Johan Rockstrom: Let the environment guide our development

Johan Rockstrom: Let the environment guide our development

About this talk

Human growth has strained the Earth's resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine "planetary boundaries" that can guide us in protecting our planet's many overlapping ecosystems.



If Earth is a self-regulating system, it's clear that human activity is capable of disrupting it. Johan Rockstrom has led a team of scientists to define the nine Earth systems that need to be kept within bounds for Earth to keep itself in balance.
Why you should listen to him:
Johan Rockstrom is a leader of a new approach to sustainability: planetary boundaries. Working with a team of 29 leading scientists across disciplines, Rockstrom and the Stockholm Resilience Centre identified nine key Earth processes or systems -- and marked the upper limit beyond which each system could touch off a major system crash. Climate change is certainly in the mix -- but so are other human-made threats such as ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, chemical pollution.

Rockstrom teaches natural resource management at Stockholm University, and is the Executive Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Stockholm Resilience Centre. He's a leading voice on global water, studying strategies to build resilience in water-scarce regions of the world. Fokus magazine named him "Swede of the Year" in 2009 for his work on bridging the science of climate change to policy and society.
"Rockstrom has managed in an easy, yet always scientifically based way, to convey our dependence of the planet's resources, the risk of transgressing planetary boundaries and what changes are needed in order to allow humanity to continue to develop."
Anna Ritter, Fokus magazine

Real time monitoring of your energy consumption

Would you conserve energy if you could monitor your consumption by the hour? Lucid Design Group has developed new software that provides users with instant feedback on how much energy they're using. SmartPlanet visits the start-up to see their dashboard up close.

The Future of... Packaging

Packing material is no friend to the environment. Energy intensive to produce, it often ends up in landfill after a single use. SmartPlanet correspondent Sumi Das looks at some greener compostable options for protecting your packages.

Is the cure for cancer inside milk?

Bruce German, a professor at UC Davis is researching the properties of milk and how it functions when ingested by growing infants. In his lab, scientists disassemble milk from mothers around the world, probing every molecule, then study the exact structures to come up with an understanding of how milk fights disease and improves health.

Treating scoliosis in kids with magnets

Stopping curvature of the spine in kids usually requires a series of painful operations to implant rods and screws to adjust the spine. Even then, the results are often less than perfect. However, a medical team at UCSF has developed a technique using magnets that promises to do away with so many surgeries.

Fighting deadly parasitic infections with a UV flashlight

Using fluorescent dyes and a simple ultraviolet flashlight, Ellen Beaulieu, a medicinal chemist at SRI International has created a test to detect parasitic infections in human beings. The new test will make it easier to stop the spread of diseases, such as Chagas, Leshmaniasis and African Sleeping Sickness by providing a low cost, low technology diagnostic for medical personnel in developing countries.

Reinventing the clay building brick

CalStar Products CEO Tom Pounds is laying the foundation for 'green' building materials one brick at a time. His company has developed a new type of building brick that uses neither clay or cement during manufacturing. Instead they've figured out a more energy efficient process by using fly ash, a material that's left over after burning coal in the nation's big power plants.

LEED pioneer shows off his sustainable home

Founder of the U.S. Green Building Council, David Gottfried helped dream up rating system that eventually became LEED-otherwise known as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification system. SmartPlanet visits the visionary's LEED platinum house in Oakland, California for a tour of its sustainable features.

Got foam? In search of the perfect beer

Do you prefer beer with or without foam? Charlie Bamforth the professor of brewing sciences at UC Davis says people want foam, so he's applying scientific principles to produce the perfect beer. SmartPlanet visits his lab and looks at an instrument that measures the foam stability of beer.

The life of a designer: From Apple to surfboards to digital encyclopedias

From his early work, creating the eMate at Apple, to his latest project, developing a digital encyclopedia based on Wikipedia, Thomas Meyerhoffer has been at the forefront of innovative computer design. Smart Planet takes a closer look at his design philosophy and his current work, reinventing the design of surfboards.

NASA | Plant Productivity in a Warming World

The past decade is the warmest on record since instrumental measurements began in the 1880s. Previous research suggested that in the '80s and '90s, warmer global temperatures and higher levels of precipitation -- factors associated with climate change - were generally good for plant productivity. An updated analysis published this week in Science indicates that as temperatures have continued to rise, the benefits to plants are now overwhelmed by longer and more frequent droughts. High-resolution data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, indicate a net decrease in NPP from 2000-2009, as compared to the previous two decades.

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/...

Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f...

Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC

Or find us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

NASA | Katrina Retrospective: 5 Years After the Storm

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast. Five years later, NASA revisits the storm with a short video that shows Katrina as captured by satellites. Before and during the hurricane's landfall, NASA provided data gathered from a series of Earth observing satellites to help predict Katrina's path and intensity. In its aftermath, NASA satellites also helped identify areas hardest hit.

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010600/a010633/index.html

Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f...

Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC

Or find us on Twitter:http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

A new kind of socially-biased search engine: Blekko

A new kind of socially-biased search engine: Blekko

A new kind of socially-biased search engine: Blekko
In the world of Google and Bing, why do we need yet another search engine? Well, Blekko's founder, Rich Skrenta, shows me a ton of things we can do with Blekko that we can't do with Google, particularly around social search. I've been using it for the past week and find it very compelling.
blekko's management team is an experienced group that has founded multiple successful startups and held leadership positions at major tech companies including Google, Netscape, and AOL.




Michael Arrington interviews the Blekko founders

BlipSnips

August 30th, 2010 By Greg Keller

We were honored to have been interviewed by Robert “the Scobleizer” Scoble, one of the industry’s most respected and read tech journalists. He is a massive fan of video (e.g., his interviews are all conducted with his trusty Canon DSLR) and he is most notably the gut who ‘gets the scoop’ before company’s hit it big. Robert puts in the long hours traveling and reaching out to technology startups and is a fan of the entrepreneur. We like that.

And so, here is the BlipSnipped version of our 14min interview! Enjoy…

Omniar

Wisestamp: making email signatures more useful

Email signatures. You wouldn't think you could innovate on those, but Wisestamp found a way. They make your email signature "live" with hooks into your social networking tools. Check it out!

Wisestamp: making email signatures more useful

Here's a video of Steve unveiling the iPod for the first time:

The Remarkable Evolution Of The iPod:


http://www.businessinsider.com/the-evolution-of-the-ipod-2009-9#oct-23-2001-1000-songs-in-your-pocket-1

A new kind of socially-biased search engine:

A new kind of socially-biased search engine: Blekko In the world of Google and Bing, why do we need yet another search engine? Well, Blekko's founder, Rich Skrenta, shows me a ton of things we can do...

