Engrossing, Poetic, Meaingful, and Reminiscent,March 31, 2008
Emile Hirsch
wanted a break from reading and found this at Blockbuster. Initially I was amused because it seemed to embody every cliche from the top ten feel good movies I have watched over the last 30 years, but I ended up taking notes and two in particular stand out:
WOW when he cuts into the wild
I truly respect and even *love* this movie.
It never occurred to me that it was Sean Penn doing the acting until I read some of the other reviews–so a complement: Sean Penn the actor was completely obscured by the actual protagonist.
There are lines of poetry throughout the movie that I imagine must be credited to the original creative spirit that crafted the story, although Sean Penn himself did the screenplay, so one cannot be certain where the original work ended and Sean Penn's own brand of magic began.
Here are a few lines that I noted down:
When he encounters an older hippie couple:
“This hippie thing is not working–some people feel they don't deserve love.”
“When you kill (a wild animal) get to it fast, once the flies and creepy crawlers are on it….”
“A murder of truth….”
Now, *without disdain* but rather with appreciation, here are the movies from the past that I found lightly inter-mingled in spirit within this one:
Merits Reprinting and Slight Updating, March 20, 2008
Joel Garreau
I thought I had reviewed this long ago, but evidently not. It is still very relevant to understanding and nurturing America today, and I would be very glad to see the publisher commission a slight update and then reprint this superb work.
As America strives to migrate from a disasterous and nearly fatal two-party spoils system and an Executive that is both corrupt and delusional, those who seek to lead America into a brighter future need to understand America in a new and more nuanced way. It is not about left or right. This book has been on continuing value to me as a point of reference, and I recommend it very highly in its existing state, more so if renewed.
The nine nations, each unique, are:
1. The empty quarter (which global warming will open up)
2. Quebec
3. Ecotopia (a model for the rest of us)
4. The breadbasket (which wastes water on excess foot and grows corn for fuel and cattle that is inedible and wastes more water)
5. New England
6. The Foundry (mid-Atlantic coast)
7. Dixie
8. MexAmerica
9. The Islands (of the Caribbean, where Cuban sugar cane sap could power 30-35 million cars, while Cuban health care would inform our own).
5 of 5 stars. Treasure Trove that Ends with USA-India Axis of Good
March 9, 2008
I've been struggling with this book, published in 2006, for months. Today I realized I could combine my notes with a handful of key index entries to create a more useful synthesis. I end with ten other books I have reviewed that augment this one.
My first impression of the book was soured by the absence of any mention of green chemistry, ecological economics, or ecology of commerce. I've known about citation analysis clusters since 1970, but I grow increasingly frustrated by the fragmentation of knowledge and the constantly growing barriers between schools of thought within political-legal, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, techno-demographic, and natural-geographic.
An important early distinction is between industrial-cost for profit capitalism and commercial speculative capitalism. Toward the end of the book I finally encountered the author's emphasis on national priorities, and I for one condemn all seeds that do not reproduce naturally. In agriculture, economy, energy, health, my bottom line is that anything that retards the eradication of hunger, poverty, sustainment, or individual and social health gains, is inherent against the laws of God and man.
Early notes include:
+ Information science plays huge role in genomics. I am reminded of the convergence in the 1990's among cognitive and information science, nano-technology, bio-technology, and earth science. I have a later note, “life sciences becoming information sciences.”
+ Although E. O. Wilson is not cited, the author is on a clear convergence in taking about how valuation is a vital aspect of getting it right. I think of India as IT rich and farm poor–they are allowing the aquifers to drop a meter a year because farmers can sell a tanker-full of water for $4, which is insane, and 2,000 farmers a year commit suicide in the face of drought and debt. Valuation is a critical national function.
+ This work falls within a new category of reading that I have been increasingly impressed by, “ethnographic,” or the study of localities and particularities to map global system that is not generic, homogenized, or blurred..
+ As the author does not cite Paul Hawken or Herman Daly, I draw the distinction between the author's focus on “natural capitalism” as of the privatization of biocapital and the patenting of gnomes, and the purer definition, of natural capitalism as one that understands the true costs over the lifetime of the materials being used including water (4000 liters of water Bangladesh cannot afford to export in a designer cotton shirt), and that makes the case for going green to create gold.
+ The author views biocapital as a combination of circuits of land, labor, and value; and biopolitics.
+ Life sciences are being “overdetermined” by speculative capitalism. I agree, and apart from India's symbiotic relationship with the US, I would like to see India develop a special relationship with Cuba and with the global academic community to take patents away from speculators and carpet bagging profiteers with no morality.
+ Technoscience changing laws (I am reminded that Google is now a suprnational entity that no government understands or regulates, something similar is happening in technoscience where Recombinant DNA technology is undermining the future of life.
+ Political economy is an epistemology.
+ Life, labor, & language–biology, political economy, philology central to the knowledge of and management of humanity.
+ VERY IMPORTANT: Game requires playing in FUTURE in order to stimulate and guide present. Visit Earth Intelligence Network to read about Medard Gabel's EarthGame that for $2M a year can offer this up across the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers, with embedded budgets of all organizations (governments, corporations, international and non-governmental, and charitable foundations).
+ Market valuation buries ethics, defines “allowable” ethics. Author touches, and I really respect this, on the moral value of information. Later on in the book the author cites Michael Fischer on “ethical plateaus.”
+ The author addresses the “social lives” of biological materials and biological information (note: I violently oppose Google's biomedical information initiative–we may as well become their zombies). In this vein, “ownership” of any of the bio-information constrains seamless sharing, enhancement, and I would add privacy. [Easy answer: CISCO AON on individual recyclable server-routers so individuals control all the information–medical, financial, etc. at their point of creation.] If CISCO will not do this, then India needs to.
+ Useful detailed discussion of conflicts & costs of privatized information versus information as a public good. The author makes case for blurring of lines and avoidance of either/or binary approach. I've already solved this: information in the aggregate should be public, while individual instances are private. Simple example: average spare parts costs can be derived from the aggregate while protecting the individual prices paid by any one of the contributors. AON, not Google, is the key.
+ The author emphasizes that the genome data demands robust detailed medical history to be valued. He contrasts India bio-ethics versus US. Sidenote: computational ethics are just as crucial.
+ I like, very much, the India public sector laboratories. I firmly believe that all health and education should be free, a public good similar to public safety.
+ Biocapital is complicated by context, distance, culture, financial, and technical variances among the competing parties.
+ I credit the author with this but I may have drawn it out: if we now see the value of collective intelligence, why are we having so much trouble seeing the value of collective intellectual property (the Creative Commons not-with-standing)?
+ Biopolitics centers of life (citing Foucault), accounting for and taking care of the population at large are central.
+ Political ecologies at all levels, gifting versus indebtedness, unions as a factor. UNIONS as a major factor. Vision fundamental. Direct links among ideology, capital, and locality.
+ Excluded populations (e.g. HIV not eligible…) can cause them to be consumed populations.
This is a deep complicated book hard for the lay reader (which I am), so to do it justice, I am resorting for the first time to a short list of key terms from the index that more represent the content:
belief systems
bioethical issues
biopolitics
biotechnology industry
capitalism, biocapital as new phase
diseases and illnesses
drug development marketplace
economic issues, multiple forms of currency
ethnographic research
genomics bioethics and industry
global market terrains
hype, capitalism
information ownership
intellectual property
life sciences
market value and non-market value
patient-in-waiting
populations, classification of
production issues
promissory biocapitalist futures
public domain issues
research issues
social issues
speed issues
temporality issues
therapeutic development
value access to
vision, commercial value
This is a pretty spectacular book, and someone did a great job across the board in presenting it.
I have had an interest in the intersection of global science, sustainable political and social and economic orders, and the vulnerability of the nation-state in the face of growing complexity for some time, and many of my other reviews focus on these literatures, as well as the literatures of collective intelligence, global assemlages, wealth of networks, localized resilience, and so on.
The sixteen chapters and five appendices are elegant–concise, clear key points, short, just the right mix of photos (including color in a center spread) figures, and text.
The publisher has been criminally remiss in failing to load the varied items that Amazon allows, such as the table of contents. I am increasingly disenchanted with publishers and of the view that Amazon should get into the book publishing business, sending digital copies to FedExKinko's, helping authors self publish (full disclosure: BOTH Fred Smith at FedEx and Jeff Bezos at Amazon blew me off–these guys are simply not serious about innovation).
Preface: Philosophical Beginnings
Chapter 1: The Philosophy of Sustainable Design
Chapter 2: The Evolution of Sustainable Design
Chapter 3: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Biomimicry)
Chapter 4: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Human Vitality)
Chapter 5: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Ecosystem/Bioregional)
Chapter 6: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Seven Generations)
Chapter 7: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Energy/True Cost)
Chapter 8: The Principles of Sustainable Design (Holistic Thinking)
Chapter 9: The Technologies and Components of Sustainable Design
Chapter 10: Shades of Green–Levels of Sustainability
Chapter 11: Productivity and Well-Being
Chapter 12: Greening Your Organization
Chapter 13: Green Economics
Chapter 14: The Sustainable Design Process–Holistic Thinking
Chapter 15: The Aesthetics of Sustainable Design
Chapter 16: The Future of Architecture
Appendix A: The Green Warrior Reading List
Appendix B: Who's Who in Green Design
Appendix C: The Phases of Green Design
Appendix D: The Elements of Green Design Methodology
Appendix F: The Principles of Sustainable Design–Summary
I put this book down with several thoughts:
1) Enormously impressed with the University of Oregon in Eugene, to the point of trying to get my oldest to take his computer and creative skills there.
