IFTF's Future Now

links for 2006-08-31

• Ecosystem Valuation
  "This Website describes how economists value the beneficial ways that ecosystems affect people.... It is designed for non-economists who need answers to questions about the benefits of ecosystem conservation, preservation or restoration."
  (tags: environment environmental_services business economics)
• Google Earth Blog: Jane Goodall Gombe Chimpanzee GeoBlog V2.0
  "[T]he Gombe Chimpanzee Blog has come out with a major update for Google Earth users."
  (tags: visualization geoweb blogging environment)
• Organic food production in the slums of Mexico City

Ten Year Forecast 2006 Keynote

Here is a video from our Ten Year Forecast this past Spring of David Pescovitz' keynote, "Voicing the Future: Artists Speak." 

Download TYF_06_Pesco_Keynote.mov  (runs with Quicktime)

links for 2006-08-30

• The Katoomba Group's Ecosystem Marketplace
  "The Ecosystem Marketplace seeks to become the world's leading source of information on markets and payment schemes for ecosystem services; services such as water quality, carbon sequestration and biodiversity."
  (tags: biomimicry biology economics environment)
• IIED
  "IIED aims to provide expertise and leadership in researching and achieving sustainable development at local, national, regional and global levels."
  (tags: environment sustainability)
• Markets for Biodiversity Services: Potential Role and Challenges
  "The article lays out examples of new markets and payment systems... [to] realize the economic value created by good stewardship of biodiversity... that are showing temendous potential to move biodiversity conservation objectives to greater scale and sign
  (tags: environment biodiversity business markets)
• Valuation of Ecosystem Services Provided by Biodiversity Conservation: An Integrated Hydrological and Economic Model to Value the Enhanced Nitrogen Retention in Renaturated Streams
  "This paper presents a user-friendly procedure to quantify the increased N-retention in a renaturated river using easily available data."
  (tags: business environment markets)
• Economic benefits of biodiversity exceed costs of conservation at an African rainforest reserve
  Conservation is often assumed to be "a noncompetitive form of land use" that "requires subsidising." The article argues that "the economic benefits derived from avian biodiversity could protect 80-90 percent of a tropical forest reserve's bird species."
  (tags: environment markets)
• No, Air, Don't Sell Yourself
  "[W]hat has been undertaken so far in the name of environmental services, and what are the implications of turning such basic elements into commodities?"
  (tags: environment business markets environmental_services)
• What's nature worth? New computer models tell all
  Scientists at the University of Vermonth are creating "computer models and tools that will give a sophisticated portrait of the ecosystem dynamics and value for any spot on earth."
  (tags: environment environmental_services business economics simulation)
• Quantifying the Wealth of Nature
  "[F]or a growing number of economists, government officials, and financiers, quantifying the benefits of clear-running streams, standing forests, and other natural processes is an idea whose time has come."
  (tags: environment environmental_services business)
• PERC - The Property and Environment Research Center- Improving Environmental Quality Through Markets
  (tags: environment environmental_services markets)
• ForestRE: What we do
  "Forests are increasingly been seen as a utility, providing services to the global environment with valuable economic benefits to communities. The more commercially significant of these is carbon storage and water supplies..."
  (tags: environment environmental_services markets)
• ForestRe: Carbon Risk
  "For some time ForestRe and Eyre Consulting have been working on the particular challenges of designing insurance products to cover against the failure in permanence of forest carbon."
  (tags: environment environmental_services carbon business reinsurance)
• "How Much Money is Environmental Protection Worth?" (Duke Environment Magazine, Spring 2005)
  Profile of Duke professor Randall Kramer, whose work demonstrates that "environmental protection can be assigned a specific economic value" that users, taxpayers, residents, etc. are willing to pay.
  (tags: environment environmental_services government policy)
• "Can the Environment be a Peacemaking and State-building Tool?" (Duke Environment Magazine, Spring 2006)
  "Avner Vengosh and Erika Weinthal View Solving the Water Crisis in Gaza as a Potential Step Toward Collaboration."
  (tags: environment government collaboration)
• Dukenvironment Magazine
  As Earth’s last ice age ended, "evidence suggests that North American temperate zone plants huddling in the relative warmth further south began a northward migration to gain ground lost during the big chill.... [W]ill the past repeat itself?"
  (tags: environment climate history e21)
• "Factoring Humans into the Environmental Picture" (Dukenvironment Magazine, Spring 2004)
  Profile of environmental social scientist Lisa Campbell, who studies "the human dimensions of conservation efforts" and its real costs. “The poorest of the poor should not bear the cost of international feelings about charismatic species.”
  (tags: environment environmental_services ethnography sustainability)
• Nature's Services
  RAND study of the growth of environmental services, and methods used to determine the economic value of ecological processes.
  (tags: environment environmental_services policy sustainability business)