Tour of NASA's wind tunnels

Roving X-Ray Vans Coming to Your Neighborhood Soon!

Old School Steve Jobs On Changing The World

It looks like that Xerox IP isn’t the only thing Steve Jobs appropriated for Apple. Here he is in all his chubby 1997 glory, introducing the TBWA/Chiat Day produced “Think Different” campaign with an unattributed quote from poet Jack Kerouac, “People who think they are crazy enough to change the world, are the ones who actually do.”

What’s most jarring about this video is the chasm between what Jobs holds as Apple’s core values in 1997 and those of the patent hungry-monopoly that is the Apple of today. As one commenter pointed out:

“Think different… As long as we approve your application for download on the app store.”

Or, “Unless you’re Adobe.“

Connecting city governments and Web 2.0 talent.

Connecting city governments and Web 2.0 talent. Learn More »




Code for America was founded to help the brightest minds of the Web 2.0 generation transform city governments. Cities are under greater pressure than ever, struggling with budget cuts and outdated technology. What if, instead of cutting services or raising taxes, cities could leverage the power of the web to become more efficient, transparent, and participatory?

We believe there is a wealth of talent in the web industry eager to contribute to the rebuilding of America. Code for America gives them the means.

City governments, learn more.

Designers & developers, learn more.

http://twit.tv/specials

The crisis will deepen, we need real news

October 4, 2009

The crisis will deepen, we need real news

TRNN REPLAY: Paul Jay of The Real News speaks at the Von Krahl Academy, Estonia in November 2008




