News aggregator

Great piece on the bioneers blog today lamenting the fact that important issues get overlooked in favor of the latest news cycle.  They call these important issues “Olds,” in contrast to the “News” in the headlines each day.

And they point out that our Olds are not getting addressed very often in the News — issues like overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources and decreasing energy supply, among others.  They go on to point out that these are the issues that have led to the collapse of several previously great societies, like the Anazazi, May, Norse and more — a point they adopted from Jared Diamond’s book Collapse.

I can summarize it any better than they could:

His list and the list of things that aren’t in the News are disturbingly similar. The truly disturbing part is that while the civilizations Mr. Diamond described were peak civilizations rivaling any now in existence, they were all relatively contained in their own geographic region. Their collapse was a loss to humanity, but there were plenty of people around to rebuild and continue the species. Now we find a civilization that has become global and that is facing the same kinds of problems the led to the demise of all the great civilizations from the past. These are not new problems, but the situation for humanity is more tenuous. When this civilization collapses who will survive and where will they go?

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i hope all these feckers go to jail.

The yin of entrepreneurism is a steady dose of optimism.  Without it, we’d just take a 40-hour a week executive gig and slowly rot our brains.

This optimism is going to be in full force this week at the Angel Capital Summit.   As I wrote in my Colorado Biz column on angel investing this month,

Some businesses are responding [to the credit crisis] by getting small, reducing risk, laying off staff and hoarding cash. Others are anticipating a better future and ignoring today’s awful financial news in favor of the promise of tomorrow. Technophiles are promising productivity gains from new tools while “free-range” thinkers have gone completely off the reservation, and are designing new currency systems.

So it’s character-building time. A real entrepreneur has the courage and the drive to leap across the proverbial chasm and create a new fortune.  The shifts are happening to allow once-in-a-lifetime wealth creation as the old system dies and a new one is born.

Join us in Denver on Friday to learn how and where the money will flow, which businesses will thrive, and how to spot the previously unseen differentiating factors, a process we are calling evolutionary risk management.

It’s time to choose wheter you are going down with the economic Titanic or hop on a lifeboat and start rowing.

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Another report on my recent experiences in Thailand, a few ideas, and comments on the recent US Presidential election, nonviolent communication, social organizing.

      

this looks pretty rad

this looks like a great idea

need to study this in-depth.

Yesterday I gave a presentation on rethinking money at UMass Amherst for a course Julie Graham is teaching called Rethinking Economy.  Julie does some very interesting work on community economies.

a collection of well-mastered pop CDs that have good micro (and macro) dynamic content

I’ve been reflecting for a while on the connection between truly conservative beliefs and sustainability.

I certainly don’t mean neo-conservatism (oy gevalt), nor conservative politics, which is more about slowing the pace of change.  So the intellectual examination becomes a play on language, an examination on the nuance of conservation, a practical conservatism that has more to do with limiting waste and valuing the entirety of something, not just the immediate practical utility that defines grab-n-go consumerism.

I’m already weary of “green” sustainability.  I think we need to be very careful about not replacing petro-chemical-based consumerism with “green”consumerism.  In fact, I believe — as I began writing about Boulder’s Eco-Paradox this summer — that we’ve got to stop buying stuff, and not just because we’re out of money.  It’s time for a new prevailing ethic that considers the long term value of goods and services, not simply its price at the pump.

Sounds kind of conservative, really.  I think some of these values go back to my New England roots.  And although he was not a conservative in his day, much of Thoreau’s thought underpins a style of conservatism that seems to me to be related to the emerging sustainability movement.

At the same time, liberal thinking — accepting that we must find new ways to relate to our world — is an important approach if you accept the production-consumption meme of the past 50 years and the radical financial leverage (and related issues) of the past 20 as the baseline for comparison.  But it can also be argued that liberal thinking includes some intellectual slop and moral relativism that has helped midwife our current crisis.

