This combines together on one page various
news websites and diaries which I like to read.
Also: BBC In Pictures
| mySociety panopticon
| mySociety Google reader
| Francis is (my own blog)
Rotterdam - City Branding Advert | by The Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog | 11 March 2010, 02:49 PM
Here's a promotional video for the city of Rotterdam, produced because the city is the host of le Grand Départ for Le Tour de France this year. [translation for non-Europeans: that big French bike is gonna start here] :-)
A splendidly-filmed advert that spared little expense in highlighting the city's bicycle culture and Citizen Cyclists.
You can support Van Jones and clean energy jobs | by Climate Progress | 11 March 2010, 02:41 PM
So The Economist is running an online debate about green jobs with online voting. And they have used a poorly worded debate “motion” — some might call it a set up — “This house believes that creating green jobs is a sensible aspiration for governments.”
Online voting is problemmatic to start with, but when you have a motion that frames the issue incorrectly, you are running a doubly pointless exercise.
I won one of these a while back — the motion was “This house believes that we can solve our energy problems with existing technologies today, without the need for breakthrough innovations” — but I asked that they changed some similarly bad wording in how the whole thing was framed (and I still wasn’t happy with the final motion, since the terms are ill-defined).
It’s no surprise that current motion is “losing.” Readers of The Economist don’t believe governments create many long-lasting jobs. Who does? Duh.
The position people like Van Jones (and I) advocate is that government helps create the conditions for the private sector to create green jobs. Indeed, other countries are pushing so much harder to foster green jobs because they know that they represent probably the single biggest source of manufacturing and skilled labor this century — and that peak oil and the threat posed by unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases mean that in the future the only jobs left will be green.
Van Jones lays out the position (and you can vote for him by clicking here — though you have to register):
The private sector—not the government—can and must be the main driver in creating green jobs. The scale of the transition to cleaner, lower-carbon energy sources is simply too large for public-sector resources and programmes to tackle alone. Only a tidal wave of private investment, innovation, invention and entrepreneurship can get the job done.
But that wave will never rise unless the government becomes a constructive partner in the effort. Therefore, it is perfectly sensible for national governments to aspire to create policies that produce green jobs.
After all, John Doerr, a leading light of Silicon Valley who knows a thing or two about innovation and technology, having placed early bets on Sun Microsystems and a little company called Google, has gone so far as to call clean energy “the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century”.
The benefits of moving toward clean energy are potentially sweeping: helping to restore infrastructure, rebuild neighbourhoods, retool factories and ignite innovation. Additionally, energy security, climate stabilisation, pollution reduction and expanded economic opportunity are all legitimate aims for policymakers to pursue.
Critics of green jobs recoil at the notion that governments might somehow tamper with the natural energy market to promote renewables. They sniff and generate a host of objections to market-distorting mandates and wasteful subsidies. But energy markets are already the product of policy, mainly those that support incumbent energy sources like coal, oil and nuclear power. These incumbent technologies benefit from subsidies, regulatory structures that shut out distributed generation of renewable power and pricing schemes that undervalue the economic contributions of energy efficiency.
The critics conveniently ignore the truth that all forms of energy are heavily regulated and often subsidised. This is because energy is the lifeblood of the economy. The precise mix of energy sources being developed and deployed within a country is never the result of pure market forces, but always a result of both private and public choices. It reflects a mix of innovation and investment on the one side, and of regulation, taxation and subsidy on the other.
Because we place no value on our atmosphere, the market acting alone cannot achieve the public interest in a stable climate and human health. Therefore, the question is not whether we will pursue policies to shape energy markets, but what sort of energy markets we want to achieve. It is sensible for governments to enact policies that will maximise the use of clean, renewable and low-carbon energy sources within and beyond their borders.
Public policies are now necessary to correct existing market failures and put clean energy on an even playing field with fossil fuels; to establish the market certainty that businesses need to make long-term investment decisions; and to provide stable, long-term support for clean-energy research, development and deployment, just as they have done in the past for the medical, aeronautical and information technology sectors.
Public investment is also required to bring the ageing electrical and transportation infrastructure that powers our industries and facilitates commerce into the 21st century, and to ramp up workforce and manufacturing infrastructure to meet the enormous new demands for goods and services that will result from new clean-energy markets.
Furthermore, governments will need to go beyond a simple cap-and-trade system for global warming pollution. Renewable energy standards and codes for energy efficiency will help build markets. Green banks and new financing tools will use public underwriting to help unleash private capital. And public investments in infrastructure will create a platform for innovative businesses to thrive and hire more workers.
In this context, policy is not a restraint on trade. It is a driver of innovation.
Fortunately, this approach has a proud and successful history. We can look to the history of the United States for good examples of what is possible. From the Tennessee Valley Authority and rural electrification, to the interstate highway system, to the telecom revolution, new investments in transformative infrastructure have consistently opened up access and opportunity, and brought more people into the middle class. The internet didn’t just create jobs for software engineers; it created work installing fibre optic cable. It created new office jobs in information technology and new career ladders into skilled professions.
Given this aspect of American history, it is ironic that the United States is falling behind in the global race for clean energy. Doubly so, given that the United States invented many of the key technologies that will power future growth, from solar panels, to advanced lithium ion batteries, to the modern wind turbine.
America’s economic competitors in Asia and Europe see the opportunity and are driving hard to secure competitive advantage. China by some estimates invested $400 billion of public and private capital in clean energy just last year.
Given the global competition to dominate clean energy production, one need not believe that green jobs are a panacea to believe that pursuing them is smart and sensible.
After all, practically everything that is good for energy independence or the environment will create a job—a green job. Solar panels don’t put themselves up. Wind turbines don’t manufacture themselves. Homes don’t retrofit or upgrade themselves. The smart grid won’t install itself, nor will bullet trains lay their own tracks. In many places, trees don’t even plant themselves any more.
To argue against green jobs is to argue for government inaction or abdication on some of the biggest challenges of our time. That is not acceptable.
Great and mighty labours are required of humanity in the new century. To mitigate climate chaos and avoid economy-wrecking energy shortages, workers must repower, rewire and retrofit whole nations. As men and women step forward to achieve these ends and accomplish these tasks, their hard-hats—in many cases—will be green
So if you have a spare minute, vote for the motion by clicking here.
The whole debate is worth reading even if the motion and the online voting isn’t terribly productive or meaningful.
Google, Yahoo & Other Tech Companies to Operate Freely in Cuba | by Global Voices (Cuba) | 11 March 2010, 02:34 PM
A recent decision by the United States Treasury Department to open up closed societies to American technology companies was met, at least for the first few hours, with radio silence in Cuba.
Treasury's intention is to “make sure the information flows,” under the assumption that “it will have political implications in a range of ways.” But the minimal reaction online is indicative of one of the biggest obstacles to this effort: social media works best with internet access.
According to the International Telecommunications Union, only 13 percent of Cubans have access to the web, while the other two countries subject to the ruling, Iran and Sudan, have 31 and 10 percent of their populations on the web, respectively.
Sentiments trickling out of the Cuban blogosphere — including blogs both from the island and from its diaspora–underscore this point. “This will be for the personal use of the dictators, because you aren't allowed to have internet in Cuba,” comments El Colmo at Diario de Cuba.
Juan Rodriguez, also at Diario de Cuba, adds:
La dictadura militar cubana nunca dejara que el pueblo cubano tenga servicios de internet en sus casas:Desde que se implanto la dictadura ‘revolucionaria' de Fidel Castro, al pueblo cubano le han bloqueado los accesos a las fuentes internacionales de informacion…ellos saben que mantener desinformado al pueblo cubano garantiza la sobrevivencia de la propia dictadura.
Lack of access isn't the only factor that may be muting Cuban reaction to the easing of restrictions. As Havana Times writes:
If these countries actually desire to use U.S. internet companies is another subject.
And, taking the prospect of anti-American sentiment a step further, Cuba Journal writes in a post titled “The Arrogance of it All”:
I say that the new rules will make it possible for the imperialists to communicate better with the mercenaries that they hire inside those three countries.
Stateside, US-Cuba policy blogger Phil Peters praises the decision, saying:
This is progress; the regulations are catching up to the Secretary of State’s speech on Internet freedom.
And Bloggings by Boz tweets:
The US lifted all restrictions on internet providers doing business with Cuba. They don't have that excuse anymore.
While it may be difficult to argue against a set of clear and transparent rules for what companies like Google and Yahoo can and cannot do within other nations, this step forward seems to have merely highlighted the lack of larger scale changes that many Cubans and Cuban-Americans may be hoping for.
The thumbnail image used in this post is by manfrys, used under a Creative Commons license. Visit manfrys' flickr photostream.
On the Street....All The Right Moves, Paris | by The Sartorialist | 11 March 2010, 02:25 PM
ereaders: an ecological argument | by Futurismic | 11 March 2010, 02:00 PM
From Sam Jordison of The Guardian: what difference do ebooks make to a reader’s carbon footprint?
I’ve only managed to find one report – on the Kindle (by The Cleantech Group) – but it backs up suggestions that so long as e-readers are used as book replacements rather than supplements, they soon start to pay back in carbon terms. The report states that a book uses up “approximately 7.46 kilograms of CO2 over its lifetime” and that the Kindle produces “roughly 168 kg” during its lifecycle, making it “a clear winner against the potential savings: 1,074 kg of CO2 if replacing three books a month for four years; and up to 26,098 kg of CO2 when used to the fullest capacity of the Kindle.”
[...]
However, I parted company with Ritch’s positive view of e-readers when she suggested a further advantage: “the consumer who purchases an ebook often has the rights to use it on five or more devices, meaning multiple users within a household would not have to purchase multiple physical versions of a book.” I’d actually view that as a problem, as far as fiction goes. Five or more devices probably gives the ebook a lifespan of little more than 10 years if my experience with such machines is anything to go by – and that’s if you don’t share it. A book (so long as it stays together) can be shared with hundreds of people over hundreds of years.
I also have concerns about the supply side. There’s no information available about the energy required to run Amazon’s “whispernet” and it’s hard to work out the amount involved in supplying other books for download. The internet is too often thought of as a cost-free resource in carbon terms – but it’s recently been suggested that Google alone produces as much as some nation states. Ritch suggested a good comparison would be that “a physical book purchased by a person driving to the bookstore creates twice the emissions of a book purchased online.” But of course, that depends on someone driving rather than walking to the shop.
In short, I think the ecological argument for ereaders is a non-starter for either side, though that could change with time (especially once ereading becomes a software matter rather than a dedicated hardware platform matter. What do you reckon?
Big Oil uses fake “Americans” to attack fake “energy taxes.” | by Climate Progress | 11 March 2010, 01:30 PM
The American Petroleum Institute is using fake “Americans” to defend billions in tax subsidies, as WonkRoom’s Brad Johnson explains in this repost. API is running full-page ads in Politico and Roll Call that attack Congress for “new energy taxes” — using stock photos:
Congress will likely consider new taxes on America’s oil and natural gas industry. These new energy taxes will produce wide-reaching effects, and ripple through our economy when America — and Americans — can least afford it.
These unprecedented taxes will serve to reduce investment in new energy supplies at a time when most Americans support developing our domestic oil and natural gas resources. That means less energy, thousands of American jobs being lost and further erosion of our energy security.
Our economy is in crisis, and we need to get the nation on the road to economic recovery. This is no time to burden Americans with new energy costs.
The target of this ad is the Obama administration’s effort to remove $36 billion in loopholes and subsidies for the oil industry. As it turns out, the “Americans” presented in the ad are stock photos from Getty Images:
“Warehouse worker holding large wrench on shoulder”
“Woman working in a distribution warehouse”
“Man standing with hands in pocket”
“Blue collar worker leaning against forklift.”
Americans are paying the price for these subsidies with our tax dollars, our health, and our national security. Removing these subsidies would “ripple through the economy” by unleashing a clean-energy future.
This is just the latest in a stream of polluter front groups using stock photos in Astroturf campaigns against clean energy policy. API was recently caught trying to add diversity to its dirty ads by photoshopping minorities into stock photography. West Virginia’s “FACES of Coal” turned out to be from iStockPhoto.com. And Virginia’s “Coalition for American Jobs” is a stock-photo front group for the American Chemistry Council.
Comment moderation turned on, unfortunately | by Knowing and Making (Leigh Caldwell) | 11 March 2010, 01:19 PM
Due to a spammer attacking the site today, I have turned comment moderation on for a while.
