 What it all means this week:
Imaginative Thinking to Address Complex Problems: A fascinating TED talk by 19-year-old biochemist Eva Vertes hypothesizes that cancer is not a disease but an attempt by the body to fight disease and injury.
The implications if she's right are staggering. When Einstein said we
cannot solve intractable problems with the same thinking that led to
them, this is what he was talking about. Thanks to reader Ed for the
link.
Why This is Our Final Century: If
you've read Flannery and Monbiot, you know that we need to reduce
greenhouse gases quickly and dramatically to save our planet from
climatic disaster. If you read this blog, you know why I, and others
like John Gray, believe such drastic action will never occur. This
week, we heard a new report from EU scientists saying that we will have to reduce emissions in affluent nations by 95% in the next forty years. And we heard the Canadian conservative government, ideologically in lockstep with the US Bush conservatives, declare that even the feeble and inadequate Kyoto targets would wreck the Canadian economy
and as such are "unthinkable". At a time when a leap far beyond Kyoto
is desperately needed, it looks likely that Canada's conservatives will
choose to fight an election (and according to recent polls, do so
successfully) on the grounds of reneging on Canada's Kyoto commitments,
propagandizing against both climate change dangers and the economic
benefits of addressing them, and putting the immediate economic
interests of the conservatives' corporatist friends ahead of the
survival of our civilization. Shameful, terrifying, and completely
expected.
Jeffrey Sachs Hopes Against Hope: The
BBC has the broadcast and transcripts of the 2007 Reith Lectures
featuring anti-poverty activist Jeffrey Sachs. What's fascinating to me
is the audience reaction to Sachs' arguments: The majority, hearing the
facts of the state of our world laid out starkly, see
free-market-skeptic Sachs as a pessimist and ask whether his
self-proclaimed optimism is misguided. But the most informed minority,
like Sir Christopher Meyer, see Sachs' almost religious belief in "mass political awareness and social mobilization" as absurdly naive and unsupportable. Thanks to Jutta Ried for the link.
Ways to Go Green: Although it's a bit bizarre to find on a website that promotes credit cards, Frugalist's list of 57 ways to live more environmentally responsibly is a good one.
The Need for Debate: Dave Snowden, an accomplished debater, argues that learning and creativity are aided more by informed and articulate debate than by consensus-seeking.
I see his point, but in my experience, most debates are neither
well-informed nor articulate, and debaters too often have their minds
already made up and are poor listeners. But, being Canadian (we are
consensus-seekers to a fault) I lack the self-confidence and sense of
urgency to debate Dave on the matter.
The Dark Side of India's Economic 'Prosperity": Arundhati Roy, who has tried to explain to the world the horrific life (and suicide rate) of India's destitute farmers (now mirrored in Australia), explains what's really happening in India, events that we here almost nothing about in affluent nations. Thanks to Jon Husband for the link.
China Building a New Coal-Fired Power Plant Every Four Days: The cost of China raising even a small minority of its desperate underclass out of poverty is the destitution of the world.
"Ocean Desalination Does Not Work": There is no simple techno-fix for looming global fresh water shortages.
Thought for the Week, from Brian Eno (thanks to Andrew Campbell for the citation):
"One
of the things I've formulated recently, as a little rule of thumb
for myself, is to say, a computer program should always allow you to
continue working in the physical world that that activity suggests
anyway. So if you're working with a music program, you don't have to
keep going back to typing and using your mouse. People think that's
being kind of picky, and rather stupid, but I've always had this theory
that the body is the large brain; it's not like, this bit of you
doesn't matter and this bit does. The whole physical experience is what
you make things with. Anyone who works with any tactile art form knows
this. And with any tactile instrument. They know that a lot of your
intelligence about what you're doing is not happening, here [the head],
it's happening all over other parts of your body. It's how your body
feels about this sort of thing. Well, unfortunately, computer
interfaces are so crude they've completely ignored that possibility.
So, if I want drawing programs that automatically work with a pad or a
pen or whatever - I have one in fact! - then I want music programs and
I want synthesizers that give me that same kind of physical
relationship, that physical musical relationship." |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
