Australian artist, Helle Jorgensen, aka Gooseflesh makes this wonderful jewelry out of preloved tapestry wool. Check out her blog where she showcases some amazing wild sea creatures made out of discarded plastic bags. Watch out! I lost a couple of fun-filled hours wandering through her blog in awe and wonder—I’ve got to get one of these necklaces!! $25.00 for the nodule bracelet and $85.00 for the Tilda Coral Necklace at Gooseflesh Etsy Shop
I attended a very cool event today called Founder Factory at the World Cafe Live in Philadelphia.
Hosted by Philly Startup Leaders and the MAC Alliance, the Founder Factory was a sold-out, one-day conference where wisdom from Philadelphia-area business leaders was shared with other Phillypreneurs.
Highlights from the presentation included successful area entrepreneurs such as Lucinda Holt, Steve Goodman, and Josh Kopelman.
Steve Goodman, the legendary lawyer from Morgan Lewis, offered an historical perspective of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Philadelphia area since he arrived in 1969, much of which he helped foster. Goodman did for Philly what Fred Wilson did for New York in his keynote at Web 2.0 in September.
Josh Kopelman, founder of Half.com and First Round Capital, assayed the current financial situation and looked forward to mid-2010, when he feels the logjam in venture funding will have to be deployed and things may start flowing again. He also used the example of some great world monuments many of which, including the Eiffel Tower and Golden Gate Bridge, were being built during earlier recessions.
His conclusion? Great things happen in the face of adversity. Just what many of us who are starting things now needed to hear.
Serial entrepreneur Lucinda Duncalfe Holt offered 5 things every entrepreneur needs to think about, focusing especially on people, flexibility, and execution. (Lucinda and Josh also had the best slide decks I’ve seen in a long time. The key: pictures not a lot of text — oh, and it doesn’t hurt to have a liberal dose of Hugh Macleod cartoons.)
In addition to the stories shared by these and other entrepreneurs, they also offered feedback to three Philly-based startups in a “Fishbowl” setting, including search engine DuckDuckGo, DropCard, and GoBYO.com.
A fantastic event that, along with DreamIt Ventures, IgnitePhilly, and other recent events, demonstrates that there is something percolating in Philly.
Image via Wikipedia
Obama’s transition team is working to reassure the U.S. (and the world) that he will make good on his campaign promises to change the course of environmental policy. As covered here by Suzanne Goldenberg for The Guardian:
Barack Obama, who has spent much of the time since his election closeted with his advisers in Chicago, sent a strong signal yesterday that he plans a decisive break with George Bush on environmental policy once he moves into the White House.
Obama has said repeatedly that the global economic crisis remains his top priority, but John Podesta, part of the troika overseeing the transition, said on Tuesday that the environment was at the top of the Democrats’ agenda. “I anticipate him moving very aggressively and very rapidly on the whole question of transforming the energy platform in the United States from high carbon energy to low carbon energy,” he said.
The recent release of the International Energy Agency’s sobering annual report on the world’s energy gives a clue to why the reassurance is necessary and why change cannot come soon enough: “Without a change in policy, the world is on a path for a rise in global temperature of up to 6°C.” (We’ve often discussed why that would be disastrous as well as the ways to truly start to solve it.)
President-elect Obama will no doubt have to reiterate his desire to act quickly on climate change many times before Jan. 20. And we hope that during his first speech as president he will deliver a strong message about how we can tackle global warming, and Inaugurate Change.
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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 4:56 PM)
By Megan Hosking
“That was by far the most enjoyable political debate I have ever seen,” chirped MC Mikey Havoc. This unlikely statement was uttered as he closed the Young Leaders Debate, hosted in the New Zealand capital just eight days before the general election.
The speakers and the audience were mostly in their early 20s (I scraped in at 33). The theme, “what do we agree on?” set the scene for concerned young activists to ask their generation’s politicians to rise above the slagging and derogatory quips that characterise so much of our politics.
The Progressive Party candidate Paula Gillon infused her opening address with a diatribe which earned her the title “The Fire Headed Monster” from the Young National Party leader Alex Mitchell for the remainder of the debate.
I felt Mitchell put his finger on something with that comment: it sounded inappropriate for these young, fresh faced and idealistic young people to ‘politic’.
‘Politics’ as a notion has never sat well with me as means to govern a nation. It intimates shrewdness, tact and cunning – as if the best results for a society’s future are necessarily won with battlefield tactics. So often self serving and insincere, ‘politicking’ seems to directly contrast the lofty role that politics and governance once held in my mind.
With our changing aspirations, and the complex challenges that lie ahead, we are going to have to seek new rules and modes for governance.
