This may be the article you're thinking of -- it's by Barry Commoner from 1976
(so your memory may not be quite as bad as you think). Unfortunately, you'll
probably have to buy a subscription to the New Yorker archives to read it... or
maybe see if one of those things called a "library" has it. ;)
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1976/02/02/1976_02_02_038_TNY_CARDS_000316621
Of course, I'm not sure why you think it isn't by Barry Commoner. I found this
by searching for "entropy" on the New Yorker site.
Brent
________________________________
From: Nicholas Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net>
To: c...@plektyx.com; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<friam@redfish.com>
Sent: Fri, December 17, 2010 11:23:45 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Help with memory
Carl and everybody,
The Wikipedia entry sure looked like it was going to have the reference, but
alas, it did not!
You are probably all prepared for one of the well-known terrors of old age,
that
you forget stuff. But another terror of old age you may not know about – that
you remember with great force and clarity things that never happened.
So, everybody, despite Carl’s best efforts, the question remains open. I have
put in calls to local nursing homes, but in the meantime could you put your
thinking caps on?
Thanks,
Nick
PS What the dickens did Roger Rabbit have to do with street cars and entropy?
From:friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of
Carl Tollander
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 8:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Help with memory
Google "Roger Rabbit", which sends you to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal Many links.
On 12/17/10 8:03 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Many years ago, perhaps more than 40, I swear I read a series of articles,
later
published as a book, that laid out the basic principles of entropy, told the
history (perhaps mythic) of how GM tore up the trolley lines in LA to get its
dirty busses to replace clean trolley cars, argued that we would in the next 40
years transition to natural gas as the price of other fossil fuels rose, etc.,
etc. I think I read it in the New Yorker, and I have had two candidates for
who
wrote it, both of which have turned out to be wrong: Bradford Snell and Barry
Commoner. Does anybody else remember it? Is anybody else on this list OLD
enough to have read it?
I promise I have googled the hell out it to no avail.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org/
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