Hope you had a nice Memorial Day weekend. My 21 year old daughter Reason just called from a cab in New York city. She arrived safely, is on the way to her hotel, and will report for her internship on Wall Street tomorrow.
My 20 year old daughter Serene announced that after three years of preparation to get into UCLA Arts, and an expensive move to new apartment in Santa Monica (thanks very much Daddy), she feels the need to do something different with her life. So a career in ART is out, back to square one. Well at least she is not thirty.
I am working on new website for the GIFTegrity prototype.
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Win Wenger writes: The northern end of the Bay of Bengal shallows in such a way that any major storm pushes a massive storm-surge of floodwaters over the low-lying, heavily populated, adjacent areas of Bangla-Desh and India. Every year or so, a tropical cyclone comes into the bay at just the right angle to push a surge over these areas, killing thousands of human beings. From time to time, the toll is in the millions instead. There is no good way to prevent the millions of desperately poor and starving human beings from going right back into the flood-ravaged areas hoping to scratch some sort of living for themselves and their families. The land is fertile, their desperation is extreme, and no physical or societal infrastructure to speak of exists to give them escape mobility or to improve their desperate conditions. This brief tells how to prevent these disasters — material and human — from happening. It also tells how to turn the greatest region of dire poverty on Earth into productive prosperity. You can help greatly with little effort, simply by talking the idea of this project over with one or two other people and so helping the idea to get into circulation where it might stand a chance of gaining consideration on its merits. (05/30/02) | |
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What is complexity, asks author-journalist George Johnson in a recent "Science Times," the science section of The New York Times (May 5, 1997)? Below the headline, "Researchers on Complexity Ponder What It's All About," Johnson reports that there is still no agreed-upon definition, much less a theoretically-rigorous formalization, despite the fact that complexity is currently a "hot" research topic. Many books and innumerable scholarly papers have been published on the subject in the past few years, and there is even a new journal, Complexity, devoted to this nascent science. Johnson quotes Dan Stein, chairman of the physics department at the University of Arizona: "Everybody talks about it. [But] in the absence of a good definition, complexity is pretty much in the eye of the beholder."... Perhaps we need to go back to the semantic drawing-board. Complexity is, after all, a word -- a verbal construct, a mental image. Like the words "electron" or "snow" or "blue" or "tree", complexity is a shorthand tool for thinking and communicating about various aspects of the phenomenal world. Some words may be very narrow in scope. (Presumably all electrons are alike in their basic properties, although their behavior can vary greatly.) However, many other words may hold a potful of meaning. We often use the word "snow" in conversation without taking the trouble to differentiate among the many different kinds of snow, as serious skiers (and Inuit eskimos) routinely do. Similarly, the English word "blue" refers to a broad band of hues in the color spectrum, and we must drape the word with various qualifiers, from navy blue to royal blue to robin's egg blue (and many more), to denote the subtle differences among them. So it is also, I believe, with the word "complexity"; it is used in many different ways and encompasses a great variety of phenomena. (Indeed, it seems that many theorists, to suit their own purposes, prefer not to define complexity too precisely.) (05/30/02) | |
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Considering available resources according to this division, we arrive at an ecological benchmark figure of 1.7 ha. of land per capita for comparing ecological footprints; it is to this figure that human use of biologically-productive space must be reduced. ... A comparison of deficits and surpluses shows an average ecological footprint of 2.3, more than 35% larger than current available space. (05/29/02) | |