I'd hoped that using Blogger's built-in captcha facility would be enough, but apparently this is being done by a real person (with a Google account) so I have had to turn on moderation.
I hope to be able to switch this off again soon, as I have had lots of value from comments (including anonymous ones) and would prefer not to put any barriers in the way. Apologies to regular posters - I will usually approve comments within an hour or two at most, except in the middle of the night UK time.
"OUCH!" "THUNK!" "OOF!" "YIPE!" | by Wooster Collective | 11 March 2010, 12:39 PM
Photo by Remi Carreiro/Torontoist
Torontoist has a terrific article on a series of site specific stencils that have appeared over the last few days on Harbord Street. Words like "OUCH!" "THUNK!" "OOF!" "YIPE!" have been painted to highlight to cyclists the deep potholes and cracks along the paths. The stencils were done by Urban Repair Squad.
Torontoist quotes a member of the Squad as saying:
"The action-hero drama of dodging obstacles and potholes, escaping devil-may-care drivers in super-fast cars, and braving the fierce, temperamental elements, may seem, and feel, quite comic. Unless you're face-down on the pavement. With some wit, we endeavour to provide warning with humour; suggest danger with comedy; invite caution without frightening...and most importantly, we appeal to our fine city to remember that potholes aren't just uncomfortable, they really, really hurt."
For more photos, and to read the full article, click here.
First Look: "Stick 'Em Up!" | by Wooster Collective | 11 March 2010, 12:29 PM
"Stick 'Em Up! is a documentary that takes an in depth look into the overshadowed world of wheat pasting in Houston, Texas. Directed by Alex Luster. You will not only get a candid view of the daily life of several street artists but we will also focus on the other perspectives & opinions from city officials, art critics and everyday citizens."
Transforming our cities from grey to green | by Forum for the Future | 11 March 2010, 12:28 PM
It was great to see the launch of the Integrated Habitats Design Competition last week – a competition that seeks out inspiring and innovative designers who emphasise the value of biodiversity and nature in our built surroundings. A competition that places significant weight on nature contributing to healthy, low-energy, high-quality environments will hopefully help the spread and uptake of best practice in greening our cities.
Integrated design and a greater focus on green infrastructure is not just the domain of planners, the owners of allotments or the managers of our very important inner city parks. Access to high quality green space, the provision of native trees for solar shading, designing building solutions to support threatened species, or the application of sustainable drainage systems do not just help conserve or enhance local ecology - they are also vital to our health and wellbeing (and happiness). They are also vital for the long-term resilience of urban areas in the face of over-heating or flooding associated with climate change. Convinced of this, I’m very happy to support and endorse this new design competition and look forward to evaluating the submissions with my fellow judges during the summer!
The competition was launched at Ecobuild last week (see Jonathon Porritt’s blog), and it was great to see this event really gathering momentum, and size. For me, Ecobuild highlighted the need for our designers and builders to put nature before technological fixes. I was privy to discussions and debates around biomimicry, the provision of food growing space in schools, and planning for more trees in our cities. But I was also impressed by the drive and enthusiasm of the many professionals trying to deliver more sustainable homes, schools, hospitals, offices, and other forms of infrastructure. There were literally hundreds of suppliers showing off their latest green products – from natural paints and SMART meters, to micro-CHP units and recycled benches.
Please visit www.ihdc.org.uk for further information on the Integrated Habitats Design Competition. The competition is supported by CIRIA and organised by Dusty Gedge, the UK’s leading living roofs expert, Gary Grant, one of the UK’s leading ecologists, and RESET, the sustainable design training charity. Judges and endorsers come a wide range of backgrounds, including government agencies, professional institutions and NGOs.
Participants have until 30th June to enter and finalists will exhibit at the Building Centre in central London for five weeks over September, during which time the final awards will be presented at the World Green Roof Congress on the 15th September.
Google Map It | by PW Style | 11 March 2010, 12:25 PM
Yesterday I was happily informed by a co-worker that Google is now providing maps for bicycle routes! Awesome, just in time for all this beautiful cycling weather! And this morning while trolling my Google Reader I stumbled upon the most recent post over at Handmade in PA. They have also hopped on the Google Map trend and have created a Handmade in PA map. It shows all the places in Pennsylvania where locally-made wares are sold and HIP is asking for people to add to the map so it can be a resource for both locals and tourists. So if you know about or own a shop that carries goods made by Pennsylvanian artists, crafters and makers hop over to the HIP Blog and follow the detailed (with pictures!) directions on how to add a destination to the map. Also, based on what I’ve seen on the map, Philadelphia’s shops are definitely not all on there yet.
M&S set a sustainable benchmark for the retail world | by Forum for the Future | 11 March 2010, 11:43 AM
I spoke at the annual M&S Suppliers’ Conference on Tuesday, which took place in Kensington Town Hall. This venue has a particular resonance for me as it was where the votes for the 1979 and 1984 European elections were counted – and every time I’m back there, I can’t help but recall that sense of consternation that so few people seemed to be prepared, at that time, to put their cross in the Green Party box!
Twenty-six years on and it seemed as if the M&S Suppliers were all voting enthusiastically for the updated version of Plan A! And that was not just because Sir Stuart Rose made a very powerful pitch telling them all that this was their reality whether they liked it or not. By the end of the day, they would certainly have had an unnerving sense of bars being raised all around them, in terms of production standards, transparency, reporting, innovation and so on.
Plan A was launched three years ago, and instantly captured people’s imagination. The combination of carbon neutral and zero waste to landfill pledges, the 100 Action Points, the commitment to invest £200 million, and the sense of all this being at the core of the company rather than being grafted on made an immediate impact. It also gave Plan A the kind of brand profile that took it way beyond the usual corporate responsibility strategies.
Three years on, the £200 million cost has been turned into a £50 million contribution to profit. Forty-five of the Action Points have been delivered, and another 80 have been added on. The ambition level has been ratcheted up several notches, with M&S now committing to becoming the world’s most sustainable (major) retailer by 2015.
Forum for the Future has worked closely with M&S throughout this time, so we are not exactly disinterested parties, but Plan A does provide the benchmark for the whole of the retail world. It’s visionary, it’s applied, it’s comprehensive (as in covering all the sustainability bases), and it’s succeeding in getting whole-company buy-in, through the high level “How We Do Business” Committee, chaired (and driven!) by Sir Stuart Rose.
So it’s well worthwhile checking out the new version of Plan A, available at: http://plana.marksandspencer.com/media/pdf/planA-2010.pdf
The Car Empire Strikes Back Again | by The Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog | 11 March 2010, 11:11 AM
This is brilliant "Car Empire Strikes Back" marketing from Mercedes. After watching it if I had to choose between sitting in a Mercedes or riding all sub-cultural like that - give me the Mercedes anyday.
As I highlight in my lecture Marketing Bicycle Culture - Four Goals to Promote Urban Cycling the car industry learned everything they know about marketing their products from the bicycle industry, which pre-dated them.
They have spent a century perfecting the art of marketing and now that they are faced with real competition - the rebirth of urban cycling - they are tweaking their adverts accordingly.
The acting in the above advert is abysmal, but the point is clear. It reinforces the misconception of urban cycling as being a lawless, adrenaline-based and sub-cultural pursuit. The smug tone is brilliantly devised and executed. It's a different approach than the Audi advert we've mentioned before, but it's still just as effective in the way it avoids featuring Citizen Cyclists and instead employs a caricature of a 'cyclist'.
I'd rather see a dapper gent happily cycling at a civilised pace to work, like Michael Musto. Or a girl in a skirt. Or any damn regular citizen.
Unless we start learning from the car industry's marketing brilliance, as they once learned from the bicycle industry, the battle is lost before the foot hits the pedal. Marketing urban cycling for regular citizens like we market every other product - positively. At every turn.
Begone fearmongerers and nanny-state PSAs. Let's sell this properly. For more liveable cities, for the public health, for The Common Good.
Election? Cue two ministerial visits in one day | by Liverpool Daily Post - Dale Street Blues | 11 March 2010, 09:50 AM
If there was any doubt that an election is round the corner, cue visits from two cabinet ministers to Liverpool today. Chancellor Alistair Darling will be in town to talk about Money Made Clear - an impartial money advice service....
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Guns, ammunition and uniforms for sale in Phnom Penh market | by Cambodia Calling | 11 March 2010, 09:49 AM
What a great story from CambodiaMirror.wordpress.com, translated from the Khmer language daily Kampuchea Thmey. To me it is just like everything else in this country - the inferiors always end up paying for their superiors' corruption.
Hundreds of military personnel raided a market in Phnom Penh (Psar Terk Thla) last week.
“What the authorities confiscated most were military uniforms, and it is said that those uniforms had been sold by military generals to the traders; in some cases, the names of those who had provided them were still attached to the supplies of uniforms, which actually were to be distributed to soldiers at the Preah Vihear Temple."
These military bosses do not give out equipment to their soldiers. Hats, hammocks and guns have to be bought by the soldiers at Psar Terk Thla, since their higher ups sell everything to the markets for extra cash.
“In addition to uniforms, hammocks, and hats, about 90% of police and military police have to buy also their pistols themselves, because their leaders do not release them to them, as they are expensive, and the leaders can benefit by selling them secretly. They order their closest subordinates to contact traders, doing it as a secret business."
The paper reports the authorities not only confiscated the contraband from ten stalls, but also arrested some sellers "to educate them".
Enterprise Apps User Interface - the wrong discussion | by Sigurd Rinde | 11 March 2010, 08:56 AM
Imagine an Enterprise App with UI design lifted from World of Warcraft? A tad gothic?
But games work, kids dive into them in droves and never seem to scratch their heads. Electronic games now being a bigger industry than the film industry must mean that their user interfaces work as well.
So it would be safe to assume that the UI issue is not about what it looks like.
It's about what happens in the interface.
Dynamic works, static does not:
A game is always a process, it delivers next task without delay, and more, it's a process where the participant chooses what next - i.e. the perfect BRP (Barely Repeatable Process) and quite like reality. Ah, yes, forgot, games are indeed (fictional) reality models are they not?
When in a game, or in reality, what matters is that you are given complete and relevant information for that particular task so you can make up your mind and proceed to action. Monster to the right, monster on the left. Then, at the same time, one single tool or click to get the task done, now. Shoot the monster on the left. One activity at a time. Few and logical choices, just do it and get on with life (eh, game) now delivered by the process engine in the form of yet another gruesome monster walking into sight.
And this is the process that happens in WoW and at your office every day, every hour, very BRP:
A temporary activity or sequence of activities initiated by an issue, an idea or a request, with multiple participants where the sequence of activities are directed by human knowledge to act according to the current situation and related circumstances.
Now the typical Enterprise Software: Basically it's not a process engine that simulates, or models, reality. It's mostly an organising tool, delivering all options at once, no simple yes/no decision based on relevant information restricted to task at hand.
Last time I counted buttons and choices in a simple CRM UI I found 150 links or buttons to click. And under many there were countless more options.
Process? There is no process delivery/automation in most software systems for use in Enterprise BRP. Any process is strict DIY. You create your own process, so claiming that the system "have process" would be a gross overstatement.
Proper automation and delivery of process is what matters. No layout, colours, rounded boxes can rectify the lack of such.
Hence, a discussion about what Enterprise Software should look like and how to present functions, would be a waste of time. The well-meant design efforts as well. Waste of time, save it for later. There is only one way to attack the issue - fix the source and build everything on top of a process engine.
[Thanks to @vendorprisey, @dhinchcliffe and @bitterer that suggested Enterprise Apps UIs should learn from Games. Then @yojibe and @mrinal who piped in with a good discussion.]
[Update March 10: And Marc Benioff of Salesforce (the 150 buttons organising dashboard thing with DIY process mentioned above) is at it again: Facebook is the thing, linger away and create your own process as we've done for the last few thousand years. A quote that tells all - "time to transform the business conversation". What about process structure, why not automate the flow/process? Ford did it 100 years ago for Easily Repeatable Processes (ERP) and increase the organisational effectiveness 8.5 times, now time to do the same for Barely Repeatable Processes (BRP)! More of the wrong discussion again.]
Interesting photos - 10 Mar 2010 - Flickr | by Daily interesting photos - Flickr | 11 March 2010, 08:49 AM
Why a new government may extend support to banks | by Robert Peston (BBC business editor) | 11 March 2010, 08:34 AM
There is a much bigger story in the Financial Service Authority's Financial Risk Outlook than the new stress test which I wrote about yesterday.