Transcript

Courtesy: vonkrahl.ee

Tallinn, Estonia
November 2008
TEXT ON SCREEN: "Free media" lecture by Paul Jay, The Real News Senior Editor, at the Von Krahl Academy
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: The Real News Network, the fundamental idea of it is to change the economics of journalism. What we believe is that for-profit journalism leads to compromised journalism. It may not always have been the case, but it certainly is now, and it's the worst on television. When you deal with the commercial pressures in what you would call "normal" times, having to sell ads and worry about ratings and all of this, it creates a gravitation in television news to have to do something that would simply attract audiences at the cheapest cost. These are normal times, and that leads to closing of foreign bureaus, it leads to news that's very superficial, and also news that's safe, stays on the official page, within the official narrative, because it's best for your commercial interest. That's the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is at times of crisis. At times of crisis, it's not a commercial imperative, at least not a narrow one, that kicks in; it's a political imperative. And you can see it in many countries, but you saw it in the most exaggerated way in the United States in the leadup to the Iraq war. When Colin Powell went to the United Nations, any good journalism would've been able to say, on the day Colin Powell told the world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, a good journalist would have been able to debunk that on that day. In fact, Scott Ritter, who was the American nominee to the United Nations inspection team in Iraq, he'd left the inspection team about 10 months earlier, but he spoke in Tokyo on the very day that Powell spoke to the United Nations, and Ritter said to a meeting of the Foreign Press Association of Japan that everything Powell had said was a lie, and it turned out Ritter was right. That speech of Ritters', that was covered by AP on video and in their text wire services. Every news organization in the world got Ritter's speech, and nobody used it, and everybody simply let Powell get away with what helped lead to an illegal war. So the idea of The Real News is, through the Internet, through thousands of people around the world contributing small amounts of money, we can create the financial base to create a news organization that can try to describe the world as it is. We think good journalism first starts with accepting that you can't know any absolute truth. And when we say "The Real News," we don't mean we know some absolute truth; what we mean is that there is a real world out there, and we all have direct experience with it, and we want to cut past all the propaganda and the spin that describes that world through news, because we're now entering a period of human history which is certainly one of the more dangerous crossroads we've ever been in, and perhaps as never before we need to know what the reality is. We're now entering a period of a general crisis of the world capitalist system. It's the big one, according to just about every economist you could talk to. We've been riding bubble to bubble to bubble the last 30, 40 years, and the big bubble is bursting. And you add to that the climate-change crisis. And then, out of this, the geopolitical tension that already existed is going to be exaggerated many, many times. Just start with a country like Pakistan. So we need to know the reality, because I think it's very clear that the traditional political process in virtually every country, with some exceptions, maybe, in Latin America, is paralyzed. No fundamental solutions are going to come from any of the traditional political parties or traditional political process. So our objective is uncompromising journalism. And what that means is to follow—we believe in facts. We believe we will never know all the facts. And we'll follow the facts as best we can wherever they lead. And we'll question assumptions. And to do that, you need independent economics.
TEXT ON SCREEN: What started The Real News?
JAY: I'll tell you how this came to pass, how I got here. I'm actually a filmmaker is what I really am. I'm known for—my last film was called Return to Kandahar, which I shot in Afghanistan. And about four or five years ago, the last thing on Earth I wanted to do was this. I'd been juggling many balls. I'd been making films and doing the debate show. And what I really wanted to do was make a fiction film. And I started writing a script called 2020, and it was about a documentary filmmaker in the year 2020 who stumbles on a political conspiracy. And I was coming to the end of doing the debate show after 10 years, and I wanted to focus just on making one thing, this movie. And I wrote most of the script, and I think it was pretty good. To write the script 2020, I had to imagine: what does the year 2020 look like? So I started trying to imagine 2020. Okay, so we're not going to be probably flying around in spaceships. But you start extending the current trends. Anyway, so I'm typing what all this is going to look—2020's going to look like, and it doesn't look good. The idea for this network, it started to percolate in my mind around that time. And the idea of having a platform where we could get the smartest people in the world to analyze what our reality is, and what are rational solutions to the problem facing us, and to create a medium that could have that kind of dialog with millions of people, which means television, whether it's on the Internet or TVs in the living room. So I was looking: well, what does 2020 look like if we have that kind of network, and if it's financed by ordinary people, and if it's independent, and if it has the guts and courage to stand up under political pressure? And guts and courage comes from economic independence. You know, we're not thinking that we have some super characteristics, those of us working on The Real News. We're ordinary people as you are. If you have economic independence, you can stand up under pressure. So I'm writing this script, and I'm saying, well, 2020 looks better with that kind of a network. And so then I came to this moment where I had to make a very big personal decision, which is: do I want to write about it, or do it? And I think we're all going to be facing this kind of moment right now that one can't understand theoretically what we're moving into, but life for most people, in Europe and North America at least, still kind of carries on sort of normally right now, and at some point you have to actually believe what you think is coming and start acting now, because if we wait, the longer we wait, the more difficult it's going to be to find the solutions. So at some point about four years ago, I just decided, okay (pardon the language), the shit is going to hit the fan. And it was also in the context—I was running this debate show on CBC. So the debate show, running this show, really opened my eyes about television news. I mean, I knew television news was crappy, but when we were doing the debate and had the ability to go into these questions day after day, then we could really see how bad TV news was. And there was a particular moment for me—or maybe two moments. One was 9/11. The morning of 9/11, we had been off for the summer, and we were planning to be back on the air on 9/17, and we had planned our show. And so we're sitting there in our offices getting ready, and the planes hit the buildings, and, you know, we watched in shock like everyone else. And then, two days later, President Bush went on television and called on the world to start a war on terror. And so I phoned CBC. I said, "We can't wait till the 17th to go on the air." And so they said, "Okay, you can go on on Friday," which I guess would have been—the 14th I think we went on. And the morning of the 14th, there were editorials in newspapers across North America and in much of the English-speaking world. I don't know what happened in the non-English speaking world. But the editorials went like this: if you try to connect the events of 9/11 to US foreign policy, if you talk about such a thing as root causes, and if you say this is anything other than a fight between good and evil, then you're blaming the victims and you're capitulating to terrorism. And there's a tremendous campaign to shut down the analysis of why 9/11 had taken place. So we had this weird relationship with CBC. We're an independent production. They didn't really have much control over what we were doing, which is partly why a couple of years later we were canceled. But we did the debate that night. We debated root causes, and we debated US foreign policy in the Middle East. We started a rational conversation about why 9/11 events had taken place. And then we continued our coverage through the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and we started—we were debating the real reasons, especially for the war in Iraq. And at the same time, American media was—I don't know. You must've seen it through CNN. I know CNN International's a little better than what the CNN that's seen in North America is. But the coverage of the leadup to the Iraq war was as bad as Pravda ever was. So this became a very big choice for me right around this point, which is: do I continue living life normally? Do I make my movie? And I was in a pretty good position 'cause I'd had a track record. My documentary films had always done very well. They'd been seen on BBCs and Artes in North America. I was one of the filmmakers that actually could raise money for films. And I had the TV show. So I had to decide: do I believe my own rhetoric or not? And so I decided life is short. And I guess the fundamental decision for me was that unless I find—if I'm not doing the thing I think is most meaningful, then I'm not happy. You know, when you reduce it to that, if I'm not doing the thing I think is the most significant with my life, then I find I feel empty inside.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Afghanistan
JAY: There's another moment, I guess, that was a very formative moment for me. I had this chance to go to Afghanistan in 2002 and make the film. And we're—you couldn't do it now, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated so badly. But we were able to go from Kabul to Kandahar, back to Kabul, up to Mazari Sharif. And on the road from Kabul to Kandahar we stopped at a roadside restaurant, and we met this young boy at the restaurant that—. We're sitting on the cushions and drinking tea. And so I asked how old he was, through the translator. And he just kind of smiled, sort of in an embarrassed way, and the translator told me he doesn't know 'cause he can't count. Schools in that whole part of Afghanistan had been closed for over 25 years. There was some drivers, truck drivers there, and one of them said, "Where are you from?" And I said, "Guess." And he said, "Germany." And he thought Germany because the Germans had started building a school near where we were. And I said, "No, I'm from Canada." I said, "Do you know where Canada is?" He said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Next to Germany." Well, he'd never seen an atlas; he's never seen a globe; he's never seen a map of the world. To put this in context, before the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and then the civil war that followed after the Americans essentially abandoned Afghanistan, the cities of Afghanistan were relatively sophisticated. The woman I made the film with who grew up in Kabul, when she was a teenager in Kabul in the early '80s, if you wore a burqa to school, you were laughed out of the school. They thought you were, like, some country kid that had shown up. She worked at a radio station in Kabul. She wore blue jeans and Western clothing. It was a relatively sophisticated city. In Kandahar before the Civil War and before the invasions, some of the most renowned people in Kandahar were the women poets. So it struck me what had happened in terms of the geopolitical machinations of Russia and the United States had destroyed this place. And the Americans had done something very specific in Afghanistan, which they've done in many countries, which is they ally themselves with the most backward rural forces. So in Afghanistan they gave these tribal leaders money, Stinger missiles, and guns, and these backward tribes imposed themselves on the cities. And the issue of, like, democracy and all this simply wasn't an issue. The issue was creating a situation in Afghanistan that was conducive to what US government of the day thought was in their interest. But for me personally, it was another thing that just struck me, that much of the world is heading into medievalism as far as we move into the digital age, and this medievalism is going to come and bite us over and over again. And, of course, moving into this new financial crisis, the situation's going to get even more exaggerated. So we can talk more about these kinds of things if you want, but the short of it is is that the political process is paralyzed in most of our countries. I can't say anything about the politics of Estonia. I don't know. But in most of the countries, political process is paralyzed, and the media creates this false narrative of our lives which reinforces this paralysis. So what we're trying to do is break this monopoly on daily news, and through creating this Internet and TV platform, contribute to breaking the political paralysis.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Iran
JAY: Like, if you take Iran, the American intelligence agencies about eight, nine months ago issued something called the NIE, the national intelligence estimate, where all the intelligence organizations together do a report on various questions. So they did a report on whether or not Iran has a nuclear weapons program. And the NIE came to the conclusion that there was not a weapons program, that Iran was not close to having enriched uranium at a point where they could have a weapons program, and if they ever really wanted a weapons program, which there was no evidence they did, that they're something close to seven to nine years away from being able to do it. That was a two-week story in the United States. It went away. And then both parties during the election campaign, both McCain and Obama, over and over and over again talked about what to do about the Iranian nuclear weapons program, even though their own intelligence agencies had said there isn't one. So we have been doing that story all along. And if you look at the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, they've said very clearly: Iran cannot have an enriched uranium program that could be weaponized unless they leave the Nonproliferation Agreement, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Agreement, that the inspection process, the safeguard process, is effective, and they couldn't operate outside of it unless they pull out. Nobody reported on ElBaradei, who's the leader of the IAEA. We reported it, but none of the American news agencies reported that statement of his. I don't know if it got reported here or not. So what we're trying to do is cut through the bull. And then the other thing we're trying to do—and this we haven't done enough of yet, and it's partly 'cause we're still raising money, we're financially just getting started—something I mentioned in the video, which is we want to do a lot of coverage about solutions. We think that as much as this period is dangerous, we don't want to do news that, after you watch it, you just want to blow your brains out. I know—actually, I got lectured really well once by a student at a university who said—I was going on about how the climate-change crisis and this and that, and, you know, by the end of what I had said, you would be pretty depressed. And so she, this young student, said to me, you know, if you just try to scare us, we might as well as well just go get high and get laid, because what's the point? It just seems too overwhelming. So we want to make solutions news. We think there are solutions, and we think all over the world there are models that we can learn from. There are rational solutions that can be found. And the vast majority of people just want to live a normal life, a rational life, and a healthy life. So we're going to make solutions news, and we're going to be scouring the earth for models of change.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Terrorism
