efficiency policies, craft a speech in which the prez announces ‘em, and then it calculates how much your ideas would decrease the U.S.’s oil consumption. Easy, eh?
Except might be surprised how drastically you have to improve fuel efficiency — and how far you have to crank down our thermostats — to make much of a dent in things. I picked a couple of policies sufficiently intense that they would probably be considered politically unfeasable, such as requiring all cars and SUVs to increase their fuel efficiently from 25 MPG from 50. Even so, given the increases in U.S. population and vehicle sales, fuel consumption still went up — albeit less quickly.
This, ultimately, is the brilliance of using game-like simulations to teach people about politics. Because the best way to learn about a complex system is by poking and prodding it. Indeed, that might be the only way to truly internalize something really complex: You have to experience it for yourself. If you’d explained to me, in words, just how hard-core our conservation would have to be to truly reduce oil usage, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. But after playing around with the sim for a while I’m kind of stunned into re-appreciating the magnitude of our oil problem.
(Thanks to Michael for pointing this one out!)
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
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» visit the Collision Detection archives
September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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