Value vs profit.

An insightful and well-articulated comment.

It costs the same to solve global warming as it does to solve it.

A research team at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, says it has studied how much it would cost for governments to stick to their worldwide global warming goal. They’ve concluded that for “a 70 per cent chance of keeping below 2 degrees Celsius, the investment will have to rise to ...

The challenge of staying positive

Here’s Stevie Wonder on the tremendous challenge of articulating a succinct and positive vision. Jump to 2m21. Epic fail. Waaaay too much to say and too little time to say it. Did you hear that bit at 2m46?! Neither did I. Anyway this morning someone said, “I don’t know how you stay so positive.” Here’s ...

The dark side of poetics.

“Eternal is the life of the warrior who finds beauty in their own wounds.” (apparently) Either that, or short but blissfully lacerated.

The Facts In The Case Of Dr. Andrew Wakefield

http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/148012.html

EU sort of forces companies to report on social and environmental impact

Something is better than nothing. Discuss. The EU is to force large companies to report on environmental and social impacts, but “opposition from some member states, particularly Germany, Poland and the UK, mean the requirements will not apply to the majority of large companies – according to estimates just one in seven large companies will ...

Life is too important for obvious news

How is the opinion of a massively biased party headline news? HS2 chair Sir David Higgins urges project speed-up  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26604074 Someone is up to something today (see previous post). NB if reading this in the future, this is as Crimea votes to join Russia, Malaysia’s jet is still missing in strange circumstances, flooding is still ...

MH370

I might as well get this down for the record since my blog is working again. 1. Russia is behind the missing flight, MH370. It’s there to distract people so that it can continue doing more domestic hardening without international headlines. If there were no plane it would be items one and two, whereas now ...

Somewhere, aliens are wincing

A tiny handful of peaceful happy aliens are watching on and wincing as yet another civilisation stumbles at the penultimate hurdle. Every time the same story: they either fail to adapt to a post-scarcity economic model, or they use up all of the nuclear fuel before they can use it to leave their solar system ...

Happy Winter!

The status update I never write

The reason I don’t socialise much and lose myself in audiobooks, reading, exercise, and drugs is because I find it hard to spend more than an hour in the company of others without wondering why we all maintain the collective illusion that everything is OK. We live in a world beset by problems which challenge ...

A postcard to Michael Gove.

Flexible Work Arrangements and 21st Century Worker’s Guilds

“Overall, we believe the guild concept can alleviate some of the challenges connected with the rise of non-traditional employment arrangements, and it may help create valuable new kinds of communities. It is not, however, a panacea for addressing the problems of the working poor.” http://ccs.mit.edu/21C/21CWP004.html

Market folly

Just to be clear, these markets which are 4 years late in realising the obvious are the same ones the incumbent powers trust to determine our lives. ” Groupon’s shares have lost 77% of their value since the firm was floated on the Nasdaq in November 2011, as investors fear its business model offering bulk ...

The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains

http://lifehacker.com/5965703/the-science-of-storytelling-why-telling-a-story-is-the-most-powerful-way-to-activate-our-brains

14 wonderful words with no English equivalent

http://theweek.com/article/index/238751/14-wonderful-words-with-no-english-equivalent

The four ages of sand

http://www.douglasadams.se/stuff/sand.html