July 27, 2007
The Last Oil Shock
David Strahan's provocative book "The Last Oil Shock" is meant to be "A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man". Homo Petrolicus is finished an we have no alternative. Even Shell's Jeroen van der Veer agrees: "the age of easy oil is over".
July 21, 2007
July 15, 2007
Charles Stross:
Crystals Will Keep Our Memories
UK science fiction writer Charles Stross, author of novels Accelerando and Singularity Sky, posits a future in which all human experience is recorded on devices the size of a grain of sand.
Consider a carbon crystal, created (and edited) one atom at a time by nanomachinery; there are two stable isotopes of carbon, and we can use a Carbon-12 atom to represent a binary 0 and a Carbon-13 atom to represent a binary 1.
One gram of this substance could store 10 to the power 21 bytes (887,808 petabytes) - the equivalent storage of more than 11 billion typical PCs.
Consider a carbon crystal, created (and edited) one atom at a time by nanomachinery; there are two stable isotopes of carbon, and we can use a Carbon-12 atom to represent a binary 0 and a Carbon-13 atom to represent a binary 1.
One gram of this substance could store 10 to the power 21 bytes (887,808 petabytes) - the equivalent storage of more than 11 billion typical PCs.
July 07, 2007
LIVE EARTH
May Set New Stage for Web Viewing
The Live Earth event this Saturday is set to reach millions more people than previous global productions with its reach boosted by the fast-growing power of Web video sharing and social networks.
Organizers estimate television broadcasts of the live concerts staged to raise awareness about climate change will be available to up to 2 billion people although there is no estimate of how many people will actually watch the shows.
Madonna's 'HEY YOU' is here. Enjoy!
Organizers estimate television broadcasts of the live concerts staged to raise awareness about climate change will be available to up to 2 billion people although there is no estimate of how many people will actually watch the shows.
Madonna's 'HEY YOU' is here. Enjoy!
June 24, 2007
OECD:
Offshoring and Cheap Imports May Hurt
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Globalization may be hurting low-skilled workers in the U.S. and Europe enough that politicians in both places may find it increasingly hard to sell voters on the benefits of free trade and open markets, says one of the world's leading economic institutes.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based institute backed by the governments of 30 leading industrialized countries, is a staunch believer in free trade, which most economists believe makes all countries richer overall, including those with high wages.
But in its annual labor study, the OECD acknowledges growing popular unease about globalization.
At virtually the same time Der Spiegel addresses the German 'labor paradox' and wonders where all the skilled workers have gone.
'Workers', George Grosz
Globalization may be hurting low-skilled workers in the U.S. and Europe enough that politicians in both places may find it increasingly hard to sell voters on the benefits of free trade and open markets, says one of the world's leading economic institutes.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based institute backed by the governments of 30 leading industrialized countries, is a staunch believer in free trade, which most economists believe makes all countries richer overall, including those with high wages.
But in its annual labor study, the OECD acknowledges growing popular unease about globalization.
At virtually the same time Der Spiegel addresses the German 'labor paradox' and wonders where all the skilled workers have gone.
'Workers', George Grosz
June 14, 2007
Web Inventor Gets Queen's Honour
The inventor of the world wide web has been awarded the Order of Merit, one of the UK's most prestigious honours. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who launched the first website in 1991, joins an elite group who have received the honour from the Queen for exceptional contributions in arts, sciences and other areas.
The British academic invented the web's address system and layout in Switzerland in 1991, ultimately revolutionising global communication.
Previously, he was named Greatest Briton at a ceremony in 2004.
Get the whole story here.
The British academic invented the web's address system and layout in Switzerland in 1991, ultimately revolutionising global communication.
Previously, he was named Greatest Briton at a ceremony in 2004.
Get the whole story here.
June 08, 2007
June 04, 2007
China Puts Economy First!
China promises to better control emissions of greenhouse gases, unveiling its first national program to combat global warming, but rejects mandatory caps on emissions as unfair to countries still trying to catch up with the developed West. So to the Chinese, climate targets should in no way spoil their economic growth.