2) Profoundly delighted with the deep philosophical underpinning that one finds throughout the book, without pretense or pomposity.
3) The one appendix I would have liked to see that is not there is the one entitles: Green to Gold–Bottom-Line Dollar Savings Over Time, and then a whole range of the elements of sustainable design by climate zone.
This is an extremely satisfying book to read. My last throught: it's time to write the Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Read more about this at Earth Intelligence Network. This book by Jason McLennan is a perfect model for what the larger systems book should strive to be.
See also the literatures under panarchy, resilience, sustainability.
This is a gem of an educational book. Mixing case studies with elaborating chapters on key concepts, it's as a good a volume as I have found for teaching undergraduates, graduates, and practitioners (farmers, factory managers, investors) the core ideas needed to restore a sustainable social-ecological system.
Highlights for me:
+ Optemization is a false premise, simplifies complex systems we do not understand, with the result that we end up causing long-term damage.
+ Resilience thinking is systems thinking. I cannot help but think back to all of the excellent work in the 1970's and 1980's–the authors were simply a quarter century ahead of their time.
+ In a nut-shell, resilient system can absorb severe disturbance.
+ System resilience is affected by context, connections across scales of time and space, and current system state in relations to threshholds.
+ Fresh water, fisheries, and topsoil depletion are major failures.
+ Drivers of environmental degradation are poverty, willful excessive consumption, and lack of knowledge (from another book, I recall that changes to the Earth that used to take 10,000 years now take three, one reason we need real-time science).
+ Key concepts are threshholds and adaptive cycles. Adaptive cycles have four phases: Rapid Growth; Conservation; Release; and Reorganization.
+ Redundancy is NOT a dirty word (just as intelligence–decision support–should not be a dirty word within the United Nations)
+ Ecological networks cannot be understood nor nurtured with a tight linking and understanding of the social networks that interact with the ecological networks.
+ Subsidies are a form of social denial, as they subsidize unsustainable practices and prevent adaptation and change.
+ Lovely–absolutely lovely–chart on page 89 about time-scales of climate and natural disasters like major fires.
+ One size does not fit all–solutions for one social-ecological network, e.g. in the USA, will not be the same as for another, e.g. in Norway.
+ Diversity is the key to regeneration.
+ Governances must be able to see and act upon key intervention points.
+ A Resilient world would be characterized by:
1. Diversity
2. Ecological variables
3. Modularity
4. Acknowledgement of slow variables
5. Tight feedbacks
6. Social capital
7. Innovation
8. Overlap in governance
9. Ecosystem services
Within this small and very easy to absorb book one finds a great annotated bibliography of recommended readings, a fine reference section, and a very solid index.
The Best and Most Essential Guide, Not the Whole Picture, January 11, 2008
Lester R. Brown
I have followed Lester Brown's dedication to evaluating the state of our planet for over a decade, and wrote to the Nobel Committee urging them to recognize him, Herman Daly, and Paul Kawkins and the two Lovins instead of Al Gore. They have all done a great deal more of the heavy lifting.
I decided to purchase this book when Medard Gabel, creator of the analog World Game with Buchminster Fuller, gave me a budget for saving the planet that totals no more than $230 billion a year (at a time when we spend $1.3 trillion waging war).
+ Book is offered free online (but the hard copy is much better deal, easier to work with, mark up and return to as a reference….use the online version to search for specifics.
+ The Introduction is clear and inspiring. This book is loaded with carefully collected facts ably presented.
+ $12 per gallon of fuel in “true costs” externalized and not billed
+ One 25 gallon ethanol tank takes enough grain to feed a person for a year. This means that those in hunger going to double from 600 million to 1.2 billion, as cars compete for grain (which is nuts).
+ Food-oil axis is developing into a triple crisis: oil, food, water. As 50% live in cities, the fuel intensity of food in the face of Peak Oil is becoming a major issue.
+ Stopping the ethanol program dead in its tracks is the single best thing US Government could do, followed my more wind farms and an end to coal plants.
+ Amazon reaching a tipping point, mega-fires are foreseen (as with New York City if its 1920's water system fails and a firestorm emerges)
+ Western model will not work for China or India (or Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and other Wild Cards)
+ Ice cap is melting fast, gfalciers are melting fast and causing small earthquakes.
+ 600 million refugees expected if sea level rises ten meters (33 feet)
+ Mortality has been reduced, but fertility has not, leaving persistent population issues.
