Meet: The Newest God

Flying Spaghetti Monster. Thought it was a nice picture on Compfight. This 'thing' has been declared a Deity (god) by an American student. That student then went on to found an official Flying Spaghetti Monster religion which he called Pastafarianism. The 'religion' was quite popular within no time because many Americans were fed up with Intelligent Design as an explanation for the Big Bang.

clipped from www.flickr.com

Earth hour

Don't forget - Earth Hour! This annual Vote for Mother Earth is gaining in popularity. Edinburgh Castle has switched off the lights.

clipped from www.globalwarmingisreal.com Tomorrow evening, March 28th, at 8:30PM, is your chance, no matter where you are in the world, to "vote for the Earth" by turning off your lights for one hour (and your television, computer, etc.)

Hulu's Launch Could Set Precedent For Written Media

Television is changing ho established corporations’ approach new demands by Internet-serviced audiences. Trailblazing deals in the TV industry that signal profound change among viewers could set a precedent for written media.
At the very least, the deals should provide inspiration.

Yesterday’s full-blast launch to U.S. TV audiences of Hulu.com, the YouTube competitor service scrambled together by NBC and Fox, LionsGate and Sony Pictures Television, underpins this. The new site allows American viewers to watch TV shows, including advertising, online for free. Hulu.com already is wildly popular because it allows people to watch shows in their own time, rather than being determined by an agenda set by the tv stations.

In a counter move, YouTube has opened its API to developers so that it will be able to compete through being more widely embedded in other sites. It has also improved its own site. Users now are advised not to download shows for which they don’t have the modem speed, for instance.

Joost.com, a similar service set up by Skype inventors which aims to reach international audiences, also launched a new package yesterday. According to its creators all went better than expected.

I am not going to write an entire post about the TV industry, but want to point out the major difference between written media and TV entertainment; written media can also repackage and release its content but it will always remain slightly limited by the clock for news coverage. After all, news is real; it needs to happen before the dissemination process can begin. The platforms that dish out the news are already visited by people who designate their own time to the consumption of the news.

The prime lesson to be learned perhaps is in the packaging. Throwing stuff from competing institutions together to make an extra valuable tool for targeted advertising appears to be a workable concept. Aggregation logic in the news media runs on totally different numbers, but it always has done, so there’s little to worry over when you see that two major tv stations are having to cluster together to stay competitive.

I guess.

International Condemnation For Violence Against Tibetans

The international community has strongly condemned the Chinese clampdown on Tibet protesters. Reports indicate that between 30 to over 100 people have been killed in the protests. The actor Richard Gere has called for a boycott of the Olympics.

The Tibet protest has led to the killing of up to an estimated 100 people thus far and international outcry has been voiced from various quarters.

Barack Obama, the Democratic Presidential candidate issued a strong condemnation, saying "This is the year of the Beijing Olympics. It represents an opportunity for China to show the world what it has accomplished in the last several decades. Those accomplishments have been extraordinary and China's people have a right to be proud of them, but the events in Tibet these last few days unfortunately show a different face of China."

Richard Gere, the Hollywood actor, urged for a boycott of the Games saying this would draw attention to the Tibetan cause.

The India residing Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who is known for his wish to see a 'cultural autonomy' rather than outright independence for Tibet, confirmed that between 30 to over 100 people had been killed. He said he felt "deep concern" and urged China to deal with the "resentment of the Tibetan people through dialogue". He called on the Tibetans not to use violence; "I also urge my fellow Tibetans not to resort to violence."

The protests which started in the Tibetal capital Lhasa, spread to various other cities, including in India, Nepal, Australia and China itself. Apart from in Lhasa, where shops were set on fire and dozens of people were killed, Indian police also took harsh action and the protests turned violent.

The UK leader Gordon Brown also expressed his concern saying "We are very concerned about what is happening in Tibet. We have asked for more information about what is going on and we will keep this matter under review."

Last Friday the Nepalese authorities, faced with up to 500 people staging a peaceful sit in outside the UN building in the capital, gave in to Chinese diplomatic pressure to close the south side of Everest for a week in May, while the Chinese Olympic torch team is on the mountain. Reason? Protesters might cause a PR embarrassment.

Tibetan monks in China from the Labrang monastery went on a march together with hundreds of Tibetans. The march turned into a riot and government buildings were attacked and windows of the police headquarters were broken. The protest ended when the police fired tear gas.

In Sydney, protesters scaled a wall surrounding China's consulate and removed the Chinese national flag and tried to replace it with a Tibetan flag. Four people were arrested when police used pepper spray to disperse the crowd after a plain clothes officer had been attacked.

Tibet's government-in-exile urged the United Nations to intervene to end what it called "urgent human rights violations" by China in the region.

Online Democracy And e-Governing

We are currently witnessing a hype of idealism online. Social networks and crowdsourcing initiatives seem to thrive on and propel unprecedented amounts of karma. How are governments fitting in?

This is the prime issue to address if you want to find out whether the increased idealism is actually resulting in higher levels of democracy. e-Government sites offer good measurement tools. You might find cool devices from the corporate sector too, but these tend to inform you of one thing only; brands and their impact. The latter is increasingly being seen as an important democratic indicator and perhaps this is a good development. After all, if our choices increasingly reflect decisions that we're taking, being part of entire production/manufacturing processes, our notion of democratic input is accordingly spreading from the realm of politics only to the realm of production too.

Brand measurement per se is not my cup of tea; I have no desire to find out what the hell the latest crisp brand is doing on my kitchen shelf. I am an avid crowdsource platform participant, but I ain't that convinced that my attitudes are changing to the level of crisp awareness... There is a dynamics involved in crowdsourcing which incites consumer choice and which is tilting the balance toward consumer decisions. That dynamics takes activity away from the producers, so it's pointless trying to capitalize on the type of democracy consumers are ontologizing. Completely different issues are important in democratic input in the production spheres.