links for 2006-08-29

• Privacy Lost, Tom Kellermann: It's Not Just Uncle Sam Spying On You - CBS News
  "All the fretting about the National Security Agency's domestic spying program is understandable, but it misses one spectacularly big point: domestic privacy in America simply does not exist anymore."
  (tags: privacy security RFID policy)
• Flying Monks: What is the Milarepa Land Trust?
  A "non-profit group dedicated to the development of Buddhist sites and content across Second Life... to engage Second Lifers with an expansive virtual experience, based on real-life sites and teachings."
  (tags: games visualization religion digital-physical Second_Life)
• Schneier on Security: Hackers Clone RFID Passports
  The title pretty much says it all: hackers have demonstrated that they can clone the information on RFID tags used in passports. This challenges the security of International Civil Aviation Organization-mandated tags.
  (tags: government identity privacy RFID travel security)
• Schneier on Security: What the Terrorists Want
  Argues that "the real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act. And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want."
  (tags: security terrorism politics travel risk)
• "Raising the Floor," Samsung DigitAll Magazine (Summer 2006)
  "The transformation of the factory from a vast machine into a creative, knowledge-intensive space is a development few could have seen."
  (tags: business design manufacturing innovation future games prototyping economics ubicomp digital-physical)
• VentureBlog: A Little Hardship Goes A Long Way
  "Traditional incubators and economic grants can do more harm than good to a startup culture when there is not already a well-engrained and robust entrepreneurial ecosystem upon which these startups may grow and thrive."
  (tags: Europe business startup entrepreneur)
• Environment Unlimited | Energy | Engineers race to steal nature's secrets
  "[N]ew companies are rethinking major infrastructure projects using natural objects as their basis."
  (tags: energy environment biomimicry UK innovation)
• IPCC Special Report on Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage
  2005 IPCC report.
  (tags: carbon environment economics)
• Thirst threatens as tropical glaciers melt away - 29 Jun 2006 - World News
  "Mountain glaciers around the world are melting faster now than at any time in the past 5000 years because of an unprecedented period of global warming, a study has found."
  (tags: environment climate water glaciers)
• First Compilation Of Tropical Ice Cores Shows Two Abrupt Global Climate Shifts -- One 5,000 Years Ago and One Currently Underway
  Examinations of tropical glacier ice cores show "a massive climate shift to a cooler regime that occurred just over 5,000 years ago, and a more recent reversal to a much warmer world within the last 50 years."
  (tags: glaciers environment climate water)
• On the Roof of Peru, Omens in the Ice
  "Glaciers store an estimated 70 percent of the world's fresh water.... [S]now moves through the slowly churning ice and may emerge from the glacier's edge thousands of years later as meltwater. Humans have long depended on the... runoff."
  (tags: glaciers environment climate water)
• International Energy Outlook 2006 - Electricity
  "World electricity consumption doubles in the IEO2006 projections from 2003 to 2030. Non-OECD countries account for 71 percent of the projected growth, and OECD countries account for 29 percent. "
  (tags: energy future e21)

Ballonmoleküle

via information aesthetics,

The three Germans behind Ballonmoleküle give lots of information on how to make molecule models out of long balloons, and explain why you would want to use balloons:

The balloons automatically adjust every angle in a way that an atom according to modern atom models does, too. When three balloons meet at one knot (at the atomic nucleus so to speak), they act just like a sp²-hybrid atom which means they form a planary system. When four balloons meet, they form a tetrahedral. You only have to keep in mind to build some free electron pairs as well. If you do this for example for water, there will be a smaller angle than for a tetrahedral, since there are six balloons that meet in one knot (two compounds for the hydrogen atom and two each for one free electron pair).

They even get a shout-out from Francis Crick: "It's really remarkable how you have been able to show the key elements of the double helix with balloons."

Next time you're at a fair, ask the clown with the balloons to make you a Cuban cluster [Fe₄(n₅-C ₅H₅)₄ (µ₃-CO)₄]:

links for 2006-08-28

• 调查显示:网络环境正在侵蚀大学生读书心态 - DoNews.com
  China Youth Daily survey on college students' expenses on Internet outweighing expenses on books
  (tags: China youth education entertainment Internet)
• 大学生求职“校园网络一块走” [南方网教育频道]
  Chinese college students' two main sources for findings jobs, equally important: online recruiting, and job fairs.
  (tags: China education youth Internet employment)
• 中国青少年研究网
  china youth research center website
  (tags: China youth education research statistics)
• In China, learning is a rising burden - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune
  "he proportion of government spending on education - about 3.2 per cent of GDP - is much lower than the average for developed economies and even lags behind several developing Asian nations including Thailand and the Philippines. The government's shar
  (tags: China education future government)
• EMIGRES FEEL CHINA'S PULL/Affordable housing, food, recreation drive a trend of reverse migration
  diasporic Chinese (from bay area) return to china to retire
  (tags: China identity migration culture cities US)

