Category: Atlases & State of the World

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Review (Guest): Film Review–“2012: Time for Change”

5 Star, Atlases & State of the World, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Complexity & Resilience, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Future, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
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Film Review: “2012: Time for Change”

Opening This Weekend in NYC, Playing in LA again this week as well, it’s:

A Film that Will Change the World

by Sander Hicks

If I told you I just saw a great movie named “2012: Time for Change” you may think I’m talking about the 2009 Roland Emmerich disaster movie. That flashy flick was wildly successful at the box office, but it’s described as “cinematic waterboarding,” and worse, by most critics. So how did it make $567 million? Maybe it tapped into that nagging little voice we all have, which says that if we do not change how we live, we face planetary catastrophe, a global environmental meltdown, in full-color HD.

“2012: Time for Change” is different. It’s a lively, smart documentary that weaves a more hopeful vision from over 200 voices and visionaries. The film works as a kind of collaborative brainstorm: Yes, we are destroying the planet, with our patterns of consumption, competition, war and blindness. The Asian Tsunami,  Hurricane Katrina, and even now tornados in Brooklyn show that the Earth has just about run out of patience with us human beings.

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Review: The World in 2050–Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future

4 Star, Atlases & State of the World, Future, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

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4.0 out of 5 stars Limits to Growth in the 21st Century

September 30, 2010

Laurence C. Smith

This book was recommended to me and I recommend it to others, but with the following observations:

1) Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update was there in the 1970's. It troubles me, as much as I read, how I seem to see the same books every ten years as someone reinvents knowledge that was known before and then either not read, or forgotten.

2) I completely agree with the Deep North concept (the Pacific Northwest Passage is opening, Iceland is now independent of Denmark, and the Yukon and Northwest Territories, along with Alaska, stand to be the main beneficiaries. Similar benefits will acrue around the South Pole, if Chile and Argentina get smart and throw Wall-Mart out of their oceans and off the continent.

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Review: The World’s Water 2008-2009–The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources

5 Star, Atlases & State of the World, Complexity & Catastrophe, Culture, Research, Disease & Health, Education (General), Education (Universities), History, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Evolving Series, Multiple Authors, Deep Value

August 26, 2010

Peter Glick, Heather Cooley, Michal J. Cohen, Mari Morikawa, Jason Morrison, and Meena Palaniappan

Although I continue to recommend The Atlas of Water, Second Edition: Mapping the World's Most Critical Resource as the best overall combination of content, visuals, and price, this book is a solid five stars and represents not just the current biennial report, but in the comprehensive index and tables of contents at the back, the volumes that preceded this one.

This is a multi-author work, and whiled Peter Glick is clearly the lead, other authors are Heather Cooley, Michal J. Cohen, Mari Morikawa, Jason Morrison, and Meena Palaniappan. I continue to be annoyed by Amazon's oblviousness to academic standards in relation to properly crediting authors, even when publishers correctly list them.

I am very glad to see that the publisher used Amazon's Look Inside the Book capability and strongly recommend studying the book through that route if you have any doubts. This is a fairly priced master work. It is not for the average reader, for that I continue to hold Marq de Villiers Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, but any of the following that I have reviewed or will be reviewing in the next few days are world-class:

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Review: The Atlas of Water, Second Edition–Mapping the World’s Most Critical Resource

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, Complexity & Catastrophe, Disease & Health, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Geography & Mapping, Intelligence (Public), Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Single Best Book on Content, Visuals, and Price

August 26, 2010

Maggie Black and Jannet King

This is one of twelve books on Water that I have read or am reading, expecting to get through all of them in the near term.

In comparison to the other works, this is the single best book when considering content, visuals, and price. This is the one book to buy if you want just one book and for that reason it is the only 6 in the lot, although Marq de Villier's book, the last one listed below, is in that group as well as the first book to really put it all together. Here are ten other books, reviews for all of which will be posted here at Amazon and at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog where you can access all my reviews on books about water with one click.

The Evolution of the Law and Politics of Water
Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building (Global Environmental Accord: Strategies for Sustainability and Institutional Innovation)
Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization
Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It
Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water
Whose Water Is It?: The Unquenchable Thirst of a Water-Hungry World
Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water
Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit
The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink
Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource

It is a real shame the publisher has not posted the table of contents, which I find to be one of the most holistic and useful I have seen in a very long time, and/or used Inside the Book capabilities that Amazon makes so easily available.

