Category: Blog Wisdom

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Reference: 8 Populations, 4 Methods

Blog Wisdom
Robert David Steele

Robert David Steele

Serial pioneer, hacking humanity…

Posted: November 2, 2010 04:34 PM

8 Populations, 4 Methods

Minister-Mentor Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore has said that demography, not democracy, is the defining element of the future, and I agree with him. This is important for two reasons:

First, if the projected population explosions occur in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and in Africa, then all ten of the high-level threats from poverty to infectious disease to environmental degradation and onwards will also explode, and these threats do not recognize artificial political boundaries. Starvation, plagues, deforestation, genocide and democide, and dis-organized crime will be wide-spread. The USA can expect to be over-run by illegal immigrants — vastly worse than today — just as Europe is being over-run from Africa and Russia is being severely encroached upon in the East, where global warming is making Siberia a “go to” place for many Chinese.

Second, we are now finding that there is not enough clean fresh water for those who are alive today, much less for the several billion more expected by 2020. While technology could certainly be developed that addresses this shortfall, it is unlikely to accomplish in a decade what the Earth's natural systems of systems accomplished over millennia — and in the absence of predatory human consumption. Fresh water can be considered the “touchstone” for both a convergence of all the limits to human prosperity that cannot be overcome without dramatic changes in our behavior and our practices; and for the emergence of a new appreciation for “wild law,” the rights of natural systems to be sustained, and in that context, the emergence of a humanity conscious of both its limits and its responsibilities.

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Reference: Water, Earth, and We

12 Water, Blog Wisdom, Briefings (Core)

Maude Barlow

Our Commons Future is Already Here

A stirring call to unite the environmental and global justice movement from Maude Barlow

By Maude Barlow

Maude Barlow gave this stirring plenary speech, full of hope even in the face of ecological disasters, to the Environmental Grantmakers Association annual retreat in Pacific Grove, California. Barlow, a former UN Senior Water Advisor, is National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and founder of the Blue Planet Project.

– – – – – –

Half the tropical forests in the world – the lungs of our ecosystems – are gone; by 2030, at the current rate of harvest, only 10% will be left standing. Ninety percent of the big fish in the sea are gone, victim to wanton predatory fishing practices. Says a prominent scientist studying their demise “there is no blue frontier left.” Half the world’s wetlands – the kidneys of our ecosystems – were destroyed in the 20th century. Species extinction is taking place at a rate one thousand times greater than before humans existed. According to a Smithsonian scientist, we are headed toward a “biodiversity deficit” in which species and ecosystems will be destroyed at a rate faster than Nature can create new ones.

We are polluting our lakes, rivers and streams to death. Every day, 2 million tons of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are discharged into the world’s water, the equivalent of the weight of the entire human population of 6.8 billion people. The amount of wastewater produced annually is about six times more water than exists in all the rivers of the world. A comprehensive new global study recently reported that 80% of the world’s rivers are now in peril, affecting 5 billion people on the planet. We are also mining our groundwater far faster than nature can replenish it, sucking it up to grow water-guzzling chemical-fed crops in deserts or to water thirsty cities that dump an astounding 200 trillion gallons of land-based water as waste in the oceans every year. The global mining industry sucks up another 200 trillion gallons, which it leaves behind as poison. Fully one third of global water withdrawals are now used to produce biofuels, enough water to feed the world. A recent global survey of groundwater found that the rate of depletion more than doubled in the last half century. If water was drained as rapidly from the Great Lakes, they would be bone dry in 80 years.

The global water crisis is the greatest ecological and human threat humanity has ever faced.

Read full presentation….

See Also:

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Water

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Reference: 12 Core Policy Domains

Blog Wisdom, Policies

Robert David SteeleRobert David Steele

Serial pioneer, hacking humanity…

Posted: October 27, 2010 05:16 PM

12 Core Policy Domains

For those seeing this Blog for the first time, this is the 12th in a 24-part series appointing a Virtual Cabinet and creating a balanced sane intelligence-driven budget as a baseline for evaluating any candidate for public office.

There are twelve policies that must be managed together. Inspired by the High-Level Threat Panel's identification and prioritization of the ten high-level threats to humanity addressed in my Tuesday blog (see 10 High-Level Threats to Humanity), I pulled out my copies of the “Mandate for Change” books from the last four presidential campaigns, and came up with this list. Of course there are many policies and sub-policies, from infrastructure to labor to population, but this is my best effort and I hope you find it helpful.

Here's the important part: what might be good for one policy domain is often very bad for other policy domains. A proper government must understand the true costs of all policy options, not only in and of themselves, but in relation to all other policy domains.
2010-11-01-HolisticHealthContextJPEG.jpg
By way of example for why we must address all policies together: it makes no sense to allow landowners to sell water aquifers that are part of our national commonwealth, or to allow soda pop companies to empty aquifers for export, or to use water we don't have to grow grain we cannot eat to create fuel when we have natural gas right here, right now. Above all, it makes no sense to subsidize elements of the food industry that are very bad for all of us — animals for food come with huge water, disease, and fuel costs that have yet to be understood by the public. [For a video on the “true cost” of meat as food, check out The Secret Life of Beef; see also this Duck Duck Go listing of top hits on the true cost of meat.

