Price's Law as Applied to Crime and Safety

Price's Law (also known as Price's Square Root Law) is a principle in productivity and scientometrics that describes extreme inequality in output within groups. (Keep reading and you'll understand how that plays out.)

The concept was proposed by a British physicist and historian of science named Derek J. de Solla Price in the 1960s, who originally observed patterns in scientific publishing. It states that in any given field, approximately half of all published research is produced by the square root of the total number of authors working in that domain.

For example, if a scientific field has 100 researchers, then √100 = 10 researchers will account for roughly 50% of all papers published. In a company of 10,000 employees, about 100 people (√10,000) will produce half the total output or value.

This makes Price's Law more extreme than the better-known Pareto Principle (commonly referred to as the 80/20 rule). As group size grows, the proportion of top producers shrinks dramatically relative to the whole.

Why It Matters

Price's Law shows how productivity follows a power-law distribution rather than a normal one. A small elite drives the majority of results in research, sales teams, creative fields, companies, and even open-source projects. While controversial and not universally precise, it explains why superstar performers, top scientists, or key employees often contribute disproportionately.

Understanding Price's Law encourages organizations to identify, nurture, and retain high-impact talent — and individuals to strive to be among that critical square-root group.

New Applications

Stumbling across Price's Law got me thinking about an application I'd not considered before: fighting crime. Is it possible that if there a x number of violent criminals in a city, that the square root of that number is committing half the violent crimes? If this were the case, an overtaxed police force could make a big impact by narrowing their focus on these "most productive" criminals. Are there 100 such violent felons in your medium-sized city? This would suggest that ten are doing half of the violent crime, and your city could become much safer by placing them behind bars. And maybe there are only 25. This would suggest five are the really bad dudes that should be behind bars.

Corollary: The square root of all criminals does half of all crime.

I haven't tested this theory yet, but I've an inkling that there's something to it.

What do you think?

How Big Is One Trillion Dollars?

A trillion dollars... Wow!

I remember when the media was near apoplectic when the national debt reached one trillion dollars during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Today, it seems we're numb to the enormity of our national debt and especially the speed at which it keeps growing.  

We say it so casually now—federal deficits, national debt, 25 trillion, 30 trillion, 35 trillion... And a request from the White House for another 1.5 trillion for the Pentagon. I know what two marbles is, or five oranges. But when you say one trillion its no longer anything but an abstraction. Or a talking point.

So let's put this in perspective. What does one trillion dollars s look like? Here's one way to get a sense of it:

If you stacked one trillion dollars in $100 bills, the tower would rise approximately 631 or 680 miles into the sky, depending on which AI you ask. (Google says 63o-678 miles.) That's more than two and a half times higher than the orbit of the International Space Station. We're talking about Yertle the Turtle on mega-steroids.The stack would dwarf the Empire State Building as though it were a decorative lawn ornament. The Statue of Liberty would disappear into insignificance at its base.

Let's attack this from a different angle. I asked Grok, "How high would a billion dollar stack of hundred dollar bills be?" Here's how to calculate it. $1,000,000,000 ÷ $100 = 10 million bills. Each bill is 0.0043 inches thick, which when stacked would be 43,000 inches. 43,000 x 12 equals 3583 feet, which is 3 times the height of the Eiffel Tower.

A trillion dollars, if you can stack that high, would reach up into the sky 630 to 680 miles. It's one thousand billions.  If you spent one million dollars every single day, it would take nearly 2,740 years to spend a trillion dollars.

When politicians discuss adding “just another trillion” to a budget, or when economists speak of trillion-dollar deficits as though they are routine, we ought to pause long enough to picture this tower of money stretching into the edge of outer space.  

As of May 2026, the U.S. national debt is approaching $39 trillion. The Joint Economic Committee reported it at roughly $38.9 trillion in early May. 

What's scary to me is interest payments on our debt are now approaching or exceeding $1 trillion per year, which means the federal government spends more on interest than many entire nations produce economically.

I keep asking myself how things can go on like this. At what point does the whole shebang collapse like a house of cards? 

What I don't understand is how we keep electing people who don't understand basic economics. If you spend more money than you take in, you're going to keep going deeper into debt. Sooner or later you're going be is a very bad place. 