Government initiatives at (e-)democracy for the time being make a lot more sense because they are that much more open to suggestions from the ground. Plus whenever you search for studies, you get more diverse, sensical, headlines. 'Does promoting community participation in governance help build social capital?', is such a headline.

The study behind it, carried out in the UK on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, draws on a rigorous review of academic evidence and original research. The researchers, a team from Demos, went to two deprived neighbourhoods in the UK (- Ely and Careau in Cardiff, and Benchill in Wythenshawe, Manchester) trying to find out the answer to this question.

In doing so, the researchers temporarily place the government at the total opposite end of the spectrum as the corporate sector. By picking a virtually impossible field (less than 1% of the population in these areas have healthy government links), the outcome is likely as predictable as the measurement studies of corporate sector driven researchers are. However, the government sponsored studies are as direly needed as corporations' efforts are wasteful and annoying.

The logic of modern life is at best ironic. The Rowntree study found the neighborhoods to be tiny microcosms of a world where the rich get richer. The key factor influencing the low level of participation in governance turned out to be that those already well-connected tended to get better connected.

The researchers devised ideas to improve the situation, building on the notion that there's growing evidence that some social networks enable citizens to work together to tackle problems for themselves. The project was a test of the limits of 'social capital'.

They focused on a concept known as 'linking social capital'. The theory is that involving people in the governance of services, government/community members' relationships are built.

During the fieldwork, researchers identified six core influences, which worked in interrelated pairs, grouped under the umbrella terms inequity, exclusivity and dependency.

Inequity
Preferential attachment: The networks surrounding participation tended to have a few nodes only.
The rich get richer: Participation confers benefits which do not necessarily 'trickle down' to non-participants. Individuals who gain 'linking social capital' through participation in governance increase their likelihood of continuing to gain more linking social capital.

Exclusivity
Closure: The value of linking social capital may come from preventing others from accessing it. It can suit public sector partners to work with some community representatives rather than others, and it can suit those representatives to be the community voices that public sector partners listen to in decision-making.
Self-exclusion: The study found at least three reasons why people opted out of activities in which, in theory, it served their interest to be involved. Some people simply decided that governance was not for them.

Dependency
Community dependency: "Those who shout loudest get somewhere," said one of the interviewees. "But who is going to ring up those people who weren't at the meeting and ask them if everything is ok?"
Institutional dependency: "There is a tendency to over-use the key people", one community activist said, explaining how institutions themselves also play a key part in fostering a culture of dependency on a small community elite. "As soon as you start going to one meeting or other the vultures come in," she said. There is often a temptation to go for the quick fix of recruiting an existing community participant who is a known quantity, rather than to invest scarce time and resources in attracting new people who may not end up participating fully or who may drop out.

The project was conducted in two of the UK's poorest areas and the researchers staked a very odd sounding claim in their study; that if the government could achieve a goal of a 1% participation rate, this would build some (instead of none) social capital. It gives you an idea of the situation.

Mobilise participation by 1 per cent of citizens and something of a viral element might be spiralling into effect; "Embed this [1%] in the wider rhythms and routines of community life", the researchers suggest.
They added seven ideas illustrating how the solution might work;

- Backing social entrepeneurs
- Disconnecting and reconnecting (to remove the barriers)
- Building trust gradually
- Involving other citizens
- Long-term capacity building for participation
- Making participation a national priority
- Refashioning the role of local councillors

Other democracy inspired initiatives such as People and Participation are online and list lots of different community projects that show an idealism of the first order. These initiatives are mostly new. The great thing is that aside from providing an impetus that works interdependently, many of the projects are likely going to be measured too.

Who Does Your Kid Resemble More?

A new genealogy site allows you to upload a picture of your kid, your (ex) spouse and your self and have them analyzed on facial features. The face analysis meter indicates who your kid resembles more. In my case, our 12 year old son resembles me 4% more. On other pictures my ex scored better, but I think that objectively speaking the 4% is just about right. There's also a celebrity morphing tool on that site.




I myself look 6% more like my mother:

Researchers: There Is No Link Between War And Poverty

A higher carbon footprint is negatively correlated with the outbreak of war and control for income effects, say Norwegian political scientists.

The Norwegian scientists collated historic evidence about war situation and environmental settings globally over the years 1961-1999 and found that there is no support for the regular Neomalthusan theory - the theory that says wars are caused by dwindling food sufficiency.

In an article published in the peer-reviewed journal Population and Environment, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) say the theory that wars are mainly caused by a country’s food production failing to keep up with its population growth, is untrue. Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) said that starvation, war and early death regulates the balance between food availability and population numbers. That means that the bulk of the population would live a minimalist existence.

Malthus' theory is pretty much standardly accepted theory among political scientists and sociologists. They see climate change and over-consumption of natural resources as a modern day illustration of Malthus’ theory.

Accepting the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, former US Vice President Al Gore Jr. made sure to underline this once more too, saying that ”Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.”

The Norwegian political scientists say their research findings suggests that there is no connection between environmental crises and armed conflict.

They studied the environmental pressures in 150 countries in the period from 1961 to 1999. "By using an internationally recognized technique for measuring a country’s environmental sustainability, the ecological footprint, the researchers were able to compare these numbers with statistics on armed conflict during the same period.

The scientists' conclusion may seem paradoxical. "[Countries] where resources are heavily exploited show a clear connection to a lack of armed conflict", they found. Or alternatively, nations troubled by war during the research period had lower exploitation rates of their natural resources. The findings give researchers solid empirical support for stating that environmental scarcity is not the reason behind violent conflict.

The scientists say that there are of course exceptions. They also studied examples of recent areas stricken by conflicts and say that it can't be denied that some of these are caused by natural resource scarcity. Darfur, Sudan, Rwanda, Haiti and Somalia are examples of this.

"I have seen with my own eyes how climate change and resource scarcity, particularly when it comes to water and grazing lands, can fuel tensions", says Jan Egeland, director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI).

Egeland is the former UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. He used to be responsible for refugee issues, and has seen many conflicts across the globe that surely could have been caused by environmental crises.

In his previous job, Egeland has gone on the record saying that the Darfur conflict was the result of an environmental crisis. But following this research work, he said, he's now a little more uncertain of such a causal connection.

Malthus lived well before the later technological breakthroughs, such as the Green Revolution. This has 'altered his bleak global caloric intake equation', Binningsbø said.

The researchers relied in their ecological research on techniques developed by the Global Footprint Network, which specializes in measuring a country’s resource consumption compared to its ecological capacity.

The method is widely used as a measurement technique, but has also been criticised. Researchers have argued that the method can only be applied on a global basis, in as much as countries trade with each other, and therefore aren’t necessarily solely dependent on their own natural resources.

New Trend - Having Your Postal Mail Delivered Online

If there's any trend that's without a doubt both confirmed and global it's everybody's hate for junk mail. A new company is raising venture capital to eliminated junk mail and step up company recycling efforts by 500%.




The company is called Earthmail.com and already it's taking the world by storm. Its founder Ron Wiener has a compelling business pitch; companies and private persons can reduce their carbon footprint and boost their productivity by having Earthclass Mail scan their mail and put it online. Just like email! This way you can eliminate unwanted mail before it arrives on your desk and clutters up the spare office space.

Wiener wants to open up in over 20 U.S. cities and is today participating in a real life reality style soap about business pioneers called StartupJunkies. The show is aired by Mojo, a hi-def tv producer and the soap is likely going to a big part of the fundraising effort.




Wiener already pitched his business before Californian, Colorado and Barcelona investors members of an angel investor community called K4. The man’s most luring catch phrase no doubt is “See how easily your organization can witness the biggest boost in productivity and cost savings since the introduction of email.”

Let's hope the investor gives Wiener light of day because that man is worth his weight in gold. His idea takes the incentive out of the junkmail persistence for good! By aggregating the paper stacks of corporations, the recycling effort could finally take off in earnest.

People Search Engine Spock Capitalises On The Success Of Social Networks

Spock.com - The Best For People Search is a recently launched people search engine which is growing rapidly. Type in the name of a person you want to look up online and you will find them in the click of a mouse. Spock is like any normal social network, but the people that populate it have not necessarily sourced the information themselves.

Spock offers instant links to a person’s personal pages on social networks including Facebook, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Twitter and many more. Plus you can see all their network contacts on Spock.

If you wonder just how reliable its listed info is if it ain’t volunteered by the subject in question, there’s a voting mechanism that allows people to vote. Also, the network’s administrators will remove content that people object to. So while outsiders can source pictures, news articles, web addresses, and potentially rather sensitive details, most of the people profiled will have provided the information themselves.

Spock is a trend that is growing rapidly and the reason is that the company has found a niche that normal social networks bypass. The comprehensive approach and search friendly experience definitely is valuable.

Other than searching for people by name, you can also look up search results according to likes and dislikes, profession or clubs that people are members of. For instance, if you are looking for a green building specialist, you’ll find a certain Robert Wisniewski, topping the list of 19 results.

Mind you, he’s the only real green building specialist of the lot. Plus, Wisniewski’s personal profile is lifted directly from a company website. But offsetting that the rest of the information is highly useful because not only do you have direct access to Wisniewski’s personal pages on all kinds of social networks, but you also find tonnes of articles about people like him under the google search entries. Even though the service obviously needs time to build up steam, the comprehensive approach that Spock uses will definitely catch on.

New Documents Reveal Information On How Hitler Used The Stars

British Secret Service agents have a longstanding reputation for the inconceivable ways in which they operate. News just out in the UK reveals that during World War II, secret agents employed the services of a horoscope expert. Just like Hitler did.

The documents that revealed this information were first released Monday 3 March by the National Archives. An astrologer by the name of Louis de Wohl apparently convinced British secret agents that Hitler was strongly palatable to astrology.

Hitler, so de Wohl told the secret agents, listened very carefully to the advice of his own horoscope expert, a Swiss guy named Karl Ernst Krafft. To gain insight into the often unpredictable plans of Hitler, it was very important that the Brits took readings of the stars themselves too, de Wohl argued, pitching his own candidacy for the job. The espionage chiefs bought it and De Wohl soon became a respected advisor to the Defense chiefs. De Wohl suggested, in a memo to a mentor Sir Charles Hambro that "shadowing" his counterpart's predictions would be a good idea. "The system according to which Hitler is advised is universal, and, being mathematical, has nothing whatsoever to do with clairvoyance or mystic matters," he wrote in a letter that was first released last Monday.

De Wohl traveled to the US in 1941 where he held lectures to convince the Americans that Hitler could be defeated. De Wohl appealed to the Yanks to intervene in the European situation.

De Wohl as a person was not beyond reproach; he claimed to be a Hungarian aristocrat but everybody doubted that. He was born and raised in Berlin and arrived in London in 1935, where he rapidly became known for his flamboyancy among the rich and famous. He was officially hired by the Ministry of Defense in 1940.

After the war De Wohl's claims were probed by historians and members of staff of MI5 and MI6 (the UK secret service), who said that his predictions seldomly came true. And some historians claimed as early as 1945 that Hitler had never taken astrology seriously.

However, the files, released at the National Archives at Kew, suggest that some of his predictions might even have come true.

But De Wohl also had his victorious moments; "He appears to have forecast the German invasion of Crete, the Battle of Midway to within a few days and Montgomery's desert success against the German Field Marshal, Erwin Rommel", Ananova reports.

The Ananova reporters quote Prof Christopher Andrew, who is writing the official history of MI5, as saying that "Hitler regarded astrology as nonsense, but the belief that he really paid attention to horoscopes entered Whitehall."

Freedom Of Expression In Cuba? Students Are On For It!

Cubans are going through an important change yet there are few reports from inside the country that reach us, compared to the plethora of news items that international agencies churn out about this country's hated leader.



The mainstream media are devoting a lot of attention to the changeover and the voting process that facilitates it, but bloggers on the ground are alerting us to some other signals. It’s been only a few days that a video which had been sent anonymously to the BBC circulated on the web, showing a few Cuban students who openly criticised their government in front of Parliamentary President Ricardo Alarcón.



A blogger who wrote about the issue for ObserversFrance.com (also the link to the e video) says she had difficulty believing her eyes watching the video. “It’s not easy to imagine. But it's true,” she writes.

It appears that people have difficulty believing this happened, let alone predict what's next. “Is the nearing end of Fidel Castro's reign bringing about improvements in freedom of speech, or is it a publicity stunt to better outside views of the authorities?”, the Havana blogger writes. A few days later she wrote an update with news about the temporary disappearance of Eliecer Avila, one of the protesting students. She said he appeared on Cuban tv, saying that the foreign media had ‘manipulated' his statement. Well, if anything, let's be happy he appeared again.

The end of the Fidel days are not expected to lead to much change in the country. Everybody knows that the fate of this small island is largely in the hands of Washington. And the Americans are demanding that the situation on the ground, ie the political democracy, improves, before it will lift the 46-year embargo. All Presidential candidates in the US elections race issued reactions to the Castro resignation that unanimously demanded improved democracy.

Castro’s brother is credited with the agricultural reforms and could issue some more changes. He has been brainstorming since the summer of 2006 for economic reforms and is quoted as saying he is all for openness. Many Cubans dread what will happen if Fidel dies because they have been sat in the guagmire where unexpected things simply have been a no no since 1959. Castro has outlasted 9 US presidents, the fall of the Soviet empire and he's even exported his own brand of communism abroad to Venezuela.

New York Times Bestsellers Don't Come Cheap

The New York Times best seller list is a fad. You've known it for years, I've known it for years. But the way the ranking is compiled remains a secret. Nevertheless the decision this week by a best seller's authors to abandon product placement in their book follows intense criticism from among others the NYT editorial. So what's acceptable in best seller marketing?

The secrecy surrounding best seller lists is both intriguing and a sore point. Nobody seems to have a clue about the quality of the books listed. There’s been speculation for years about a black dagger that appears next to some titles on NYT best seller books. Presumably, it’s evidence of bulk buying, but nobody really knows.

The allegation that bulk buying takes place and that it’s a crime is totally justified; after all, readers would want to think that they’re reading a book that made it to best seller status because many others thought it deserved that. But just like you can’t tell from an average book shelf whether the books on it have been read, the best seller list is also more or less a status symbol that everybody is after nevertheless.

More questionable than bulk buying is when the people that are responsible for filling up actual pages, the writers, get in on the dirt. Take Cathy’s Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233 a NYT best seller for teenagers written by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman. The authors included 'product placement' into the book; they agreed with Cover Girl to have the protagonist wear their lipstick and by means of compensation, the book was promoted on beinggirl.com the Procter & Gamble exploit. Commercial Alert, Ralph Nader's group, took immediate offense and ordered editors and reviewers to give it thumbs down. Even The New York Times wrote a critical review. What the editors forget is that people will find it hard to believe their editorial itself is independent.

The criticism has had its effect because next Monday, the book paperback version of the book comes out without any sponsorship. I am not sure I like this. Somehow some idiots have decided it’s time to ‘protect’ teeny girlies. Or so. Despite the fact that any 11-year old knows how the world functions. I would imagine that teenagers will feel, if anything, deprived due to this action. It’s de facto signal that the corporate world is beyond fixing - yet another great message.

Marketing of books is often presumed an afterthought, but if you read the literary pages and pay attention to the war of ideologies’ sponsorships battles you won’t be surprised at the vast hinterland. Writers pay good money, it appears, to learn the tricks of the trade. One program that claims to offer up-to-date book insider tips is John Kremer’s 1001Ways to Market Your Books. “The New York Times bestseller list is essentially a work of fiction,” Kremer says on his website. “As a result, it can be — and is — manipulated by those who know how the list is compiled. Publishers do it all the time. [....] Even an unknown author can use the same techniques to propel his or her book to the top of the bestseller list,” Kremer says.

And guess what, Kremer himself is offering good money for people to preach his gospel. He offers widgets to bloggers to write about his book. To me, there’s nothing wrong with this. What I find offensive is that the very same people that push books to the top by completely hidden means now get away claiming the moral high ground by condemning product placement in a teen book. To me that reaks of deformed thinking that’s messed up beyond recognition. What’s next, the veil for teeny ‘whores’?

Green Drinks Are Becoming All The Rage All Over The Globe

Green drinking buddies? They exist! Every month, green group drinks take place in over 320 bars around the world. Green Drinks meetings are attended by people working in NGOs, academia, government and business. Just say 'are you green?', and then whoosh, networking!

The group´s organisers say Green Drinks is an organic, self organising network. It appears that´s right. The network already is in these countries; UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, Afghanistan, Argentina, Belgium, Belize, Brazil, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka and Switzerland.