links for 2006-08-26

• Foreign Affairs - The Global Baby Bust - Phillip Longman
  "Most people think overpopulation is one of the worst dangers facing the globe. In fact, the opposite is true... Falling birthrates might seem beneficial, but the economic and social price is too steep to pay."
  (tags: globalization economics demographics population e21)
• BBC NEWS | Europe | Denmark hopes to claim North Pole
  "Denmark hopes to claim the North Pole and search for oil in high Arctic regions, the Science Ministry has said."
  (tags: environment energy arctic denmark geography)
• The Observer | International | Arctic booms as climate change melts polar ice cap
  Melting polar ice caps are attracting prospectors, geologists, and others who hope to exploit newly-accessible natural resources in the Arctic-- and also sparking new territorial disputes between countries bordering the Arctic.
  (tags: arctic climate environment energy geography denmark US UK Russia Canada Norway)
• CBC News: Mapping more of Northwest Passage question of Canadian sovereignty: scientists
  "[W]ithin 50 years, global climate change could turn what is now an infrequently travelled narrow shipping lane through the ice into a widely accessible shipping lane and put Canadian sovereignty over the passage into question."
  (tags: arctic geography canada transportration shipping)
• Our Warming World: Effects of climate change bode ill for Northwest
  On the potential impact of climate change on the Pacific Northwest.
  (tags: US climate environment)
• ISUMA - CANADIAN JOURNAL OF POLICY RESEARCH
  Special issue on climate change.
  (tags: canada environment climate)
• Northwest Passage an unlikely Panama Canal, but some shipping to increase
  "The Northwest Passage isn't likely ever to become a northern version of the Panama Canal, suggests the latest research on climate change and the northern ice pack."
  (tags: canada environment economics climate)
• Malcolm Gladwell, "The Risk Pool," The New Yorker (28 August 2006)
  On dependency ratios and economic growth. "[W]hat’s critical is not just the growth of a population but its structure."
  (tags: business economics demographics policy security society)
• Foreign Policy: The List: The World's Megacities
  "Petty crime and pollution are common inconveniences in cities big and small. But in megacities, those with a population of 10 million or more, these and other everyday headaches can quickly become mammoth problems—putting both lives and treasure at ris
  (tags: geography megacities city)
• BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | The challenges facing an urban world
  "The world is fast approaching the point where the majority of the human population will be found in urban areas." 50% of the world's population will live in cities by 2007, according to a UN estimate.
  (tags: megacities society urbanization globalization city)
• DigitAll Magazine
  "The transformation of the factory from a vast machine into a creative, knowledge-intensive space is a development few could have seen."
  (tags: business design manufacturing innovation future games)
• "Warming 'more severe' for cities," BBC NEWS (25 August 2006)
  "The impact of climate change is likely to be more severe in major cities, with the elderly most at risk, according to a study commissioned for the Greater London Authority."
  (tags: climate environment health city)
• Constructing the Digital Universe » Blog Archive » The New Politics of Knowledge
  Wikipedia, "the amazingly huge, wide-open encyclopedia project has become the locus of a new debate over the politics of knowledge."
  (tags: encyclopedia open_source collaboration collective_intelligence Internet web2.0)
• the informal education homepage
  "infed is an open, independent and not-for-profit site put together by a small group of educators."
  (tags: education)
• Smart City 2020 | Metropolis Magazine
  "Preindustrial cities were mostly skeleton and skin—inert material arranged to provide shelter, security, and intensification of land use."
  (tags: city design endofcyberspace future technology)
• Tailing the X-Commuter - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com
  "The fastest-growing appliance in America is not the microwave.... It's the power window."
  (tags: automotive city demographics urbanization)
• Richard Florida: The New Megalopolis - Newsweek: International (3 July 2006)
  "[T]he global economy takes shape around perhaps 20 great Megas—half in the United States and the rest scattered throughout the world."
  (tags: city economics globalization urbanization)
• Wildlife: Cities Are the New Jungles - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com
  "[U]rban biodiversity seems to be on the rise—as our cities become cleaner, suburbs grow greener, and more and more species learn to adapt." Indeed, "it's in the open country that plants and animals have seen the most rapid decline.
  (tags: urban environment cities)

Future Shock

Extremely funny, if superficial, Daily Show piece on the future of robots. (Here's part two.) Features Ray Kurzweil in one of his most humorous performances.

links for 2006-08-25

• reBang weblog » Blog Archive » Smiley Face Savvy
  Essay on the possibilities for using virtual worlds to generate and test products in the real world.
  (tags: manufacturing virtual_economy digital-physical design marketing)

links for 2006-08-24

• VOA News - China's Urban Water Supply Threatened by Pollution, Poor Management
  "pollution and industrial mismanagement are threatening water supplies in nearly 300 cities"
  (tags: China environment security pollution water)