Made of Ideas

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, and one of Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers, "urges us to embrace a new world in which digital technology drives down the price of goods 'made of ideas'."

Bill Easterly also made the list, "for raising inconvenient truths about the foreign-aid business." Let's hope more people pay attention to HIS ideas now.

Echoing Easterly's ideas, is another thinker on the list, George Ayittey, who says "the presumption that Africans don't know what is good for them and that Americans or other foreigners know what is best for Africans is extremely offensive."

Media Matters

David Carr wrote in the New York Times the other day about "The Fall and Rise of Media":

Historically, young women and men who sought to thrive in publishing made their way to Manhattan. Once there, they were told, they would work in marginal jobs for indifferent bosses doing mundane tasks and then one day, if they did all of that without whimper or complaint, they would magically be granted access to a gilded community, the large heaving engine of books, magazines and newspapers.
...
For those of us who work in Manhattan media...a life of occasional excess and prerogative has been replaced by a drum beat of goodbye speeches with sheet cakes and cheap sparkling wine. It’s a wan reminder that all reigns are temporary, that the court of self-appointed media royalty was serving at the pleasure of an advertising economy that itself was built on inefficiency and excess. Google fixed that.
...
Those of us who covered media were told for years that the sky was falling, and nothing happened. And then it did. Great big chunks of the sky gave way and magazines tumbled — Gourmet!? — that seemed as if they were as solid as the skyline itself. But to those of us who were here back in September of 2001, we learned that even the edifice of Manhattan itself is subject to perforation and endless loss.

So what do we get instead? The future, which is not a bad deal if you ignore all the collateral gore. Young men and women are still coming here to remake the world, they just won’t be stopping by the human resources department of Condé Nast to begin their ascent.

And VC in NYC adds this:

I realize that the change is gut wrenching and many have lost jobs and careers in the process. I don't celebrate that. In fact, I find it upsetting. But I have also watched many reinvent themselves and come out in a better place too. Change is inevitable and we are better off embracing it than fighting it.

Love & Rockets and Half the Sky

The song is in your heart
Your heart is in the song
The song is of the earth
The song is of the sky

From a piece in today's New York Times on "how changing the lives of women and girls in the developing world can change everything:"

Bill Gates recalls once being invited to speak in Saudi Arabia and finding himself facing a segregated audience. Four-fifths of the listeners were men, on the left. The remaining one-fifth were women, all covered in black cloaks and veils, on the right. A partition separated the two groups. Toward the end, in the question-and-answer session, a member of the audience noted that Saudi Arabia aimed to be one of the Top 10 countries in the world in technology by 2010 and asked if that was realistic. “Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country,” Gates said, “you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10.” The small group on the right erupted in wild cheering.

James Lovelock in Space

There's a LOT more of the author in this interview than anyone interested in James Lovelock will likely want, but the father of the Gaia Theory is always fascinating.

Lovelock is first and foremost a scientist: "I love being a scientist. I don't like it when the Gaia movement is treated like a religion, as if scientists are seen as part of the problem rather than the solution.

"Some of the more recent green hysteria is plain wrong. I know what there is to be worried about and what not to. Flying is not a major problem, not compared with all the CO2 being given out all the time by us and our pets. Flying's only got this reputation because often greening mixes with the bad side of the left, which is to do with envy."

In his new book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, Lovelock discusses climate change and the environmental policies that makes politicians look good but do "nothing for the Earth." He also shares his fears and hopes for Gaia.

Hope for Humankind

Hope for Humankind

A new study from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies suggests that ecosystem recovery is possible.
 


Humankind is heavily exploiting ecosystems to meet rising demands for resources and environmental services. An inevitable consequence of this impact is that biotic and biophysical conditions of ecosystems become degraded from overuse or from accidents. Competing demands for finite space and finite ecosystem services means ultimately there will be limited if any recourse to abandon degraded areas and shift exploitation to non-degraded ones. Conservation efforts must therefore turn toward restoration of degraded environments in order to create the portfolio of future opportunities that balance environmental protection against providing environmental services for a burgeoning human population. This necessarily begs the questions: is there any hope that ecosystems can recover from the perturbations they face; and if so, how long will recovery take?



Authors Schmitz and Jones explored environmental case studies covering the last century and investigated the renewal and recovery of ecosystems after periods of "perturbation...including agriculture, deforestation, eutrophication, hurricane, cyclone, invasive species, logging, oil spill, power plant, and trawling."

While there is little to no objective criteria for establishing complete recovery (especially given limited baseline data), the study found that recovery time "typically was 20 years or less," noting that "most recovery from human disturbance was, however, slower than from natural causes."

While Jones and Schmitz are careful to point out their study is not intended to "give license to exploit ecosystems without regard to sustainability," they conclude that "recovery is possible and can be rapid for many ecosystems, giving much hope for humankind to transition to sustainable management of global ecosystems."

Neuromapped

ADHD is a neuromapping-based understanding of how creative, right-brained people's minds work.

I can't possibly recommend Freed and Shapiro's book 4 Weeks to an Organized Life with AD/HD enough. Yes, they offer a number of ideas for coping, but if you've made it this far, you've probably come up with your own methods. What's fantastic is how well they illustrate what's going on in your mind that's not going on in the minds of other people. You not only realize just why you're lucky, but how to maximize our potential.