Contact your local branche and see if you can join. If there´s no Green Drinks in your home town, email the organisers for tips on how you can set it up in your town; edwin [at] greendrinks [dot] org.

Tweetmeme Ranks Your Links Into Twitter According To Popularity

Data mining social networks is quite a challenge. Imagine walking on a busy street and trying to make sense of all the conversations around you at once. It is humanly impossible. Yet computer programs can handle the task. The more interesting mashups tend to be successful at capturing human activities at the perifery of our existence and present them in context.

Take Twitter, the hugely popular chattering service. The mashups that mine the data meaningfully are those that group and categorise human statements so we can make sense of them. One of the latest Twitter mashups is called Tweetmeme and it categorises the most frequently linked-to sites on Twitter.

Tweetmeme is the latest in a series of add-on Twitter websites. Roughly speaking, many of these efforts involve the separation of the general chatter from the links that people happen to mention whilst they're Twittering. Tweetmeme identifies links by their category, ie blogs, videos, images or audio and feeds these into RSS.

Tweetmeme's real value is that it gives you a great idea about what's alive in higher cyber regions.

The Latest Trends In Printing? Green Technology!

A company called GreenPrint has invented a printing program that scans printouts for content that users are not likely to read before printing. Things like images and banner ads are eliminated from the printouts unless you specify otherwise. The program is compatible to all Microsoft Windows based systems. It also allows you to create even more economical PDF documents. 


I have downloaded the program and it works great. It saves me from adjusting the margins in IE7, something I do whenever I print documents and which has saved me pages and pages of paper and printing toner. GreenPrint's software calculates exactly what amount of paper, money, and greenhouse gases you are saving by using the program. This is quite interesting.

An individual will on average save up to $90 a year, GreenPrint says. That’s the equivalent of more than 1,400 pages. The company says that if the number of users sign up for its program that they’re expecting to sign up, some 100 million trees could be prevented from being chopped down. That is the equivalent of 300 million tons of greenhouse gases.


A case study on GreenPrint's website details the contribution to the environment that a big pharmaceutical company made in just over 11 months. Their environmental report card shows that they contributed to 6,298 trees left standing, saving 1,858,876 gallons of water, cutting energy usage by 1,094,688 kilowatt hours (the equivalent to heating and cooling 47 houses for a year), preventing 823 cubic yards of solid waste being dumped in landfills, cutting air pollution back by 15,522 pounds. Imagine! That's only 11 months! There’s a free printer program as well as a paid downloadable program. The latter offers ad free print previews and tech support.

Download the program here.

GreenPrint has also invented a new font which is 20 percent more narrow than Arial, Helvetica and Times New Roman fonts. Called 'EverGreen', the new font (see picture) is the first in a series, GreenPrint promises. More eco friendly fonts will hit the market later in the year.

The Planet Needs You And These Are Your Tools

Was it only yesterday that I wrote about the below India ranking that the US scored on a Yale scorecard of environmental/agricultural/health gdp-linked indicators? Today another double whammy dosis of worrisome news from the UK.

The report in question is entitled "Health Effects of Climate Change in the UK”. It's written by scientists of the Health Protection Agency and predicts chances that a heat wave will occur before 2012 are 25% which will claim thousands of lives.

The report, authored by the UK's Health Protection Agency is shockingly alarming in many ways. But its writers are outlining worst case scenarios and the effects with no aim other than to inform health officials what they should be prepared for.

The death toll is estimated to run as high as 10,000 people. If temperatures average at least 27 degrees over 24 hours, some 3,000 immediate deaths would occur.

The 'best' statistics available of the hazards are the 2003 French heatwave which had an official death toll of 14,000 people. The UK health officials' report arrived at a politically opportune moment because Downing Street is putting a plan together for the health sector to deal with global warming related disease.

Hospitals are told to prepare for malaria outbreaks because rising temperatures mean there's a bigger risk of outbreaks of diseases transferred by musquitoes and ticks. Even if a disease might not originate in the UK, warm weather might trigger an epidemic that was transferred from people who travel overseas, the UK government believes.

Air pollution is another big worry. The authors of the Health Protection Agency's report say that hospitals should count on an estimated 1,500 deaths and hospital admissions annually as a result of it. Food poisoning is believed to rise by 15% due to warmer weather. That amounts to 14,000 cases a year. Other than health hazards there are also increased chances of floods.

Is it me or does it really begin to feel like we need to take climate change seriously? When people talk about 'doing my bit for the planet' the phrase is mostly used as an expression of smallness. But if you read up on what you actually can do, you'll be surprised at how easy most options are. Better tools become available every day that allow you to calculate the direct impact in kilos of carbon emissions. If you want to start doing something, find a calculator (I have listed general (energy) calculators, water, paper, printer, car and aviation calculators on my other blog. If you live in the UK, you can also opt for an iGoogle calculator which allows you to track everything you contribute to the planet. You can visit my other blog here: http://amplifiedgreen.wordpress.com.




we need to realise that every little bit counts.

US Underperforms India In Environment Study

The US ranks at the bottom of the G8 in a Yale/Columbia Universities report studying environmental and social factors. India scores better than the US, which only narrowly outperforms China.

The report features global trends and reveals close links between gross domestic product per capita, greenhouse gas emissions/agricultural policies and sanitation, indoor air quality, as well as a country's success in fighting disease.

The top ten of the list, in which countries can score 100 at best on the combined indicators as well as 20 other measures, is heavily populated by European countries. Switserland leads, earning its top place because of a greenhouse gas efficient policies mostly.