JAY: First of all, there is terrorism. There is a real 9/11. Real planes flew into real buildings. People got killed. The tactic of terrorism usually is something born of desperation, but not always. The problem is kind of multifaceted, the way I see it. First of all, there's no such thing as terrorism as a thing in itself. There's very specific political forces that use terrorist tactics. So the terrorism of a Hezbollah or a Hamas in its fight with Israel is a very different thing. Or if you want to go the other ways, what people have called state terrorism, that Israel uses against the Palestinians, is a very different thing than what al-Qaeda did. There's very different political forces at work here. What the Bush administration did is they wanted to create this construct to replace the construct of the Cold War, because in the Cold War they had the Evil Empire, and the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union justified the US doing anything they wanted to around the world, including creating a whole infrastructure of corruption throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, regime after regime, which were thieves and had nothing to do with really fighting against any influence of the Soviet Union. They were fighting against their own people—the yearning to have their own independent nations, to have control of their own natural resources, and so on. So the Evil Empire justified the military-industrial complex and the assertion of US hegemony everywhere. With the fall of the Soviet Union, they lost their Evil Empire, so they needed another Evil Empire. And terrorism, as this abstraction, became the new Evil Empire. That doesn't mean there isn't real terrorism. It's complicated, but this is what I said earlier when I talked about this 9/11 thing. They don't want to talk about why al-Qaeda exists. They don't want to—like, there was a photograph in the video. I don't know if you saw it, but it's Roosevelt on a destroyer in 1945 meeting with King Ibn Saud from Saudi Arabia. And they make a deal with the Sauds, Roosevelt makes this deal, which is: we're going to have you control the oil of Saudi Arabia, you're going to make a deal with the Wahhabi tribe (Wahhabism is this extreme form Islamism), and we're going to use you. And Eisenhower actually said it quite explicitly: we're going to use the Saudi royal family to spread Islamic extremism throughout the Middle East in order to fight nationalism and socialism. So the roots of this al-Qaeda and the roots of bin Laden are found in this Saudi-US connection that goes back right to just after World War II. And then in Afghanistan, you know—you probably know the story—the Americans actually invited bin Laden to come to Afghanistan. They asked the Sauds to send someone to Afghanistan to become one of the figures of Islam. I mean, I'm no fan of bin Laden, and if they caught him tomorrow, I think that would be a good thing, personally. But if you read his message to the Americans, which he sent in 2004 on October 29, just before the November 4 election, he said that "You say we're fighting you because we hate freedom." He said, "Well, if that's true, why don't we attack Sweden?" It's a fight against US policy in the region. It may be a psychopathic fight, it may be a manipulative fight, but it's about US policy. But they don't want Americans to consider these things, because they want Americans to live in ignorance, and the media there facilitates it.
TEXT ON SCREEN: Obama
JAY: There's such enthusiasm for Obama, there's such hope in Obama, but people have to also know the truth about Obama. And right now, if you're alternative media or mainstream media, the narrative is "don't touch Obama". And while, I mean, from a personal point of view I think it's better that Obama's president than the last eight years of having a regime which is more or less run by psychopaths—and I don't say that as a joke. I think you could—you know, any clinical definition of what a psychopath is, I think you would find they meet that. But what Obama is—or let's put it this way: what Obama promises is not what Obama is. Well, we did this story and we'll do more. To understand Barack Obama, you have to go back to 2002 or 2003 and find out why did he oppose the Iraq War. The people that opposed the Iraq war fell into two camps in 2002, 2003. One camp said: there's no evidence of weapons of mass destruction; let the UN inspectors complete their work; it's illegal to invade a country unless they're a direct, immediate threat; international law matters, and it's in the interest of all peoples to defend international law; and so on. That's one camp. Another camp—and this particularly came from people like Brent Scowcroft and people who were around George Bush I's administration—they opposed the Iraq War because it would weaken the American empire, that it was a strategic blunder, that going into Iraq, the American army would get tied down. It would most importantly undo the balance of power in the region, that Saddam was a block to Iran, and if you take out Saddam, you open up the territory for Iranian expansion. So the reasons for this camp's opposition to the Iraq War had to do with how do you maintain the strength of the empire. Well, Barack Obama was part of that camp. His opposition to the war was based on that it would strategically weaken the United States, not because it would be an illegal war. And you go back and read his speeches from 2002, 2003, that's his argument. So Obama is—if you ask—you can read what he says about himself. I think Obama's sincere and he should be taken at his word. And most Americans, at least anyone who consider themselves sort of left of center, liberal left, they all read into Obama something he never said, I think because he used the language of fundamental change. But Obama traces his foreign policy back to Truman. Truman was the American president after World War II, and he's the one that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. He was the one that decided not to demilitarize after World War II. It was a big decision. Usually after wars, countries pull back on their army and their armed forces. Truman decided not only to keep the armed forces but even to expand them into what many people are now calling, in the United States, the creation of something called a "national security state", which was this convergence of the industrial-military complex with the security apparatus, creating a big, permanent infrastructure, so now something close, if you put all together the American budget, apparently is as much as half the US budget goes into this military-industrial complex now—government budget. Obama traces his foreign policy to Truman and Kennedy and Reagan. Kennedy even put even more money into militarization. And so Obama is—and if you look now, if you're following his recent cabinet appointments, they're completely conventional center, center-right Democratic Party cabinet appointments, from finance to State. Hillary Clinton looks like she's going to be Secretary of State. Just one bit of Hillary Clinton on foreign policy. About a year ago, there was an amendment, a resolution put forward in the Senate called the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, by Senator Kyl and Senator Lieberman, and this amendment was to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Senator Webb, one of the leading foreign-policy brains in the Democratic Party, fought this resolution, saying that if you declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard "terrorists", it's the same as calling the Iranian government "terrorist", and it's essentially a declaration of war, and it's handing Bush and Cheney another blank check for another war, not the least of which there was no evidence that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was terrorist. And I'm quoting leading Democratic Party people now like Senator Webb. Almost the entire leadership of the Democratic Party voted against this resolution; Hillary Clinton voted for it. Point is is that Obama is exactly what he says he is: he's extremely traditional, centrist American politician. He's run a brilliant campaign, probably one of the best-executed election campaigns in the modern age. He's got millions of people filled with hope and inspired and engaged in the political process, and he comes at a time when all the old thinking is not going to work, because of the financial crisis. How they're going to deal with that, we'll see. Obama was kind of picked by a group of political operatives about eight years ago, and their first big breakthrough was the 2004 Democratic Party Convention, where they got Obama to speak on a keynote speech, which was the beginning of this run to the presidency. His major funders are [George] Soros and Warren Buffett. It's a section of the elite, and they do want change: they want a more vibrant domestic economy; they want more investment in infrastructure; they're for a more rational capitalist system. Soros says something which I think was very good, which was interesting, I thought, because Soros helped finance a lot of the really neoliberal governments come to power in Eastern Europe who believed, many of them, in a real, total free market. And Soros said the other day on American television, he said that what he calls "free market fundamentalists," that they believe that a free market will always correct itself. And he says it's not true. Soros was saying that a free market will always go to extremes unless government comes in and corrects it. So the group around Obama want a more rational capitalism, which is—I mean, from a personal point of view, I think is better than an irrational capitalism. So, you know, it's good. But do they want fundamental change for ordinary people in the United States? And I would say no.
TEXT ON SCREEN: 9/11
JAY: And it brings up a whole question of whether the Obama administration is going to hold the Bush administration accountable for crimes. And the biggest crime will be the war in Iraq. The second biggest crime will be illegal spying on the American people. And the issue of holding a president accountable for crime, and the vice president, we've been reporting on. We've been reporting on the attempt to impeach the Bush administration. And many, many people, especially people involved in, you know, judicial rights, constitutional rights, believe this issue of the criminal prosecution of Bush goes to the core of defending the Constitution. But there's another thing, which is the Obama administration should look into the events of 9/11, and that should be one of the things they hold that administration accountable for. And the problem is, too many Democrats are implicated. And that's the problem with a lot of these issues. But we know for a fact that Condoleezza Rice went to the 9/11 Commission and said that she, after getting this memorandum—I don't know if everyone knows the story. Condoleezza Rice got a memorandum from the intelligence agencies which said bin Laden plans to attack America, and Rice reads this memorandum and did nothing. We know, because in front of the 9/11 Commission she more or less lied. She said that she tasked the FBI to tell 72 FBI bureaus about the memorandum and that they should be on the alert for terrorist activities. And the 9/11 Commission later actually phoned all 72 bureaus, and it turned out only 2 had even been notified at all—70 never heard about it. So we know for a fact that she got a memorandum saying bin Laden plans to attack America, and we know for a fact she did nothing about it. So that's a good place to start. So in terms of respecting the movement, we believe there are many, many unanswered questions, and we don't think the official version explains many questions. At the very least what 9/11 was was [inaudible] most criminal negligence in history. At the very least, there should be some accountability for this.
TEXT ON SCREEN: "They"
JAY: Well, there's different "theys". "They," in the most general, is the elite. "They" are those that own television stations, banks, and so on. But you can break up "they". There's not a monolithic "they". Amongst "they", they fight each other like crazy. So the elite that's more connected to the military-industrial complex has big divisions with the elite that has more interest in the domestic economy. And money siphoned off into the military is destroying the American economy. The debt is going through the roof. I think one of the fundamental reasons for the current economic crisis is because there's so little real purchasing power amongst ordinary Americans. People's wages may be at 1972 levels, but their standard of living didn't go down that much, because they borrowed. Everyone had credit cards. I don't know what it's like here, but it was crazy. Every day—at least once every two, three weeks, I get another credit card in the mail. They were just giving credit to everyone, because there was so much capital in so few hands, they didn't know what to do with it. So one of the things you can do with it is keep loaning it to people in some way or another. So this artificial economy was developing there. So people like [Rupert] Murdoch in that section of "they" have a different economic strategy than the "they" who make money out of more militarization. But "they" is the elite. George Will, who's a very well-known right-wing commentator on American television and in the newspapers—he's probably even the most or in the top three or five most famous right-wing commentators—he was on a show, The George Stephanopoulos Show, which is a new show on Sunday mornings. And he got angry once, 'cause I don't think he would have said what he said if he hadn't lost his temper. It was about McCain having seven houses. I don't know if you heard this during the campaign. People were giving McCain trouble for seven houses. And George was on the show, and somebody was talking about McCain's seven houses, and he says, "This is ridiculous. Who cares if he has seven houses? America has always been ruled by its aristocracy." He said, "Democracy in America's not about whether the elite is going to rule or not; it's about which section of the elite's going to rule." So that's "they".