May 31, 2007
China Conquers Africa
From "Der Spiegel:"
China imports everything the continent produces: tropical hardwoods, oil, metals and even a small amount of cotton. Africa's five most resource-rich countries - Angola, South Africa, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and Congo - account for more than 80 percent of all African exports to China.
In return Africa gets cheap, mass-produced items, basic consumer goods like household devices, television sets and clothing. From South African supermarket shelves to Uganda's flea markets, the products with the strange characters printed on their packaging are available everywhere. In fact the flood of cheap Chinese goods has already destroyed the textile industries in Swaziland and Lesotho.
China imports everything the continent produces: tropical hardwoods, oil, metals and even a small amount of cotton. Africa's five most resource-rich countries - Angola, South Africa, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and Congo - account for more than 80 percent of all African exports to China.
In return Africa gets cheap, mass-produced items, basic consumer goods like household devices, television sets and clothing. From South African supermarket shelves to Uganda's flea markets, the products with the strange characters printed on their packaging are available everywhere. In fact the flood of cheap Chinese goods has already destroyed the textile industries in Swaziland and Lesotho.
May 17, 2007
NEW GORE BOOK
The Assault on Reason
From the book via TIME Magazine:
"The democratization of knowledge by the print medium brought the Enlightenment. Now, broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it. We the people—as Lincoln put it, "even we here"—are collectively still the key to the survival of America's democracy."
"THE ASSAULT ON REASON" is a visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has combined with the degration of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason
At the time George W. Bush ordered American forces to invade Iraq, 70 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11. Voters in Ohio, when asked by pollsters to list what stuck in their minds about the campaign, most frequently named two Bush television ads that played to fears of terrorism.
We live in an age when the thirty-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate's thinking, and America is in the hands of an administration less interested than any previous administration in sharing the truth with the citizenry. Related to this and of even greater concern is this administration's disinterest in the process by which the truth is ascertained, the tenets of fact-based reasoning-first among them an embrace of open inquiry in which unexpected and even inconvenient facts can lead to unexpected conclusions.
How did we get here? How much damage has been done to the functioning of our democracy and its role as steward of our security? Never has there been a worse time for us to lose the capacity to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from national security to the economy, from issues of health and social welfare to the environment. As The Assault on Reason shows us, we have precious little time to waste.
Gore's larger goal in this book is to explain how the public sphere itself has evolved into a place hospitable to reason's enemies, to make us more aware of the forces at work on our own minds, and to lead us to an understanding of what we can do, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason and safeguard our future. Drawing on a life's work in politics as well as on the work of experts across a broad range of disciplines, Al Gore has written a farsighted and powerful manifesto for clear thinking.
"The democratization of knowledge by the print medium brought the Enlightenment. Now, broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it. We the people—as Lincoln put it, "even we here"—are collectively still the key to the survival of America's democracy."
"THE ASSAULT ON REASON" is a visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has combined with the degration of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason
At the time George W. Bush ordered American forces to invade Iraq, 70 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11. Voters in Ohio, when asked by pollsters to list what stuck in their minds about the campaign, most frequently named two Bush television ads that played to fears of terrorism.
We live in an age when the thirty-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate's thinking, and America is in the hands of an administration less interested than any previous administration in sharing the truth with the citizenry. Related to this and of even greater concern is this administration's disinterest in the process by which the truth is ascertained, the tenets of fact-based reasoning-first among them an embrace of open inquiry in which unexpected and even inconvenient facts can lead to unexpected conclusions.
How did we get here? How much damage has been done to the functioning of our democracy and its role as steward of our security? Never has there been a worse time for us to lose the capacity to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from national security to the economy, from issues of health and social welfare to the environment. As The Assault on Reason shows us, we have precious little time to waste.
Gore's larger goal in this book is to explain how the public sphere itself has evolved into a place hospitable to reason's enemies, to make us more aware of the forces at work on our own minds, and to lead us to an understanding of what we can do, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason and safeguard our future. Drawing on a life's work in politics as well as on the work of experts across a broad range of disciplines, Al Gore has written a farsighted and powerful manifesto for clear thinking.
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