tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961006065192244756.post8089172843727403891..comments2023-10-05T07:11:05.917-04:00Comments on Art at the Auction: Yikes Is Rightpetplutohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01053307189721906583noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961006065192244756.post-13050515222387705052008-10-13T15:09:00.000-04:002008-10-13T15:09:00.000-04:00The folks from Planet Money said what I've been th...The folks from Planet Money said what I've been thinking all along: that this current crisis couldn't possibly be the fault of any single person or organization. I'm a big fan of the History Channel's episodes of Modern Marvels that examine history's greatest disasters, and it seems that in nearly every case it took a cascade of multiple critical system failures to cause a major disaster. Take the big blackout of ... was it 2003? Whenever it was, (I seem to remember that)it happened because a substation failure in Canada triggered failures across the board, with each successive failure making the entire grid weaker until the whole thing collapsed. <BR/><BR/>There's an <A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/opinion/12dooling.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink" REL="nofollow">interesting article</A> on the subject by Richard Dooling in the Times. Some might say it seems a bit alarmist or paranoid, but I don't think he's calling for the end of technology altogether, just for less blind trust in formulae too complicated for mere humans to handle.Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14569180426066178711noreply@blogger.com