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Sunday, March 30, 2003
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Benjamin R. Barber writes: The pursuit of democracy has been a sideline in an American realist foreign policy organized around oil and trade with despots pretending to be on our side--not just in Republican but in Democratic administrations as well, where democracy was proclaimed but (remember Larry Summers) market democracy construed as market fundamentalism was practiced. In the old paradigm, democratic norms were very nice as emblems of abstract belief and utopian aspiration, or as rationalizations of conspicuous interests, but they were poor guides for a country seeking status and safety in the world. Not anymore. The cute cliché about democracies not making war on one another is suddenly a hard realist foundational principle for national security policy. Except the truth today is not only that democracies do not make war on one another, but that democracies alone are secure from collective forms of violence and reactionary fundamentalism, whether religious or ethnic. Those Islamic nations (or nations with large Islamic populations) that have made progress toward democracy--Bangladesh, India or Turkey, for example--have been relatively free of systematic terrorism and reactionary fundamentalism as well as the export of terrorism. They may still persecute minorities, harbor racists and reflect democratic aspirations only partially, but they do not teach hate in their schools or pipe propaganda through an official press or fund terrorist training camps. Like India recently, they are the victims rather than the perpetrators of international terrorism. Making allies of the enemies of democracy because they share putative interests with us is, in other words, not realism but foolish self-deception. We have learned from the military ! campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda how, when push comes to shove (push has come to shove!), the Egyptians and the Saudis can be unreliable in sharing intelligence, interdicting the funding of terrorism or standing firm against the terrorists at their own door. Pakistan still allows thousands of fundamentalist madrassahs to operate as holy-war training schools. Yet how can these "allies" possibly be tough when, in defense of their despotic regimes, they think that coddling the terrorists outside their doors may be the price they have to pay for keeping at bay the terrorists already in their front parlors? The issue is not religion, not even fundamentalism; the issue is democracy. (03/30/03) | |
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Larry Korn writes: The title of this article is a statement of hope and an invitation to join us in creating a new agriculture. The agriculture we envision is based on sustainable, ecologically sound food production and forestry methods, which are responsive to local conditions and human needs. We are inspired by this task largely by the work of Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, author of The One-Straw Revolution, and Australian environmental scientist Bill Mollison, author of Permaculture One and Permaculture Two. Although these men live and work far from our region, they share a common perspective in their approaches to agriculture. Both emphasize the practical value of minimum tillage, tree crops, perennial plants, and soil-building combinations of grasses, legumes and nitrogen-fixing trees and shrubs. They also stress the importance of maintaining diversity and complexity, and of integrating plants, animals and human society into whole, self-sustaining agricultural landscapes. We believe that the principles put forward by Fukuoka and Mollison offer a solid starting point from which we can establish a sustainable regional agriculture. (03/30/03) | |
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Stanford University -- Two more sections of the Buckminster Fuller Archives have been put online. They are: Series 14: Non-LECO Photographs consisting of six sub-series: Travel, Fuller Family and Friends, Artifacts, Chronological, Extra Licensing Photographs, and Unidentified Photographs, and Series 19: Artifacts consists of three sub-series: Geometric Models (126 mostly with pictures), Architectural Models, and Miscellaneous Models. (03/30/03) | |
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E-Wire -- Green Star Products, Inc. announced that the largest biodiesel plant in the US is now being assembled in Bakersfield, California. The production capacity of this plant is expected to be 35 million gallons per year at full production. This is significant when considering that the entire U.S. production of biodiesel in 2002 was only 15 million gallons. (03/30/03) | |
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BBC Science -- Toshiba has unveiled a prototype fuel cell it hopes will become the power source for laptops in the future. The fuel cell breaks down methanol to generate power and, Toshiba claims, will provide enough juice to run a laptop for about five hours. To get the cell working, the alcohol fuel is provided in small 50cc cartridges. Toshiba hopes to put the fuel cell on sale in early 2004. Fuel cells which use chemistry to generate electrical power by breaking down substances such as hydrogen are already being touted as a green power source for the future, especially for cars and other light vehicles. Fuel cells for cars typically use hydrogen but, said Toshiba spokesman Yoichi Akashi, the company will be using methanol in its portable power source. "Compared to hydrogen, methanol is much safer," he said. (03/30/03) | |
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The Guardian UK -- The science of morphing has created a resurgence of geometry-led architecture. We know what morphing is: one human face gradually becomes another thanks to the computer's ability to interpolate between two sets of pixels. This is just one aspect of morphology, the science of shape at the cutting edge of architecture and engineering. Structural morphologists believe it is geometry that drives architectural and engineering innovation. The pioneer of this approach was Buckminster Fuller, an evangelist for applying geometry to space-filling structures. He believed the standard approach to space structures - right-angled cubes and rectangular boxes - was wrong. He sought the most efficient use of materials, which meant members in tension rather than great chunks of masonry or metal in compression. To make such structures, Fuller claimed, you need structures based on triangles and tetrahedra rather than cubes. So fervent was Fuller's geometrical zeal that when he taught at Black Mountain College in the late 40s, a class joke was that "Bucky probably invented the triangle". ... If it seemed to Buckminster Fuller, 70 years ago, that our spatial sense was crippled by the cube, it is now flowing freely, in every curve and material imaginable. (03/30/03) | |
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Greenbiz.com -- Engineers in Georgia are developing a "reverse production" process that creates the infrastructure to recover and reuse all electronic waste materials.The researchers hope the new technology will change the way we recycle products such electronic equipment and disposable cameras. The researchers, funded by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the National Science Foundation, have developed ways of separating metals and different qualities of plastic in electronic equipment. (03/30/03) | |
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New York Times: Science -- Power plants in New York State will have to sharply cut their output of pollutants blamed for acid rain, smog and other environmental ills beginning next year under rules approved yesterday by state regulators. The regulations, which will be phased in over the next five years, are expected to reduce by tens of thousands of tons a year the emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides generated by the plants across the state. Those emissions combine in the atmosphere to produce smog, while also poisoning lakes and killing fish, especially in the Adirondacks. Gov. George E. Pataki, in announcing the rules, said that they put New York ahead of the rest of the country in protecting air quality. He said the restrictions on sulfur dioxide will be the most stringent in the nation. (03/30/03) | |
6:56:25 AM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
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4/1/2003; 5:17:06 AM.
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