More! Hidden costs of global warming

Dengue fever in Italy.

Mental Illness = No school for you!

The Chicago Tribune just ran a special report about increasing numbers of college students who are being forced out of school. Not because they have poor grades, not because they violated any school regulations, but rather because they have a mental illness -- such as bulimia, PTSD, or depression. I'm not an expert, but I have a strong opinion on this. More to come later.

Well, the whole "international penpal" thing just got easier. Look at TechCrunch.....

The OTHER Digital Divide

I'm sick of everyone talking about the digital divide between the haves and have nots as if as soon as you give kids laptops they stop starving/getting malaria/being killed on a grand scale. The real digital divide is between people. With everyone spending more and more time inside their own networks, where's the understanding going to come from? Where's the love? Just because we all watch the same YouTube videos or LOLCats doesn't mean that we're going to make the world a better place. What's the point of connectivity... if there's no connection. Someone should create an app that gets kids interested in having digital pen pals. BTW: Blogger may soon be using OpenID which I think is a great move. Finally, we will be free of the GOOG! (Except for our blog hosting, e-mail, search, RSS reader, internet connection....)

Lunchbreak Biomimicry Alert!

If you haven't noticed, there are some cool things happening with biomimicry lately. From flying squirrel parachutes to insectoid architecture, it looks like humans are learning to learn how to learn from the world around them.

Imperialism = Free Stuff

What's so bad about imperialism?

Every time there is a clash of cultures, war of conquest, and other instance of violance between two peoples seperated by national, religious, or (insert b.s. reason for bigotry here) differences, neither side is unchanged. It's no accident that English, French, and Spanish are spoken in every New World country. The legacy of the Spanish conquest of South American peoples can be seen from the street names in Argentina to the murals that adorn buildings all over my neighborhood in San Francisco, the Mission. Tobacco, a New World plant, is one of the most commonly abused drugs in China, thanks to the English.

As the Bush administration threatens to expand the War on Terror to new shores, we hear at The World You Know what to remind everyone what the true legacy of imperialism is: free stuff. If you don't believe me, just look at how many karate and tae kwon do schools there are in strip malls. If we had never fought Japan or "helped out" Korea, those would have never been possible. Also, Volkswagons.

So, in the intereste of the greater good, we decided to make a list of some of the things to be gained from needlessly and senselessly invading some of the soverign nations on G.W.'s hit list.

China - Leatherette Ipod and cellphone cases, little plastic toys

Myanmar - The country has like half a million monks. We could but them to work churning out those prayer flags that everyone seems to have. I don't care if they aren't Tibetan.

Venezuala - Oil, universal healthcare

Iran - Those bomb-ass sugar cubes with the little bit of saffron in them

Cuba - 90-year-old jazz musicians, sugar, baseball players

Syria - Henna. Lots and lots of Henna.

Hidden Costs and Global Warming

Yesterday I found an old book that I picked up in college, called “Problems of an Industrial Society.”

As you can imagine, it’s a fun read.

Written in the 60s and updated in 1981, the book recalls a kinder, happier time when humankind as a whole did not yet fully grasp how truly f*cked we were as far as the whole global warming/pollution thing.

It also highlighted a classification system for environmental problems (proposed by T. C. Sinclair). The system is as follows:

Class 1 in which the amenities and aesthetic qualities of life are violated. Class 2 in which there is injury or death to individuals from environmental contamination. Class 3 in which whole species are threatened with extinction from disturbances of ecological inter-relationships. Class 4 in which fundamental cycles in the biologic pyramid and its natural environment are distorted or destroyed to such a degree that life for whole series of living forms becomes impossible over wide areas and possibly over the globe as a whole.

This brings up an important point that is often overlooked in the debate about global warming, pollution, and the rhetoric surrounding environmental protection: It's not just about the polar bears. What we do to the environment has an impact on our whole quality of life. What's more, many of these changes are long-term to the extent which they're almost permanent ("irreversible in my lifetime" = "permanent" to me).

I’ve wanted for some time to talk about the “hidden costs of global warming and pollution,” so here it is:

THE HIDDEN COSTS OF GLOBAL WARMING AND POLLUTION (arranged in order of the Sinclair classification system)

Class 1

Ugliness – Think about it.. LA smog isn’t as lethal as the smoke in London from the 1950s, but it isn’t pretty. Glacier National Park may soon be sans-glaciers. I don’t even want to talk about the aesthetic qualities of having 58,000 gallons of fuel oil spilled only a couple of miles away from my house. Smell – Higher temperatures for longer period of time means more bacteria hanging around. More bacteria = more bad smells. All you have to do is walk down Mission Street between 16th and 19th to know get a whiff of what we’re all in for. I have smelled the future, and it is stinky.

Class 2 Crime – What, you don’t believe there’s a relationship between global warming and crime? There is. It may not be provable as a cause-and-effect relationship (yet), but just read this (and while you’re thinking about it, do you really think Iraq would be so violent if it had the ambient temperature of Hammerfest, Norway?). MRSA. Fast facts: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus kills more people each year than AIDS, emphysema, or homicide. West Nile Virus, which can lead to encephalitis and death, is expanding ever northward in the face of warmer temperatures. The threat of encephalitis – it's enough to make your head hurt.

Drought – Not a problem... unless you're in Georgia.

Class 3 Extinctions – There’s still time… for some.

Class 4 In the 1980 printing of Problems of an Industrial Society, the authors state that there have had been no instances of places where biological systems had been fundamentally disrupted. They mention that there was no data on how much pollution the ocean could sustain until this point was reached. Sadly, in some areas, the line has already been crossed. Only time will tell whether we’ll be able to reverse the damage to the environmental systems that we still depend on for our very existence. That was depressing. Next time, I’m going to write about something fun.