It is that the UK's banks have to find £440bn of loans and finance between now and 2012 to replace maturing debt.
There are only three places that money can come from.
The money could come from savers in the form of a growth in deposits.
And, as it happens, we have been saving a bit more in the UK.
But if the banks' stock of lending stayed flat for the next couple of years (which looks plausible if unpleasant for our economy) and we saved at the rate of the last three months of 2009, the gap between banks' loans and deposits would still be just under £400bn at the end of 2012.
According to the FSA, we would have to increase our saving in bank deposit accounts by 12% per annum to close the funding gap, which - in the FSA's words - would "imply a savings rate far in excess of conceivable levels".
Another possible funding source are markets for asset backed securities, which closed with such calamitous consequences for the global economy in the summer of 2007.
Now, banks have again started to be able to raise money by packaging up mortgages and selling them to investors in the form of bonds; these markets are back in business.
But in order to close that £440bn funding gap, our banks would have to issue new debt in the next couple of years on a scale equivalent to the boom years of 2004 to 2006.
There are two problems with this.
First, it may not be possible.
Second, it may be highly undesirable: separate research by the FSA shows that these asset-backed securities - or at least those retained on banks' balance sheets - were the source of a staggering 70% of all losses on loans and investments incurred by 10 of the world's biggest banks (including the UK's) between the summer of 2007 and March 2009.
In other words, further instability and chronic weakness in the banking system could be the consequence of closing the funding gap by resorting to the securitisation market.
Where else could the money come from?
Well there is only one other place: taxpayers.
As it happens, over £300bn of the maturing debt that the banks have to replace is the finance provided by taxpayers to prevent them from collapsing in late 2008 and early 2009.
This taxpayer finance takes the form of £134bn of state guarantees for debt issued by banks under the Credit Guarantee Scheme and a further £178bn of Treasury bills provided by the Bank of England in exchange for banks' securitised mortgages.
If this sounds complicated, just think of it as just over £300bn of loans by taxpayers to banks, which are scheduled to be repaid by 2012 or so.
Now the clear implication of the FSA's analysis of banks' £440bn financing requirement is that taxpayers would not be able to withdraw that £300bn of support in 2012 without precipitating another banking crisis, or an economic crisis, or both.
Which means that any new government has a very difficult decision to make more-or-less immediately after the general election: should that £300bn of taxpayer support be extended?
Failure to do so would have one immediate and dangerous effect: it would encourage banks to stop lending; since the less any bank lends, the less it has to borrow, the less finance it has to raise.
But if banks went on such a lending strike, the UK would inevitably be tipped back into recession.
However if a new government rolled over that £300bn of support, that £300bn borrowed by banks would increasingly look like a long-term liability of the state; and in those circumstances there would be a stronger argument that the £300bn should be added to an already-ballooning national debt.
Which could be painful.
Finally it is probably worth pointing out that one bank, Lloyds, is much more exposed to this problem than others.
It has received £157bn of taxpayer finance via the Special Liquidity Scheme and the Credit Guarantee Scheme.
Quite how it would reduce this to nil by 2012 without closing its door to new lending is somewhat intriguing.
Bicycle Democracy | by The Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog | 11 March 2010, 08:33 AM
Photo: ALAA AL-MARJANI/AP
The bicycle has been a democratic instrument since the day it was invented. Here's an Iraqi man - a Citizen Cyclist - in Najaf on his bicycle, raising his inky blue finger proudly and defiantly in the air as he heads away from the polling station in the recent elections.
As seen on Politiken's website.
Thanks to Jacob for the link.
Links for 2010-03-10 [del.icio.us] | by Alison Gow (Liverpool Echo / Daily Post) | 11 March 2010, 08:00 AM
Osborne's new economic model? | by Knowing and Making (Leigh Caldwell) | 11 March 2010, 07:35 AM
The Conservatives apparently think a "new economic model" is needed to restore the strength of the British economy.
I wonder what they mean.
I assume they aren't talking about a model in the way an economist would think of it: a simplified representation of the operations of the economy. Probably they mean "we need to run the economy in a different way". This is how businesses use the word "model" when they talk about choosing a business model, or a revenue model. So maybe he just wants to use a different set of rules for taxes, employment or general economic incentives. This speech gives some clues - it's tricky to read through the rhetoric to find any common underlying model, but what he seems to want is to set three "priorities" for government economic policy.
But taking him literally reveals a more interesting way to think about the question. What if he really does want to change the descriptive model that we use to think about the economy?
In principle, a model should be a neutral description of a complex system, and the fact that different models exist shouldn't affect the behaviour of the system itself. Choosing a new model is usually an attempt to incrementally improve the fit of your model with the real world - not the stuff of political revolution.
But interesting things happen when a model turns out to be accurate - or if people think it's accurate. People start to use it. People making decisions about the economy use the model to decide what to do. And the more accurate it seems to be, the more likely they are to use it.
So by developing the original General Theory model of economic activity, savings and unemployment, Keynes had a vast impact on the decisions made by governments and, in turn, by individuals responding to governments.
Successive monetary models have influenced how central banks controlled interest rates (exchange rate models, money supply models, NAIRU and the Taylor rule).
And models of the finance markets have influenced how banks and regulators have interacted with each other within the finance markets.
What if these models are wrong? Are people making vast, sub-optimal decisions and hurting billions of people because of a broken model? Probably. The choice of model does matter.
All of the models I've just mentioned have something in common: they influence the actions of a small number of big players. You could argue that at the lowest level, models don't matter so much - people act according to their local incentives and if they behave according to an inaccurate model, their mistakes will cancel each other out through the forces of competition or evolution. The model's aim is to describe microbehaviour, not influence it.
But actually, people do still follow a mental model in their decision-making, and many of these models are pervasive enough to have a macroeconomic impact. Some examples of models which (I'd suggest) most economic actors are following:
Boy and girl picking up autumn leaves - CV Valmiera… | by Two Talk | 11 March 2010, 07:30 AM
SOS CV. Nanchang
The Conservative message | by John Redwood MP | 11 March 2010, 06:58 AM
Yesterday the Conservative message for the next couple of months was unveiled to some of us.
It is: “We can’t go on like this. Vote for change”
Change includes:
“Change the economy. Back aspiration and opportunity for all. Gordon Brown’s debt, waste and taxes are holding us back and threatening the recovery with higher interest rates”
“Change society. Mend our broken society by encouraging responsibility and backing those who do the right thing.”
“Change politics. Give people more power and control.”
Any comments?
How Many Relationships Can We Manage? | by Dave Pollard (How to Save the World) | 11 March 2010, 06:57 AM
Just about a year ago, I posted an article on the work that Christopher Allen had done on:
Christopher illustrated his answer to the second issue (the one this article is about) with the lovely drawings of Nancy Margulies, shown above, of three concentric circles/spirals, which he called, respectively, the support circle, the sympathy circle, and the trust circle. He argued that there are rivers or threads running through all three circles representing common ‘context’ for these relationships (work, shared philosophy or beliefs, kinship, love etc.), what he calls ‘geographies of connection’ on the topographical map of our relationships. Here’s Nancy’s illustration of these threads:
Over the last week, I’ve been chatting with Tree Bressen, Rob Paterson, Melinda Fleming and Nancy White about how many meaningful relationships we can sustain without exhaustion. I hypothesized that (based on people I know) most people have either 5-7 really close (family/love/other partnership) relationships that essentially take up all of their social time, or they have somewhere north of 50, almost all more tenuous, relationships. In either case there’s a constant struggle I would argue, to give and get the aggregate attention and appreciation one wants from one’s social network.
The prevailing view is that we can (and do) have both — an intimate inner circle and a more tenuous second and third circle (or perhaps there are more circles, or perhaps it’s just one continuous outward spiral with strong links at the centre and weak links further out). But my observation is that very very few people really have both, and that people are pretty willing to give up on their large networks if they can find what they want in their inner circle. There’s a constant tension, though — since that inner circle is “putting all one’s eggs in one basket” there is a risk of losing those relationships and not being able to replace them, so many people, I think, try to keep that larger network ‘in reserve’ as a safety net(work).
Because we only have a limited number of hours per year for social activity (take away sleep etc., work time and time wanted for solitary activities and I’d guess we each have between 1500 and 3000 hours a year of social time to parse out), cultivating our networks (which are largely outside our control) can be hugely challenging.
And on top of all this, some of us (sensibly I think) are trying to rediscover or maintain another essential relationship, to Gaia, to all-life-on-Earth, to the natural world. For most of us there is a huge disconnect here — the people in our circles, like we ourselves, live outside the natural world (both physically and especially psychologically) so there is no context of place in which to situate and ‘make sense’ of these relationships. There is, in short, no real community. The relationships, and the attention and appreciation that draw us to others and others to us, are substantially all in our heads.
I have said before that I think humans were and are meant to live a tribal, place-based life as part of community and of all-life-on-Earth. In that natural, prehistoric, and now ideal and unachievable world, we are, at a certain age of adulthood, given the choice of asking to be invited to join the community in which we grew up, or leaving the community and seeking another that gives our life more meaning and value. We can be a part of a community, or we can live peripherally to it, as a visitor or traveler or nomad, until we find the place and community (the two are largely inseparable) where we know we belong. In the natural and prehistoric world one is always a part of the greater circle of all-life-on-Earth, so even those who live on the periphery of community still feel a larger belonging, connection, and appreciation. But there is relatively little choice in such a world of who we can choose to live in community with. Most natural tribes (and not just in human societies) have significant buffer zones between them, and a certain Darwinian reticence to accept strangers. One earns one’s place in a community, and the relationships with the tribe naturally follow.
My Gravitational Community — the 50-70 people listed in the right sidebar — has evolved over the years but stayed roughly the same size. As some of the people who have come into my ‘orbit’ have become much closer to me, the attention I have for the rest (manifested mainly through this blog, IM, e-mail and Second Life) inevitably wanes and these relationships tend to weaken and ‘fall out of orbit’. I wonder if there’s a Quantum Theory for social networks, a ‘rule’ that determines, based on your total social time and energy and on the number of people in various levels of intimacy or proximity to you, how many ’spaces’ are left in the outer orbits?
If all your relationships are shallow, I can envision you having 150 (Dunbar’s number) such relationships, and juggling them competently. At the other end of the spectrum, I suspect the maximum number of sustainable meaningful relationships for newlyweds and new mothers is between 1 and 2. Perhaps an inverse-square law applies. And then, as we all struggle with Tom Robbins’ great question How do we make love last?, some of those inner circle covalent relationships slide out to outer circles or out of orbit entirely, making room for either a host of new outer-orbit relationships or a new ‘one and only’.
It will not come as a surprise to my regular readers that I believe we are naturally polyamorous, and that there is more strength and sustainability in an set of 3-7 covalent relationships that are intimate and loving and appreciative and attentive but not exclusive, not demanding of the lion’s share of one’s time, and full of accommodation and compersion for each partner. These relationships (especially in today’s world) need not be reciprocal — each of the 3-7 others one has a poly relationship with may have 3-7 other relationships, such that the total poly network could involve dozens of people. This provides a lot more flexibility and support than can be expected from any monogamous relationship. But it is a lot of work, especially when the relationship members live far apart.
My Gravitational Community is broken down into categories that show how the people with whom I have meaningful relationships came into my life, but it would probably be more honest if I were to categorize them by what draws me to them (and hopefully, them to me): that draw may be emotional/visceral/erotic appeal, shared purpose or ideals, or any of three types of intellectual appeal (great intelligence, great creativity, or great communication skill or other attractive competency). Think of these appeals or ‘geographies of connection’ as spokes or rivers flowing out from the centre, as a second dimension (along with ‘quantum level’) of the ‘map’ of one’s social network. Might be a little too personal and too revealing to show for the Gravitational Community on my right sidebar though!
Please feel free to join the dialogue, and let me know if and how you think it’s possible to have it both ways — the ‘cold fusion’ of a fulfilling and intimate inner circle as well as a large and diverse and dynamic ‘outward spiral’ of people with whom one also manages to sustain an enduring and meaningful relationship.
And also please let me know if you have thoughts on how it might be possible to somehow ’situate’ the people you have important relationships with, within the larger relationship we all have (but have largely forgotten) with all-life-on-Earth. To meld and merge all these juggled relationships into real communities.
