Akhil Bhardwaj: Cascading Failure -- A BuzzFlash Reader Contribution

[Demeter]

As I read about Rummy being replaced/fired, then heard about Ken possibly stepping down, Chafee quitting the Republican party, etc., I was reminded of the following:

Cascading failure (loss of elections) is common in power grids (political parties) when one of the elements fails (George) and shifts its load to nearby elements (other Republicans) in the system. Those nearby elements are then pushed beyond their capacity so they become compromised and shift their load onto other elements (Fox News, Rush, and friends).

Cascading failure is a common effect seen in high voltage systems, where a single point of failure (Iraq) on a fully loaded or slightly overloaded system (corruption, sex scandals, meth addicted priests, etc.) results in a sudden spike across all nodes of the system. This surge current can induce the already overloaded nodes into failure, setting off more overloads and thereby taking down the entire system in a very short time (loss of the House and the Senate, something which was just a pipe dream a few months back).

This failure process cascades through the elements of the system like a ripple on a pond and continues until substantially all of the elements in the system are compromised and/or the system becomes functionally disconnected from the source of its load. For example, under certain conditions a large power grid can collapse after the failure of a single transformer.

(Is that what we are witnessing?)

Akhil Bhardwaj
Cupertino, CA

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/548



SOUNDS LIKE A BLACK BOX MODEL TO ME! LIFE IMITATES SYSTEMS