Good news for big business: Global Warming is Real!

Just in case all of you conservative-capitalist types missed it, the European Space Agency announced today that there is now a navigable Northwest Passage thanks to global warming. And you guys thought it wasn't real....

Having no internet is like living in Baghdad (without the bombs)

Apologies for not posting lately, but my apartment doesn't have an internet connection. While I'm not posting, you should go to Open Target and check out something that I find to be very interesting....

More Arctic Hijinks

More countries are trying to claim that the rapidly-warming arctic belongs to their continental shelf. Great. At the rate that tropical storms are forming this season, it may be choice beachfront property in a few years, as well.

Big Brother News

Let's face it, when someone pries into your personal life or tries shut you up, you don't like it. Maybe this is something particular to Western societies, what with the long tradition of tolerated dissent (as long as you don't pose an actual threat to the people in charge). Most people who consider the First Amendment to be a good idea are a little afraid of corporations and governments that spend too much time trying to shut down the public exchange of information (see this article about self-serving wikipedia manipulation). That's why there are so many people happy about Karl Rove retiring. In addition to being a political operative whose demagoguery was only outdone by the vice president himself, Karl Rove was an expert at manipulating public opinion and running roughshod over our unalienable rights. There's nothing wrong with PR, mind you. It simply has to be balanced by some kind of ethical code. "Win at all costs" is not an ethical code. Take the various Bush administration wiretapping scandals, for example. It's very hard to violate the basic precepts of constitutional law, lie about it, and be indignant when other countries who state openly that they don't care about privacy at all and actively want to control their population indicate they are going to do the same. I mean, c'mon, China even restricts what's allowed to come up on Google searches (which may end up hurting Google's popularity in the long run). Americans aren't even sure if they like undercover journalists. How did wiretapping get to be okay?

Hot Enough For Ya?

In the wake of the Russia's titanium flag stunt, more information about why the polar icecaps are melting has come to light. A new study says that coal buring in the U.S. earlier this century was a major cause of global warming. Not only because of the carbon release, but also because the increase particulate matter in the air causes climatic change that has also been attributed to affecting the Atlantic hurricane season (or warming in the polar regions). You'll remember debates earlier this summer about using coal to power the U.S. Capitol. Despite new information coming out almost daily about increased global warming, I expect that the naysayers and brown nosers will have their way for some time

Twenty thousand leagues under the melting polar dead zone

In a short-sighted land grab, a couple of Russian scientists planted a titanium flag under the melting polar ice caps. While I would normally laud such an obviously worthwhile endeavor, I find other ocean-based news stories to be more alarming. I mean, sure, a high-stakes legal battle over one of the bigger oil reserves in the world is news, but what about the formation of a huge dead zone off the coast of Oregon or killer squid invading Monterey Bay. While the former isn't yet traced back to global warming and the latter will only result in the disappearence of fish sticks (a long time coming, in my opinion), you can't deny any longer that there will be some serious consequences due to global warming. Even if you aren't in the firing line for the next round of Mother Nature's revenge, I still think it's good that some people are planning ahead.

Data Presentation

For those of you who haven't gotten on the Tufte bandwagon, or don't see why you should, here's why: As people who are presented with an ever-increasing amount of information every day, we have to find a way to make this data orderly and comparable. In my own two fields of study, psychology and public relations, this is painfully apparent. People far too often are experiencing information overload to the point where their ability to make decisions is impaired. This is big stuff. Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for his work on this subject. This is what Edward Tufte is all about. Below are two examples of his work. Data Analysis for Politics and Policy Power Point is Evil

Sparklines

If you don't know Edward Tufte by now, you should. Read about sparklines here so you can start making better use of your data.

Wii

Nintendo announced the "Wii Zapper" today, essentially a gun-type mount for the current Wii controls. They made this during akeynote address where they touted the fact that the video game market is making much greater inroads with older and female consumers.

They did this at a iPhone-style keynote launch, but with a twist - everyone at E3 gets to try out the Zapper on actual games.

This is a good move that will generate no small amount of press for Nintendo, but overall the games that they announced seemed to be mostly shooters and hack-and-slash games that the Wii isn't really considered the primary platform for. I mean, I'd love to see my girlfriend play Ghost Squad again, but how many other people are looking for that experience? This also sort of undermines the idea that this E3 was the "coming out party" for the video game industry. It is getting greater market penetration with older consumers, but it doesn't appear that Nintendo was going after the older demographics.

They also have invited a couple of blogger-types up to explain how some of their new controllers work.

Furthermore, they talked about the new "Wii Wheel" and online MarioKart play that will be upcoming.

Stay on message

How many times have you seen some blowhard on television go on a ill-advised tirade that blows in up in their face? Well, Michael Moore went on a real doozy of a rant on CNN. However, it looks like he came prepared. What I think made this so effective is that he was prepared for the usual SituationRoom "schtick": Bring a guest on, show them a clip that attacks them or their message in some way, and have Wolf Blitzer follow it up with a few prearranged questions. However, Moore's people briefed him very well on what he was going to be up against. It was probably made easier by the fact that the "attack" segment had aired several times earlier during the week. Kudos for taking the time to review that segment ahead of time.

USA 2. Mexico 1. You ?

Alright, a quick update today: soccer. The US MNT capped a great Gold Cup run with a 2-1 victory against Mexico, who played a great game. As a Chicago Fire fan, I could have seen a little more of Justin Mapp, but that's neither here nor there. Now, about this blog. This is not a soccer blog. If you want a blog about soccer, you can go here. The world you know is a blog about technology, the environment, and the future of human society. So in short: soccer good, humanity better.

the world you know

Hi, This is the world you know, my blog about technology, culture, the future, and anything else that matters. Join me for a discussion of where the world is going and what people are doing to get it there.