T For Texas | by Mark McNulty Photography | 11 March 2010, 06:53 AM
It’s SXSW time again (he say’s like an Austin music veteran when he’s only been once) and I’m off to Texas for something that is looking like it’s going to be way more than seeing a few bands and talking shop for a week! This one’s gonna be the road trip! If you visit the US for business or even, as I’ve been lucky enough to do at times, visit to go on tour, all you ever seem to see is a city. The airports are on the edge and venues are somewhere on the inside and so it’s airport, hotel, venue, hotel, airport, hotel etc etc and what I never got to see was all the bits that you see in the movies that connect all them cities together and that’s what we’re getting to do this time. Last year I met ex La’s founder and Liverpool artist and country singer Mike Badgers in Austin with the intention of doing some film work with a camera I’d borrowed to take with me, as I’d got some idea I wanted to make music documentaries about some of the folk, blues and country singers currently coming out of Liverpool. I hadn’t made plans as to how this was going to work but Mike led me, with some new found Stateside friends called Emily and Matt, to the home of Kevin and Cathy who lived in South Austin with a house that had a massive ropelight map of Texas on the outside facing gable end. And the ropelight map of Texas also had a flashing peace symbol right in the middle of it. The idea of going out there was to film a quick clip of Mike singing which we did and the song was called Animals and it sounded great but then the Beer and the Rum came out, along with the Mexican food, and needless to say a party got started along with talk of a band and a UK tour! With these things usually, and sometimes for the best, forgotten in the haze of the following morning, it was great to see that this one actually happened. Last summer saw Mike put together a tour of the UK which featured Mike singing with Matt and Emily, who live in Tennessee, alongside the help of Chris, Ian and Barry of Liverpool’s Loose Moose String Band. And the band went by the name of the Nashville Liverpool Underground Medicine Show. That tour worked out great and the next few weeks sees the follow up tour in the States for which I’ll be joining them, with the camera again, to follow them through a week in Austin at SXSW before heading down through Texas and onto New Orleans. So even though I’ve only been once before, SXSW is already looking very different from last year. I spent most of last year running from venue to venue trying to see as many bands as possible but this year I’m mostly going to be hanging out with the Nashville Liverpool lot and trying to see a bit more of Austin itself. I’m sure I’ll see a band or twenty and no doubt will be uploading a load of live photos along the way but I’m also hoping to do lots of portraits and profiles of some of the people that we meet so watch this space!
Austin
No balance in the payments | by John Redwood MP | 11 March 2010, 06:47 AM
This week’s poor balance of payments figures for last month revealed two worrying facts. Despite the sharp falls in the pound, there has been no surge in exports to show us gaining market share as we become more price competitive. At the same time, imports have increased sharply as destocking ends, with no sign that UK industry is about to replace imports with home produced goods. Trade volumes both ways are up as the world economy recovers a bit, but there is no encouraging sign that we are about to improve our relative position.
After a decline of almost one quarter in the currency, you would expect both a surge in exports and a lively increase in import substitution. The absence of both so far implies several problems.
First, a lot of capacity was clearly lost in the recession. Factories were closed, people were made redundant. The last twelve years have seen industry decline as a result of high taxes and high regulatory costs.
Second, manufacturers have been finding it difficult to get bank finance for their activities. In need of cash, they have favoured putting prices up in sterling terms, taking advantage of the lower pound to do so. They have been forced to raise their margins on lower volumes given the shortage of finance.
Third, the UK in recent years has lost great swathes of capacity. JCB recently told us how small a proportion of their vehicle components they can now source from the UK. If you go into most clothes shops there are racks and racks of Asian textile products because the UK industry has been cut to the bone. UK steel plant is closing as demand falls.
We need policies that will help industry recover and build new capacity. That requires changes to taxes, regulations, and bank regulation.
México Cycle Chic - Reforma Sunday / 01 | by Copenhagen Cycle Chic | 11 March 2010, 05:00 AM
Every Sunday the impossibly wide Reforma boulevard in the centre of México City is closed off to...
For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.
Report from Colbert | by Cosmic Variance | 11 March 2010, 04:56 AM
Reporting back from a hotel in midtown Manhattan, having made it through the Colbert Report basically unscathed. In fact the experience was great from beginning to end. I’m typing as the show airs on the East Coast, so no clips to show you as yet, but I’ll put one up when it appears.
Monday morning I talked on the phone with Emily Lazar, a researcher for the show. I was really impressed right from the start: it was clear that she wanted to make it easy for me to get across some substantive message, within the relatively confining parameters of what is basically a comedy show. From start to finish everyone I dealt with was a consummate pro.
We got picked up at our hotel in a car that brought us to the Colbert studio, and hustled inside under relatively high security — people whispering into lapel microphones that we had arrived and were headed to the green room. Very exciting. The green room was actually green, which is apparently unusual. I got pep talks from a couple of the staff people, who encouraged me to keep things as simple as possible. They made an interesting point about scientists: they make the perfect foils for Stephen’s character, since they actually rely on facts rather than opinions.
Stephen himself dropped by to say hi, and to explain the philosophy of his character — I suppose there still are people out there who could be guests on the show who haven’t ever actually watched it. Namely, he’s a complete idiot, and it’s my job to educate him. But it’s not my job to be funny — that’s his bailiwick. The guests are encouraged to be friendly and sincere, but not pretend to be comedians.
We got to sit in the audience as the early segments were taped, which were hilarious. I feel bad that my own interview is going to be the low point of the show, laughs-wise. But I went out on cue, and fortunately I wasn’t at all jittery — too much going on to have time to get nervous, I suppose.
I had some planned responses for what I thought were the most obvious questions. Of which, he asked zero. Right off the bat Colbert managed to catch me off guard by asking a much more subtle question than I had anticipated — isn’t the early universe actually very disorderly? That would be true if you ignored gravity, but a big part of my message is that you can’t ignore gravity! The problem was, I had promised myself that I wouldn’t use the word “entropy,” resisting the temptation to lapse into jargon. But he had immediately pinpointed an example where the association of “low entropy” with “orderly” wasn’t a perfect fit. So I had to go back on my pledge and bring up entropy, although I didn’t exactly give a careful definition.
As everyone warned me, the whole interview went by in an absolute flash, although it really lasts about five minutes. There was a fun moment when we agreed that “Wrong Turn Into Yesterday” would make a great title for a progressive-rock album. Overall, I think I could have done a better job at explaining the underlying science, but at least I hope I successfully conveyed the spirit of the endeavor. We’ll have to see how it comes across on TV.
I shouldn’t end without including some good words about the bag of swag. Not only does every guest get a goodie bag that includes a bottle of excellent tequila, it also includes a $100 gift certificate for Donors Choose. How awesome is that?
And as we left the studio, there were some young audience members lurking around hoping for a glimpse of the great man himself. They had to settle for me, but they sheepishly asked if I would pose for a picture with them. Not yet having perfected my diva act, I happily complied. I hope they take away some great memories of the night.
jamesykwak | by The Baseline Scenario | 11 March 2010, 03:00 AM
By James Kwak
The National Association for Business Economics does a semi-annual Economic Policy Survey of its members, who are primarily private-sector economists. The March 2010 survey isn’t up on their site yet, but this is what it has to say about the Consumer Financial Protection Agency:
“A key point of discussion in Congressional deliberations on financial services regulatory reform has been the establishment of an independent agency focused on consumer financial protection. Fifty-four percent of survey respondents feel that creating such an agency would not impair safety and soundness regulation; 25 percent believed it would be detrimental. On a related issue, 43 percent of respondents indicate that a consumer financial protection agency would not impair access to credit while 39 percent believed it would.”
The financial sector has been demanding that any new consumer protection agency be made subservient to the traditional safety and soundness regulators, and has also been threatening that greater regulation will make credit harder to come by. Apparently the business community–a group that is pretty skeptical about government, judging by some of the other survey responses–isn’t buying it.
simonhrjohnson | by The Baseline Scenario | 11 March 2010, 02:27 AM
By Simon Johnson
For nearly two years now we have waited for a speech. We need a simple speech and a direct speech – most of all a political speech – about what exactly happened to our financial system, and therefore to our economy, and what we must do to make sure it can never happen again.
President George W. Bush apparently did not consider giving such a speech, and Secretary Paulson could never talk in this way. President Obama seemed, at some moments, close to making things clear – when he talked on Wall Street in September and, most notably, when he launched the Volcker Rules in January. But President Obama has always come up short on the prescriptive part – i.e., what we need to do – and his implementation people still move as if there were lead weights in their shoes.
Without a definitive speech, there is no political reference point, there is no convergence in the debate, and there is not even any clarity regarding what we should be arguing about. Without the right kind of speech, there are just many lobbyists working the corridors and a lot of backroom deals that most people do not understand – by design.
Tomorrow, hopefully, we should finally get the speech. Not – sadly – from the White House, not from anyone in the executive branch, and not even from within the Senate Banking Committee (although Senators Merkley and Levin took a big step today), but rather on the floor of the Senate.
On Thursday, Senator Ted Kaufman (D., DE) is due to deliver a strong blow to the overly powerful and unproductively mighty within our financial sector. He will say, according to what is now on his website,
To be sure, a speech is not legislation. And, as yet, this is just one senator’s point of view. But because the administration so completely lost the narrative regarding what happened and why, there is now a free, open, and fair competition to explain what we need to do.
The lobbyists will still prevail on this round. But a big debate around the nature of our financial system is exactly what we need.
People who want to defend finance as-is now need come out of the woodwork. Senator Kaufman has set a very high standard. If you wish to oppose this agenda, speak clearly and in public about why we should not pursue exactly what the senator proposes.
If opponents of reform do not come out and argue the merits of their case, people will reasonably and increasingly infer that Senator Kaufman and his allies are right on all the substance.
Reform is blocked by a perverse combination of bankrupt ideology and deep-pocketed corporate interests. The only way to break through is to bring a lot of sunshine into the true affairs of finance – including by speeches like the one we will hear tomorrow.
On the Street.....Yasmin, Paris | by The Sartorialist | 11 March 2010, 02:08 AM
Vote for Climate Progress in TreeHugger’s Best of Green Awards | by Climate Progress | 11 March 2010, 01:08 AM
Why should you vote for ClimateProgress in TreeHugger’s Best of Green Awards 2010 Readers Choice in the category of Best Political Website (click here to vote)?
Sure, you like the insider’s view of climate science, solution, and politics delivered every day to you for free. But the other nominees are pretty darn good, too.
Well, set aside all issues of merit, look at the competition, and vote strategically:
Origins - Asia Pacific Business Narrative Conference 2010 - Call for Case Studies | by anecdote - putting stories to work | 11 March 2010, 12:09 AM
part of The Singapore International Storytelling Festival
6-8 September, Singapore
Call for Case Studies
In early 2009 we (Patrick Lambe and I) wanted to see if we could put together a conference on storytelling for business. Our concept was for a very practical, workshop-focused conference, designed to help Asia Pacific business people apply story approaches to boost business performance. But we weren’t sure if anyone would come!
So we organised a two-day masterclass on business narrative as part of The Singapore International Storytelling Festival, and the festival did a terrific job in telling people about the event. We waited anxiously to see if anyone would register. Did Asia Pacific organisations really value storytelling as a legitimate and effective business technique? Patrick called me in Melbourne a couple of weeks after we announced the event: registrations were coming in fast. We were booked out months in advance.
This year we want to build on that success and focus on the many story practitioners in our region to create an event where we can learn from each other while also expanding the awareness of narrative approaches among the region's organisations. We’re looking for proposals for case study presentations from within the Asia Pacific region to share what you have done and what you have learned.
The conference has three objectives
Conference design
The event will have three parts:
Day 1 will be a closed practitioner's forum for the conference speakers and case study presenters only. We will spend the day sharing what we have learned from a practitioner's perspective. The day will be designed for dialogue rather than presentations.
Day 2 will be a public conference where practitioners will present case studies that illustrate the effectiveness of story-work; and
Day 3 will consist of a set of 1/2 day workshops to enable attendees to build their business story skills in specific areas such as coaching, organisational change, leadership development and communication.
Do you have a case study to share?
We are seeking expressions of interest to share a case study at the conference. We are particularly interested in stories of working with narrative in organizations, across private, public and non-profit sectors. They should clearly illustrate the value of how stories and storytelling can be used to meet the organisation's business needs.
Case presenters will:
How we will select the case studies
We will select case studies based on:
Please send a short description (a couple of paragraphs) to both Patrick Lambe (plambe@straitsknowledge.com) and Shawn Callahan (shawn@anecdote.com.au) before 22nd March. We’re also happy to trade ideas by email or Skype if you want to develop an idea before you decide to put a more formal description together.
