The “headers” are the images you will find at the top of the page each time you check into the Exernomics site. The images are intended to serve as subliminal messages about the challenges at hand. Each time someone checks in they have different graphic in front of their nose.
In the case of xRx (as we call it for short) the goal is to put before the visitor striking examples of (a) environmental and resource damage that our present cowboy practices are inflicting on our gasping planet. And on the other side of the ledger, (b) some of the hopes for the future, and specifically in this case different approaches to renewable energy. If you click the header itself multiple times you will get an idea of the range of the images.
Sometime we get complaints. One early morning we received a commentary asking us about the choice of the following photograph:
The image on your new website is also on a huge screen on the plaza at Lincoln Center. When my sister was visiting, she saw it and exclaimed, “That’s that thing that fries birds!” I googled it and came up with several articles. http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188328-californias-new-solar-power-plant-is-actually-a-death-ray-thats-incinerating-birds-mid-flight. I think they are trying to alleviate the problem, but I was surprised to see it on opening your new site
Oops. Life out there in the real world of complex systems is rarely simple. As we know all the news about the technologies, implementations and results of the largely willy-nilly, to now, push to renewables is not automatically 100% good news. And yes apparently the massive Gemasolar solar power plant in Fuentes de Andalucía, Spain, on the negative side of the sustainability ledger is also — see the article — massacring great bevies of birds who fly between the rays. But that too is part of the message we are attempting to address.
And the bird fryer, if I may call it that, is not the only example of such a striking ambiguity. Thus when a gorgeous picture of a hydroelectric installation pops up on the screen, any reasonable visitor will – will they not? — have mixed reactions to it. Everything comes with a cost. And learning curves do not show their full results the morning after.
So if you click the header in each cases another will pop up in its place, some showing the damage we are doing, and others, perhaps, some of our hopes for a better future.
PS. And yes, we await with great interest your candidates, and comments.
Exernomics: On Energy, Economy and Growth 