3/27/2023

JRB,

            UCD is on break, so far today is leisurely day, but will soon be interrupted by the sound of the dentist’s drill. At 9:08, I am enjoying my communion with you.

            As I keep my vigil over the presidency, I am amazed at your full plate. I can’t keep track of the various matters under my purview as department chair, so I don’t know how you manage. You do have 15 secretaries, but each thinks their issue should be top priority & you have to decide which you are going to pursue. That must be hard.

            Compounding the challenge, each issue is complex, involving systems with numerous moving parts. Have you heard of Dana Meadows who birthed the field of “systems thinking” with a crew of computer science folk at MIT in the ‘70s when they began to program models & then vary their assumptions to see how the models behaved. I was inspired by her when I took her classes at Dartmouth. She warned, “the idea of making a complex system do just what you want it to do can be achieved only temporarily, at best. We can never fully understand our world, not in the way our reductionistic science has led us to expect.” She concluded that we need to learn to dance with systems rather than control them. You might keep that in mind as you work on the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables.

            Did you see the photos of Gen. Min Aung Hlaing riding around in his jeep commemorating Burma’s 78th Armed Forces Day? In a rare speech he “ran through old grievances, real & perceived, blaming British imperialism and Japanese fascism, which he said had divided the people of Myanmar.” He mentioned something about democracy which makes me wonder what his conception of that might be.

            Speaking of which, the WP notes that the “turmoil in Israel” is complicating your upcoming democracy summit. Be careful, the NYT says, Bibi “is an irrational actor, a danger not only to Israelis but also to important American interests and values.”

            BYBS,