Rosling’s World – a documentary about Hans Rosling

About the Documentary

A 55-minute documentary about Hans Rosling’s life & thoughts. Hans Rosling is a professor in international health. His presentations on global development evokes laughter, rejoice and reflections. He wants everyone to question their prejudices about the world – as he himself has needed to do. A documentary by Pär Fjällström, SVT.

(With subtitles in English)

Free statistics for democracy

From a talk by Hans Rosling at the Prince Mahidol Award conferance 2010. Produced by health metric network.

HansRosling

Gapminder Desktop is a new application which allows you to use Gapminder World without an Internet connection available. You can:

Use Gapminder World without the Internet.
Save a list of your own favorite graphs.
Update automatically to the latest version.

Huckabee - Sir Ken Robinson, Author of The Element (01-31-2009)

Sir Ken Robinson discusses his book on finding your passion. Mentions Paul McCartney & George Harrison

Sir Ken Robinson on Q TV

One of the foremost experts in creativity Sir Ken Robinson sat down in Studio Q to talk about his new book 'The Element'.

Sir Ken Robinson, Hammer Lectures

Watch the Q&A begining at 56'30"................................


Ken Robinson has written numerous books, most recently "The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything." This talk explores ways to connect peoples' natural aptitudes with their personal passions to achieve at their highest levels in education and business. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for his outstanding achievements in education and the arts.