 

Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

"If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know it didn't get there by itself."

The past couple months I've been listening to episodes of Uncommon Knowledge, an long-running interview and discussion program hosted by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institute at Stanford. It features in-depth conversations with political leaders, scholars, journalists, historians, scientists, and other prominent thinkers on topics like politics, economics, history, culture, foreign policy, education, and current events. The discussions are meaty, with lots of protein for your brain muscle.

This week I listened to Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in which Robinson moderated a critique Darwinian theory with David Berlinski, David Gelernter, and Stephen Meyer.

Listening to this and similar lectures has generated a number of insights such as one of the key differences between math and science. In math, 2 + 2 = 4. Period. In science, theories are proposed with a measured humility, in this manner: "This is what we know... for now."

When Darwin proposed his On the Origin of Species, he knew it didn't answer all the questions. He assumed that science in the future would fill in the gaps. So it was strange to me even in high school that every single nature show would include a nod to Darwin. If I was watching a program about sharks they always mentioned, as if it were fact, that this killer instinct evolved over a period of sixty million years. All this was assumed and extrapolated from the uncritical acceptance of Darwin's ideas.

So it was refreshing to learn of other points of view. Gelernter argued that Darwin's theory does not adequately explain the emergence of new species, particularly due to the Cambrian explosion and advances in molecular biology. Meyer promotes intelligent design, emphasizing the complexity of DNA as evidence of intelligent causation, while Berlinski remains skeptical yet open-minded.

All three underscored the lack of free speech in academia regarding Darwinism critiques and the challenge of understanding consciousness, with Meyer suggesting intelligent design could offer broader scientific insights beyond Darwinism. 

Problem one with Darwin's theory is the very narrow period of time that all these species came into existence, a period science has called the Cambrian explosion. 

The second problem became evident after the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick. Here's what that means as regards evolution.

If you want a computer to do something new, you have to write fresh software code for it. That's exactly what scientists discovered about life in the second half of the 20th century, starting with Watson and Crick's work on DNA. To create a new kind of living thing, a nnew species, you also need new "code." That code is the information stored in DNA—the long molecule that looks like a twisted ladder.

[EdNote: Before cracking the code for DNA in 1953, Francis Crick was a code breaker during World War II.]

The sequence of letters along the DNA molecule tells the cell how to make all the different protein molecules it needs to function. Then there's extra information that tells those cells how to organize themselves into the right shapes and structures—like how to build eyes, legs, or the overall body plan of an animal or plant.

In short: just like software code runs a computer, DNA is the instruction manual that builds and runs living organisms. If you want a truly new life form, you need to write new instructions in that DNA code.

"Things are more complicated than Darwin knew. We understand that producing new forms of life now means not just new shapes, new activities in which life engages, but a prior code." And what are the odds of a new species happening? These guys break it down for us mathematically. You are more likely to wake up as a cockroach tomorrow than to see a new species come into existence. (My nod to Gregor Samsa.)

If you want to listen to the program, you can find it here on YouTube. Whereas all three agree that Darwin's conclusions were flawed, they are not all in agreement with the notion of "intelligent design," which is an interesting discussion in and of itself.

MY REASONS for sharing this blog post is to encourage you to (A) reconsider the implications of how Darwin and his ideas have been applied since his death, and (B) to watch or listen to Dennis Robinson's Uncommon Knowledge programs on YouTube. Lots of great guests and very smart people.

TWO FINAL QUOTES FROM THE PROGRAM

A.  "Darwin now poses a final challenge. Whether biology will rise to this last one as well as it did to the first, when his theory upset every apple cart, remains to be seen. How cleanly and quickly can the field get over Darwin and move on? Striking sentence. This is one of the most important questions facing science in the 21st century." 

B. "Scientists are paid for making guesses, not for making right guesses, but for making interesting plausible ones. And if scientists, after the guess has been made, don't do their job, don't investigate the guess, don't do their best to figure out is it true or false, then we are false to science and we're betraying science."