Shawn Callahan
Patrick Lambe
Céline FW 2010 by Garance Doré Studio | by The Sartorialist | 11 March 2010, 12:05 AM
Video compliments of Garance Doré
The record needs a better hearing - Labour and Tory | by Alistair Campbell | 10 March 2010, 11:50 PM
Due to a scheduling balls-up, I was last night at a Labour fundraiser in Greenwhich when I would rather have been at Burnley's re-arranged home match against Stoke.
Of the fundraiser, more later, but it meant for one night only I was like Bob and Terry from that brilliant episode of The Likely Lads, when they were trying to avoid knowing the result of a match because the highlights were on telly later. Ours was the only Premier League match on last night so we were guaranteed to be the main game for once on Sky's half ten football special.
It is harder to avoid results in the modern age with mobile phones, blackberries and omnipresent TV sets. I turned off all my contraptions to avoid the 'what a goal' 'oh no' 'here we go again' 'never a penalty' type texts that are part of the modern football experience.
Someone came to the fundraiser with a shiny new iphone telling me they could get me minute by minute updates as I spoke. I had to begin my speech with a genuine plea not to tell me any news from Turf Moor, should it filter through. My son, at the match, was similarly under silence instructions. The only tricky moment was at a pub by a set of traffic lights on the way home, when I could see our manager Brian Laws being interviewed on Sky Sports News. I looked away quickly in case smile or grimace gave the game away.
Anyway, I made it, and was home just in time to see the kick-off followed by a one all draw.
As for the fundraiser, as with other recent such events, definitely a change of mood to report, with a sense of hope that people are turning against the Tories and starting to look more favourably on Labour.
Two interesting points from the floor during the q and a. One, which I echoed whole-heartedly, that we need to talk up the record more as a way of pushing back on the negativity in the media and showing how politics has delivered real change. Local MP Nick Raynsford pointed out that even after all the problems of the global economic crisis, unemployment in his area was 40 per cent down on 1997.
Going on about the record is not about getting pats on the back. It is the means by which you make real the prospect that changes planned for the future can and will happen.
The second point concerned the economy, and the insight that campaigning in times of economic difficulty is not as straightforward as campaigning in times of economic strength. The issue then becomes which party can best be trusted to secure the recovery. One speaker from the floor rightly said that he would like to see and hear more from the many economists who reject the Tories' plans to choke the investment going in to help secure that recovery.
Again, the record is important here - ours and the Tories. I think one of the reasons the polls are narrowing is that GB and Alistair Darling are getting some of the respect they deserve for their handling of the economic crisis when it erupted. The Tories would have let things take their course, with potentially catastrophic consequences, because their instinct is always to see government as the problem not the solution. We cannot let them forget they made the wrong calls then, because it indicates to the public they would make the wrong calls now. With the date for the Budget now set, Alistair Darling's calm and ability to tell it as it is will come in handy up against George Osborne.
*** Buy The Blair Years here and raise money for Labour http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.
Bug Reporting: A How-To | by Snail in a Turtleneck (News) | 10 March 2010, 11:27 PM
This type of bug report drives me nuts:
You have a critical bug! This crashes Java!
for (int i=0; i<10; i++) { cursor.next(); }
(I’ve never gotten this exact report and I’m not picking on anyone, it’s a composite.)
This doesn’t crash for me. It doesn’t even compile for me because the variable “cursor” isn’t defined. If you’re going to use a variable (a function, a framework, etc.) in a code snippet, you have to define it. Let’s try again:
Mongo m = new Mongo(); DB db = m.getDB("bar"); DBCollection coll = db.getCollection("foo"); DBCursor cursor = coll.find(); for (int i=0; i<10; i++) { cursor.next(); }
Better! But this is probably crashing because of something in your database. Unless it crashes regardless of dataset, you need to send me the data that makes it crash. The basic rule is:
The faster I can reproduce your bug, the faster I can fix it.
Some other tips for submitting bug reports:
And, of course, flatter the developer’s ego when they’ve fixed the bug. Not applicable for me, of course, but other developers like it when you give them a little “Thanks, you’re awesome!” biscuit when they’ve fixed your bug.
To my users: thank you to everyone who has ever filed a bug report. I’m really, really happy that you’re using my software and that you care enough about it to submit a bug, instead of just giving up. Seriously, thank you. I have to give a shout-out to Perl developers in particular, here. More than half the time, people reporting bugs in the MongoDB Perl driver actually include a patch in the bug report that fixes it! I love you guys.
Copenhagenizing México | by The Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog | 10 March 2010, 11:26 PM
Been in México City if you're wondering about the sporadic posting. Sorting through the photos from five wild days. Stay tuned.
New Mapzen Updates Make Editing Smoother and Faster | by CloudMade | 10 March 2010, 11:01 PM
We’ve taken on board a lot of feedback and made lots of fixes and updates to Mapzen which we think will make a significant difference to your editing experience. They’re aimed at helping you map more by providing even greater flexibility within Mapzen.
Here’s what we’ve added:
1. Easier to work in areas with lots of land use
It’s now a lot easier to work more accurately with land use and other areas, with the ability to turn their filling on or off to provide a clearer view of what you are putting a perimeter around when viewing the satellite imagery or background images.
2. Easier to align roads to satellite imagery
A new Hide/ Show Elements button has been added to the bottom of the editing window allowing you to quickly turn on / off elements to better see the background objects. This is really useful when trying to align roads to satellite imagery.
![all_elements_are_hidden[1]](http://blog.cloudmade.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/all_elements_are_hidden1.jpg "all_elements_are_hidden[1]")
3. More control when adding lines and areas
A much requested feature that you’ve all been waiting for. Now you can press ESC to cancel any editing made to shapes of lines and press ‘Enter’ to end editing with line types. This is really useful when adding new roads.
4. Mac Users: no more annoying zoom in / zoom out
If you have a magic mouse from Apple or use a MacBook touchpad you might have experienced sudden jumps in zoom level. If you have suffered this problem, you can now disable the ‘scroll’ function to prevent the map from accidentally zooming in or out.
![disable_scroll_touchpad[1]](http://blog.cloudmade.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/disable_scroll_touchpad1.jpg "disable_scroll_touchpad[1]")
We hope you’ll find these updates useful – please continue to email us feedback, it’s incredibly useful to help us evolve and improve Mapzen. Here’s how you can get in touch
The next Mapzen blog post will look at some new features coming up in the April release of Mapzen Beta. Until then, if you don’t have a Mapzen account already, you can sign up for one and start using Mapzen here – happy mapping!
Nature editorial: “Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.” - Nature News: "Attack sparks memories of McCarthy witch-hunt." | by Climate Progress | 10 March 2010, 10:37 PM
Nature, the highly respected British scientific journal, has an excellent editorial and news story tomorrow on the recent assault on climate science (excerpted below).
Taking Nature’s advice, I urge the administration to send science advisor Holdren and NOAA Administrator Lubchenco and Energy Secretary Chu on a media blitz and national tour to explain and emphasize the science.
Nature is among the few journals “that still publish original research articles across a wide range of scientific fields,” including climate science. It has been a leader in defending climate science (see the December Nature editorial: “Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause.”)
The news story (subs. req’d) is:
Climate e-mail rerun
Attack sparks memories of McCarthy witch-hunt.
The story is about the latest set of e-mails among climate scientists, which led to Dr. George Woodwell setting the record straight here. Those emails in turn had been stimulated by Sen. Inhofe inquisition seeking ways to criminalize and prosecute 17 leading climate scientists.
Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University in California who is on Inhofe’s list and participated in the National Academy discussion, says he is urging colleagues to calm down and stick to the science. And he hopes that the Inhofe report — which says the scientists “violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, may have violated federal laws” — will spark a backlash….
As a member of the minority party, Inhofe can’t do much more than issue statements and reports. But Schneider says that if the Republicans later regain a majority in the Senate, Inhofe could take more concrete steps, such as forcing climate scientists to testify before Congress and pursuing his claims in congressional hearings.
Scientific societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Geophysical Union, should respond to Inhofe’s report with a declaration of support, says Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University in New Jersey who is also on Inhofe’s list. “Defending the scientific community and scientists from attacks ought to be a central part of their mission.”
The AAAS and other scientific organizations have repeatedly affirmed the fundamental science of global warming…. Alan Leshner, AAAS chief executive, says he is focused on trying to ensure that policy-makers distinguish between the controversies and the science. “What I don’t want to see is that this set of incidents is used as an excuse to deny the scientific findings.”
The editorial (subs. req’d) is even more blunt:
Climate of fear
The integrity of climate research has taken a very public battering in recent months. Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.
Climate scientists are on the defensive, knocked off balance by a re-energized community of global-warming deniers who, by dominating the media agenda, are sowing doubts about the fundamental science. Most researchers find themselves completely out of their league in this kind of battle because it’s only superficially about the science. The real goal is to stoke the angry fires of talk radio, cable news, the blogosphere and the like, all of which feed off of contrarian story lines and seldom make the time to assess facts and weigh evidence. Civility, honesty, fact and perspective are irrelevant.
… Ecologist Paul Ehrlich at Stanford University in California says that his climate colleagues are at a loss about how to counter the attacks. “Everyone is scared shitless, but they don’t know what to do,” he says.
Researchers should not despair. For all the public’s confusion about climate science, polls consistently show that people trust scientists more than almost anybody else to give honest advice. Yes, scientists’ reputations have taken a hit….
… scientists must acknowledge that they are in a street fight, and that their relationship with the media really matters. Anything strategic that can be done on that front would be useful, be it media training for scientists or building links with credible public-relations firms. In this light, there are lessons to be learned from the current spate of controversies. For example, the IPCC error was originally caught by scientists, not sceptics. Had it been promptly corrected and openly explained to the media, in full context with the underlying science, the story would have lasted days, not weeks. The IPCC must establish a formal process for rapidly investigating and, when necessary, correcting such errors.
The unguarded exchanges in the UEA e-mails speak for themselves. Although the scientific process seems to have worked as it should have in the end, the e-mails do raise concerns about scientific behaviour and must be fully investigated. Public trust in scientists is based not just on their competence, but also on their perceived objectivity and openness. Researchers would be wise to remember this at all times, even when casually e-mailing colleagues….
The [recent email] discussion was spurred by a report last month from Senator James Inhofe (Republican, Oklahoma), the leading climate sceptic in the US Congress, who labelled several respected climate scientists as potential criminals — nonsense that was hardly a surprise considering the source. Some scientists have responded by calling for a unified public rebuttal to Inhofe, and they have a point. As a member of the minority party, Inhofe is powerless for now, but that may one day change….
The core science supporting anthropogenic global warming has not changed. This needs to be stated again and again, in as many contexts as possible. Scientists must not be so naive as to assume that the data speak for themselves. Nor should governments. Scientific agencies in the United States, Europe and beyond have been oddly silent over the recent controversies. In testimony on Capitol Hill last month, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, offered at best a weak defence of the science while seeming to distance her agency’s deliberations from a tarnished IPCC. Officials of her stature should be ready to defend scientists where necessary, and at all times give a credible explanation of the science.
Here’s my suggestion to the administration. Launch a cross-country tour and media blitz with the science advisor (see “John Holdren on the hacked emails and the state of climate science“) and NOAA Administrator (see “The Sounds of Science: Lubchenco gives a demonstration of the science of ocean acidification“)
They should be joined by local scientists and, whenever possible, our energy secretary (see Nobelist Chu on IPCC and emails, “this is a little wart on the overall amount of information”; questions “asymmetric” standard skeptics are held to).
When you are in a street fight, you want to bring your biggest guns.
The Other Food Pyramid | by Only In It For The Gold | 10 March 2010, 10:19 PM
From Good Medicine Magazine:
Only on topic for this blog because it raises the perennial question: "Why is democracy so stupid?"
Il Ciclista Dolce: Michael Musto | by Copenhagen Cycle Chic | 10 March 2010, 09:47 PM
A cool little interview with Village Voice entertainment columnist Michael Musto, from our friends...
For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.
Research shows that stories create personal motivation and increase productivity | by anecdote - putting stories to work | 10 March 2010, 09:46 PM
The second Tuesday of every second month the Strathmore Unicorns Junior Basketball Club's committee meets. I'm the club Secretary and last Tuesday we were discussing the perennial topic of how to encourage our players (and their parents) to pay their registration fees on time.
