Gil Friend’s Blog
Global warming to devastate Europe first
[New Scientist]: European winters will disappear by 2080 and extreme weather will become more common unless global warming across the continent is slowed, warns a major new report from the European Environment Agency.... The changes are happening at such a pace that...
The Good News About Costly Oil
[Business Week]: Standard & Poor's chief economist David Wyss offers a contrarian view: 'Expect prices to slowly come down -- and if they don't, fear not. Even at $75 a barrel, we wouldn't see a recession in the U.S.' The long-term problem is that energy demand is...
Organic food companies will not buy organic apparel
[Sam Moore]: Over the last 5 years, several companies have been working to replace the non organic t-shirts used as advertising by organic food companies, with organic product, only to be told that the garments are "too expensive" verses traditional t-shirts or fleece...
More on ‘Linguistic Action’: Contributing to the Theory of Lean Construction
[Quantum Gardener]: This very interesting paper [196k PDF] applies the concepts of Linguistic Action to the problem of Project Management. It is a great example of the practical use the basic linguistic acts can be put to. From the paper: Lean Construction, inspired...
Long strange trips: Barlow and Reingold talk
[ReasonOnline]: John Perry Barlow 2.0; The Thomas Jefferson of cyberspace reinvents his body -- and his politics. Rancher, Grateful Dead lyricist, Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder and general roustabout weighs in on health, I've been systematically...
A genetic algorith for fighting spam
DNA technique protects against 'evil' emails [New Scientist]
Language and thought – [reciprocal?] cause and effect?
Language may shape human thought [New Scientist] Hunter-gatherers from the PirahÑ tribe, whose language only contains words for the numbers one and two, were unable to reliably tell the difference between four objects placed in a row and five in the same...
Waste equals food… sorta
Sewage waters a tenth of world's irrigated crops [New Scientist] Nothing wrong with that in principle, of course. Closing the farm to city to farm nutrient cycle makes good sense. (Recalls to me my masters thesis, back in the long ago, looking at the potential...
Where Have All the Big Ideas Gone?
[Common Dreams]: Some Bold Proposals - Perfect for Either Party - Could create Genuine Change Ted Halstead of the New America Foundation, writing in the LA Times, offers these: Universal coverage for universal responsibility. Tax consumption, not work. End all farm...