Clipmarks | zbeechclip's clips

One Kind of Future Vision

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:07:27 GMT

clipped by: zbeechclip
clipper's remarks: How is our vision tempered by the sources of our income?

"In his latest book, international business futurist, James Canton takes readers on a dizzying ride through hundreds of technological, govern- mental, medical, environmental, and economic trends that will, in Canton’s view, reshape the world over the course of the next 20 years. Roughly half of the world popula- tion, some 3 billion people, is under the age of 25, and approximately a quarter of the world youth population subsists on less than a dollar a day. By 2025, two out of every three people on the planet will live in a water-stressed area, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, eastern Asia, and southeastern Asia. At the same time, technological innovation and globalization will result in more than a billion millionaires by 2025. Break- throughs in genomics and stem-cell therapies will extend the human life- span in the West beyond 150 years, creating new problems.

Clip Source: www.futureguru.com

Dr. Canton is CEO and Chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a think tank he founded in 1990.

Globalized Contamination

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:44:25 GMT

clipped by: zbeechclip
clipper's remarks: The article points out that these contaminants are traveling around the world through the atmosphere and coming in for a landing wherever and whenever they fall to Earth via rain or snow. Mountain areas are particularly susceptible because they "catch" the pollutants as they fly by in high altitude winds. We are all interconnected, and yet we have no real institutions that are functioning on these issues in a globally interconnected way. Yet nation states don't seem to be able to protect their inhabitants from this type of agression.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

BILLINGS, Mont. - Pesticides, heavy metals and other airborne contaminants are raining down on national parks across the West and Alaska, turning up at sometimes dangerously high levels in lakes, plants and fish.

The substances detected ranged from mercury produced by power plants and industrial chemicals such as PCBs to the banned insecticides dieldrin and DDT. Those can cause health problems in humans including nervous system damage, dampened immune system responses and lowered reproductive success.

Contaminants that accumulated in fish exceeded human consumption thresholds at the eight parks that researchers focussed on most: Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Mount Rainier, Olympic, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Gates of the Arctic and Denali national parks and Alaska's Noatak National Preserve.

Western Airborne Contaminants Assessment Project: http://www.nature.nps.gov/air/Studies/air_toxics/wacap.cfm

Tags: pollution, politics, legal, international law

Completing the Circle

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:29:38 GMT

clipped by: zbeechclip
clipper's remarks: While most engineers function in a masculine, straight line thinking mode - the reality (which corresponds to a feminine energy way of thinking) is that eventually, what goes around comes around. Were the shipbuilders asked to design their product with its end in mind? No. They were only tasked with the first piece of the puzzle, make something that floats and can move stuff from one location to another within reasonable risk tolerances. "Modern" accounting does not require them to include disposal of the product in their calculations! What would product design look like if disposal had to be calculated into the design?

Clip Source: 60minutes.yahoo.com

Ship Breakers: The Dirtiest Job

We all know how ships are born, but few of us know how they die, and hundreds of ships meet their deaths every year, from five-star ocean liners to grubby freighters. The ships are literally dumped with all their steel, their asbestos and their toxins on the beaches of poor countries like Bangladesh. It's dirty, backbreaking work. Join correspondent Bob Simon for a journey into the world of the ship breakers.

Should rich countries be allowed to send their trash to poor countries like Bangladesh?

no way, not even close to real Dirty jobs in 3rd world countries!! shipwrecking yard is very profitable business! Korea, Taiwan, China did it last thirty years and it has always been moving to new poorer countries. Lots of recycled materials from those ships are actually making way back to products we import these days. Dirty! is hardly to correct word for it! they are cleaning up our @#$% S!

Posted by yingster90640 on Wed, Feb 27, 2008 8:06 PM ET

Tags: sustainability, pollution, jobs, product design

How about a chlorophyll implant?

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:55:58 GMT

clipped by: zbeechclip
clipper's remarks: If we could create these - what would it look like to get into bio/organic implementation and be able to graft this onto skin? Imagine going out for a walk on a sunny day and "presto" you don't need to eat much for lunch because your skin has been producing nourishment for you!

