The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Lewis Mumford on the city (3.39)
Lewis Mumford – A Social Visionary (8:27)
From Lewis Mumford's “The Conduct of Life” (5:17)
The Myth of the Machine (3:43)
Reinventing education and the StudentsFirst.org movement
The US education is in crisis. The evidence is well-known and summarized in my post earlier this week.
A root cause of the crisis is the application of the factory model of management to education, where everything is arranged for the scalability and efficiency of “the system”, to which the students, the teachers and the parents have to adjust. “The system” grinds forward, at ever increasing cost and declining efficiency, dispiriting students, teachers and parents alike.
The root cause of the problems: factory model of management
. . . . . .
The five shifts that are needed in education
Just as in reinventing management, where five fundamental and interdependent shifts are needed, so in reinventing education five fundamental and interdependent shifts need to occur:
1. The first shift concerns the goal which has to shift from a focus on the efficiency of “the system” to one of putting students first.
. . . . . .
Continue reading “Journal: Reinventing Education–Putting Students First”
Film/documentary: Monster Salmon and Butterflies
We already eat GM crops and now GM Salmon, which grow faster and larger than ordinary Salmon, are soon to come onto the market. But does anyone know what effect they will have on us and our environment? This fascinating documentary follows the few independent researchers of genetic engineering as they investigate the dangers of “Monster Salmon”.
“At eighteen months old you see the enormous difference here … the Salmon as it exists now is not profitable enough”, says Andrew Kimbrell as he examines an enormous transgenic Salmon. It dwarfs its natural brother lying alongside it. His is one of the few voices questioning the fast-tracking of GM Salmon onto the marketplace.
While giant Salmon are about to land in our pots and frying pans, independent scientists are only now starting to examine the science behind it. It's a game of catch up and the early indications are worrying. “Certainly if DNA was not cleared from the organisms, if that happens, then it may be the start of a highly unwanted process with regard to health”. While researchers questions are ignored, humans are about to become guinea pigs for genetically engineered fish. There are worries that eating transgenic Salmon could weaken the immune system causing chronic illness, infertility, and even disrupt our own DNA. Yet these seem risks the pro-GM scientific community seems willing to take. However, it is not just the impact these Salmon could have on humans which is worrying scientists. There are suggestions transgenic Salmon could lead to the extinction of Salmon in the wild. While Aqua Bounty, the company looking to market transgenic Salmon, claims the Salmon will be sterile and unable to mate, scientists are contesting that their fertility will be impossible to regulate. If fertile transgenic Salmon escape to the wild the consequences will be dire. “One thing we have found is that the young don't survive as well … it is quite likely the population could go extinct”. “What could be more important than deciding on the permanent genetic future of life on Earth, but we don't vote on that”. While the questions over these Salmon remain, they will shortly be arriving on our plates and we won't be able to do anything about it. We won't even be able to tell when we're eating it.
Japan and the Search for Rare Earth Elements
India: The Japanese trading house Toyota Tsusho Corporation announced that it will begin construction of a rare earth processing plant in India in 2011 in an effort to secure suppliers beyond China, Kyodo reported.
The group company of Toyota Motor Corp. will build the plant in Orison State with plans to launch by the end of 2011. The plant will be constructed in collaboration with Indian Rare Earths Ltd., an affiliate of state-owned Nuclear Power Corp. of India, and with Japan's Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Japan hopes the plant will produce and export 3,000 to 4,000 tons of rare earth elements each year beginning in 2012.
Bolivia: Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Bolivian President Eva Morales agreed during a meeting in Tokyo to cooperate on the development of commercial lithium extraction in Bolivia. Japan would like to help Bolivia develop its resources, Kan said.
Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akihiro Oat said Japan was prepared to supply technology and infrastructure. Tokyo is also ready to contribute to the development of Bolivia's human resources, Oat said. Morales, who arrived in Tokyo on the 7th and Kan also confirmed their cooperation on a geothermal power plant project in Bolivia. Japan will extend loans to fund that project, Kyodo reported.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: Japan is taking long term action to reduce its dependence on Chinese supplies of rare earth elements, which China chose to manipulate for political purposes during the Senkaku Islands dispute. Japan is implementing its own version of economic colonialism in India and Bolivia to ensure secure supplies in the long run.
Phi Beta Iota: While India is an obvious location poised to compete for Central Asian rare earths as well as help accelerate India's own discoveries, Bolivia is even more interesting because of its closeness to Chile, which is the only country we know of that is immediately capable of achieving infinite free energy. For Chile (and Brazil) to fail to see the importance of leveraging near-by sources of rare earths is a strategic error of substantial import.
See Also:
Owner, Idlewild Books, New York City
10 Books 10 Countries: The Best Translated Books of 2009
If you're reading this, it's probably because literature matters to you, because you agree with the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa that literature is “one of the common denominators of human experience through which human beings may recognize themselves and converse with each other, no matter how different their professions, their life plans, their geographical and cultural locations, their personal circumstances.”
Yet here in the United States, we seem to be conversing mostly with ourselves. Even among those of us who love to read, we are largely cut off from the great dialogue that connects so much of the world (and missing some damn good books) due to the fact that less than three percent of what's published in this country is translated from other languages.
Three percent is low: in France and Spain, for example, both of which produce prodigious amounts of their own literature, more than half the new books published in a given year are translated from other languages. And even among the small number of foreign-language books that do make it into English in this country, about 300 to 400 titles in an average year, how many do you hear about?
If your main source for book news is mainstream media, the answer is: not many. Nine of the ten books on The New York Times's “Best Books of 2009” list were written by Americans (the tenth was by a Brit), as were nearly all the titles on their year-end list of 100 notable books. And very few of the books reviewed in any major American newspaper come from beyond our borders.
Read full article with list of books by country.
Phi Beta Iota: The author makes an very important point. Read the entire post to see his thoughtfully selected examples of books Americans should be but are not reading.