As much as the innovative minds of our time will be transfixed on how to do things more effectively and efficiently while restoring natural resources, not just using them less quickly, and applying complex technology to things that might be solved by reducing, not adding, I think that there are some elements of conservatism that ought to be reconsidered.

Here’s an interesting piece at “CrunchyCon” (a curious conservative blog) talking about how food system though leader and darling of the sustainability movement, Michael Pollen, is really a “Burkean Conservative,” that lays out a position largely aligned with what I’m talking about.

And I’ve grown quite fond of regular discussions along these lines with Bill Shutkin, who in many ways transports a neo-Walden ideal with him from Cambridge to Boulder as the new Chair of Sustainable Development at University of Colorado.

So amidst all the half-finished metaphors, split infinitives and contradictory logic herein, this point is this: a new meme is forming, and for us to only look forward to a shiny bright green future without considering saving the conservative baby from the neo-con bathwater will perpetuate some of the mistakes we are still learning that we just made.

Today this is all still more of a supposition and inquiry than a strong position.  But in this radical transformation we’re all experiencing, I wanted to share the evolution of my own thought, and contribute somehow to the new synthesis; the chapter we are writing now.

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October 28-29, 2008

Relaxing on Koh Phangan

Much as I like Penang, I’m happy to be away from the bustle and noise of Georgetown for a while. I woke this morning to the sound of gentle rain hitting the roof of my seaside bungalow in Koh Phangan. With my Malaysian visa about to expire, I took it as an opportunity to visit Thailand again, choosing to return to the island (koh) that I visited last year. Koh Phangan in comparison to its better-known near neighbor, Koh Samui, is still relatively unspoiled. Although tourism is its economic base, it has not yet been overbuilt and overrun by upscale resorts and high rise condos. There is still a lot of open space and the typical accommodations consist of modest bungalows strung out along the various beaches.

A major attraction of Koh Phangan is the “full moon party” that attracts the twenty-something party crowd. I guess it was inevitable that ambitious entrepreneurs would augment that attraction by staging “half-moon” and “dark moon parties,” as well. Fortunately, that scene is easily avoided as it happens mainly at the south end of the island near Had Rin. The remainder of the island offers various levels of peace and quiet, nice beaches and clean water. Expenses are a bit higher here than in Penang but still affordable. I’m sure I could find ways to economize if I were to commit to a longer stay. It’s off season now so it’s a buyer’s market for lodgings. I dare say that ninety percent of the units are vacant right now.

The only sizeable village on the island is Thong Sala, located on the western side. That’s where the ferry docks are. It has all the usual conveniences – shops, restaurants, banks, cafes, and a nice night market where one can get a good cheap meal. I prefer to stay to the north and not too far away from Thong Sala at one of the many bungalow places that line the shore. The place I’m at is fairly new and clean and has screened windows, a rarity in these parts. It has no A/C, only a fan, but that’s quite adequate as it doesn’t get too hot here and there’s usually a breeze off the ocean.

The antipode to the party scene is the yoga/health spa scene. There is a sizeable cluster of people who come to the island for yoga workshops, personal growth, healing, and spiritual development. I first learned about Koh Phangan from my Italian friend, Michele, whom I met at Auroville last year. He had come here earlier that year to do yoga at the popular Agama Center which has a loose affiliation with the Ananda Yoga Resort where one can find various health oriented offerings like vegetarian food, yoga classes, sauna, massage, and a seven day colon cleanse program.

I came to the island last year prior to my visit to Bali. I liked it but was able to stay for only two weeks. Michele was not on the island at that time so I had to discover it on my own. This time, he is here so I have the advantage of being guided and introduced to people by someone who has spent a lot of time here.

The Bank Bailout Scam

What can you expect when a fox is appointed to manage the hen house? Our current Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, was formerly the CEO of Goldman Sachs, one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world. His appointment to that post was clearly intended to enable a continuation of the long trend of greater concentration of power and wealth in elite hands.