Each year the Treasurer send a letter to laggards warning them that if they don't pay their fees they will not be insured and wont be able to play. This letter might have worked in the past but over the years coaches rarely stop their players from playing because of outstanding fees. So unless we become more draconian, the threatening letter approach has run its course.
As everyone was chatting I was recalling Influencer's six sources of influence and based on that model I suggested an alternative that appealed to personal and social motivation of an important person on every team: the team manager.
Here are my two suggestions. Love to hear yours in the comments.
Personal motivation initiative: we are creating a one-page handout describing why the team manager is an important role and listing four things every manager must do to be great at the job. The first on the list is to collect registration fees on time. I did think we should include a short story of how a manager did one of these tasks (more on this idea below).
Social motivation initiative: For the next four months we will share with all the team managers the overall percentage of teams that are all paid up and either congratulating them of getting all their fees in or encouraging to be as good as the rest. The overall percentage at the outset will be large which will send the message that most people are paying (social proof).
To add to this thinking I discovered this morning some important influence research which shows how stories can be added to this mix with tremendous effect. Over at the Inside Influence Report Noah Goldstein reports on Adam Grant's research showing that reminding people of the meaning and significance of their work can double their productivity. And he did this by simply sharing stories from those people who benefited from the call centre worker's hard work: in this case benefactors of a fundraising organisation.
Here is how Grant ran his experiment. Working in a fundraising organisation call centre, Grant divided his participants into three groups: people who were reminded of their personal benefits of the job; people reminded of the significance their tasks was having on the benefactors of their work; and the control group. The personal benefit group read stories from other employees about the benefits of the job such as money, skills and knowledge. The task significance group read stories from the people the organisation was giving scholarships to and how these scholarships effected their lives. The control group didn't hear any stories.
Here's how Golstein reports the results:
What they found was amazing. Employees in the Personal Benefit and Control conditions looked almost exactly the same after the intervention as before it in terms of amount of donation money raised and the number of pledges earned. Yet, those in the Task Significance condition earned more than twice the number of weekly pledges (from an average of 9 to an average of 23) and more than twice the amount of weekly donation money (from an average of $1,288 to an average of $3,130). Additional analyses suggest that the huge increase was driven by previously unmotivated employees increasing the number of calls they made per hour.
So my question is who's story does the team managers need to hear? I can't imagine hearing a story from the committee of how getting the money in on time will motivate anyone. Perhaps it needs to be a story from one of the players that received a scholarship or from a parent in the under eights who gets reduced fees to get them started. Or maybe it is a story from one of the coaches who all just received new coaches tops.
Grant, A. M. (2008). The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 108-124.
Glenn Beck Attacks You! | by Climate Progress | 10 March 2010, 09:17 PM
A must-see video, but it only works if you have a Facebook account (click here).
Be sure to watch until the very end. The last joke is just laugh out loud funny, especially if you have a young daughter.
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Apprenticeship Programme 2010 for emerging artists | by Hope Street, Liverpool | 10 March 2010, 08:47 PM
Apprenticeship Programme 2010 for emerging artists | Liverpool Art and Culture Blog. Hope Street’s apprenticeship programme runs from May 31st to October 23rd 2010. Application forms are available to download: www.hope-street.org/2010ApprenticeshipProjects.htm or you can call into Hope Street Ltd weekdays 10am-5pm (situated on Arrad Street). Check Google Maps by going to www.hope-street.org/contact.htm THIS YEAR’S PROJECTS This year Hope Street will be [...]
Tom and George lie for cash – anti Hicks and Gillette poster | by Liverpool Culture Blog | 10 March 2010, 08:32 PM
I’ve noticed a few anti-Gillett and Hicks posters around the city recently, but haven’t given them much thought beyond that.
I’m not a Red, though I know many people who are. Some of them are actually from Liverpool.
But even though I don’t have much to do with LFC, I sympathise with the predicament of fans.
Having seen the two clubs I support wrestle with the bonkers Gary Gibson and clueless Mike Ashley it’s easy to empathise with Liverpool FC fans who are attempting to drag the club back to the values and meaning of the glory days.
Shankly’s famous ‘the socialism I believe in…’ quote once adorned a Philosophy Football shirt I used to own. It’s how I see life, nevermind football, but it started to feel embarrassingly at odds with football some years ago, when I stopped wearing it.
Is it possible to marry that old-fashioned working-class spirit and ethics to football in the modern day? No, not in my opinion, which is why I essentially left football behind some time ago.
Once you reach the point where modern football leaves you dispirited, cynical and vaguely disgusted, there doesn’t seem much point in maintaining an ongoing interest in it.
I admire those fighting for the heart and soul of their football clubs, even though the odds are stacked against them.
The Spirit of Shankly seems in short supply these days, especially on the day when Chester City went into administration. As a friend of mine lamented:
Chester City’s debt amounted to less than a DAY’S pay for John Terry. Obscene.
Indeed. Welcome to football in the 21st century.
Image by Dave the Pap.
simonhrjohnson | by The Baseline Scenario | 10 March 2010, 08:19 PM
By Simon Johnson
Senators Merkley and Levin, with support from colleagues, are proposing legislation that would apply Paul Volcker’s financial reform principles – actually, much more effectively than would the Treasury’s specific proposals. (Link to the bill’s text.)
Volcker’s original idea, as you may recall, is that financial institutions with government guarantees (implicit or explicit) should not be allowed to engage in reckless risk-taking. At least in part, that risk-taking takes the form of big banks committing their own capital in various kinds of gambles – whether or not they call this proprietary trading.
At the Senate Banking Committee hearing on this issue in early February, John Reed – former head of Citi – was adamant that a restriction on proprietary trading not only made sense, but was also long overdue. Gerald Corrigan of Goldman Sachs and Barry Zubrow of JP Morgan Chase expressed strong opposition, which suggests that Paul Volcker is onto something.
Of course, Goldman – among others – may seek to turn in its (recently acquired) banking license and go back to being “just an investment bank”, not subject to Fed regulation. But raising this possibility is a feature, not a bug of the Volcker-Merkley-Levin approach.
Think through this logic – which I argued out with a very senior ex-Goldman person this weekend.
1) If Goldman wants to be saved in the future, it needs to be subject to tough regulation – including this new restriction on proprietary trading.
2) If it doesn’t want to be saved, that works for me. But there is no way that Goldman at its current scale – or anything near – could fail without causing enormous collateral damage (literally). Remember that there is no prospect of a “resolution authority” that will work for cross-border financial institutions, like Goldman (in private, top officials and leading bankers are willing to concede this).
3) So if Goldman wants to escape the Volcker Rule, it will have to become much smaller.
4) How small is open to discussion – but I would guess that this would be no larger than Goldman’s size in 1998 (around $270 billion in today’s dollars). Given what we’ve learned about the limitations of everyone’s internal risk models, a sensible regulator would probably want to be even more conservative on size.
5) My assessment is that if Goldman were around $100 billion in total assets, that would be a reasonable outcome – although we still have to worry about what they (or anyone) does in the “dark markets” of over-the-counter derivatives.
In any case, putting these issues openly on the table for Senate Banking – and on the floor of the entire Senate – is incredibly helpful. The Volcker-Merkley-Levin proposal is concrete and feasible, and a useful part of how we can move forward.
ConocoPhillips chair mocks clean energy advocates as “hydrocarbon deniers” - CEO of Saudi Aramco worries about "a bottleneck" in oil production. Seriously! | by Climate Progress | 10 March 2010, 07:49 PM
Oil prices and profits are on the rise again. The anti-science disinformation campaign funded in large part by Big Oil is having unimaginable success. And the powerful minority of do-nothing ideologues appear to have the upper hand in the Senate.
And that means a modern day Mr. Potter oil company executive can speak his mind and tell us what he really thinks of clean energy, as Greenwire (subs. req’d) reports:
HOUSTON — Leaders of two of the world’s largest oil and gas companies used their addresses at CERAWeek, a sprawling conference sponsored by energy analysis firm IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, to warn against unbridled optimism about wind and solar energy. Khalid Al-Falih, president and CEO of Saudi Aramco, deemed overreliance on renewable power dangerous, while ConocoPhillips Chairman James Mulva employed sarcasm to compare renewable boosters to those who won’t acknowledge climate change.
“We must overcome the opposition of the ‘hydrocarbon deniers,’ “ Mulva said, playing off the term “climate deniers,” used to describe skeptics about climate science. Hydrocarbon deniers, he said, are those who “believe that renewable energy will quickly and easily replace hydrocarbons and cure all that ails us.”
Well, I’m quite sure if Mulva and his buddies have anything to say about it, we won’t be curing what ails us anytime soon!
Mulva, whose company supports mandatory U.S. regulation of greenhouse gases, said renewables cannot develop quickly enough to replace fossil fuels, and he predicted that even in 40 years, most electricity will not come from renewable sources.
Hmm. ConocoPhillips left the US Climate Action Partnership in February, primarily it seems because it didn’t like even the modest regulation of emissions from oil that USCAP had been pushing.
“After all, there are only so many places where massive development is economical and publicly acceptable,” Mulva said, “and only so much government funding to subsidize the renewable sources.”
Seriously. Of course, that’s the point of having a price on carbon that Mulva had been supporting, so you don’t need endless subsidies. Later in the very same article we read:
Mulva lambasted the administration’s proposals to terminate tax benefits on oil and gas. “Perhaps it has not learned that if you tax something you get less of it,” he said. “Less supply security, fewer jobs and lower reinvestment.”
Yes, endless subsidies for fossil fuels, even though they dominate the market and are destroying a livable climate, but clean energy, well there’s only so much funding available for that.
Wind and solar have problems with “cost, reliability, visual impact, land and water use, bird strikes and massive power-line rights of way,” Mulva said. Biofuels, he said, require large amounts of land and water, can drive up food prices and increase greenhouse gas emissions.
It boggles the mind. In Mulva’s Bizarro World, Htrea, oil extraction, transportation, and refining are purely benign.
The Saudis have even more chutzpah, as it were:
Al-Falih said too much focus on renewables could diminish the investment needed to continue producing traditional fuels and could create a “green bubble” in energy markets.
“The belief in an almost instantaneous transformation to alternative energy is worrisome to me,” Al-Falih said. “While our subsurface resources remain plentiful, we may create a bottleneck above ground by failing to invest wisely and in a timely fashion.”
[Pause to clean up gray matter off the floor -- sorry for not warning you about the need for a head vise.]
The entire goal of Saudi Aramco and OPEC is to create a bottleneck above ground in oil!
Where is George Bailey when we need him?
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Cycle Chic Goes to México 01 | by Copenhagen Cycle Chic | 10 March 2010, 07:30 PM
It was a wild, thrilling and rewarding trip to México City. I was invited by the Danish embassy to...
For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.
Just another cog in the machine | by Cambodia Calling | 10 March 2010, 07:18 PM
I just had to share this with readers. I loved this video - so clever and what a great message, so full of hope. I know it'll strike a chord with many of my friends in corporate jobs. The video is one of six shortlisted for the first ever global labour video of the year. To watch them all and to vote, click here.
Let's all continue speaking up for workers' rights and end the soul-destroying system and culture in so many companies.
Go Ahead, Act Like a Scientist | by Only In It For The Gold | 10 March 2010, 07:18 PM
Being a scientist is not a putdown. How strange, in these years of the revenge of the nerds, this time of huge respect for engineers and programmers, that scientists are urged to be ashamed of ourselves.
Today, Revkin says
The more I talk to social scientists and psychologists about humanity’s growing pains in its current population and appetite surge, the more it’s clear that the “market failures” described by economists examining environmental issues derive from fundamental patterns of behavior rooted deep in the brain.Right. So, what grownups do, in circumstances like that, is exert cognitive pressure from the frontal lobe to overcome atavistic appetites. This means that the reason to stop emitting carbon is because we have way too much carbon sitting around loose already, not because there will be an economic boom from making windmills.
On the Street.....After Chanel, Paris | by The Sartorialist | 10 March 2010, 06:51 PM
Pathways To Housing | by Wooster Collective | 10 March 2010, 06:46 PM
Energy and Global Warming News for March 10: Climate’s a hot issue in Arkansas; New Senate ‘gang’ gathering on energy? | by Climate Progress | 10 March 2010, 06:19 PM
Climate’s a hot issue in Arkansas
Arkansas is rapidly emerging as ground zero for climate politics, as advocates from all sides swarm embattled incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln.