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Peter A. Corning writes: Some universal Darwinists, Daniel Dennett, Gary Cziko and, most notably, psychologist Susan Blackmore in her new book The Meme Machine (1999), see this reductionist evolutionary dynamic at work in human societies as well. In cultural evolution, Blackmore claims, the replicators are hypothetical entities called memes, a term coined by Dawkins as a cultural analogue for genes. Dawkins intended it as a metaphor, but Blackmore (and others) argue that memes are real physical entities, like genes (DNA). Moreover, memes have a mind of their own; they compete among themselves "for their own sake" [Blackmore's emphasis]. Just as Dawkins characterized organisms as "machines" for making more genes, so every human is "a machine for making more memes....We are meme machines," Blackmore tells us. ... The trouble is, memes don't really exist as a distinct causal agency in evolution, and saying they do won't make it so; I predict that they will prove to be more elusive than the Higgs boson. As a metaphor for various forms of learned cultural "information", the term might be quite useful. It has the advantage of being more generic than such familiar terms as "ideas", "inventions", "behaviors", "artifacts", etc., and it is certainly preferable to such clumsy neologisms as Edward Wilson's "culturgens". But as a shaper of cultural evolution independently of the motivations, goals, purposes, compulsions and judgments -- in short the minds -- of human actors, memes rank right up there with the fiery phogiston and the heavenly aether. (05/29/02) | |
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NewScientist.com -- A minimum of three million people would be killed and 1.5 million seriously injured if even a "limited" nuclear war broke out between India and Pakistan, warns a new study uncovered by New Scientist. The estimates are comprised of the immediate casualty list from blast, fire and radiation if only a tenth of both countries' nuclear weapons were exploded above 10 of their largest cities. It does not take account of the inevitable suffering that would result from the loss of homes, hospitals, water and energy supplies, or the cancers that could develop in future years. (05/29/02) | |
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New York Times -- CASSODAY, Kan. — A roadside sign proclaims this town the Prairie Chicken Capital of the World. But the prairie chicken is experiencing a catastrophic decline here in the Flint Hills, the core of its range. ... The greater prairie chicken has suffered serious declines over its range, from North Dakota and Minnesota to Missouri and Oklahoma. Attwater's prairie chicken (Tympanuchus cupido attwateri), a subspecies that once occupied what is now the intensively farmed land of southern Texas, has been reduced to 22 males in 2001 from a million or more in the early 1900's. A close relative, the easternmost form of the greater prairie chicken, a subspecies known as the heath hen (Tympanuchus cupido cupido) is extinct. The last one, a male, was seen in 1932 on Martha's Vineyard. (05/28/02) | |
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New York Times -- Japan, home to the world's largest remaining whale hunt, is losing the younger generation. ... Among people in their 20's, almost 60 percent opposed a resumption of commercial whaling, though resumption is a cause dear to the hearts of Japanese officials. "Ultimately, whaling's demise may have little to do with how majestic, smart or endangered the mammals are, but simple economics," Asahi Shimbun wrote last month. "A growing number of Japanese don't want to eat whale meat. And if they won't eat it, they won't buy it, and if they won't buy it, say goodbye to Japanese whaling." (05/28/02) | |
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John Robb writes: The Internet isn't an extension of the past. It is a new thing. It leverages individuals in ways that go beyond old models. It creates a new order of things where individuals, and not companies, can expect to control all the benefits of economic gains. ... How did individuals pull this off? Control of the information flow. Individuals within and outside of corporations have used their control of the information flow to make the markets for products, services, and labor increasingly competitive. People have more providers to buy from (on a global scale) and more organizations to work for (the monster.com effect) than ever before. Corporations are caught in a vice between competitive pricing and higher labor costs. In cruel turn of events (not from my perspective of course ;->, but from a corporate one), individuals are also starting to wake up to the excesses of corporate America. They know too much (Adam Curry says that there are no secrets, and this is what he means). Companies that have been able to hide behind copyrights (excessive in length) and patents (excessive in breadth) in order to charge excessive prices, are being challenged. (05/28/02) | |
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While we Americans went to the movies this weekend to celebrate our dead heros, elsewhere ... LONDON -- India and Pakistan are on the verge of a catastrophic war over Kashmir: 1.4 million troops from the two nations are poised for battle from the Tibet border to the Arabian Sea. The two old foes are trading artillery barrages along the Kashmir ceasefire line. Pakistan's and India's nuclear arsenals are on hair-trigger alert, as political leaders and generals on both sides play nuclear chicken over divided Kashmir. The 750,000 troops India now has massed in Kashmir have proven unable to suppress the 13-year-old uprising by Kashmir's Muslim majority against Indian rule. India insists the dirty guerrilla war in Kashmir, in which 60,000 people have died, is entirely the work of Pakistan. In fact, India faces a genuine popular uprising by the Muslim majority. Pakistan aids some of the rebel groups, though not all. Now, Delhi is threatening to unleash its army, either to stage limited attacks against insurgent bases inside Pakistani Kashmir, or in a general offensive against Pakistan proper, a massive operation that could quickly escalate into nuclear war. ... Remember on a small planet like Earth everybody is downwind/water of each other. (05/28/02) | |
