This one is interesting:
The maths that saw the US shutdown comingON THE surface it seems inexplicable. The government of the most powerful country on earth has shut down and is dangerously close to defaulting on its debt. Its people and economy are feeling the consequences, and a new global financial crisis might not be far behind. And all this because a minority faction of one house of Congress will not approve a budget unless a healthcare measure that has already been passed into law is suspended.
But for Peter Turchin, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the stand-off was predictable. He is one of a small group of people applying the mathematics of complex systems to political instability. They have been anticipating events just like this – and they say that if we don't find some way to respond to the warning signs and change course, things are bound to get a lot worse before they get better.
Turchin has found what he believes to be historical cycles, two to three centuries long, of political instability and breakdown affecting states and empires from Rome to Russia. In a book he is finishing, he argues that similar cycles are evident in US history, and that they are playing out to this day. He admits that his theory, built on a model that combines social and economic data, must be tested against real events – but unlike most historical theories, it can be. Meanwhile, he says, it "predicts the long-term conditions that led to this shutdown".
The whole thing is worth reading. Still a bit of a stretch to say this is definitely the cause of this particular shutdown, but the general ideas seem like they might be very useful, and he seems to be on the mark for the historical trends.
Also, the part at the end about how the shutdown affects the CDC is a bit of a worry (although not directly related to Turchins' work).
Devious, treacherous, murderous, neanderthal, sub-human of the West.