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Review: State of the World 2010–Transforming Cultures–From Consumerism to Sustainability

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atlases & State of the World, Best Practices in Management, Complexity & Catastrophe, Culture, Research, Disaster Relief, Disease & Health, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Top of the Fives, A Bold Departure Elegantly Executed

August 25, 2010

Erik Assadourian et al

I've become someone jaundiced about the State of the World series, while always respecting the persistence of Lester Brown (Peter Drucker called people like us “mono-maniacs” essential as change agents), but this one knocked me off my seat just with the table of contents. From there I went to the Notes and saw a number of books new to me. You can visit Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog to see the 1,600+ that I have reviewed, sorted into 98 non-fiction categories.

My first note:

A triumph, the most interesting, diverse, and relevant of the series to date. A bold departure, “just in time.”

The book opens with a timeline over multiple pages with illustrations, and the notes are worthy. The timeline is compelling broad view that I found very helpful, and would like to see more of.

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Review (Preliminary): Atlas of Science–Visualizing What We Know

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, Best Practices in Management, Budget Process & Politics, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Catastrophe, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Economics, Education (Universities), Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Games, Models, & Simulations, History, Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Commercial), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Amazon Page (Pre-Order)

Katie Borner

MIT Press to release 31 October 2010

On sale for just under $20–this is a BARGAIN.

Review

“Science is a voyage of discovery and Katy Börner has provided its first atlas. This excellent book offers a compendium of all that is best in explaining visual maps of our scientific knowledge.”
—Michael Batty, University College London, author of Cities and Complexity: Understanding Cities with Cellular Automata, Agent-Based Models, and Fractals (MIT Press)

Product Description

Cartographic maps have guided our explorations for centuries, allowing us to navigate the world. Science maps have the potential to guide our search for knowledge in the same way, helping us navigate, understand, and communicate the dynamic and changing structure of science and technology. Allowing us to visualize scientific results, science maps help us make sense of the avalanche of data generated by scientific research today. Atlas of Science, features more than thirty full-page science maps, fifty data charts, a timeline of science-mapping milestones, and 500 color images; it serves as a sumptuous visual index to the evolution of modern science and as an introduction to “the science of science”—charting the trajectory from scientific concept to published results.

Atlas of Science, based on the popular exhibit “Places & Spaces: Mapping Science,” describes and displays successful mapping techniques. The heart of the book is a visual feast: Claudius Ptolemy's Cosmographia World Map from 1482; a guide to a PhD thesis that resembles a subway map; “the structure of science” as revealed in a map of citation relationships in papers published in 2002; a periodic table; a history flow visualization of the Wikipedia article on abortion; a globe showing the worldwide distribution of patents; a forecast of earthquake risk; hands-on science maps for kids; and many more. Each entry includes the story behind the map and biographies of its makers.

Not even the most brilliant minds can keep up with today's deluge of scientific results. Science maps show us the landscape of what we know.

Exhibition (Ongoing) at National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C.; The Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance, Bonn, Germany; and Storm Hall, San Diego State College

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Review: Shooting the Truth–The Rise of American Political Documentaries

6 Star Top 10%, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atlases & State of the World, Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Communications, Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Culture, DVD - Light, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, History, Impeachment & Treason, Information Society, Iraq, Justice (Failure, Reform), Media, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Both a Tour of Substance, and an Eye Opener for Book People

July 29, 2010

James McEnteer

This is a 6 Star and Beyond book and is so categorized at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, where one can browse all 1600+ of my non-fiction reviews sorted into 98 categories and easily found with keywords–I've tried for years to get Amazon to give us this functionality and finally created it for my own work.

I was so impressed, so engaged, so absolutely educated by this author that I spent no less than four hours, and it might be as much as six, creating a table of all 120 films that he mentioned, with the directors, the year of release, and hot links. The complete list with hot links is at Phi Beta Iota, and should have been an appendix–I certainly give the list to the author should he wish to post it anywhere.

A few highlights, followed by the complete table of 120 films: