Free Republic

Published Nov 11 2008 by Energy Bulletin Archived Nov 11 2008The Five Stages of Collapse by Dmitry Orlov 1.Hello, everyone! The talk you are about to hear is the result of a lengthy process on my part. My specialty is in thinking about and, unfortunately, predicting collapse. My method is based on comparison: I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and, since I am also familiar with the details of the situation in the United States, I can make comparisons between these two failed superpowers. I was born and grew up in Russia, and I traveled back to Russia repeatedly between...

The Revenge of the Nerds by Steven Lagerfeld When Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein published The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life 10 years ago, the book provoked a more violent response than any other in recent memory. Enough heated reviews and articles appeared to fill several anthologies. Yet the critics said very little about one of Murray and Herrnstein’s central contentions: that a high-IQ “cognitive elite” is consolidating a dominant position atop American society. Maybe that silence is understandable, given that the two men made several far more incendiary arguments—about IQ as a source of intractable...

I am a newcomer to this posting board, but was directed to the site by a friend after my first experience with the North Texas “Protest Warriors” this past week. I was one of the volunteers at the Dallas City Hall exposition of “Eyes Wide Open,” where they made a noisy appearance. The “Eyes Wide Open” exhibit laid out a pair of combat boots in memory of every fallen American soldier in Iraq, as well as shoes to represent Iraqi civilian casualties. By the time the memorial left Dallas there were 1,499 pairs of boots on display, and the 1,000...