Thursday, July 18, 2002

I will be working mostly on my book the next four days. I am feeling an increasing sense of urgency. I am afraid we are nearing the cusp. ... It's Even Worse Than It Appears, and now It's all up to us! Robert Waldrop reports: World wheat production is declining, this year world consumption (594 million tons) will exceed production (581 million tons), drawing down existing world wheat stocks to 147 million tons. This is the fourth straight year that world wheat storages have contracted. Note that the annual carryover, now down to 147 million tons, amounts to about 3 months world consumption. Argentina's wheat production has declined 2.5 million tons "because of ongoing problems with planting the crop. Macro economic disruptions have caused a sharp drop in the exchange rate, providing an incentive to grow low cost export crops like wheat, but the lack of credit to finance production is compounded by a reported shortage of diesel fuel, severely limiting wheat plantings. This month, forecast area dropped one million hectares. . . " ... Timothy Wilken writes: Our human problems are reaching a level that may soon find our society in freefall. Its up to us regular and ordinary people. We can only rely on ourselves. We need individuals of integrity to join with us to build a new model of society that depends on co-Operation and abundance. And, by abundance I am referring to an abundance of integrity, intelligence  and responsibility. Then we can begin restructuring our society in ways that will lead to a relative abundance even within the finite world we inhabit. Synergy means working together—creating together as in Co-Creation—laboring together as in Co-Laboration—acting together as in Co-Action and operating together as in Co-Operation. The goal of synergic union is to accomplish a larger or more difficult task by working together than can be accomplished by working separately. (07/18/02) A Journey of Discovery Barry Carter writes: Most managers and workers in today’s enterprises are cogs in obsolete machinery. They sometimes have a vague feeling that the machinery needs scrapping and replacing, but they do not know what to do about it.  . . . We are in the early phase of a revolution that will fundamentally transform enterprises around the planet. The transformation is a paradigm shift of immense magnitude. ... I grew up the second of three children in a middle-class black family living in rural Vir­ginia. My father owned a construction business and my mother worked as a secretary with the state government. In 1965, Virginia instituted a voluntary school desegregation policy. At age nine, I, along with my brother, were the only two black children to integrate the public elementary school system of Boydton, Virginia. While I scarcely met with angry mobs, water hoses or police dogs, I did notice an abrupt change in my station in life. I had been one of the “good,” smart kids at the black school, but at the white school I was suddenly a loner to be avoided. My class was a harsh, hard and abrasive environment filled with tough country boys. I responded to the challenge by becoming tough, somewhat calloused and tuning out much of the harshness around me. Like the time my fourth grade teacher asked me not to sit with one white boy at lunch because it made him sick to eat with a black kid. I ignored her comment and sat with him the very next day. I can’t say that the five years there traumatized me in the sense that I was in any pain and anguish. I simply toughened, as it became impossible for me to feel inferior to anybody. I was vaguely aware, at that age, that the black people around me felt apprehensive towards white people, but with what I was seeing, there wasn’t a thing intimidating about those trifling people.  If I sensed people responding to me in a weird way, I concluded that there must be something wrong with them, and tuned them out. (07/18/02) Gene Found for the Spark of Life TIMES ON LINE -- BRITISH scientists have discovered the gene that provides the spark of life, when an egg is fertilised by a sperm, in research that promises dramatic advances in fertility treatment and stem cell experiments. A ten-year study has revealed that the gene in sperm triggers the crucial process by which an egg starts dividing to form an embryo, solving a mystery that has confounded medical science for two centuries. The breakthrough, by researchers at the University of Wales College of Medicine in Cardiff and University College, London, paves the way for improved therapy for infertile couples and treatments that use cloned stem cells to tackle Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes. (07/18/02) 8:58:40 AM

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