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OTEC, or ocean thermal energy conversion, is an energy technology that converts solar radiation to electric power. OTEC systems use the ocean's natural thermal gradient—the fact that the ocean's layers of water have different temperatures—to drive a power-producing cycle. ... This potential is estimated to be about 1013 watts of baseload power generation, according to some experts. The cold, deep seawater used in the OTEC process is also rich in nutrients, and it can be used to culture both marine organisms and plant life near the shore or on land. (05/28/02) | |
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New York Times: Science -- In Atlanta as in much of the East, the droughts of recent years have thrust water scarcity into greater public consciousness, through restrictions like the ones in place here, which allow outdoor watering only every other day. But public officials and experts here say that the multistate talks, with their focus on a 50-year future, have made clear the need to put in place in places like Atlanta more permanent but also more burdensome changes, in water pricing, regulation and conservation, along the lines familiar to the water-parched West. "The idea that we're having water wars in a region that gets so much rain is astonishing, but it is definitely the shape of things to come," said Aaron T. Wolf, an expert on water conflicts and a professor of geoscience at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "The whole country is learning that we can't just keep on doing what we've always been doing when it comes to fresh water." (05/27/02) | |
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New York Times -- A re-examination of events before Sept. 11 clearly suggests that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the agency most directly responsible for protecting against an attack on American soil, failed to assemble a coherent picture of the available danger signals. Nor did it fully communicate what it knew to the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies. Interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior policy-makers and law enforcement and counterterrorism officials suggest that in the summer of 2001 the government's counterterrorism apparatus was too lumbering, too compartmentalized and too inattentive to grasp the emerging pattern. Also, perhaps, a bit unlucky. (05/27/02) | |
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New York Times -- For hundreds of millions of years, horseshoe crabs have spawned with relatively little fanfare. This spring, however, as they have hauled themselves up on the beaches of Delaware Bay, they have been counted, collected for bait, observed, and argued over. ... Environmentalists and birders are tracking the crab population as well, because a huge surge in the number of crabs collected for bait in the last decade, and a decrease in the number of the shorebirds that feed on them — red knots in particular — have caused alarm. ... The issue is not merely one of conservation; horseshoe crab blood is a basis for a required biomedical test of bacterial contamination to determine the safety of drugs, intravenous solutions and some medical devices. Estimates of the size of the industry vary but it is at least $50 million. Berkson is currently waiting for an assurance that he will get money for the next trawl survey, as well as a federal appropriations measure that would provide $700,000 a year for five years for monitoring the horseshoe crab population. (05/27/02) | |
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TIME.com-- An insider's view of the FBI failure to protect America. (05/26/02) | |
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Water-ice has been found in vast quantities just below the surface across great swathes of the planet Mars. ... Insiders suggest that, partly as a result of this finding, Nasa may now commit itself to a manned landing within 20 years. (05/26/02) | |
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One of the problems with a belief in Human Neutrality is that it causes great apathy. If I am truly independent, then I have no duty to family, community, Life or the Earth itself. Those humans who are waking up to the knowledge of their interdependence are putting away the illusion of neutrality along with its apathy and indifference. But to do so sometimes takes great courage. Sea Captain Paul Watson tells the story that led the creation of the Second Greenpeace Foundation. (05/26/02) | |
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New York Times -- "America should feel the same pain that Japan has felt for 15 years," said Masayuki Komatsu, the spokesman for the Japanese delegation. His bitterness came from losing on his home turf a vote that Japan has routinely lost since 1986, a motion to allow four fishing towns to resume the commercial hunting of 50 whales a year along Japan's coast. Japanese diplomats said they would maintain a plan to increase their nation's whale "science research" program, killing an additional 100 whales this year. In addition, they said they would seek this fall to get minke whales dropped from an international endangered species list, allowing Japan to import whale meat from Norway, ending a longstanding suspension in legal international trade of whale products. ... The nationalists were out in force, as 160 buses and trucks with public address systems rolled through town last Sunday, the day before the assembly opened. Blaring World War II martial hymns, the buses disgorged thousands of right-wing nationalists, with many waving Japanese flags and most wearing paramilitary uniforms. Chanting "Get out, Greenpeace," the nationalists asserted Japan's right to kill whales without foreign interference. (05/26/02) | |
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Win Wenger writes: Sometimes (and in the near future, as world population heaves and bulges up toward seven billion and as our ecology totters toward ruin), supply does pinch a bit. With our topsoil mostly gone and its remainder chemically challenged; with our oceans mostly fished out; with treatment-resistant diseases starting to appear not only in people but in our crops and livestock; and with global warming disrupting local climates upon which our agriculture depends — supply is about to start pinching a lot more than just a bit. Indus Valley Civilization, the first wave of Mayans, Babylonian Civilization — various major civilizations on record mismanaged their natural resources to the point where they starved and collapsed. Had you suggested to any of them even the possibility of such an outcome beforehand, they would have been too helpless with laughter at the absurdity of the notion to even put a spear in you, which would have been their next response. I expect the equivalent response here, but for those readers who remain at this point, I'm about to suggest here a fairly easy way to increase healthful food supply in the world ten-fold, a hundred times; if need be a thousand times! (05/25/02) | |
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Daniel Dennett writes: In just one species, our species, a new trick evolved: language. It has provided us a broad highway of knowledge-sharing, on every topic. Conversation unites us, in spite of our different languages. We can all know quite a lot about what it is like to be a Vietnamese fisherman or a Bulgarian taxi driver, an eighty-year-old nun or a five-year-old boy blind from birth, a chess master or a prostitute. No matter how different from one another we people are, scattered around the globe, we can explore our differences and communicate about them. No matter how similar to one another buffalos are, standing shoulder to shoulder in a herd, they cannot know much of anything about their similarities, let alone their differences, because they can't compare notes. They can have similar experiences, side by side, but they really can't share experiences the way we do. Even in our species, it has taken thousands of years of communication for us to begin to find the keys to our own identities. It has been only a few hundred years that we've known that we are mammals, and only a few decades that we've understood in considerable detail how we have evolved, along with all other living things, from those simple beginnings. We are outnumbered on this planet by our distant cousins, the ants, and outweighed by yet more distant relatives we share with the ants, the bacteria, but though we are in the minority, our capacity for long-distance knowledge gives us powers that dwarf the powers of all the rest of the life on the planet. Now, for the first time in its billions of years of history, our planet is protected by far-seeing sentinels, able to anticipate danger from the distant future--a comet on a collision course, or global warming--and devise schemes for doing something about it. The planet has finally grown its own nervous system: us. (05/25/02) | |