Recent moves by the U.S. Treasury make that ever more obvious. In an article in Saturday’s (Oct. 25) New York Times, Times economic columnist, Joe Nocera, reveals what he calls “the dirty little secret of the banking industry”–namely, that “it has no intention of using the [government bailout] money to make new loans.”

Nocera explains that the Paulson plan to hand over $250 billion [in money borrowed into existence by the government] to the biggest banks, in exchange for non-voting stock, was never really intended to get them to resume lending to businesses and consumers, as was stated. That was just window dressing. The real purpose of the bailout is to engineer a rapid consolidation of the banking industry by enabling at public expense a wave of takeovers of smaller financial firms by the most powerful privileged banks. Examples, so far:

JPMorgan’s recent government-backed acquisition of two large competitors, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual; the takeover of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, Wachovia by Wells Fargo and, National City by PNC.

There’s more to come, and by deciding which banks get handouts and which don’t the entire consolidation process is being orchestrated from the top.

Expatriate Living

An “expatriate” is one who lives outside of his/her homeland. That term should not be confused with “ex-patriot,” who is someone who once was patriotic but is no longer. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, of course, but let’s not go off on that tangent just now. The “expat” lifestyle suits me very well. Besides enabling me to stretch the purchasing power of my small pension, there are social, educational, cultural, and even spiritual benefits to living abroad. That’s especially true when one gets away from the areas that are dependent upon tourism and immerses oneself for extended periods of time in the daily routines of ordinary people, which is something I feel I’ve barely started to do. It has been said that “travel broadens on,” but I would venture to say that living abroad tends to make one less nationalistic, more humanistic, and more appreciative of the things that all people have in common.

Communicating

When I left the U.S., I suspended my Verizon cell phone account. Their rates for international service are quite unreasonable in comparison to what’s available in Asia. Mobile phone dealers are everywhere here and the competition is fierce, so some phones and most services can be had pretty cheaply. The common practice here is to buy your own phone then buy a SIM card from one of the many service providers, then buy minutes of call time. As I understand it, you pay only for outgoing calls, not incoming, but there is an expiration date on your outgoing call time the duration of which depends on how big a block of time you buy. In Malaysia ten Ringgit was good for ten days, thirty Ringgit for thirty days.

Cheap as it is in Malaysia, service in Thailand seems even cheaper. To avoid high roaming charges on my Malaysian service, I did as I was advised by other travelers and bought another SIM card when I got to Hat Yai, my first stop in Thailand. The SIM card is a tiny electronic chip that slips into a slot just beneath the phone’s battery. Anyone can install it in about ten seconds. People at my guest house directed me to a shop right next door where I paid 50 baht (about $1.50) for a SIM card. I then “topped-up” my card at the guest house with 100 baht worth of call time. At .80 baht per minute that gave me 125 minutes of domestic call time, good until December 2. At a total cost of less than 5 dollars that’s not bad. No wonder every teenage kid in Asia has a mobile phone. Oh, and I can call internationally, too, (including the U.S.) at somewhat higher but still cheap rates. If the FCC was really doing its job, we’d have similarly good, cheap, mobile service in the U.S.

In Asia, people tend to use SMS (short message system) or text messaging more than voice communication. My own usage has changed accordingly. Text messages provide a much more accurate way of communicating, can be saved in phone memory, and are very inexpensive. I have my phone set to automatically save both incoming and outgoing messages, then I occasionally delete those that I no longer need. I hardly ever make a voice call anymore.

Sicko

DVD’s of popular movies, which are surely pirated, are sold openly at very low prices in Malaysia, Thailand, India, China, and I’m sure, other parts of Asia. A couple weeks ago I picked up a few for 5 Ringgit (US$1.60) each. Among them was Michael Moore’s latest film, Sicko. It is in my opinion his best yet, and I urge everyone to see it. The film provides a clear description of the appalling state of the American “health care” system and compares it with systems in Canada, the UK, France and Cuba. If those countries are able to provide good, free health care for their people, The US should be able to do it too.