RELATED LINKS

The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays

Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design

Friday Musings: A Curated Collection from the Quote Vault

In a world of rapid change and enduring questions, here are some quotes to roll around in your mind when you take a break from your screens. From Subroto Roy’s vision of a flourishing society, to voices as varied as Hannah Arendt, Martin Luther King Jr., Edward Snowden, and Graham Greene, quotes that illuminate the human condition dealing with justice and bureaucracy, creativity and resilience, perception and courage. 

I personally enjoy mashups of unrelated observations because the unplanned juxtapositions can give birth to new and unexpected ideas. 

* * * 

"A flourishing society would be one which grows along the three planes of science, religion and art under conditions of freedom."
—Subroto Roy

"There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle."

—Rober Alden

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation."

—Graham Greene

"More is more. Less is a bore."
—Robert Venturi

"Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret."

—Marlene Dietrich

"Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that the horses may not be stolen."
-- The Marquis of Halifax

"Bureaucracies are far better at removing fingerprints from snafus than dusting for them."
—Mark Thompson

“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”

—Hannah Arendt

 

"Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us."  

—Stendhal journal entry (10 December 1801)

"Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was."
--Dag Hammarskjold  

"Nothing is more common than the wish to be remarkable."

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are ruled by criminals."

—Edward Snowden

“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”

-–John Wooden

"I lived on books. Books taught me how to think."

--Sy Hersh

"A short saying often contains much wisdom."

—Sophocles

“Recommend virtue to your children, that alone—not wealth—can give happiness.”
— Ludwig van Beethoven

"A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz."
—Humphrey Bogart

"A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no writing."

--Don Roff

“If you can’t fly, then run, if you can’t run, then walk, if you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” 

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

——————

Almost Wordless Wednesday: A Glimpse of Duluth Culture Revealed in 7 Posters of Coming Events

 A random batch of current posters on the library bulletin board.

Roy Orbison was truly one of the greats. Check this out:
Seven Anecdotes from the Roy Orbison/Beatles Tour

Proof positive that we're not just flyover country.

This weekend Duluth Dylan Fest will commence.  Be there or be square.

I saw them my freshman year in college... a fun memory way back when.

First class shows for those who love live theater.

It's becoming a Northland tradition.

Looks interesting. Should we come with an appetite?

It's safer than snake-handling in Kentucky.

"Words Can’t Reshape Physical Reality" – A Blunt Conversation with Energy Writer Irina Slav

Irina Slav

I can't recall when I first discovered the Bulgarian freelance energy journalist Irina Slav, but from the start I was captured, not simply by her years of experience writing about oil, gas, mining and geopolitics, but also by her wit and her courage to put it all out there regarding the realities of our current energy issues. Her writing is never dry, and routinely downright fun; a contrarian grounded in facts that force you to confront what is really going on. 

In short, she seems to enjoy telling truths many seem unable to see because they've been swept away in a fifty year flood of media mischief and misinformation. 

 

So without further adieu, I am pleased to introduce you to Irina Slav.

 

EN: I admire your courage and the "let the chips fall where they may" attitude you write with. How long have you been writing and how did you "find your voice" as a writer?

IS: If we’re talking professional writing, that started about 15 years ago, but I’d been writing fiction since my teens. I think that helped train my writing “muscles” for any topic, fictional or factual.

As for finding my voice, that happened gradually, as I gained experience and realized there was no point in being polite and worrying about what people would think. I honestly no longer care about offending anyone with hard facts. They are there, whether anyone likes them or not.

EN: Have you always written about energy issues? What was your background and what drew you to write about this important topic?

IS: My academic background is in English literature and linguistics. My professional life began with translations, while I was still at university. After graduating, I spent a couple of years at a daily newspaper where I mostly translated articles but once got so excited about the topic of peak oil (yes, I believed it was coming) that I volunteered to produce my very own feature article. I think we still have the paper edition with that article.

After I left the paper (because the owner, who was a politician, asked me if I wanted to run for the European Parliament as a party candidate and I said “Hell, no”) I started work at a news agency where I was assigned coverage of Russia’s and Central Asia’s energy and mining industries. I discovered oil and gas are a fascinating topic and started reading up on it, on extraction, pipelines, refineries, the lot.