Learn more about the Hammer Museum at UCLA and Hammer Lectures at www.hammer.ucla.edu.

Riz Khan - Ken Robinson - 3 March 09

The New Games People Play: How Game Mechanics Have Changed In The Age Of Social

The New Games People Play: How Game Mechanics Have Changed In The Age Of Social


by Alexia Tsotsis on Aug 1, 2010



The crux behind game mechanics is the feeling that you’ve accomplished something; “Whether you’re clicking on a plot of land or a musical note, that is an accomplishment” says Social Gaming Network’s Shervin Pishevar. Social gaming gives you the opportunity to share these goals with your social graph so that many people see them, as well as the chance to work on these accomplishments collaboratively.

At Friday’s Social Currency CrunchUp, leaders from the Social Gaming space including Pishevar, Disney Mobile SVP Bart Decrem, Stanford School of Business Professor Jennifer Acker and SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch sat down together in order to discuss gaming’s latest incarnation.


What elements are needed for addictive games?

Pavlovian mechanics are crucial. It’s important as a user to feel like the time that you spent came up with a result, social elements like being able to see how you did with other people, and being able to play with other people play into this. Integration with music also creates an emotional linkage, one thing responsible for Tapulous’ success was the functionality to apply multiple songs from artists like Justin Bieber to Lady Gaga.

Decrem elaborates, “There’s an actual science around how to engage and monetize users, the Farmville harvest mechanic, for example. On mobile, its ‘the x factor’ does the game have magic?” What we’re now seeing is what happens when the science of game mechanics in social games is combined with the quirkiness of what you see on the iPhone platform.

According to Seth Priebatsch, new employees at SCVNGR memorize a deck of 50 game dynamics like the progression dynamic, or earning points to make progress. They then can incorporate those elements into a game, “Humans love progress bars, if you see a progress bar, you want to complete it.”


How will games increasingly square with the real world?

Currently all the value creation happens mostly on Facebook, but that will soon change. The panelists all agreed that this recent integration of social and mobile is beginning of a new computing platform, mainly due to the capabilities introduced by the iOS. Killer apps on this new platform will need to incorporate both a social element and an entertainment element in order to survive.

According to Pishevar, SGN is “Working on things where you’re placing your phone in the real world and seeing 3D characters walking down the street, games where you have a garden in your actual physical yard that you’re actually tending to and it’s growing and you can see it on the iPhone.“

Decrem elaborates “There’s no difference to me between playing Tapulous on the iPhone and using my Starbucks card in the morning, wanting to get 15 stars so I can get a free coffee … “

Real life rewards for online behavior are a force to be reckoned with, and will increasingly become more prevalent as developers continue to experience success with them. Yelp for example, saw their usage skyrocket when they incorporated the Check-in element. “You’re checking in with a physical card instead of a mobile. We haven’t invented anything new.”

Says Priebatsch “We are bringing one very new thing to the game framework, the open graph API. Social traffics in connections, games traffic in influence. By applying that to the real world, we are building a platform that traffics in motivations and rewards.”



In what new ways can these game mechanics can be applied in the future?

“We’re really in the first or second inning on the mobile side,” says Pishevar, “The level of creativity and fun that’s coming is incredible.”

Should businesses rush to apply social mechanics? “It’s just natural evolution,” says DeCrem. Businesses developing a product should ask themselves, How about if you can connect with your friends? How about if we make it fun?

Piveshar’s one criticism is that the gaming industry could do so much more. “Because of the social graph many have cut corners of quality in order to monetize; We’ve got hypergrowth. Lots of millions have been created and its time to give something back.”

Acker brought up the idea of games that cure cancer as one way social gaming can actually benefit society, referring to HopeLab’sRe-Mission and Zamzee, “It doesn’t matter how many brochures you show a kid, he’s not going to want to [go to chemo]. But when you build an avatar called Roxy, have her shooting the cancer cells, and then when she feels feel weak you go get her a chemo tap … It’s incredibly powerful.”


Elements of gaming engender powerful emotions; Chemotherapy can become a positive thing and cancer becomes something you can beat. And that’s pretty formidable.

毀掉好創意的十句話

3分鐘，看清腦力激盪的陷阱。

Brainstorming 腦力激盪是辦公室內尋找創意時常常聽到的詞；你可知道它跟Office Lady一樣走進歷史了嗎？

思考權威愛德華．狄．波諾（Edward de Bono）提出了什麼新詞呢？

From NTT’s Showroom In Tokyo: Futuristic Remote Collaboration Apparatus “t-Room”

Here’s the fourth (and final) demo I witnessed at NTT‘s showroom “Note” [JP] in Tokyo: a futuristic apparatus for remote collaboration and education called “t-Room” [PDF]. While NTT’s Home ICT system, the telemedicine technology, and the digital signage system (now with one more video) were quite impressive, the t-Room certainly boasts the biggest wow factor.

The t-Room is essentially a room that consists of multiple video screens and that’s connected to other t-Rooms to share audio and video content remotely (over NTT’s next-generation network).

The showroom has two t-Rooms to demonstrate how two or more people can interact with each other over shared video screens. Users see themselves (plus real or virtual objects) and the persons in the other t-room(s) at life-size and in real-time (it’s also possible to program a time lag).

The technology can be used for entertainment, remote education and collaboration, video conferencing, and other applications. Needless to say, all sessions can be recorded for later reference.

The main difference between the t-Room and conventional video conferencing systems is that the t-room “overlaps” screens, removing (in a way) spatial barriers that separate users who are located far away from each other. And it’s much cooler, too (see the video below).

只要認真做，就會有影響

當圖畫刊登到國語日報之後，對小朋友的影響會是什麼？



若能重返童年，認真度過每一刻







創意絕對不是無中生有，而是醞釀於大量的閱讀後。





創意雖沒有標準答案，某種程度而言，會是模模糊糊的對。









如何解讀別人的心思Rebecca Saxe

Next-Generation Telemedicine Technology

LiBox

TechCrunch NOW July 23, 2010: The Mystery Of India's $35 Tablet

TechCrunch NOW July 23, 2010: The Mystery Of India's $35 Tablet

Devin Coldewey on India's $35 tablet and the hurdles to market.

Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur: An Investment Oasis In The Middle East

Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur: An Investment Oasis In The Middle East

Usama Fayyad on his new fund and the need for investment capital in the Middle East.



