Reads!

I think there's enough reads from the past few days for a post!

How to collaborate together to foresee and handle future challenges more effectively:

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_a_global_foresight_commons/

What the world needs - a consumer market in China:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/magazine/28China-t.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=globasasab1&ref=global-asia&pagewanted=all

Cybertherapy using augmented tech:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/science/23avatar.html?ref=science

Mining the seafloor for minerals:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/science/09seafloor.html?ref=science

A fascinating look at the evolution of toxicity!

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/all-natural_all-toxic/

Reads!

Japan's political and economic decline?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/world/asia/17japan.html?pagewanted=all

The eradication of rinderpest!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/science/16pest.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Wow, revealing the organisational chart of the public service!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/oct/15/government-department-staff-orgcharts

MIT creates solar-powered portable water desalination plant!

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/researchers-create-portable-solarpowered-water-desalination-system/

Tim Jackson

I read his book, and I'm even more impressed about this TED Talk. What he seems to be doing, is to lay the ideological foundations for a genuine post-recession world. How does this differs from Natural Capitalism? I think what makes his ideas stand out from the rest is that he has truly put the human project at the centre of his concepts which intersects with the environment and the rest of economy. This differs markedly from Lovins in Natural Capitalism where the environment-economic nexus is primary, where human capital is only one chapter towards the tail end of the book, almost like an afterthought. I will be watching his work more, I guess. 

Economics and Justice

I know Amartya Sen more as an economist rather than as a moral philosopher. Yet his name pops up in discussions of justice and all the other attendant questions. So... Economics is the study of who should get what and how, whereas Justice, at some level, seems to be about why anyone should get anything at all. 

If viewed from this perspective, different forms of political and economic organisation are responses to the same question, of why anyone should be getting anything at all. Why do we have rich and poor divides? Why are there laws, or money, or even codes of conduct? Why do these things arise at all? At one level, the reason for these things, are because of an economic system, but the economic system is really a means to the end for allowing people to get ... things, to fulfill needs, and perhaps, wants. 

Am reading: 

Quality of Life

http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Life-Report-meghan-daum/dp/0670032131

and

The Idea of Justice

http://www.amazon.com/Idea-Justice-Amartya-Sen/dp/0674036131

Reads!

First there was Open Data, and now UK might be moving forward to eradicating digital illiteracy within their own population.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/sep/21/internet-over65s-manifesto

Perhaps the soul is a united mind?

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/from_divided_minds_a_specious_soul/

The economics of trash - nice inforgraphic!

http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/trashonomics-09202010/?display=wide

Addicted to pain, chilis?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/science/21peppers.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all]

Saving the Russian seed bank, that was under threat from private property developers!

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/new_hope_for_efforts_to_save_vavilovs_priceless_plant_legacy___/2320/

Using bacteria to create plastics!

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/26313/