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Lewinsky, Schmewinsky, Could We Have Some Real News?
By Donella Meadows
–August 6, 1998–
Reporters and photographers camp outside Monica Lewinsky’s apartment, umbrellas shading them from the summer sun, waiting to bring us — what? A glimpse of her being escorted to the grand jury? A first-hand description of her expression as rude questions are shouted out to her, none of which she answers? Is this stuff worth the attention [...]
Presidents and Citizens and Responsibility
By Donella Meadows
–August 20, 1998–
“I take complete responsibility,” the president said solemnly, while doing no such thing.
It’s far too easy, this “taking responsibility.” Having done something stupid or despicable, public figures duck and deny and delay. Finally, when the truth comes out and they have no other choice, they put on contrite faces and “take responsibility.”
What does that mean? What [...]
Neatniks of the World, Arise!
By Donella Meadows
–July 23, 1998–
Well, last Saturday I had one of my neatness explosions.
I spent the morning cleaning the kitchen with a housemate who is even farther out on the tidiness spectrum than I am. We picked up and scrubbed away monuments to unconsciousness that people had been steadfastly ignoring (and working around and tripping over) for days. We had [...]
Eating into Resilience Saves Money — in the Short Run
By Donella Meadows
–July 16, 1998–
I’m told there are two million programmers working full time to get the Y2K “millennium bug” out of our computers. Judging from my email, I’d guess there are another two million discussing the problem, warning about it, hyperventilating about it.
Not that there isn’t a problem. To save time and computer memory, early programmers wrote only the [...]
Y2K and the Average Bite of Food
By Donella Meadows
–July 2, 1998–
The average bite of food eaten by an American travels 1300 miles from field to mouth.
That statistic is quoted over and over by people who want us to think about how distant we are from our basic sustenance, how vulnerable our lives have become, how dependent on systems we can’t control or even understand. These people [...]
