Wednesday, January 3, 2007

How You Can Help the Planet By Stopping at One. Werner Flueck sent me a copy of a 1995 article (not available online, but read a précis here) in the journal Population & Environment called "The Environmental Consequences of Having a Baby in the United States", by SUNY professor Charles Hall et al. In summary they report:Each American born in the 1990s will produce in a lifetime approximately 1.5 million kilograms (3.3 million lbs.) of atmospheric wastes (mostly CO2), 10 million kilograms (22 million lbs.) of liquid wastes, and one million kilograms (2.2 million lbs.) of solid wastes (mostly pro-rata share of agricultural, mining and construction wastes, and including 83,000 kg (185,000 pounds) of hazardous & toxic waste.Each American will consume 700,000 kilograms (1.5 million lbs.) of minerals (mostly sand and gravel), and 24 billion BTUs of energy -- equivalent to 4000 barrels of oil (40% in petroleum products, 25% each in natural gas and coal). In a lifetime, an average American will eat 25,000 kilograms (55,000 lb How to Save the World, January 2, 2007. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 9:32:27 AM      Google It!.

From Monitoring Teens to Minding Terrorists . The job of a shopping mall security guard normally involves controlling rowdy teenagers, finding lost children and patrolling parking lots. But starting this month, malls across the country will begin training guards for another task: fighting terrorism. By Ylan Q. Mui. [washingtonpost.com - Technology - Industry News, Policy, and Reviews] 9:29:35 AM      Google It!.

Ephemeral selves, not selves, future selves, balding portly selves [Edu_RSS] 9:25:21 AM      Google It!.

Legal Predictions for 2007 [Edu_RSS] 9:23:42 AM      Google It!.

Pyrosequencing Inventor Building Mini Sequencer That Will Cost Fraction of 454's GS20. The Stanford Genome Technology Center at Stanford's Medical School is developing the low-cost miniaturized DNA sequencer that is the equivalent of a supercomputer.  The objective is to run 400 million sequencing reactions in parallel that can prod... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 9:20:42 AM      Google It!.

Tamil Nadu (India) Shutting the Door On Microsoft. aprasadh writes "The government of Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, has begun initiatives to convert all of their IT systems fully to OSS-based software. (The link is a copy of a news item that appeared recently in the Deccan Chronicle, an English-language daily.) The managing director of the IT procurement, consulting, and training agency for the Tamil Nadu government describes the reasons why he has chosen OSS, and also how he dealt with Microsoft executives." From the article: "Initially, 99 per cent of government systems have been running on Microsoft systems but then 2007 will be a watershed year for the state IT sector... We have already dispatched 6,500 Linux systems to village panchayats and another 6,100 Acer desktop systems with Suse Linux operating systems are on their way. We are procuring 20,000 desktop systems for schools, which will run only on Suse Linux... I require at least 500 trainers to train 30,000 state officials across Tamil Nadu in the next six months."[Slashdot] 9:17:36 AM      Google It!.

The Debate Over Advertising on Wikipedia. An anonymous reader writes "Some Wikipedians have objected to Virgin Unite's participation in the Wikimedia Foundation's fund drive, calling it adverising. But there's a strong case that Wikipedia should run advertising. The funds raised could support dozens of Firefox-scale free knowledge and free software projects, outspending all but the wealthiest foundations."[Slashdot] 9:15:37 AM      Google It!.

Patent Lawsuit Filed Over Bluetooth . SEATTLE -- Three major electronics companies have been sued by a foundation which claims that their use of Bluetooth wireless technology infringed on patented work at the University of Washington. By AP. [washingtonpost.com - Technology - Industry News, Policy, and Reviews] 9:11:33 AM      Google It!.