State of Fear

Browsing the small collection of books available at my resort, I came across Michael Crichton’s, State of Fear. Reportedly a bestseller, it looked to be the most interesting amongst the available titles (aside from the two copies of Tolstoy’s War and Peace). It did not at first register with my conscious mind, but I was reminded a few days later, when I recommended it to him, that Peter Etherden, my good friend and colleague in the UK, had urged me a few years ago to read this book. Coincidence? Following my recommendation to him, Peter came back with: “I have been trying to persuade colleagues to read State of Fear since it first came out in 2004…when I found to my surprise that all the references in the extensive endnotes checked out. Prior to reading it I had believed the environmentalists’ case without looking into the data and the premises behind their claims.”

In this book, Crichton tells a whale of a tale. It’s quite engaging fiction, but it’s also designed to inform, just, as, Peter notes, was much of Charles Dickens’s work. In this case, the bad guys are money grubbing con men who have control over a major environmental organization. The plot revolves around the good guys and gals who attempt to foil the heinous criminal plans of the con men to create major disasters that can be blamed on human-induced climate change. These are crimes that are intended to pump up the “state of fear,” which is the underlying theme of the book. One of Crichton’s main characters argues, rather convincingly, that the global warming theory is not well supported by the actual scientific evidence, which Crichton provides for the reader in abundance.

When Peter first began expressing his doubts a few years ago about the global warming theory I thought he had gone over to the dark side because by then everybody “knew” that global warming was an irrefutable fact. Now, with the widespread viewing of Al Gore’s polemical film, An Inconvenient Truth, that “fact” is even more firmly entrenched in the public mind. I personally was an early believer in the global warming effect of the buildup of greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide) and the prospect of abrupt climate change. That belief was based on my 1982 reading of John Hamaker’s book, The Survival of Civilization. Hamaker argued that this was a natural cycle with a period of about one hundred thousand years. He said it might be exacerbated by human activities, but was essentially quite independent of them. Hamaker’s evidence was paleontological, based on the physical examination of glacial ice cores and fossils.

His prediction was that the greenhouse effect would lead to more turbulent weather patterns in the temperate zones and eventually bring on another ice age. That seemingly paradoxical prediction was explained as follows:

More solar energy trapped in the atmosphere causes greater amounts of water to be evaporated from the oceans and lakes; this vapor causes greater cloud cover which migrates toward the poles covering more of the polar and temperate zones, blocking the sun’s energy and causing cooling in those regions. The result is greater wind shear – storms, tornados and hurricanes at the interface between the tropics and the temperate zones, and ultimately, global cooling and glaciation. And what drives this process of CO2 buildup in the first place? The depletion of minerals in the surface soils which cause plant growth to be less intense. And how does glaciation correct that? By bringing new minerals to the surface, which stimulates new plant growth, which takes more CO2 out of the atmosphere, which reverses the greenhouse effect, which causes the glaciers to recede. Hamaker’s prescription for ameliorating the effects of those changes – remineralize the soil by grinding up rocks (glacial till) and spreading the dust over fields and forests.

Well, it sort of made sense to me, though I did not dig very deeply into the subject. Subsequent studies by mainstream scientists, we are being told, confirm the CO2 buildup and the global warming phenomenon. The CO2 figures cited by Crichton confirm the buildup showing an increase from 316 parts per million in 1958 to 376 ppm in 2002. That’s an increase of 60 ppm or about 19 percent in 45 years. Crichton’s character minimizes the importance of that amount of change, but I find the argument less than compelling. Hamaker argued that the rate of CO2 increase is exponential (changing at an accelerating rate) not linear (changing at a constant rate), something that doesn’t show up in the limited data provided by Crichton. As for the global warming effect, Crichton argues against it by showing that, while some places have gotten warmer, others have actually gotten cooler. But if Hamaker’s thesis is correct, that is to be expected. It begs the question, is there a locational pattern to the places that have gotten cooler, and what are the geographical and weather variables that might explain that pattern?

