Agence France-Presse First Posted 07:22:00 10/19/2010
TOKYO—The world must act immediately to stop the rapid loss of animal and plant species that allow humans to exist, the United Nations warned on Monday at the start of a major summit on biodiversity.
EXTRACT:
At the start of the decade, UN members pledged under the Millennium Development Goals to achieve “a significant reduction” in the rate of wildlife loss by 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity.
Instead, habitat destruction has continued unabated, and some experts now warn that the planet faces its sixth mass extinction phase – the latest since dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago.
EXTRACT:
The Earth's 6.8 billion humans are effectively living 50 percent beyond the planet's biocapacity in 2007, according to a new assessment by WWF that said by 2030 humans will effectively need the capacity of two Earths.
What makes a celebrity special? She was just an ordinary person a month or a year ago, but now, suddenly, your heart goes flitter-flutter when you meet her, or you want an autograph.
One way to consider fame is that it increases the options for the person at the same time the number of demands go up. In other words, celebrity makes the celebrity's attention more valuable.
It's exciting to shake hands or get an autograph from a famous person, then, because the celebrity has something others want, you're getting a slice of attention from someone who has other options. But she didn't exercise those options–she chose you.
By this definition, you're famous. Compared to just a few years ago, more people know you, you have more options and your attention is far more precious than it ever was.
Not just you, of course. Your customers too. They're famous now.
Time to start treating them that way.
Phi Beta Iota: This is a play on both diversity and co-creation as well as business ecologies. We are One.
The rapidly emerging/evolving new field medical doctrine is usually termed Tactical Combat Casualty Care. Not sure how fast it will migrate to civilian sector due to litigation risks.
EXTRACT GOOD: Gone from their repertoire are difficult or time-consuming maneuvers, such as routinely hanging bags of intravenous fluids. On the ground, medics no longer carry stethoscopes or blood pressure cuffs. They are trained instead to evaluate a patient's status by observation and pulse, to tolerate abnormal vital signs such as low blood pressure, to let the patient position himself if he's having trouble breathing – and above all to have a heightened awareness that too much medicine can endanger the mission and still not save the patient.
EXTRACT BAD: But something has happened in the usually smooth communication between dispatch center, aircraft and hospital. No ambulance pulls up to the helicopter. Reece and Helfrich wait. They wait. The pilots radio the dispatcher that they've arrived with a critically injured soldier. Reece and Helfrich, helmeted and inaudible, gesture wildly to people outside the emergency room door to come over. Two other patients have also recently arrived. But that's not the problem. There's an available ambulance 100 yards away. But it doesn't move.
Phi Beta Iota: What has been done in TACTICAL combat medicine in the ten years of constant war has been nothing short of sensational and inspiring. NOTE that it is not just technology, but HUMAN enhancement. This has NOT characterized the rest of the US military nor the rest of the US Government which has the added disadvantage of not having the funding nor the education-intelligence-research mindset needed to enter the 21st Century.
Phi Beta Iota: The FBI has two walk-ins on 9/11 in advance of the event, one in Newark, NJ and the other in Orlando, FL. In both instances, because the FBI did not recognize any of the names being reported, it blew off the walk-in. Something similar appears to have happened here, BUT there is also yet another instance of a US person being in the employ of the US Government (similar to the botched car bomb attack on the World Trade Center) and their activities being a) sanctioned by one US agency and b) not being reported to other US agencies or to allies. The US secret world is HOSED strategically, operationally, tactically, and technically….. it is cultural “unfit for duty.” We continue to believe that an Open Source Agency and a Multinational Decision-Support Centre with reach-back to at least 90 countries is the way to kick-off 21st Century Intelligence. See the Virtual Cabinet series at the Huffington Post for the larger context within which we believe US intelligence must be reinvented.
November 30th, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could
potentially engage in one of the largest federal power grabs we have ever
seen.
At the FCC’s November meeting – note the coincidental date of choice,
AFTER the impending election – three unelected bureaucrats (of five) could
simply vote themselves rulers of 1/6th of our entire economy – the
information and technology sector.
Meaning the Internet that you currently enjoy – that has been a marvel of
economic and information innovation and success – will be subject to vast
new governmental regulations. You didn’t elect these people – but they
are on the verge of electing themselves Internet overlords.
November 30th, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could potentially engage in one of the largest federal power grabs we have ever seen.
After two years of this Presidential Administration and this Congress, that is saying an awful lot about an awful lot.
And what’s worse, the FCC would be doing it without Congress weighing in. At the FCC’s November meeting – note the coincidental date of choice, AFTER the impending election – three unelected bureaucrats (of five) could simply vote themselves rulers of 1/6th of our entire economy – the information and technology sector.
Thomas Friedman wrote in a recent New York Times article, “Third Party Rising“, that he is “astounded” by the level of disgust with Washington D.C. and the two party system he has found among industry leaders in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. He says he knows of “at least two serious groups” on the East and West coasts “’developing third parties’ to challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation’s steady incremental decline.”
He predicts that “barring a transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties, there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her one definitely big enough to impact the election’s outcome”.
Friedman cites the harsh indictment of the two major parties by Stanford political scientist Larry Diamond: “We basically have two bankrupt parties bankrupting the country”. Diamond published similar views back in 2008 in a Huffington Post article, Can American Democracy Recover? He cited “a broad and deepening sense among Americans not only that the country is moving in the wrong direction, but that there is something seriously wrong and corrupt with our democracy”. He provides the following specifics:
Phi Beta Iota: We learned this when we went across America for the American Committee on Foreign Relations (ACFR) in the years following 9/11 delivering our lecture, “9/11, U.S. Intelligence, and the Real World.” Americans are not stupid–mainstream media personalities like Friedman are not stupid either, just oblivious. They live in their own world with the Kissingers and CNN faces so bent on being polite they cannot muster a tough question or get a grip on the whole. As we said years ago, Washington may not be interested in reality but reality is assuredly interested in Washington. It's game time.