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Sea Captain Paul Watson writes: "With a shock, my eyes met the left eye of the whale like Odysseus facing the Cyclops. That one eye stared back, an eye the size of my fist, blackish brown and with a depth that astonished and gripped me. This was no brutish creature. This was no dumb animal. The eye that I saw reflected an intense intelligence. I read the pain and I read understanding. The whale knew what we were doing. This whale had discriminated. That message was beamed directly into my heart by a mere glance. Fear there never was, but apprehension vanished like a crest upon a wave. I felt love both from and for. I felt hope, not for himself but for his kind. I saw a selflessness of a spirit completely alien to our primate selves. This was a being with an intelligence that put us to shame, with an understanding that could only humble us. And the most shameful message of all passed over to me; forgiveness. ... In an instant, my life was transformed and a purpose for my life was reverently established." (05/24/02) | |
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Stephen Jay Gould, 60, a Harvard University professor of zoology and geology who became one of the most widely recognized scientists in the world for his graceful, lucid and downright entertaining writings about science, died of lung cancer May 20 at his home in New York. Dr. Gould, a Harvard professor since 1967, gained fame among contemporary scientists as a gifted and controversial student of evolutionary biology, and he conducted notable research in invertebrate paleontology. He became famous for his modification of some of the theories of Charles Darwin. His scientific work and writings resulted in a slew of awards. He received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship -- or "genius" award -- the first year they were given. He also received a National Book Award, the London Zoology Society's Silver Medal and the Medal of Edinburgh. His book "The Mismeasure of Man," a study of intelligence testing, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1981, he was named "scientist of the year" by Discover magazine. And perhaps even more impressively, it was reported that Harvard students packed his lectures on geology, biology, zoology, and the history and philosophy of science. (05/24/02) | |
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James J. O'Donnell wrote: It was on the 24th of August, in the year 410 of the common era, that the unthinkable came to pass. A guerrilla army, led by a renegade Roman general named Alaric, who had been brought up in a German-speaking community outside the actual boundaries of the Roman empire, ended years of threats and intimidation by invading the city of Rome itself. For three days they remained, destroying, looting, and killing. The exact loss of life was never known and may have been less than fears of the moment said it was, but the experience was a shattering one nonetheless. It had been 800 years since the last such defeat of the city, 800 years in which Rome had grown to be the greatest city in the world, the envy of the nations, the model for what a great city was like. The shock was felt throughout the Roman world. In far-off Bethlehem, the scholar and monk Jerome, so prolific that one might think of him as the Stephen King of his time, could not work. Here are his words: "And I was stunned and stupefied, so much so that I couldn't think about anything else day and night. I felt as if I were being held hostage myself and couldn't even open my mouth until I knew for sure what had happened. Hanging there, caught between hope and despair, I was torturing myself with the thought of what others were suffering. But after the brightest light of all the lands was extinguished — after the head of the whole Roman empire was lopped off — to speak truly, after the whole world had perished in a single city: I fell silent and was humbled, and I kept my silence and my sorrow was renewed. My heart grew warm within me and fire blazed up in my thoughts ..." (05/24/02) | |
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Timothy Wilken writes: Trust is not a new word for humanity. It was coined long ago when the world was dominated by the adversary way. Trust meant that I could rely on you not to hurt me. It was safe to assume that you were not my enemy. Synergic trust means means more. It means that while I can rely on you not to hurt me, I can further rely on you to help me. It is not only safe to assume that you are not my enemy, but I can count on you as a friend. Friends, you are welcome to download files from The Time-binding Trust without obligation. However to protect the integrity of these files, we ask that you not alter their contents in any way nor remove this TrustMark label. There are no other conditions or restrictions. You are encouraged to copy the files freely and distribute them to whomever you choose. If you discover that the files of The Time-binding Trust are of value to you, and you wish to support the Trust, you may choose to help us directly with your actions or if more convenient for you by making support payments. If your use of The Time-binding Trust provides you with continuing value, you are welcome to give the Trust continuing support. The amount, frequency, and timing of all gifts of support are entirely at the discretion of the giver. (05/23/02) | |
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