Yahoo’s Former Chief Data Officer On Their $800 Million Mistake (TCTV)
Posted: 25 Aug 2010 01:54 AM PDT
Dr. Usama Fayyad has worn several hats at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, Microsoft, his startups DigiMine and DMX, and of course, at Yahoo where he was their Chief Data Officer for four years.
It’s a rich resume with one unifying theme: data. Few people have spent as much time as Fayyad ruminating on this one subject. From finding volcanoes on Venus to creating better algorithms for ad targeting, Fayyad has made a career on crunching massive data sets and creating elegant algorithms to make sense of white noise. It’s somewhat ironic then, that for a man who lives in data, there is actually very little known about what makes Fayyad tick as an entrepreneur and how he shaped the companies he worked for.

In a rare video interview, SGN founder, Shervin Pishevar, recently spoke to Usama Fayyad in Jordan for TechCrunch TV. During this entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur fireside chat, Fayyad opens up about his obsession for data, how he sold his company to Yahoo (after the 6th offer), how Yahoo made an $800 million mistake (that may have triggered the giant’s ugly tumble) and how he almost became the CTO of Google.

While there are golden nuggets scattered throughout this interview, the discussion on Yahoo is particularly rich and focuses on the rocky period leading up to Microsoft’s now famous (and failed) takeover bid.

Fayyad describes a torn management team that was searching for direction and clear priorities. At one point (presumably mid-2007), Jerry Yang, then CEO, tried to reassemble a list of 7 priorities, ranked according to importance. One of the top debates was whether Yahoo should focus on becoming an ad network or an ad exchange. Fayyad, the chief data officer, thought it was a misplaced debate, that Yahoo should be paying more attention on the growing gulf between Google and Yahoo’s revenue per search (RPS).

At the time, Yahoo was making roughly “1/6 the money that a search on Google was making,” he says. Fayyad was ready to go to war, with roughly a dozen development projects lined up to “close the gap.” According to his calculations, through these initiatives, Yahoo would have pulled in $800 million in incremental revenues within the year.

Those “close the gap” plans were never fully executed, as management went a different direction—- still captivated by the prospect of gold at the end of the ad network/exchange rainbow. As Fayyad explains:

“I was on the camp that said ad exchange is the wrong thing for Yahoo to do, primarily for two reasons: because Yahoo is a big publisher itself so it’s a competitor so how could it run an exchange, can we expect Google to put its inventory on Yahoo, or Microsoft? The other one was that, exchanges as we all know, publishers will never put their premium inventory on exchanges they only put their crap inventory, so to me an outlet of crap inventory is not necessarily a very interesting thing.

But at the time, through a debate between the execs, it was decided that of the seven priorities, of the company, CTG or close the gap fell from #2, which is where i thought it should be (#1 being business up, site up meaning the site is up…) it fell to #7, while ad netowrks and exchange taking up… 2 and 3. So to me that bypassing of 800 million revenue of extra cash in the hands…like i said 20/20 hindsight… at the time people were very worried that we would lose the opportunity to take the leadeship in ad network and in ad exchange and they valued that much more than immediate cash. Now me being the pragmatic, startup scruffy guy, I wanted the cash in the bank, give me the cash and then later let me fight my war. I claim and this is my explanation, once we missed that 800 million in additional revenue, stock goes down, Mr. Ballmer shows up, bad offers, cycle, cycle, cycle, expectations of the street goes down, and it was a really bad spiral that the company got into.”

Assuming Fayyad’s $800 million estimate is correct (it’s not that outlandish when you consider he grew Yahoo’s behavioral targeting business from $20 million to $500 million in four years), that’s a fascinating “what if” scenario. There’s no doubt that Yahoo could have used that cash in hand while it chased the two birds in the bushes.

Interestingly, despite his deep disappointment with the reorganization, he stayed on a little longer after a talk with Yang. The soon to be ex-CEO convinced Fayyad that a new strategy was underway. And indeed, that summer Yahoo rolled out an exciting vision at a splashy corporate event. Yahoo even tapped Steve Jobs as the keynote speaker, to deliver his inspirational story about how he turned around Apple. Unfortunately, for Fayyad, expectations never quite lived up to reality, as he says in an almost plaintive tone: “We came up with a beautiful plan and there was no execution because the company had gone through so much turmoil.”

In total there are roughly 30 minutes of footage of Pishevar’s interview with Fayyad, which I’ve divided into five topics: the development of his startup, how he made the case for data at Yahoo, that $800 million-dollar mistake (see above), his brush with Google and finally his latest venture, Oasis 500, a startup accelerator for entrepreneurs in the Middle East. If you want to see parts one to five from end to end, check out the last clip.

Watch out: The globe trotting Pishevar, who has just wrapped up a tour of the Middle East and is preparing to meet new entrepreneurs in Asia, will be submitting future entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur videos to TechCrunch TV.

In part one of this series, Fayyad talks about how his early years at NASA influenced his ideas on data and how DigiMine came together.

Fayyad discusses how made data/analytics matter at Yahoo:

If Fayyad took a left turn, he could have been the CTO of Google. In this clip, he recalls a conversation with Sergey Brin, when Google was in its infancy. The blunt Fayyad told Brin that Google had no business plan.

In part five, Fayyad discusses his new investment fund Oasis 500, which will help budding entrepreneurs in the Middle East. Although entrepreneurs have decent access to VC money in this region, there is very little capital available for young companies.

Parts one through five:

The wider surveillance agenda and the total information awareness network

焦点访谈2010-08-08 紧急救援 — 甘肃舟曲发生特大泥石流灾害

extreme

goosekingpin's video

雲林縣四湖鄉--鵝

四湖鄉芳源畜牧場負責人吳祥斌推動鵝肉生產履歷，最近獲農委會認證，成為全國第一家通過鵝肉產銷履歷認證的畜牧場，消費者在超市購買芳源畜牧場鵝肉，可透過條碼機查詢其生產過程。

吳祥斌說，生產履歷制度是業者、消費者雙贏政策，業者若能落實生產履歷，可以有效控管飼養成本，政府監督業者，讓消費者吃得有保障。

芳源畜牧場推動生產履歷制度5、6年，成功以「Taiwan Goose」為名外銷日本，推廣優質鵝肉。吳祥斌指出，產品能打進日本市場，代表品質具有一定水準，因為產品檢驗項目達20多種，日方藥物殘留檢測很嚴格，飼養過程絕不能添加任何藥物。