+ 15 of 24 primary ecosystems degraded or pushed beyond their limits.
+ Climate has become more destructive, with 55 weather events costing $1.5 billion or more each since the 1980's.
+ Great discussion of the ecology of cities, Bioneers would resonate with all the author recommends.
+ Scarcity crossing national boundaries.
+ Excellent notes, heavy reliance on UN and other primary sources.
+ He proposes a budget of $190 billion a year to achieve our social goals and restore the Earth.
+ The only thing missing from this book are some of the positives, for example bacteria as an energy source, healing bacteria, eletrified water as a cleanser needed no other ingredients, the recovery of the Dead Sea with furrows that retain every drop of water.
I am so surprised to find only one review that I wanted to quickly add my praise for this author, while also pointing out three things that a handful of wealthy philanthropists could do tomorrow to execute this vision.
#1 We should all support the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER) as created by the Natural Capital Institute, and encourage colleges and universities around the world to begin loading the “true cost” information for all products and services (e.g. 4000 gallons of water in a designer T-shirt). Delivered to end-users via cell phone query at the point sale, this will dramatically affect markets.
#2 We should ask the 90 major foundations in the USA to host a summit to which all governments, non-governmental organizations, prominent wealthy individuals, and the United Nations are invited. The objective should be to create an online “Range of Gifts” Table that identifies specific contributions that can be made at every cost level, to eradicate the ten high level threats within fifteen years, by harmonizing the twelve policies such that ALL organizations and ALL individuals can opt in on a master budget that is strategically sound, operationally executable, and tactically open to all.
#3 We must absorb the wisdom of C. K. Prahalad, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and others listed below, and recognize that the only enduring sustainable solutioin lies in educating the five billion poor, who do not have the time or the money to sit in a classroom for 18-22 years. We can create today, using Telelanguage.com, an immediate registry of 100 million volunteers with Internet access, speaking 183 languages among them, who can educate the poor–who are not stupid, just illiterate–one cell call at a time.
I believe that Reuniting America, True Majority, and WISER are reaching critical mass. All we lack now is one well endowed champion who sees that it is our collective intelligence that will solve the world's problems, and there is no need to run for President. Here are the handful of books I would recommend to Michael Bloomberg if he were to ask me today how to fulfil his vision of political, educational, and philanthropic reform.
Visit Earth Intelligence Network for free public intelligence on the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers. The weekly report “GLOBAL CHALLENGES: The Week in Review,” will appeal to anyone interested in this book and its topic.
5.0 out of 5 stars Useful Bridge, Provokes Reflection
October 28, 2007
It was my good fortune to receive a copy of this book in galley form, and then again when published, because the author was scheduled to speak at one of my conferences. Having read a number of books on religion in politics (bad) and religion in diplomacy (good), as well as a number of books on science in isolation (bad) and science in relation to the humanities (good), I was most intrigued by this author's daring–and ultimately successful–endeavor to combine the accuracy of a scientific textbook with the inspiration of religious faith and gospel (good).
Yes, for some this may be a stretch, and some of it may annoy those who like their religion dressed in dogma and ritual and “no humor allowed,” but on balance I found this book totally worthwile. See others I recommend along these lines at the end of this review.
The author does not address, nor does he need to, the extremes of religion or of the politicization of science. Instead, he reconciles perspectives that have been allowed to claim they are in contradiction when in fact they are not. He builds bridges and makes important distinctions, such as between private and public revelation, facts as God's native tongue, and contrasting faith-based views on evolution.
The book is full of quotes from many of the most respected evolutionary thinkers of all time – both living and dead–as well as dozens of personal anecdotes. There is a separate list of Highlighted Stories, just after the Table of Contents.
Drawing on evolutionary brain science and evolutionary psychology, the author reframes and “makes real” traditional Christian concepts such as “Original Sin” and “The Fall”, but does so in a way that anyone, regardless of their religious or philosophical worldview, can embrace and benefit from. I am reminded of Conversations with God in that sense.
Part IV: “Evolutionary Spirituality” is a collection of exercises, practices, and “self-help” and “relationship-help” tools. Although I have not seen any other “self-help” books, this section struck me as provocative (of reflection) and therefore helpful to anyone.
Overall the author offers us all a “big picture” understanding of life's most important and persistent questions such as: “Where do we come from? Where are we going? Why are we here? How are we to live?”
The bottom line: this book addresses concerns many Christians have about evolution, yet also communicates a universal “gospel” (good news message) that will speak to people of all religious traditions, and even those hostile to religion.
From now on, no discussion of how science and religion or evolution and creation relate can ignore this book. The index is excellent, as are the concluding offerings, a “Who's Who” section and a Resources section.
Engrossing, Poetic, Meaingful, and Reminiscent,March 31, 2008