The researchers were impressed with its use of hydroelectric power and the Swiss railway dominated transport system in general. The number two spot was taken by Sweden, followed by Norway and Finland, Austria, France, Latvia, Costa Rica, Colombia and New Zealand, which scored 87 points. In a similar study released in 2006, New Zealand, now tenth, was the top performer. The researchers assigned climate change a heavier weighting in their most recent study, which accounts for New Zealand's fall.

The US, with a score of 81.0, ranked 39th on the list. In terms of regional smog, the US was the absolute bottom of all 149 surveyed countries. The results were presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month. An FT poll asking `What Should Be The Top Of The Agenda At Davos?´ underscored the survey's actuality; `Climate change´ topped the list at 25.1%, followed closely by ´US recession´ (18.4%). Poverty was third, scoring 15%.

The Bush administration says it is planning a program to cut ozone damaging emissions by 90% in ten years. The focus is on cutting diesel emissions from heavy vehicles like trucks and diesel powered building equipment. Such a move would be welcome news but let’s also hope that greenhouse gas emissions are toned down because at a quarter of the new releases of greenhouse gas emissions, the US’ record is shameful. That’s not least because over the last few years this situation has deteriorated.

Staples, The US Office Retailer, Becomes 'Environmentally Correct'

The paper sector is an obvious a target for green activism, so this weekend’s breaking news that office supplies retailer Staples severed all ties with its Singaporean paper supplier because of environmental concerns shouldn’t be that surprising. But the events that led to Staples’ move are an eye opener; a Wall Street Street Journal reporter discovered that the company was going to use its Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) logo and tipped off the FSC about the environmental policies of APP.

APP’s paper producing methods incited environmental concerns first in 2004 when Greenpeace pointed out that it in part relies on natural rainforests for its production of paper. A hoist of US, Asian and European companies terminated their contracts with APP, one after the other in recent years. All cited environmental concerns as their reason. The giant retailer Office Depot Inc. is also in the list.

The WSJ reporter’s action resulted in the FSC’s objection to Staples’ use of its label. The certification is considered the world's most stringent, and ensures responsible management of the world’s forests at miller level. A Staples spokesman last weekend told the Wall Street Journal “We decided engagement was not possible anymore. We haven't seen any indication that APP has been making any positive strides [to protect the environment.]”. He added that staying in business with APP would come "at great peril to our brand."

It's obvious; Staples is concerned that its customers won’t be enamored with forest destructive paper production methods. APP has a policy of producing paper from newly planted forests but says that due to huge demand, it needs to cut trees from mature rainforests as well. This practice is, in the Wall Street’s Journal’s terms, ‘having an impact on big U.S. paper buyers’.

The big question now of course is whether APP, one of the world’s largest paper manufacturers, will stop its destruction. Its policy thus far has been to deny that it's doing anything wrong. The incentive is rather limited; Staples purchased only around 9% of its total paper supplies from APP and roughly 5% of this concerned paper. The WSJ didn’t manage to get a reply from APP immediately, but perhaps later this week, when Staples officially announces its decision, there will be more information.

Economics Professors Do Not Teach Eco Values - Yet

Did you know that Green economics is hardly an established concept academically? That is because economists have difficulties believing that anything other than the input in their models reflects reality. But the numbers they so diligently belabor are only valid because everyone else in the game plays by the same rules.

Standard economist models account for the earth’s resources as if they were free and infinite, but the realisation is growing that this is an untenable position. Economics is traditionally highly empirical and the uptake of a new logic will take time. It took us until the 1700s to produce an Adam Smith who had the presence of mind to adopt a systemic approach to the mishmash of Mercantile partying. It's ironic that now that business practices are once again beginning to resemble Mercantile characteristics, it is taking us time again to reconcile it into the Capitalist system, even though the case for it is strong.

Mercantilism is a great concept, even though the term might not be fashionable right now because it has such a bitter taste to it in a macro economic context. But then again, consumer driven pressures for sustainable production might just outpace the initial distaste. What's more, the mixture of demand for green, ecological production processes and mercantilist trading is bound to result in new textbook material in a few years. Professors who train young economists might soon see that it's time to talk a different game.

Watch this video of an alternative proposition on accounting for the earth’s natural resources. A reaction to the movie reads: “You obviously do not understand free markets. Who is making green technology buddy? Its not the government. Its businesses in the ECONOMY that are creating green technology because it is PROFITABLE to do so.” But it seems to me that the tipping point for has moved forward. Various trends show that profitability as a focal point is being replaced by probability.

The mercantilist based economy is already soaring, even if we don't recognise it as such. Take any crowdsource platform and what you witness happening is essentially mercantilist trading. We simply don't use the word but, in true mercantilist fashion we've come up with individual labels as the replacement generic term.

Recently, Business Week dedicated an article to the virtual untraceability of millions and millions of small businesses. This is evidence that language wise there's a gap. But it doesn't mean that organizations of small traders don't exist. In a subsequent article, they featured MerchantCircle.com which is an example of a company that fills the niche of grouping the individual businesses together. MerchantCircle is a kind of interactive Yellow Pages that exploits local to the max.

Small business owners (from around the globe) can register, claim SEO optimized listings for their business and what's the best part; have their customers write referral reviews of their services. The company is very young, under one year, but already it's thriving. Part of its success is due to MerchantCircle’s own brilliant use of word of mouth.

For instance, it is getting bloggers like myself to write about them via the equally ingenious platform creamaid.com. This is another example of a mercantile miracle. Via CreamAid, you can kickstart writing for dollars without being mediated by a reviews brokerage. You pick a topic you were already thinking to blog about and join a conversation by submitting your blog post. The party you review pays you plus you receive traffic from a widget that publicises the conversation in which you've participated. One of my next posts will deal with paid blogging in the green sector.

