Friday Miscellaneous: Books, Science and Other Things I've Been Thinking About

Today it's Friday. Here in the Northland we've been celebrating our annual Duluth Dylan Fest all week, which kicked off in Hibbing at the home young Robert Zimmerman grew up in there. Music by Geno, Amy and Pat was followed by a tour of the Hibbing High School where Bob first began to make a name for himself.

This was followed by a string of events here in Duluth throughout the week, culminating in the annual Front Porch Birthday Party at the house where Dylan spent the first six years of his life. We'll be gathering there from 11:00 a.m. till 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, Bob's birthday, with music by Greg Tiburzi. If you missed Wednesday's performance at Sir Ben's, you really missed a stupendous rendition of Dylan's Desire album. Big shout out to Greg, Erin Aldridge and Sonja Bjordal. Thank you.

Last night Cowboy Angel Blue performed in the Depot Train Museum and tonight will be the traditional Singer/Songwriter Contest at Sacred Heart. Full schedule here.

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One of the exciting things in my life right now has been a renewed interest in math and science. As followers of my Substack know I have been sharing the Math Circles of James D. Nickel. (Example: The Wonders of the Fibonacci Sequence). This exploration lead to the discovery of new thinking about the world we live in from a physics perspective. 

There are so many things that have been discovered about the nature of reality and the universe that are downright astonishing. It's my hope to share some of these things. The implications of Watson and Crick's discovery of the genetic code will blow your mind. How did the Hubble telescope expand our understanding of the size of the cosmos? What does "trust the science" really mean? 

My interest in history has never abated. Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War is now in my pile, revisiting the Great War and how it was a mistake for Britain to get involved. How ironic that the war to end all war proved to be the springboard to a century of wars in every corner of the world. 

That whole period of history was startling when you see the emergence of Social Darwinism, the birth of the Eugenics movement and the arrogance of Western intellectuals. 

On a more positive side  I've recently been inspired by some new writers I've been introduced to including David Berlinski and Stephen C. Meyer. 

As we wind down into Memorial Day weekend, more than a few Northlanders wonder when summer will start to show its face. What are some things you're jazzed about right now? There's so much still to be discovered. Don't just drift. Get a PhD in Lifelong Learning.

Nine More Applications of Price's Law

I just learned about Price's Law a few days ago and it intrigued me. Because I've been thinking about city issues like safety and law & order, I wondered how Price's Law might apply to crime, which I wrote about yesterday. But after sleeping on it and considering its implications, I explored additional ways to apply Price's Law.

Derek J. de Solla Price came up with what's now called “Price’s Law” after noticing that half of all published research is produced by the square root of the total number of authors working in that domain It's deceptively simple idea that seems to pop up everywhere once you start looking for it. 

In its classic form, it says that the square root of the participants in a domain produce roughly half the output. So in a company of 100 people, about 10 people do half the meaningful work. In a city of 1 million, about 1,000 people may generate much of the innovation or influence. Or in a city the size of Duluth (86,000) 293 generate half the innovation or influence. In short, game-changing leadership is not a crowded field.

The really fascinating part is how universal the pattern feels. The more you think about it, the more applications there seem to be.

Churches and Volunteerism
In many churches, the square root of the congregation often handles most of the ministry, fundraising, cleanup, and organizing. A congregation of 400 may function largely because 20 people quietly carry the institution on their backs.

Family Dynamics

In extended families, one or two individuals often become the “memory keepers,” organizers, peacemakers, and caretakers for dozens of relatives. The entire emotional architecture of a clan may rest on surprisingly few shoulders.

Civilization Itself

One could argue that a tiny fraction of humans created the majority of the ideas that shaped civilization—Newton, Maxwell, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Plato, Edison, etc. Most people inherit culture; very few materially alter it.

Internet Comment Sections

A tiny number of users generate most online discourse. One percent of users may produce half the posts, arguments, outrage, and memes that define a platform’s “culture.” My guess is that most people simply "lurk" to see what everyone's talking about..

Conspiracy Theories
Price’s Law may explain why a handful of highly motivated activists or ideologues can disproportionately shape public narratives. Most people are passive consumers; a small energetic minority drives movements.

Entropy in Organizations
As organizations grow, the productive core does not scale linearly. Bureaucracy expands faster than contribution. This may partially explain why large institutions often become sluggish despite employing thousands. 

Marriage and Friendships

In many social networks, a few people initiate most gatherings, phone calls, and emotional labor. Remove them, and entire friend groups dissolve. I've seen this happen

Historical Turning Points

Many revolutions, reformations, and renaissances may have hinged on an astonishingly small number of determined individuals operating at precisely the right moment. In the American Civil War, the Battles of Vicksburg and Gettysburg turned the tide of the war, with a devastating outcome for the South. (Both happened the same week.)

Decay of Institutions

A frightening inverse version of Price’s Law: when the most competent square root burns out, retires, or disengages, the whole structure can suddenly wobble. The institution looked massive and stable, but its true load-bearing beams were few.

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. 

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"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.

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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.