The Kiwi Party’s platform is to hold binding referendums for every controversial topic that this country faces. It sounds democratic and progressive to wrestle the decision-making process away from the zoo antics of our Parliament, and put it in the hands of every man and woman.
But deep down, I am nervous to trust my countrymen to vote with the best interest of this planet and humanity’s long-term well being at heart. As individuals, many are too focused on the near future to fully grasp the need for of a 100- and 1000-year vision for what makes a world worth living in and handing on.
In business and on our governance boards, we recruit people specifically for leadership roles. It takes a whole host of different skills and extraordinary performance to be the nation’s best CEO or Chair. Could we ask the same of our politicians? You know you have a good CEO or Chair when they demonstrate strategic diligence – with a good balance of risk-adversity and imagination, an eye for opportunity and demonstration of clear servant-leadership. These seem to be rare qualities in our politicians.
My question to the panel: “Are you satisfied that this is the best way to govern a nation and get long-term sustainable prosperity?” In sum, would they consider that there are other political systems being utilised in other places in the world? It alarmed me that the candidates saw political parties as a ‘necessary evil’ and entertained no imagination about what else might be working better out there.
Damian Light from United Future had an articulate, bright and open presence. He uncovered another issue that we could all agree needed attention: New Zealand’s status as a colony of the Queen. Yes indeed. It seems strange to me that the idea of fundamentally changing our political system would be so far from the thoughts of the public. This upgrade needs to align with the shifts that are happening internationally – like the World Future Council. We need to have governance that takes its roots in a key set of values (The Treaty of Waitangi, perhaps) and that is able to link with a global vision for prosperity.
As the Green party slogan says – some things are bigger than politics. After the dust from our elections settles, let’s not just put this all back on the shelf until the next election. Let’s continue to ask: “what sort of politics will get us where we need to go – a sustainable, fair prosperous future for all?”
We may well find that Politics doesn’t have a place in a sustainable future. A crazy idea, but I just thought I’d put it out there.
See the Young Leaders on YouTube.
Megan Hosking is the owner and director of communication design company Alto. She has helped develop Intersect – a lively network focusing on sustainability and cultural transformation and she is also a member of the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra.
Photo credit: Megan Hosking
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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Columns at 4:39 PM)
Image credit: Wikipedia
Ramping up policies that encourage the investment in and distribution of renewable energy could help energy sources like wind, solar and hydro overtake coal more quickly.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) released their annual World Energy Outlook today, which states that by 2015 renewable energy resources will become the second largest source of electricity, moving ahead of gas but still sitting behind coal.
The IEA’s World Energy Outlook estimates, however, were made from a “pessimistic” perspective, assuming that no global action will be taken to stem climate change.
Without a climate deal, however, things look pretty grim. According to the Outlook, “without a change in policy, the world is on a path for a rise in global temperature of up to 6 degrees C.”
So what if the world’s leaders were to strike a climate deal? According to the Outlook, covered in this article from Reuters, if action is taken soon to “penalize greenhouse gases and support low-carbon renewables,” energy sources such as wind, solar and hydro power will catch up even more rapidly:
“Renewables-based electricity generation is expected to grow substantially over the coming decades, benefiting from high fossil-fuel prices, declining investment costs and government support.”
The IEA crunched the numbers and ran two scenarios limiting global warming to 2 or 3 degrees Celsius:
Under the more ambitious, 2 degrees outcome the IEA said renewable sources of energy would account for 40 percent of global electricity generation by 2030, compared to 23 percent in the reference case.
Examples of policy steps that could be taken include raising the penalties on carbon dioxide emissions and creating incentives for a “technology revolution” for electric vehicles and on pollution reduction devices like carbon scrubbers on coal plants.
Some factors that could help renewable energy grow include an increase in funding for R&D, an increase in investment for electricity networks, and regulations that encourage the distribution of electricity from renewable resources.
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(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Energy at 3:41 PM)
Scientists may have overcome a major hurdle to calculating how much carbon dioxide is absorbed and released by plants, vital information for determining the amount of carbon that can be safely emitted by human activities. The problem is that ecosystems simultaneously take up and release CO2. The key finding is that the compound carbonyl sulfide, which plants consume in tandem with CO2, can be used to quantify gas flow into the plants during photosynthesis.
Evolution isn’t just for living organisms. Scientists have found that the mineral kingdom co-evolved with life, and that up to two thirds of the more than 4,000 known types of minerals on Earth can be directly or indirectly linked to biological activity. The finding could aid scientists in the search for life on other planets.
Just after Americans have headed to the polls to elect their next president, a new report in Current Biology reveals how one species of fish picks its leaders: Most of the time they reach a consensus to go for the more attractive of two candidates.
