http://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=827

Eigenvalues. Fixed points. Stable equilibria. Mathematicians like things that stay put. And if they can't stay put, the objects of study should at least repeat themselves on a regular basis, like orbiting planets or populations of predators and prey. Even in the case of chaotic systems, mathematicians have traditionally gravitated toward invariant features, such as strange attractors, stable manifolds, and periodic points.

What makes this tradition possible is that dynamical systems---at least the ones mathematicians favor---are governed by equations that depend on time either cyclically or not at all. But nature doesn't always oblige. Many phenomena require equations whose coefficients are non-periodic functions of time. Indeed, many---arguably most---phenomena can be described not by equations at all, but only as an amalgam of time-varying data.

http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2007/12/28/larouche-whole-operation-paki...

"People are being idiots," he said, "because they say, well, `You can't say that! Let's concentrate on the facts. Let's concentrate on the facts,' is what they'll say. Now here you have, the fact is, we're in the point of a total breakdown of the international financial and monetary system. This is not a collapse; this is not a depression. It's a disintegration of the very integument upon which the whole civilization has now come to depend. That's the game. And, any developments which don't fit the game, don't explain this kind of thing. It's one thing after the other; it's a chaos operation. The tendency is to create chaos; it's a chaos operation. So, therefore, in a chaos operation,-- don't try to attribute chaos, to some individual who's not chaos.

"We don't know who the culprit is; we don't know which faction, who is the faction," LaRouche concluded. "We can identify the faction by the nature of the faction. But the identity of the faction, we don't have. The guy who's doing this, is doing something. We know what they're doing; we know what the effect is they're playing for. That's clear. WHO that someone is, we don't have."

Most people don't like such alternatives...
Guess you are talking about those less than 5% of the world population that just happen to live in the US ? :)
The same that consume 25% of the world's oil ? Maybe the rest of the world will adapt more easily actually ?

Just Heard this song on NPR: I think that if we are going to choose to listen to someone other than Uncle Dave we will surely end up nude in a cave without food. It's time to take Uncle Dave seriously. He's not a manic depressive, just a freakin realist.

Uncle Dave's Grace: lyrics by Peter Berryman, music by Lou Berryman

"We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing" Thanksgiving day, Uncle Dave was our guest

He reads the Progressive which makes him depressed

We asked Uncle Dave if he'd like to say grace,

A dark desolation crept over his face

"Thanks," he began as he gazed at his knife,

"To poor Mr. Turkey for living his life

All crowded and cramped in a great metal shed

Where life was a drag then they cut off his head"

"Thanks," he went on, "for the grapes in my wine

Picked by sick women of seventy-nine

Scrambling all morning for bunch after bunch

Then brushing the pesticides off of their lunch

Thanks for the stuffing all heaped on my fork

Shiny with sausage descended from pork

I think of the trucks full of full of pigs that I see

And can't help imagine what they think of me"

Continuing, "I'd like to thank if you please

Our salad bowl hacked out of tropical trees

And for this mahogany table and chair

We thank all the jungles that used to be there

For cream in our coffee and milk in our mugs,

We thank all the cows full of hormones and drugs

Whose calves are removed at a very young age

And force-fed as veal in a minuscule cage"

"Oh thanks for the furnace that heats up these rooms

And thanks for the rich fossil fuel it consumes

Corrupting the atmosphere ounce after ounce

But we're warm and toasty and that is what counts

I'm grateful," he said, "for these clothes on my back

Lovely and comfy and cheap off the rack

Fashioned in warehouses noisy and cold

In China by seamstresses seven years old"

"And thanks for my silverware setting that shines

In memory of miners who died in the mines

Worn down by the shovelling of tailings in piles

Whose runoff destroys all the rivers for miles

We thank the reactors for our chandelier

Although the plutonium won't disappear

For hundreds of decades it still will be there

But a few more Chernobyls and who's gonna care?"

Sighed Uncle Dave, "though there's more to be told

The wine's getting warm and the bird's getting cold"

And with that he sat down as he mumbled again

"Thank you for everything, amen"

We felt so guilty when he was all thru

It seemed there was one of two things we could do

Live without food, in the nude, in a cave,

Or next year have someone say grace besides Dave.