Following my decision to go freelance I had a major stroke of luck when an editor for Oilprice contacted me and offered me a daily engagement. The rest, excuse the cliché, is history. I still find oil and gas production fascinating and hugely underappreciated as the most essential industry for modern civilization. This doesn’t mean I love Big Oil or some such nonsense but I do have a deep appreciation for the people who extract hydrocarbons from the ground.

EN: You’ve spent nearly two decades covering Russian and Central Asian oil and gas before broadening out to global energy markets. Looking back, what’s the biggest misconception you’ve seen policymakers or investors hold about energy security—and how has the last few years of conflict and market chaos either validated or upended that view?

IS: The most destructive, delayed-action, misconception was the belief that globalizing supply chains would work swimmingly and it’s perfectly okay to outsource all the heavy industries to Asia to focus on the “post-industrial” economy. We’ve all seen how well that’s worked.

More generally, the assumption that words can shape physical reality has wrought havoc in the West, whether it’s about energy or geopolitics. We are now reaping what the reality shapers sowed.

EN: In your writing, you’ve highlighted “stranded transition assets” and grid integration failures for renewables, even as banks like Barclays now acknowledge the risks. Do you see the current energy crunch—driven by geopolitics, AI demand, and defense needs—as the moment when the renewables-heavy transition narrative finally cracks, or is the political momentum still too strong to reverse course?

Click to Enlarge

IS: The narrative has been cracking for a while now but the net-zero fan lobby is still very strong and loud, especially in political circles. I think the momentum is too strong for politicians to admit they were wrong about it. The current energy crisis is not helping – it just made wind and solar make sense because they are – and how I hate the word – “homegrown”. They aren’t really but nobody cares about that. I fear we’ll have to witness an actual collapse before we come to our collective senses.

EN: You’ve been blunt about EU policies like the ETS, the 2035 ICE car ban (and its green steel workaround), and methane rule “flexibilities.” From your perspective in Bulgaria, what’s the single biggest disconnect between Brussels’ decarbonization targets and the day-to-day reality of energy supply and industrial competitiveness in Europe?

IS: The biggest disconnect is in priorities. Brussels keeps harping on about “clean” energy while everyone else wants mostly cheap and reliable energy.

EN: Your recent posts have touched on blackouts, demand destruction, negative electricity prices, and the quiet return of gas-fired power in places like Spain. What practical lessons from these real-world failures do you think the energy industry and governments still refuse to learn—especially when it comes to baseload power versus intermittent sources?

IS: What governments appear incapable of comprehending is the fact that it is not okay to have a grid dominated by intermittents. Having some is fine, no problem with rooftop solar and some bigger installations in factory yards but having solar and wind make up a substantial, let alone, larger than half, portion of the energy mix is a bit risky.

EN: You’ve written about parallel realities in energy—one physical and one fabricated by analysts and financiers. With oil prices swinging on tweets, record U.S. exports, and surging Chinese “clean energy component” shipments to Europe,  do you see the biggest risks (or opportunities) in the next 12–24 months for both traditional hydrocarbons and the so-called transition technologies?

IS: I think it’s pretty clear by now that hydrocarbons will be in short supply in the coming months. Just how long these shortages will last depends on when the war in the Middle East ends and the outlook doesn’t seem very good right now. So, the risk is shortage, which, I guess, would be an opportunity for those who can source oil and gas and sell them to energy-thirsty countries.

As for transition technologies, the fans will double and triple down, claiming they are safer than oil and gas imports. The problem is those technologies are also largely imported and they will become more expensive, too – energy inflation touches everything. So I think there will be some more rude awakening in the “clean energy” space. 

EN: After covering this beat for 15–20 years and living through events like the recent Bulgarian blackout, what’s one piece of advice you’d give to younger journalists, investors, or even ordinary citizens trying to cut through the noise on energy and geopolitics—especially when official narratives keep colliding with physics and economics?

IS: The one advice I would give is “Check if two plus two makes four. If the news says it doesn’t, then the news is false.” It’s a simple thing to do but not easy. A lot of people would rather stick with the false news for comfort, even if they end up paying dearly for that comfort down the line. Those who are not satisfied with “the noise” ask questions. They also buy generators for backup.

Check out her Substack, Irina Slav on energy