Below are snapshots of each of the twelve policies and why they matter. In celebration of the new HEALTH section here at the Huffington Post, I am posting this Blog under Health instead of Politics, and below I provide a graphic of how Health Policy must be central to, and in relation to, all ten threats and the other eleven policies, as well as a graphic unique to Health Policy.

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Reference: SCREWED–The Roots of Populist Rage…

Blog Wisdom, White Papers
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

… are real, if unappreciated.  Chuck

Scary New Wage Data

David Cay Johnston | Oct. 25, 2010 04:35 AM EDT

Now for some really scary breaking news, from the latest payroll tax data.

Every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a single dollar, new data from the Social Security Administration show. Total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined, but at the very top, salaries grew more than fivefold.

Not a single news organization reported this data when it was released October 15, searches of Google and the Nexis databases show. Nor did any blog, so the citizen journalists and professional economists did no better than the newsroom pros in reporting this basic information about our economy.

The new data hold important lessons for economic growth and tax policy and take on added meaning when examined in light of tax return data back to 1950.

The story the numbers tell is one of a strengthening economic base with income growing fastest at the bottom until, in 1981, we made an abrupt change in tax and economic policy. Since then the base has fared poorly while huge economic gains piled up at the very top, along with much lower tax burdens.

A weak foundation cannot properly support a massive superstructure, as the leaning Tower of Pisa shows. The latest wage data show the disastrous results some of us warned about, although like the famous tower, the economy only lists badly and has not collapsed.

Measured in 2009 dollars, total wages fell to just above $5.9 trillion, down $215 billion from the previous year. Compared with 2007, when the economy peaked, total wages were down $313 billion or 5 percent in real terms.

The number of Americans with any wages in 2009 fell by more than 4.5 million compared with the previous year. Because the population grew by about 1 percent, the number of idle hands and minds grew by 6 million.

These figures show, far more powerfully than the official unemployment measure known as U3, how both widespread and deep the loss of jobs was in 2009. While the official unemployment rate is just under 10 percent, deeper analysis of the data by economist John Williams at http://www.shadowstats.com shows a real under- and unemployment rate of more than 22 percent.

Balance of article below the line…

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Reference: Entangled Minds, Extra-Sensory Perception

Articles & Chapters, Blog Wisdom

Entangled Minds Dean Radin's blog

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Extrasensory Perception and Quantum Models of Cognition

By Patrizio E. Tressoldi, Lance Storm, & Dean Radin.

The possibility that information can be acquired at a distance without the use of the ordinary senses, that is by “extrasensory perception” (ESP), is not easily accommodated by conventional neuroscientific assumptions or by traditional theories underlying our understanding of perception and cognition. The lack of theoretical support has marginalized the study of ESP, but experiments investigating these phenomena have been conducted since the mid‐19th century, and the empirical database has been slowly accumulating. Today, using modern experimental methods and meta‐analytical techniques, a persuasive case can be made that, neuroscience assumptions notwithstanding, ESP does exist.

Read rest of overview blog….

The full paper is available at the online journal NeuroQuantology.

Tip of the Hat to Sumner Carter via Sandra D. Sabatini at Facebook.

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Reference: 10 High-Level Threats to Humanity

Analysis, Blog Wisdom, Threats
Robert David STEELE Vivas

ROBERT STEELE: As I watch DNI Dan Coats embarrass himself, I cannot help but be reminded of the only decent high-level threat study ever done, by a panel including LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret), the last serious National Security Advisor in modern US history.  The DNI is either being lied to or is actively misleading Congress. See in passing Soft Coup and False Flag Attacks. I am dismayed by the failure of the DNI to provide a national threat report that is holistic and inclusive of true cost economics.

10 High-Level Threats to Humanity

Or, everything no one ever told DNI Dan Coats that he was incapable of thinking of by himself.

Full text with graphics below the fold.

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Journal: How and Why Ideas Spread…

Blog Wisdom

Seth Godin Home

I spread your idea because…

Ideas spread when people to choose to spread them. Here are some reasons why:

  1. I spread your idea because it makes me feel generous.
  2. …because I feel smart alerting others to what I discovered.
  3. …because I care about the outcome and want you (the creator of the idea) to succeed.
  4. …because I have no choice. Every time I use your product, I spread the idea (Hotmail, iPad, a tattoo).
  5. …because there's a financial benefit directly to me (Amazon affiliates, mlm).
  6. …because it's funny and laughing alone is no fun.
  7. …because I'm lonely and sharing an idea solves that problem, at least for a while.
  8. …because I'm angry and I want to enlist others in my outrage (or in shutting you down).
  9. …because both my friend and I will benefit if I share the idea (Groupon).
  10. …because you asked me to, and it's hard to say no to you.
  11. …because I can use the idea to introduce people to one another, and making a match is both fun in the short run and community-building.
  12. …because your service works better if all my friends use it (email, Facebook).
  13. …because if everyone knew this idea, I'd be happier.
  14. …because your idea says something that I have trouble saying directly (AA, a blog post, a book).
  15. …because I care about someone and this idea will make them happier or healthier.
  16. …because it's fun to make another teen snicker about prurient stuff we're not supposed to see.
  17. …because the tribe needs to know about this if we're going to avoid an external threat.
  18. …because the tribe needs to know about this if we're going to maintain internal order.
  19. …because it's my job.
  20. I spread your idea because I'm in awe of your art and the only way I can repay you is to share that art with others.