Lincoln’s approval rating — at an all-time low of 27 percent — has made her one of the most politically endangered Democrats in the Senate. Last week, Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter jumped into the race, posing a serious challenge from the left to the conservative Democrat.
As chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Lincoln has a lot of sway over offsets and other farming provisions included in the climate bill.
She’s come out strongly against a House version of the legislation, which she’s said is a complete “nonstarter” in the Senate.
Last month, she co-sponsored legislation introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) attempting to veto an Environmental Protection Agency ruling that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare. The ruling compels the agency to begin regulating emissions in sectors across the economy.
“She’s running a strategy to present herself as a conservative Democrat, and part of her message on that is her opposition to the cap-and-trade bill,” said Jason Tolbert, editor of the conservative Arkansas political blog The Tolbert Report.
In the first television advertisement of her campaign, Lincoln touted her opposition to a “cap-and-trade bill that would have increased energy costs for Arkansans.”
New ‘gang’ gathering on energy?
The Obama administration signaled a fresh commitment to moving a climate bill this year, bringing together a bipartisan group of 14 key Senators and top cabinet officials for a White House meeting on Tuesday afternoon.
“He wants us to move, figure out where we can come together and do as comprehensive bill as we can,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).
In opening remarks, according to Senators in attendance, President Obama took the idea of an energy-only bill – the preferred approach of moderate Democrats – off the table, saying he wanted a “comprehensive” bill that includes a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
“He wants to do it this year, that’s for sure,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.)
The meeting was called as Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) near the release of their revamped climate bill.
Those three senators have dropped the idea of an economy-wide cap in favor of imposing different emissions curbs on different industries. The legislation would also provide new federal assistance to nuclear power plants, carbon sequestration, storage projects at coal plants and offshore oil exploration – proposals aimed at attracting Republican support.
Kerry spoke in general terms about their proposal, which they expect to release by the end of the month. Congress, said Kerry, is “now down to dealing with specific language” in the bill.
Most members say they have yet to see specific language, although the three Senators have spent the past few weeks in a flurry of meetings about the proposal.
China Targets Battery Pilot Project For Renewable Energy
China’s State Grid is building a massive demonstration project for integrated renewable energy and power storage in the provincial city of Zhangjiakou in Hebei, state news agency Xinhua reported.
The ability to store large amounts of energy is critical to the development of renewable power because of the intermittency of energy sources like solar and wind. Industry players at companies such as Suntech Power Holdings Co. (STP) call storage an integral piece of the renewable-energy puzzle.
As China moves to increase its renewable-energy targets in its next five-year plan, which will be announced later this year, the development …
IMF Plans Fund to Help Rich World Meet Climate Pledge
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, said the organization is devising a “green fund” that would help rich nations meet their Copenhagen pledge to raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to tackle the effects of climate change.
Under such a fund, IMF quotas could be used as a basis for contributions to help burden-sharing, Strauss-Kahn said. The fund could serve as a “bridge” while rich nations negotiate their contributions to climate-change mitigation under the Copenhagen agreement, he added.
“Launching such a scheme would entail a major political effort. But the potential pay-off is enormous — for Africa and the world,” the IMF’s managing director said in a speech at the university of Nairobi in Kenya today. “Now is the time to put new ideas on the table.”
The fund would help African nations tackle the increase in drought, flooding, food shortages and disease that will likely be caused by climate change and may spur progress on negotiations towards a global agreement on curbing emissions. The IMF increased its quotas last year in order to add more than $250 billion to global liquidity following a request from the Group of 20 leaders.
‘Early Progress’
“Early progress with financing for climate action will help to unlock support from developing nations for an ambitious global deal on climate change,” said Richard Gledhill, global leader of the climate change practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. “The key challenge will be to structure commitments in such a way as to leverage investment from the private sector and from the carbon markets.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts as many as 250 million Africans may be exposed to water shortages by 2020 and some countries may see harvests fall by 50 percent.
On Dec. 10, billionaire George Soros asked the richest nations to use $100 billion of foreign-exchange reserves to finance emissions-reducing projects in poor countries.
The reserves would go into investments in rain forests, agriculture and land use that will lower carbon-dioxide emissions, the financier said during negotiations involving 192 nations in Copenhagen.
Steven Chu at CERAWeek: The U.S. can “lead the world in a new industrial revolution”
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu took the podium early (instead of at lunch) at IHS-CERAWeek today because “I have to go back to Washington,” he said briefly. His talk at the energy conference was very much that of a college professor, complete with graphs and charts.
“The U.S. has the opportunity to lead the world in a new industrial revolution,” Chu said, but a cleaner one that will help keep U.S. in the lead with technology.
He then followed with a defense of why he believes the data shows man-made climate change is real, including data on two different kinds of carbon in the environment. The ratio between Carbon 14 (which has a certain radioactive footprint) and Carbon 12, which comes from extracted hydrocarbons, has shifted such that there’s more Carbon 12 in the mix.
He gave a shout-out to natural gas, noting how it would be much preferable to coal for power generation. But he emphasized finding ways to “store” wind power via compressed air or water pumping so it can be used during peak power hours, with natural gas power playing the role of back-up.
Chu also touted research into improving the impact of burning coal, mentioning a new DOE announcement of a $154 million investment with NRG Energy (which owns many of Houston’s power plants) for a “clean coal” power initiative.
During a very quick Q&A, IHS-CERA director Dan Yergin asked how hard Chu found it to push innovation at the DOE, given his background in cutting-edge research. Chu said he was encouraged to find much of America’s top scientific talent — both old and young — to be very interested in energy issues. So the talent and enthusiasm is there.
On nuclear power Chu said he thought it’s “part of the solution but not the entire solution.” About 20 percent of U.S. power comes from nuclear, a ratio the country would like to “maintain and possibly grow” he said. That’s why the administration has added more money to its nuclear loan guarantee program. Once several new reactor projects are built on time and on budget, Chu expects the government to step back and let the industry work on its own.
His final nod to the largely oil-and-gas-centric audience: “Oil is an ideal transportation fuel, so it will be with us for decades,” he said. “But having said all these things, we still have this climate issue and we’ll need to use oil in a cleaner way.”
Ex-Im Bank approves new scrutiny of fossil fuel projects
The Export-Import Bank voted yesterday to ramp up financing for renewable energy and impose new reviews of large fossil fuel projects as part of a broad new climate change strategy.
Bank President Fred Hochberg is expected to announce the new carbon policy today when President Obama joins the institution’s annual meeting. The strategy, with a centerpiece $250 million loan guarantee program for renewable energy projects, is the first of its kind among export credit agencies.
“Just having a carbon policy is farther than any export credit agency in the world,” said Export-Import Bank spokesman Phil Cogan. “That’s pretty significant.”
The move is part of a 2009 settlement resolving a lawsuit involving Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and several cities. The suit alleged that the agency — which provides loans, guarantees and insurance to subsidize U.S. exports — provided more than $32 billion to fossil fuel projects without considering the impacts of global warming under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
But it also comes as other global lending institutions like the World Bank look for ways to balance the work they do with a new international emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and phasing out support for fossil fuels.
For the most part, environmental advocates say the agencies are failing to make fundamental changes to steer the world away from dirty fuel and toward zero- and low-carbon energy development.
Activists reacted with particular fury to the Export-Import Bank’s policy, arguing it does nothing to curb the carbon emissions the agency is responsible for creating, and may even create new avenues to support the financing of coal projects….
Under the plan, the Export-Import Bank vows to adopt a “rigorous enhanced due diligence process for all high carbon intensity projects.” Officials plan to categorize projects based on their carbon intensity levels. “High” intensity proposals producing between 700 and 850 grams of CO2 per kilowatt will be required to meet certain standards, like using the “best appropriate technology.”
Coal gasification, oil-fueled power plants and coal plants that are developed with the capacity to include carbon capture and storage technology would not have to meet any additional requirements. And for the most inefficient, subcritical boiler plants, the agency plans to require offsets to reduce the project’s carbon intensity level. The standards allow for the possibility that a project might be denied because of its climate change impacts, but set no threshold nor give any description of what might trigger a denial.
Doug Norlen, policy director for the environmental nonprofit Pacific Environment, noted that the Export-Import Bank rarely finances coal projects. He maintained that the new carbon policy barely addresses the agency’s enormous oil and gas portfolio. Moreover, he said, the coal provisions appear to open the door for financing new power plants rather than protect against the possibility.
“They are avoiding their responsibility to curb their mainstream portfolio of fossil fuel emissions and potentially setting up a stalking horse for future expansion of emissions through future support of coal,” Norlen said.
Cogan, when asked if he envisioned the Export-Import Bank financing a coal-fired power plant under the new policy, said “it depends,” based on the criteria laid out in the policy. He also said the agency simply can’t shift away from fossil fuel lending.
Is the U.S. too Balkanized to be a solar giant?
Solar executives are worried that the United States’ decentralized energy policy may make it impossible to achieve market dominance.
When Tom Rooney, CEO of Silicon Valley’s SPG Solar, returned from a business trip to Beijing last month, he was struck by how far the United States has fallen behind, simply by staying still.
“It dawned on me that most people in America don’t have a clue about how far behind we are,” he said. “It’s a little disappointing that as one of the largest buyers of panels in the U.S., we are barely taken seriously in China.”
The United States is now the fifth-largest buyer of solar components, Rooney estimated, behind Germany, Spain, Canada and Japan. In 2008, the United States installed 342 MW of solar, compared to 1,500 MW in Germany and 2,300 MW in Spain, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Of that demand, China and Taiwan filled almost half, while U.S. production was 414 MW.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu echoed the industry’s concerns Monday at Stanford University, but didn’t offer much hope of a policy fix. Instead, he offered up the Energy Department’s loan guarantees and funding of research centers at universities (ClimateWire, March 9).
“America has the opportunity to seize the day,” he said. “Do we want to be leaders or followers?”
It may be too late to choose, Rooney said. The Chinese are reaping the economic benefits (and environmental consequences) of their investments in Beijing. And they’re wondering why they have so few American customers.
“In Beijing, people are scratching their heads, saying, ‘What’s going on with these guys?’” Rooney said. “From Florida to California, we’re such obvious end-users. Within five years, we would be by far the No. 1 market in the world, and we would have the technological bully pulpit in terms of steering the future technologies. Now we’re just riding the coattails of countries that are first, and with no leadership comes no say-so in the next generation of technologies.”
Apples and Wiener schnitzel
The United States’ fragmented energy policy is why Germany — with solar potential similar to Alaska’s — is the world leader in installed capacity, Rooney said.
“In Germany they have more national policies, whereas here we have hundreds, maybe thousands, of utilities and public utility commissions,” he said. “In the U.S., we do it one little community at a time, and there is no national impetus to get it done. It’s the ability to act monolithically” that provides the greatest economic benefits.
But other observers doubted Germany’s success could ever be replicated in the United States with broad national policies. California alone has more than 30 utilities that would have to translate a feed-in tariff to work with their own size and design. A national renewable energy standard would be more likely to work, but also poses obstacles, said Sue Kateley, executive director of the California Solar Energy Industries Association.
“I see it as a good thing, but it’s fraught with how do you do it,” she said, citing a recent bill in the Arizona Legislature that would have altered its renewable energy standard to include nuclear power. “The concept of ‘We need to have a national initiative to get more renewable energy on the grid,’ that’s really important, but how you do it is the complicating part.”
One thing the federal government could do with little fuss or fanfare is clarify policy to explicitly allow local feed-in tariffs, she said. A recent report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory offers several paths for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to make it easier for states to avoid conflict with federal rules governing wholesale electricity sales.
“You wouldn’t even need legislation for that,” Kateley said. “FERC could just issue a rule.”
Kateley pointed out that Germany doesn’t have an investment tax credit, so its feed-in tariff is commensurately high. As well, its relatively low solar potential compared to the United States means that even if more megawatts have been installed, the actual generation — and ratepayer obligation — is still low.
“Comparisons to Germany should be done very carefully,” she said.
South Korea, Japan race for share in lithium market
Japan and South Korea are scrambling to tap into international lithium reserves as the metal becomes more valuable for electric car batteries.
Along with China, Japan and South Korea hold 98 percent of the world’s lithium market, but the countries are now hoping to corner the market. China has lithium on reserve, as well as an untapped source in its salt lakes.