Well, I don’t know, maybe we have global warming, maybe global cooling, maybe climate change, maybe not, but one thing seems clear – we’ve been making a mess of our planet with deforestation, urban sprawl, and pollution of many kinds that makes living in many places quite unpleasant or even downright dangerous. We ought to do something about that. But let’s get back to the main theme – fear. Is there a conspiracy to make us ever more fearful? Conspiracies abound, but anyone who tries to reveal the evidence of them is ridiculed and lumped into the category of paranoid nut cases. But there will always be wolves in sheep’s clothing and foxes getting into hen houses, who all the time try to tell us “There ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”

Crichton’s own “nutty professor” argues in the book that starting in 1989 there was a “major shift” in the media’s use of terms like crisis, catastrophe, plague, disaster, dire, unprecedented, and dreaded, and that it was all deliberate hype because “politicians need fears to control the population.” With the collapse of the “Communist menace,” a whole string of other threats have been trotted out as replacements. Whether it is real or imagined, climate change is one of them.

Power politics is no more than a big protection racket. As H. L. Mencken observed more than 70 years ago, “The whole art of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins - all of them imaginary.” The power elite will always pose as our saviors, offering new plans and programs that they say will protect us or save us. They tell us there is no alternative (TINA). It’s time we started cooperating to create alternatives that reflect our own values and ideals and promote the common good. Remember the words of President Franklin Roosevelt: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

      

If there were any doubt, a recent piece in the Financial Times leaked a report (free reg req’d) from the International Energy Agency which says that global oil production is already decreasing.

I wrote about this over at the Business Catapult blog.

Dylan said it best,

the first one now will later be last

the present now will late be past

the order is rapidly changing…

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*Published first in the Clear Creek Courant Oct. 29, 2008. www.clearcreekcourant.com

By Adrienne Anderson

It's day 46 of running for Marshall Ulrich. Day 46 and mile 2,400-something. Marshall's last-tracked location was logged via satellite at 10:40 p.m. Monday night somewhere near Canton, Ohio. He is running as this story unfolds. He is running with an injured foot. He is running 17 hours a day. He is running on fumes. He is running across America.

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So when I got my new MacBook Pro (late 2008 edition) with the fancy new trackpad that is an integrated mouse button, it had an incredibly annoying problem:  every 4th or 5th click, didn’t click!  So I’d be clicking on a window behind the current one, or clicking on an icon in the dock, and [...]

Today is not an ordinary hike for Georgetown resident Dave Ventimiglia. He is carrying three grocery bags full of Oreos, Snickers and Doritos up Square Top Mountain on Guanella Pass.
The mountaintops are sprinkled with snow from the previous weekend’s storms. In the distance, the expansive landscape is interrupted by tents and strangely out-of-place camera crews —
no, this is not an ordinary day. Open pdf file for full story.

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It was Oct. 8, 1907, when Elks Lodge No. 607 laid the cornerstone
for what would be one of the first lodges in Colorado to
have its own building. It was a time when that type of news
made the front page of the Denver newspaper: “Cornerstone to be
delivered to Idaho Springs.” It was a time when buildings were more
than just bricks.
“Any building can be built by human hands,” said Chaplain Nick
Demercurio at the Elks’ time-capsule-opening ceremony Oct. 6. “But a
great lodge like this can only be built by human hearts.”
Open pdf file for full story.

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smashing is so awesome

Have just read an excellent blog post on “dumb databases” and the issue of read vs. write consistency.  My own mesh & churn for open money comes out of the same realizations that in a distributed environment the way to handle many many issues is to put the responsibility on the reader to verify the validity of the data.