Many of us, I’m sure, harbor romantic fantasies of taking the land, donning a pair of old jeans and becoming a farmer — an actual productive link in the local, sustainable, community-rooted, equitable food future that glimmers like a mirage off in the distance, one nation under Michael Pollan.
The reality, though, is that the life of a modern American farmer is a tough slog. Agriculture in the U.S. isn’t at all friendly to the go-it-alone farmer: land is prohibitively expensive and the initial capital investment required can be prohibitive. If software startups in the United States faced the same obstacles as startup farmers do today, there’s little chance we’d have seen the rise of Microsoft or Amazon or Google.
Even so, there is today a burgeoning Young Farmers Movement in America. A new project, titled Serve Your Country Food, aims to map that growing trend. Started by young agricultural activist Severine von Tscharner Fleming, the effort wants to make visible where young farmers are tilling soil and raising animals from coast to coast across the United States.
USDA census figures show that American farmers are, on average, getting older. Farmers between the ages of 25 and 34 make up just 2.8% of American farmers, and farmers under 25 account for just half a percent.
As the farming population ages without an influx of new blood, we lose the opportunity to pass down the hard-won knowledge of experienced growers to ones just starting out. Communities have a tough time making plans for a sustainable agricultural future if they don’t know they’ll have young bodies to meet the considerable physical demands of farming.
And fewer young farmers means the hardy souls who do attempt to stick it out face a lonely future. They don’t have the support network that can help forge through the difficult times they’ll likely face. "Serve Your Country Food" asks young farmers — from those who have managed to purchase their own land to “journeymen” who travel from plot to plot — to stand up and be seen and counted.
The goal is to help reorient modern agriculture back to the small, ecologically-minded farmer, and to do so by collecting enough data on the young farmers movement to produce useful research. If all goes well, this same system will be used to augment the softer side of farming: "dances, parties, and festivals for young farmers in the countryside." And while that might not be foosball in the break room at the Googleplex, it still sounds like a mighty good time.
Nancy Scola is a Brooklyn-based writer, blogger, and editor who focuses on the place where technology meets culture. She’s worked in the past on Capitol Hill, in presidential politics, and in progressive radio.
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(Posted by Nancy Scola in Columns at 9:54 AM)
Japanese TV warning of tsunamis, Sept. 2004.
Image credit: Wikipedia.
Early warning system aims to avoid a repeat of the devastating disaster that hit the country in 2004, killing 168,000 people
by Ian MacKinnon
On Tuesday, Indonesia launched a sophisticated new tsunami warning system designed to give coastal residents enough time to flee or seek shelter from an impending tidal wave.
The national system aims to protect the inhabitants of the archipelago’s vast coast and prevent a deadly repeat of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 168,000 people in Indonesia alone.
But even as President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono inaugurated the system in Jakarta, officials conceded it would be several years yet before it is fully complete and the whole coastline protected.
In particular, deep-sea warning buoys have yet to be installed around Bali, Flores and northern Sumatra — which includes Aceh where most lost their lives in the tsunami — with the result that there could be delays in predicting a tsunami and issuing warnings.
However, much of the complex system of sensors, satellite communications and computer modelling is already in place ahead of the 2010 completion target and was able to predict the tidal wave that struck the Sumatran coast last September.
The Boxing Day 2004 tsunami was the result of an earthquake below the seabed measuring 9.3 on the Richter scale. The surge it triggered struck the Banda Aceh coast within 15 minutes, but in the hours that followed the devastating impact left 240,000 dead around the region.
Yet Indonesia, with its 17,000 islands, remains especially vulnerable because it sits on the meeting point of three of the earth’s tectonic plates, leaving 60% of the coastline at risk from tsunamis.
The new high-speed warning system connects a series of seabed sensors that detect the earthquakes that may set of a tsunami, information that is relayed to buoys on the surface.
Deep-sea pressure gauges monitor any sudden variations indicating that a tsunami is in motion, data that is enhanced by the notion of the surface buoys that carry global positioning systems.
All the information is relayed by satellite to the tsunami early warning centre in Jakarta, which is connected to 11 regional hubs across Indonesia.
The real advance, though, is that the snippets of information are fed to a computer which evaluates it in conjunction with pre-programmed scenarios that will, within minutes, give a simulation of arrival times and wave heights, enabling fast and accurate warnings to be issued in the event of an emergency.
But even a perfectly working system, which was jointly developed with Germany, can only reduce and not completely eradicate the dangers posed by such a natural catastrophe.
“We are starting the world’s most advanced tsunami early warning system able to issue the quickest possible warnings with a high degree of reliability,” said Thomas Rachel, Germany’s parliamentary state secretary, in Jakarta.
This article originally appeared on The Guardian. Ian MacKinnon is their south-east Asia correspondent.
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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Emerging Technologies at 5:22 PM)