Airlines That Don't Live Up To Environmental Standards Face Tough Financing In Future

Negative public perception of companies' environmental policies can no longer be regarded as territory for marketers or advertisers only. Companies now risk their funding if they are not 'green', say financial analysts.

A recent issue of Global Flight reported that airlines are forced to go green not only because of consumer pressures but also because of financial reasons.

Analysts say that airlines that do not have a strategy in place (very soon) to address environmental issues might soon find itself unable to get finance. That is totally at the other end of the spectrum of where the commentator was coming from. It is a first sign that real change in attitude is taking place. You can argue about the effectiveness of the various carbon programs or of purifying the fuels, but at least the hypocrisy factor’s gone down.

The magazine outlines that risk analysists are increasingly giving as much weight to the effect of public perception as to the still uncertain scientific understanding of aviation's precise impact on the environment. Who knows, perhaps the mix of regulations, new European guidelines and financial considerations that together could make or break airlines when it comes to the bottom line, might turn out to become a model development for other industries. “A risk manager will [...] as a matter of course take account of a business's holistic impact on the environment and will subject that to the same level of audit scrutiny as he would traditionally give to a business's balance sheet”, Flight Global writes. It goes on to quote a risk management expert as saying "We don't have to prove we're right about the risk. We just have to prove we may be right."

Further down in the article a (ratings agency) Moody’s Analyst is quoted as saying: "If there is successful adherence by European airlines through a formalised structure, that could well improve access to capital. These airlines could well show the way, be the harbingers of a trend and could ultimately become the model. But they will first have to demonstrate that they are managing these programmes effectively."

The same specialist believes that a new US administration could be positive for the creation of an emissions trading program. If the Open Skies transatlantic air travel liberalisation is going to step up competition in the airline industry, it will also lead to a further internationalision, which might mean that the European initiative could be adopted in the US as well, the analyst said.

Moody's is already working on standardised methods to rate airlines’ pollution in as fair a way as possible. The methodology includes financial metrics and qualitative considerations such as fleet age, fuel hedging strategies and geographic spread of risk. A rating agency is acting as a bridge between the rather inflexible world of industry to the more flexible world of finance and consumers at large.

Green economics is hardly an established concept academically. That is because economists have difficulty believing that anything other than the input in their models reflects reality. But they forget that the numbers they so diligently belabor are only valid because everyone else in the game plays by the same, fallacious, rules.

The biggest misconception by far is of course the concept that the earth’s resources are accounted for with as if they are infinite. Academia might lag behind the times though, because if you look at businesses, especially those ‘blamed’ for some of the worst pollution, a notable change is taking place. Economics is of course a field that is traditionally highly empirical – it took us until the 17 hundreds to have one bright mind think up a systemic approach to the mishmash of Mercantile parties – and who knows, the rule book might be re-written in the not so distant future.

Watch this video of an alternative proposition on the earth’s natural resources. A reaction to the movie reads: “You obviously do not understand free markets. Who is making green technology buddy? Its not the government. Its businesses in the ECONOMY that are creating green technology because it is PROFITABLE to do so.” But it seems that the tipping point is has moved forward. Profitability as a focal point is on its way to being replaced by probability.

Iranian Sisters Sentenced To Death By Stoning For Chatting To Male Admirers

A woman falsely accused of committing adultery has been sentenced to death by stoning by an Iranian court. Her husband secretly taped video footage of her and her sister's meeting with male admirers to present proof that his wife had been promiscuous. The woman’s sister, has been sentenced to death too.

The two sisters called Zohreh and Azar, will meet a gruesome end. In Iran, women being sentenced to such a fate will be dug in the ground up to their breasts and stones are being thrown until they are dead. This is a long drawn out process because the stones thrown need to be, according to Iranian law prescriptions, big enough to injure, but not so big that the victim is dead within two stones´ throws.

The irony of this whole saga is that the two sisters were not doing anything wrong. The two, who appealed their case in a higher court after having been sentenced to lashes earlier on, claim that the footage shows that they had not committed adultery. The husband of Zohreh’s sister Azar did not press charges. At the moment, around nine women are awaiting a similar fate, as well as two men.

Death by stoning has been an issue within Iranian politics since 2002, when the Iranian legal system´s top official, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, ordered a moratorium on the penalty and the Iranian parliament is working on a review of Iranian laws, which aims to eliminate death by stoning. But the penalty is definitely popular still because in recent years it has been applied in various cases. Amnesty International has also called for an immediate end to this brutal sentencing. Find out how you can take action here.

Carbon Footprint Calculators Are Specialising In 2008

Carbon Footprint calculators were the thing of 2007. This year will see the specialisation of these tools. Since January, various component calculators have been launched, including a wine carbon footprint calculator.

The latest of the batch is a Ho2conserve.org's tool (click on the icon in the right bar for the link). The great thing about the tool is that it allows you to calculate your footprint wherever you are in the world. My own water footprint is 414 cubic meters a year. That is well below the average person. The calculations are also based on what food you eat. Do not confuse this with your food carbon footprint. Of the 414 cubic meters I use, the bulk of it, 368 cubic meters, is linked to the food I purchase. The Ho2conserve.org website explains the high number. "[The calculator] takes into account not only the water used in your home, but also the water that is used to produce the food you choose to eat and the products you buy", the website's introduction text reads. "Your water footprint also includes other factors such as the water used to cool the power plants that provide your electricity". That makes sense.

Another nifty device, especially for people living in the UK, is Google's new Carbon Footprint Project. It combines personal information with data on climate change in the whole of the country. The project enables you to calculate your carbon footprint, track personalised carbon-reducing actions and compare footprints or actions to other people's. I don't live in the UK but I have just found the device in my iGoogle gadgets page. You have to change your countries settings to the UK however if you live outside of this country.

