A sober take on the State-of-the-Earth

~C4Chaos: What do you believe about the state of the environment?

"I believe that the state of the environment is not in peril. It's just is.

"The Earth had survived countless transitions in its billions of years of evolution. And it will continue to do so long after humanity (as a specie we are today) had perished. So in my view, it is *us* and our state of relation to the environment which could use more improvement if we want humanity to have an extended stay on this planet."

Read the rest on his site. Spot on, in my opinion.

Goose Networks: Stop going. Start Goosing.

Goose Networks: Stop going. Start Goosing.: "'High-tech hitch-hiking seems likely to catch on'"

I have heard (peak-oil educator) Richard Heinberg mention 'Community Supported Hitchhiking' before. (A play off of CSA: Community Supported Agriculture.) Ironically, the techno-fix is in, and it is Goose Networks. Microsoft Employees are Beta testing this, and it could catch on.

I've said it before: there certainly will be a cacophony of solutions offered in response to 'The Hydrocarbon Twins" (Climate Change and Peak Oil). Some will be innovative, some will be far-fetched. The jury is out on this one...

Bee Colony Collapse Disorder

Einstein once said that without honeybees, the human race would have four years to live. While I am not sure of how he arrived at that specific number, one thing is for certain: pollinators are a crucial element to the life cycle--even in industrial agriculture. There is no techno-fix for a disappearing honeybee population.

I have read two hypothesis for Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) so far: Cell Phones interference with bees' navigation systems, and GMO pollen contaminating the environment with plant produced pesticides that "bypass the protective barrier between species." The former has seen some counters (such that hive preditors do not take advantage of the abandoned hive, denoting some other factor), and the latter (GMOs) being addressed in the Sierra Club article that this post links to.

Let's hope this is one we didn't muck up.

How to punctuate a sentence - lifehack.org

because writing is important to communication; which is important to evolution, i offer you this link:

How to punctuate a sentence - lifehack.org

Dembot: HD UP

UPDATE: ooops! what's this doing here. should be here.

Andrew Baron of Rocketboom on the thirst for content:

Dembot: HD UP: "As expected, a pick-up in high quality online content is being desired with the release of the Apple-TV.

It used to be that we got calls all the time about new distribution platforms for our files and now they have for the most part turned to HD calls. Aggregators serving HD content are popping up left and right. RB is currently distributed on at least four companies that I know of.

Our primary distribution point, Move Digital, has seen a 10-fold increase over the last couple of weeks. We were serving around 400-500 files per day there and its just jumped up to 3000-4000 per day.

Related: David Pogue lifts up TiVo in context of it's i-boxing.

What's next with all this new hardware? Why set-top box software apps, of course."

GreenBiz News | The Convergence of Science, Technology, and Nature

"Students of economic and cultural history know that the current tight alignment between science, technology, and economic development is relatively recent. Western science accelerated past that of other cultures around perhaps 1600, whereas Western economies did not do so until the 19th century, indicating substantial lag time between scientific discovery and implementation in commercially viable technologies. That gap, however, has virtually disappeared. Not only are the lines between "basic" and "applied" research increasingly unclear and porous, but much scientific research has shifted from "curiosity driven" to "potential economic value" driven.

"These trends have long existed, but are accelerating dramatically; moreover, they are increasingly coupled to each other. They also coalesce in a particular modern zeitgeist as "natural" systems are converted to commodities and thus internalized to the human project; "nature" not just as cultural construct, but as subset of the human."

Incoming! KaosPilots!

[The cadre of change. cb]

Dane MBAs reinvent biz school in poorest Vancouver.

"Stepping into the lobby of the KaosPilots' impromptu headquarters inside the Stanley, however, is like walking into a different world. Chic-looking European MBA students are talking on cellphones or huddled in laptop scrums discussing how to help a big union or small business go green, get city hall more sustainable, or make disabled people less lonely.

If you're a KaosPilot, this is business school. Peter Froberg is one among 30 of them living and working from an SRO in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Like his counterparts, Froberg, a 25-year-old Dane, beat out some tough competition for a chance to join the Denmark-based program and come learn in Canada's poorest postal code. He's also shelling out considerable tuition fees because he wants to learn how to effect "a merger between the business world and the idealistic world," as he puts it.

In three years of fast-paced projects and lectures, students like Froberg plan to become a troupe of organizational contortionists, equally at home in corporate, non-profit and public spheres. It's the kind of ambidextrous business acumen students hope will help them climb the ladder, and that the program's creators hope will plug Europe's troubling brain drain."

GreenBiz News | Are Emissions Offsets A Carbon Con?

The Summarized Takeaway:

For many campaigners, offsetting is flawed in principle since it gives the impression that people in rich countries need not change their lifestyles to halt global warming. A serious objection concerns the effectiveness of the voluntary offsetting market, whose lack of regulation or standards makes it far from clear whether offsets are actually having the desired effect.

Getting it wrong appears to be all too easy when it comes to carbon offsetting. But as the offset market continues to mature, and its standards become more established, the quality of offsets available should increase. Yet, ultimately, the process of offsetting is not foolproof. Nor is it the answer to climate change, which can be more effectively tackled by companies and individuals first changing their behaviour.

Web Worker Daily: Focus on Multitasking

This article highlights some old news to those who troll the productivity blogs... multi-tasking is actually a less effective way to GTD (get things done). I am a big fan of checking email periodically rather than being on alert for immediate response (even if that response is only to stop what i am doing to read) to the next message.

Conscious Choice: Why We Close Doors

Conscious Choice: Why We Close Doors:

In his new book, researcher featured in What the Bleep… shows how to outsmart our brains for our own betterment"