他表示，推動生產履歷制度，要把生產過程中的每個環節都詳實記錄，對傳統生產者來說確實有些麻煩，但養成習慣後，生產過程透明化能開拓市場，對於產業幫助很大。

芳源畜牧場採用全台首創的光控水簾鵝舍，密閉式空間內，四周都是水牆，溫度超過32度就會自動啟動，讓室內溫度能低於室外5度左右，養鵝環境乾淨、舒適，可預防禽流感，還播放音樂，並餵食牧草。

吳祥斌飼養4萬多隻鵝，生產的鵝隻經過合法屠宰場屠宰後製成多項加工產品，透過網路訂購行銷。

他說，今年WHO年度健康食材評選中，鵝肉是所有肉類的第一名，只要選購通過生產履歷認證的產品，消費者就能吃得安心、健康。



http://www.goose.tw/article.php?id=30

LiveUpdatingSearch

Bill Gates e Buffet p8 THE RICHEST PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

內容簡介
社會新鮮人不可不看，商務人士更不可錯過，
成功的信念、財富的觀念、創新的理念，就在富豪面對面！
你會問世界上最富有的兩個人什麼問題？
「做過最糟的投資？」、「得到過最好的建言？」、「兩位當初是如何認識的？」、「皮夾裡有多少錢？」、「對未來十年的展望？」、「如何能改變世界？」…
在這場令人期待的座談中，世上最富有的富豪華倫巴菲特和比爾蓋茲巧妙的回答內布拉斯加大學林肯分校工商管理學院學生們的各種問題。這些未來商業界的菁英學子們無不把握這個難得的機會，積極地與兩位富豪互動溝通，分享道德倫理、經營管理、金錢觀、全球化和他們成功的訣。
股神與首富之間超越上千億美金的友誼
「波克夏哈薩威公司」董事長暨執行長巴菲特代表了傳統產業，他擅長投資，憑藉獨特的投資哲學、選股準則，縱橫股海數十年，賺得上百億美金的財富，贏得「股神」的美譽。而比爾蓋茲則代表新經濟，創辦世界上最大的軟體公司「微軟」，創造資訊科技時代的商業神話，蟬連全球首富寶座多年。
相差25歲的兩人，財富相加約有上千億美金，儘管身處兩個時代，作風廻異，從事的產業也大相徑庭，但從談話中可以感受股神與首富之間的友誼遠遠超越了金錢、名利，也超越了大眾對他們的想像。
比金錢更寶貴的資產
巴菲特與蓋茲都曾經像你我一樣沒沒無聞，但他們利用優勢，抓住機會，熱中冒險，不怕犯錯，並擁有高瞻遠矚的眼光和異常敏銳的市場嗅覺，於是他們成了股神，當了首富！現在這兩位有遠見的富豪將與你面對面，以坦率、幽默與精闢的見解分享他們在成功的路上，成名致富的關鍵、失敗受挫的經驗、商場叢林的黃金法則，這一切比金錢更寶貴的資產都將成為你人生發展上的重要指引。

BUFFETT AND GATES GO BACK TO SCHOOL

Garth Sundem Foolproof Equations for a Perfect Life

GS foolproof from Science on Vimeo.

Rotating Solar House Generates Five Times The Energy It Consumes

Rotating Solar House Generates Five Times The Energy It Consumes
27 Comments

234

by Matylda Czarnecka on Aug 20, 2010

What’s cooler than a rotating house? One whose solar panels produce five times the energy the house uses. That’s pretty incredible, considering that even zero-energy structures are rare.

German architect Rolf Disch built the home, called Heliotrope, to follow the sun throughout the day. The structure features triple panes of thermally insulated glass to strike a balance between letting light in and keeping the house cooler inside.

A giant 6.6-kilowatt-capacity rooftop solar panel called the Sun Sail slurps up the rays of energy, pumping them into the home and grid. Solar thermal collectors on balcony railings act as water heaters and radiators. On cloudy days, the house can be heated with wood chips and solar thermal heating.

The Sun Sail itself rotates separately from the house, adjusting itself to the best possible position at all times. This gives it a 30% to 40% advantage in energy production over traditional rooftop solar panels.

The house is green inside as well. Waste water goes through a purification system for reuse, and rain water collects in a rooftop basin. The toilet system turns human waste into compost.

Is it nice to live in? Disch must think so, as he resides in the prototype himself. Two other Heliotropes have been built to date, each costing about $2 million to build.

This video tours the house inside and out. Be warned: it’s in German and the time lapse at the beginning is set to some rocking techno music:

Gillmor Gang 08.13.10

The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Danny Sullivan, Andrew Keen, and John Taschek — on Google/Verizon and Oracle/Android. Recorded live Friday, August 13, 2010.

Lady Java Video Marks Exact Point Where Geek Culture Jumped The Shark

Lady Java, whose whiny drone is making me pretty nostalgic for the days when non-developers thought Java was a kind of coffee, is the creation of the supremely dorky folks over at JavaZone in Oslo, Norway. And while you might argue that the Java developer community is still small and tight knit, that thing is currently rounding out 100,000 views on the originally posted YouTube video and countless others on repost.

“I want to program like they do at Oracle …”

I personally blame Twitter for killing geek culture. You know who else has a combined love for coding and Lady Gaga? Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who yes, follows her on Twitter.You know how I know that? Yes, again Twitter.

“Some people prefer other languages, but that’s okay if you’re retarded I guess.”

In case you’re confused, I don’t mean “jumped the shark” and “killing” in the traditional “lose popularity” sense, just that nerd culture is now officially mass culture with whatever decline in quality that implies.

But it’s not entirely Twitter’s fault. Hollywood should at least share part of the blame for making nerd life look somewhat glamorous in the hype surrounding David Fincher’s The Social Network and whatever that newest Google movie is. And for letting Ashton Kutcher weigh in on tech news.

Okay maybe that one is Twitter’s fault.

Tracing the blame is hard, but tracing the tipping point is not (Hint: It’s this video).

However smarter people influencing the machinations of mainstream is not entirely a bad thing; Maybe U.S. teens will finally consider engineering cool, and at least nerds know that Lady Gaga is not her actual name.

SENIOR LAWYER SAYS "BEWARE OF COMING POLICE STATE"

SENIOR LAWYER SAYS "BEWARE OF COMING POLICE STATE"

Clayton Ruby defends Charlie Veitch, second person charged under Public Works Protection Act

I Love “Unconferences”

attended both BarCampOrlando and blogOrlando – I had the best time meeting, socializing and sharing ideas with other web elites.