Rising temperatures could spark massive population shifts across the United States
Alaskans, stay in Alaska. People in the midwest and the Pacific north-west, sit tight. Scientists trying to predict the consequences of climate change say that they see few havens from the storms, floods and droughts that are sure to intensify over the coming decades. But some regions in the US, they add, will fare better than others.
Forget most of California and the south-west (drought, wildfires). Ditto for much of the east coast and south-east (heatwaves, hurricanes, rising sea levels). Washington DC , for example, may well be a flood zone by 2100, according to an estimate released last week.
Instead, consider Anchorage. Or even, perhaps, Detroit.
Even as the United States government continues to push for the use of more chemically-intensive and corporate-dominated farming methods such as GMOs and monoculture-based crops, the United Nations is once against sounding the alarm about the urgent need to return to (and develop) a more sustainable, natural and organic system.
That was the key point of a new publication from the UN Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) titled“Trade and Environment Review 2013: Wake Up Before It’s Too Late,” which included contributions from more than 60 experts around the world.
For those to whom the recent US campaign against Syria seems a deja vu of last summer’s “near-war” attempt to ouster its president Bashar al-Assad, which was stopped in the last minute due to some very forceful Russian intervention and the near breakout of war in the Mediterranean between US and Russian navies, it is because they are. And as a reminder, just like last year, the biggest wildcard in this, and that, direct intervention into sovereign Syrian territory, or as some would call it invasion or even war, was not the US but Saudi Arabia – recall from August of 2013 – “Meet Saudi Arabia’s Bandar bin Sultan: The Puppetmaster Behind The Syrian War.” Bin Sultan was officially let go shortly after the 2013 campaign to replace Syria’s leadership with a more “amenable” regime failed if not unofficially (see below), but Saudi ambitions over Syria remained.
That much is revealed by the WSJ today in a piece exposing the backdoor dealings that the US conducted with Saudi Arabia to get the “green light” to launch its airstrikes against ISIS, or rather, parts of Iraq and Syria. And, not surprising, it is once again Assad whose fate was the bargaining chip to get the Saudis on the US’ side, because in order to launch the incursion into Syrian sovereign territory “took months of behind-the-scenes work by the U.S. and Arab leaders, who agreed on the need to cooperate against Islamic State, but not how or when. The process gave the Saudis leverage to extract a fresh U.S. commitment to beef up training for rebels fighting Mr. Assad, whose demise the Saudis still see as a top priority.”
In other words, John Kerry came, saw and promised everything he could, up to and including the missing piece of the puzzle – Syria itself on a silver platter – in order to prevent another diplomatic humiliation.
This is a great blog post by Clark Quinn, e-learning guru whom I think highly of. His post talks about whether there is a science to learning (spoiler: there is) and how e-learning professionals should frame it as learning engineers. It got me wondering how content engineers and other technical communicators beyond those in the e-learning field approach this.
In other fields of endeavors, there is a science behind the approaches. In civil engineering, it’s the properties of materials. In aviation, it’s aeronautical engineering. In medicine, it’s medical science. If you’re going to be a professional in your field, you have to know the science. So, two questions: is there a science of learning, and is it used. The answers appear to be yes and no. And yet, if you’re going to be a learning designer or engineer, you should know the science and be using it.
There is a science of learning, and it’s increasingly easy to find. That’s the premise behind the Serious eLearning Manifesto, for instance (read it, sign it, use it!). You could read Julie Dirksen’s Design for How People Learnas a very good interpretation of the science. The Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center is compiling research to provide guidance about learning if you want a fuller scientific treatment. Or read Bransford, et al’s summary of the science of How People Learn, a very rich overview. And Hess & Saxberg’s recent Breakthrough Leadership in the Digital Age: Using Learning Science to Reboot Schoolingis both a call for why and some guidance on how.
Among the things we know are that rote and abstract information isn’t retained, knowledge test doesn’t mean ability to do, getting it right once doesn’t mean it’s known, the list goes on. Yet, somehow, we see elearning tools like ‘click to learn more’ (er, less), tarted up quiz show templates to drill knowledge, easy ways to take content and add quizzes to them, and more. We see elearning that’s arbitrary info dump and simplistic knowledge test. Which will have a negligible impact on anything meaningful.
We’re focused on speed and cost efficiencies, not on learning outcomes, and that’s not professional. Look, if you’re going to do design, do it right. Anything less is really malpractice!
Have you ever wondered whether the money you spend ends up funding causes you oppose?
Buycott helps you to organize your everyday consumer spending so you can fund causes you support and avoid funding those you disagree with.
Example: During the SOPA/PIPA debate in 2012, a number of companies pushed to pass legislation that reduced online freedom of expression, while other companies fought hard to oppose the legislation. With Buycott, a campaign can be quickly created around a cause, with the goal of targeting companies with a boycott unless they change their position, or buycotting a company to show your support.
When you use Buycott to scan a product, it will look up the product, determine what brand it belongs to, and figure out what company owns that brand (and who owns that company, ad infinitum). It will then cross-check the product owners against the companies and brands included in the campaigns you've joined, in order to tell you if the scanned product conflicts with one of your campaign commitments.
Each year, I teach a class called Advanced Analytic Techniques (AAT) here at Mercyhurst. It is a seminar-style class designed to allow grad students to dig into a variety of analytic techniques and (hopefully) master one or two.
The students get to pick both the topic and the technique on which they wish to focus so you wind up with some pretty interesting studies at the end. For example, we have applied the traditional business methodology of “best practices” to western European terrorist groups and the traditional military technique of Intelligence Preparation of The Battlefield to the casino industry.
I was surprised at some of the information in the slide deck. First, I thought the New York Times was first online in the 1970s via LexisNexis.
I thought that was an exclusive deal and reasonably profitable for both LexisNexis and the New York Times. When the newspaper broke off that exclusive to do its own thing, the revenue hit on the New York Times was immediate. In addition, the decision had significant cost implications for the newspaper.