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Synthetic molecules that mimic chlorophyll in plants may one day form the basis of highly efficient solar cells, say Australian researchers.

Dense arrays of chlorophyll molecules in leaves are responsible for converting light energy to electrical energy and then to chemical energy.

Crossley and team have used an array of the synthetic chlorophyll to build a prototype of an organic solar cell.

A leaf is about 30-40% efficient at converting light to electricity and this compares with just a 12% efficiency for conventional silicon-based solar cells.

"We have the basis of a biomimetic organic photovoltaic device or solar cell," says Crossley.

Tags: biotechnology, solar power

Maybe the "energy" solution isn't "Big"

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:39:13 GMT

clipped by: zbeechclip
clipper's remarks: What if we could energize our societies without having to depend on large, usually corporate, centrally run and controlled energy production?

Clip Source: www.greenpeace.org.uk

EfficienCity is a virtual town, but pioneering, real world communities around the UK are using similar systems. As a result, they're enjoying lower greenhouse gas emissions, a more secure energy supply, cheaper electricity and heating bills and a whole new attitude towards energy.

What is decentralised energy? Well, it's pretty much the opposite of our present, outrageously inefficient energy system, which was designed to meet the needs of a society that hadn't even heard of climate change. This centralised system is a shambles - in fact, it would be impossible to invent a less efficient way of generating energy.

It's a little bit like putting radiators on the outside of your house instead of inside it; we're burning one lot of fossil fuels for electricity, and another lot for heat, but waste heat is a by-product of electricity generation. Can't we just burn one lot of fuel to generate electricity, and capture the 'waste' heat at the same time?

We can.

Tags: environment, economy, energy

Airport Express Configuration

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:24:38 GMT

clipped by: zbeechclip
clipper's remarks: My Airport Express was blinking amber and I could not get it to rejoin my LAN. Here's what I discovered and it works like a charm. You need to make sure that you select WPA2 for both devices and encryption type "WPA2 Only". Then, if your "express" is showing up on the WDS page of the Airport Admin Utility - DELETE IT and then search for it again with the "+" sign. Then just follow the next window's instructions and remember to change the password from "public". Good luck!

Clip Source: docs.info.apple.com

If you choose to do a manual WDS configuration (as opposed to the automatic feature used in the steps above), be sure that all base stations have the same network name. Attempting to give base stations differentiated network names on a WDS network may render the network inoperable. Returning base stations to the network name of the main should return the network to operation.

Click the plus (+) button to scan for your remote base station.

In the sheet that appears, select the remote.

Click update, and pay attention to the messages that go by. Momentarily, you will be prompted to verify settings for the remote base station. In the new or hard reset scenario, the remote's password will be "public", so you should replace that with a more secure password. Because this is automatic configuration, you don't need to change anything else in this dialog.

Tags: mac, airport, express, wds

Diversity Elixir

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:15:32 GMT

clipped by: zbeechclip
clipper's remarks: Reframing the question toward: How can we be more productive together? is an excellent driver for a different kind of conversation around working with diverse teams. Now the question is, what is the toolset needed to tap that creativity and not get stuck in cross-personal communication breakdown?

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Rather than ponder moral questions like, “Why can’t we all get along?” Dr. Page asks practical ones like, “How can we all be more productive together?” The answer, he suggests, is in messy, creative organizations and environments with individuals from vastly different backgrounds and life experiences.

if we have people with diverse tools, they’ll get stuck in different places. One person can do their best, and then someone else can come in and improve on it. There’s a lot of empirical data to show that diverse cities are more productive, diverse boards of directors make better decisions, the most innovative companies are diverse.

People from different backgrounds have varying ways of looking at problems, what I call “tools.” The sum of these tools is far more powerful in organizations with diversity than in ones where everyone has gone to the same schools, been trained in the same mold and thinks in almost identical ways.