If you have never used a general carbon footprint calculator (one that calculates your Co2 emissions in kilograms on the basis of your energy usage) or have done so long ago, give them another go because there have been many improvements. It is advisable to consult your energy supplier's web pages because most companies now offer calculators and many link them to your direct usage numbers. In case you don't find anything, you can always compare the scores on about three different carbon calculators to get the most dependable results.

Business and industry are increasingly ofsetting carbon emissions too. A New Zealand wine growers association launched an international calculator which indicates the greenhouse gas emissions of any given vineyard.

The online business sector is also jumping on the bandwagon, offering programs which claim to support tree planting activities. Only today, the Wall Street Journal blog reported that the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) might start to certify this immaterial goods-based business in the future.

Next In Printing? 3 Dimensional Output!

Printers have experienced massive innovations the last decade. Next is three dimensional printing. Printers facilitating this might soon be quite affordable.

It sounds too sci-fi to be believable, yet researchers of Cornell University have managed to develop an open source 3D inkjet printer that can manufacture just about anything you can think of.

The best part of it is that due to popular input in the design, the printer is going to be affordable. It's dubbed a fabbing system, in reference to the phrase Fab at Home. But who cares about the semantics? It is going to be your Christmas present about three years down the road, as the new price is set at around $2400.

The system uses a 3D inkjet printing process which, in stead of ink, deposits droplets of plastic.This way, layer by layer, it gradually manufactures an object of any shape.

The inventor, Hod Lipson, sort of casually invented the machine. He wasn’t intent on designing the earth shattering piece of equipment that ordinary manufacturing designers will envy him for, but simply wanted to design a really cool robot, he says.

“One that could “evolve” by reprogramming itself and would also produce its own hardware—a software brain, if you will, with the ability to create a body”, according to an article in Popular Mechanics.com.

Experimenting with the process, Lipson invented what’s known as a rapid-prototyping fabrication, or “fabber.” Nothing all that new, because fabbers have been around for two decades. Until Lipson set out to manufacture his device however, Fabbers had been notoriously expensive that would only be part of the furniture of high tech labs. None of them could use more than one single material.

Lipson’s invention changed all of this. Not only the cost picture but also the technical capability of the machine. “To really let this robotic evolutionary process reach its full potential we need a machine that can fabricate anything, not just complex geometry, but also wires and motors and sensors and actuators,” Lipson was quoted as saying in Popular Mechanics.

He and a few other grad students did the thing that you and I would also do in a similar situation; they crowdsourced the issue. The result is the Fab at Home. Apparently the machine is as weird as our ancestors would only have dared dream about; it uses virtually any ground material, including foodstuffs like Easy Cheese and chocolate, but also other materials including epoxy and metal-powder-impregnated silicones.

The Top Fashion Cities Of 2007 - Ranked By Media Coverage

An algorithm that tracks media and blogosphere attention for fashion has compiled an unusual Fashion City 2007 Top 25. Breaking into the most frequently media-mentioned list of fashion cities were Berlin, Shanhai, Moscow and Dubai.
Topping the list for 2007 are New York, Rome, Paris, London, Milan, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, and Singapore.

Bizarre rankings included Shanghai at No. 14, Sydney and Melbourne at Nos. 12 and 15 respectively, and the Fashion Quartet of South America: Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Palo, and Buenos Aires.

Bottom of the list at No. 25 was Krakow. This city made the ranking "because of its emerging status as center of neo-Bohemian influence", Global Language Monitor, a US language consultancy who conducted the review, said.

The ranking is surprising not least because cities that recently would have been considered fashion backwaters, are emerging as significant regional hubs.

GLM created the ranking using its Predictive Quantities Index, a proprietary algorithm which tracks words and phrases in the media and throughout the blogosphere. The words and phrases are tracked in relation to their frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets.

Rank
1. New York -- Far and away No.1 by every index
2. Rome -- Beats out Paris, London and Milan
3. Paris -- Heartbeat of the fashion world
4. London -- Pulsing with creative energy
5. Milan -- Perennial contender for No. 1
6. Tokyo -- Gaining global influence
7. Los Angeles -- Will Posh Spice impact Ranking?
8. Hong Kong -- No. 1 in South Asia
9. Las Vegas -- Emerging as vibrant fashion center
10. Singapore -- Strong regional hub
11. Berlin -- Big fashion push & its working
12. Sydney -- OZ scores two in the Top 20
13. Barcelona -- Regional center grows in stature
14. Shanghai -- China breaks into the Big Time
15. Melbourne -- Gold Coast is golden for fashion
16. Moscow -- Lenin would not be amused
17. Bangkok -- Realizing its dream
18. Mumbai -- Indian fashion influences globe
19. Santiago -- Major strides for a proud nation
20. Rio de Janeiro -- More than Carnivale and Ipanema
21. Sao Paolo -- Money and fashion DO mix
22. Buenos Aires -- Seat of Classic Beauty returns
23. Johannesburg -- A first for Africa
24. Dubai Dubai? -- Yes, Dubai,
25. Krakow -- Neo-Bohemia thrives

Flickr Lends Itself Brilliantly For Making Movies!

Flickeur, pronounced like ‘Voyeur’, is an art project that you can see every day without tiring of it. The video clip retrieves random images from fresh Flickr stock and creates an infinite film that resembles a stream of consciousness.

All the blends, motions, zooms or timeleaps are completely random. The result is stunning even though the project is very simple.

Flickeur works like a looped film. 'Magnetic images will merge with older materials and be influenced by the older recordings’ magnetic memory', the project’s creator Mario Klingemann says.

The virtual tape also plays and records forward and backward to create another layer of randomness. This principle will create its own, sometimes suggestive, sometimes scary, sometimes funny story.

Worth seeing.