South Korea has set aside $12 billion for lithium acquisition this year and worked out a deal with Bolivia to tap into that country’s massive reserve. The country even declared it will extract lithium from seawater by 2015. Still, the Samsung Economic Research Institute wrote that Seoul was trailing in the lithium race and advised the government to divert more funds to resource diplomacy.
In Japan, meanwhile, Mitsubishi Corp. and Sumitomo Corp. are looking to get the rights to extract lithium from the Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia, which could hold the world’s largest deposit. Toyota Tsusho will buy a 25 percent share in Argentina’s lithium-potash development.
South Korea’s salt-water announcement could change the market, though scientists say cost-effective extraction technology is several years away. Japanese scientists worked on the process for three decades, but found it too expensive without booming demand.
Experts are split about whether the current reserves of recoverable lithium can satisfy the market for metal, which is also used in laptop and cell phone batteries. There is currently 4.1 million tons without Bolivia’s stores, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. South Korea believes that seawater extraction will keep those reserves from running out too early
Nanometre ‘fuses’ for high-performance batteries
Minuscule tubes coated with a chemical fuel can act as a power source with 100 times more electrical power by weight than conventional batteries.
As these nano-scale “fuses” burn, they drive an electrical current along their length at staggering speeds.
The never-before-seen phenomenon could lead to a raft of energy applications.
Researchers reporting in Nature Materials say that unlike normal batteries, the nanotubes never lose their stored energy if left to sit.
The team, led by Michael Strano of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, coated their nanotubes – cylinders just billionths of a metre across – with a chemical fuel known as cyclotrimethylene trinitramine.
“One property that nanotubes have is that they conduct heat very, very well along their length, up to a hundred times faster than in metals,” Dr Strano told BBC News.
“We asked what would happen if you perform a chemical reaction near one of these, and the first thing we found is the nanotube will guide the reaction, accelerating it up to 10,000 times.”
The team used a laser or an electric spark to set off the reaction in a bundle of coated carbon nanotubes, filming the results using a high-speed camera.
U.S. greenhouse gases fell 2.9% in 2008 — EPA
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell 2.9 percent in 2008, according to a draft report that U.S. EPA opened for public comment today.
The emissions decline was attributed to falling carbon dioxide emissions as energy consumption fell in the face of record-high oil prices and an economic recession. Total emissions for the year were about 6.9 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent, an increase by 13.6 percent from 1990.
EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory also calculates CO2 emissions removed from the atmosphere by sinks like forests, soil and vegetation. Since 1990, the country has seen a 3.4 percent increase in the CO2 absorbed by forests and land use, largely due to an increase in the rate of carbon accumulation in the forests, the report says.
Fossil fuel combustion remained a primary source of CO2 in the United States, accounting for 94 percent of CO2 emissions in 2008.
The inventory is prepared by EPA in collaboration with other agencies as part of U.S. obligations under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Downsizing Detroit: agriculture in the inner city | by Futurismic | 10 March 2010, 06:00 PM
We mentioned last summer that there was a chance some of the American cities affected worst by the changing economic climate deliberately “downsizing” themselves in order to consolidate what remains and cauterise the wound, and it seems that the decision has been made in the case of Detroit.
With the town already showing signs of becoming a new frontier for hippies, frugalists, art communes and close-to-the-land types, Detroit’s planners are proposing to change roughly a quarter of the city’s ghost-town urban areas into semi-rural farmland [via BoingBoing].
That’s a grim decision to have to make; I think we can assume that it’s being made by people who really can’t see any other way out. Question is, will Detroit be just the first of many?
Tired of blogging? - tired of life | by Binary Law | 10 March 2010, 05:45 PM
I’m more than happy that, as the Pew Foundation reports, the chatter has moved elsewhere: Since 2006, blogging has dropped among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults. As the tools and technology embedded in social networking sites change, and use of the sites continues to grow, youth may be exchanging ‘macro-blogging’ for [...]
More yarnbombs, PHAG closing, zombie MJ | by PW Style | 10 March 2010, 05:44 PM
Someone has been busy knitting things for public places. I saw the first two wandering around yesterday (first one in Rittenhouse, second across from the Eastern State Penitentiary), the second two at 26th and Brown a couple weeks ago.
We did an interview with a couple of local yarnbombers a few weeks ago, if you’d like to read more.
Also spotted in one of my rare ventures into the light of day (btw, if a blogger feels sunshine on her face it means there won’t be six more weeks of winter, I believe it goes) was PHAG’s closing sale. They’re just going all-online, not out of business, but still bummer.
And across the street, this portrait of Michael Jackson, which was so stop-in-your-tracks bad that a friend and I ended up having a fairly long conversation about what it was trying to say with a similarly horrified stranger.
Star Wars: In Concert reviewed | by Cheryl Mullin | 10 March 2010, 05:40 PM
Billed as a massive multi-media event featuring stunning visuals, a live orchestra, choir and narration, plus an exclusive exhibit of Star Wars costumes, props and production artwork - Star Wars: In Concert promised so much.
So why was there a twinge of disappointment as I left the ECHO Arena last night after the show?
The evening had started well. I arrived at the arena with Neil McDonald from ScyFi Love full of excitement for the night ahead.
We spent a good 40 minutes or so wandering around the Arena's atrium looking at the various exhibits on show.
There were the usual fan favourites - Han Solo encased in carbonite, Chewy, Yoda, C-3PO and Darth Vader.
There were also some very odd choices, such as two Imperial Guard uniforms and a Naboo starfighter pilot's uniform. Nevertheless it was great to see them up close and see the workmanship that had gone in to them.
We couldn't help but notice that the merchandise was a little on the pricey side, charging a pant-wetting £20 just for a programme, and T-shirts ranging from £18 to £45!.
And so on to the show itself.
The arena may have been half empty, but the anticipation amongst the fans was palpable.
I have to say I did have chills when the orchestra struck up the first chords of the Star Wars theme accompanied by classic clips from the six films projected onto a huge screen behind them.
C-3PO himself, Anthony Daniels was our compère for the evening, taking us through the saga and introducing each piece of music.
But there was something missing that I couldn't quite put my finger on.
While the orchestra threw themselves into playing John Williams' brilliant score, the sound somehow felt tinny and flat inside the cavernous venue.
I couldn't help but wonder if a more intimate setting, such as the Philharmonic Hall would have been more appropriate for the concert.
It was the shown the accompany the pieces which bemused us most.
Some of the films most iconic moments were rushed past, with Han Solo's 'Yahooo. You're all clear kid' and Admiral Ackbar's 'It's a trap!' being missed out completely.
Some of the more interesting art work, especially sketches of characters from Mos Eisley Cantina whipped by in a blur and some characters - most notably Boba Fett - were missed out all together.
The most bewildering section was the final battle on Endor. Having been introduced as the fight which brought down the Empire, it was cut with scenes from the Battle of Grassy Plains from The Phantom Menace.
The audience was truly appreciative of the orchestra's work, which was rewarded with an encore performance of the Imperial March.
As I say we left having enjoyed the show, but I couldn't help thinking that with a bit more heart it could have been something truly amazing.
jamesykwak | by The Baseline Scenario | 10 March 2010, 05:30 PM
I think. BofA is eliminating overdraft protection on debit card purchases. Most stories, like in the Times and the Journal, are headlining the elimination of overdraft fees, but it’s not like you’re getting overdrafts for free; actually they are eliminating overdrafts on debit card transactions altogether, starting this summer. (You will still be able to opt in to overdraft protection for debit card transactions, but only if you link your checking account to another account, so the money is being transferred from yourself. You will also be able to opt in to overdraft protection, with fees, for checks and automatic bill payments;* and you will be able to decide on the spot if you want to pay a fee to overdraw your account from an ATM.)
So it sounds like rather than getting as many customers as possible to opt in to overdraft protection, BofA has decided to just kill it. I think this is a good thing. So does the Center for Responsible Lending. Of course, the policy does sort of undermine all the previous rhetoric about how overdraft protection was good for consumers and about customer choice. But let’s just blame all that on Ken Lewis and assume that Brian Moynihan made the right choice (although Moynihan was head of consumer banking last year before becoming CEO).
Note also that BofA’s stock price is doing just fine today, right in the middle of the pack of big banks. Maybe it’s not true that banks have to take advantage of customers in order to make money. Yes, I understand that other fees may go up, or interest on deposits may go down, but if all this is doing is shifting costs from hidden fees to well-understood fees, that’s good.
In another attempt to give a little credit, I’m looking at a Morgan Stanley research report from a couple weeks ago projecting tepid job growth during the recovery and recommending comprehensive health care reform, a refundable payroll tax credit, increased job training programs, and protocols for short sales or mortgage principal reduction, with a shout out to a community revitalization project. (Morgan Stanley, too, has a new CEO, former McKinsey director James Gorman.) I doubt Morgan Stanley is putting a lot of lobbying dollars behind these ideas, but still it’s something.
* Which makes sense to me; I wouldn’t want my rent check to bounce, especially if my lease has a big fee for returned checks, but if I’m just buying a cup of coffee I’d rather not get the coffee (or use cash) than pay $35 for it.
How much stress can the banks take? | by Robert Peston (BBC business editor) | 10 March 2010, 05:28 PM
Perhaps the biggest cultural change since the credit crunch is that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) now takes the long view of financial history and insists that banks prepare for once-in-a-century financial catastrophes - the kind of disasters that regularly happen, but only after memories have dimmed of the preceding one.
So the watchdog's latest financial risk outlook instructs bank to make sure they have sufficient capital to withstand losses generated by the following scenario:
"A further decline in GDP of 2.3% from the end of 2009 to the end of 2011, with gradual recovery thereafter. Alongside this fall in GDP, the scenario includes a rise in unemployment to a peak of 13.3% in 2012, and allows for a 'doubledip' in property prices, with house prices falling by 23% from current levels and commercial property by more than 34%."
Now, for the avoidance of doubt, the FSA is not forecasting that the UK will re-enter recession. In fact its so-called "central" projection (what it thinks most probable) is that there will be a "V" shaped recovery, with GDP growth accelerating this year, to 1.4% in 2010 and 2.2% in 2011.
This "central" projection is no more sophisticated than the mean of professional forecasts. And they have been pretty wide of the mark in recent years.
So a prudent FSA - which wants to avoid a repeat of 2008's near collapse of the banking system - has to make sure that our banks have enough of a buffer of capital to cope with a lot worse than what economists expect.
Do Britain's banks currently have enough capital to absorb additional losses generated by a second recession and further sharp falls in asset prices?
Probably. The FSA insists they hold core tier one capital - which is basically pure equity - equal to a minimum of 4% of loans and other assets weighted according to the Basel Committee's widely criticised rules.
Right now the core tier one ratios of all our biggest banks is more than twice that. Most of them have ratios greater than 10%. Lloyds has the lowest ratio of the pack at 8.1%.
Which is not to say that they are invulnerable.
The FSA, for example, believes that the sharp falls in interest rates engineered by central banks to resuscitate the global economy may be disguising rather than solving the repayment difficulties being experienced by some borrowers: for arithmetic reasons it takes longer when interest rates are at record low levels for any borrower that stops repaying to cross the arrears threshold that sets alarm bells ringing in a bank's head office and at the FSA.
All that said, if the FSA's worst fears materialise and we enter a second recession (which plainly in the light of today's weak industrial production figures is not inconceivable), we should be worrying about other things than the solvency of our banks (although those other things, such as the credit-worthiness of the government and social cohesion, aren't exactly trivial).
Free Energy and the Meaning of Life | by Cosmic Variance | 10 March 2010, 05:06 PM
When we think about the “meaning of life,” we tend to conjure ideas such as love, or self-actualization, or justice, or human progress. It’s an anthropocentric view; try to convince blue-green algae that self-actualization is some sort of virtue. Let’s ask instead why “life,” as a biological concept, actually exists. That is to say: we know that entropy increases as the universe evolves. But why, on the road from the simple and low-entropy early universe to the simple and high-entropy late universe, do we pass through our present era of marvelous complexity and organization, culminating in the intricate chemical reactions we know as life?
Yesterday’s book club post referred to a somewhat-whimsical vision of Maxwell’s Demon as a paradigm for life. The Demon takes in free energy and uses it to maintain a separation between hot and cold sides of a box of gas — a sustained departure from thermal equilibrium. But what if we reversed the story? Instead of thinking that the Demon takes advantage free energy to help advance its nefarious anti-thermodynamic agenda, what if we imagine that the free energy is simply using the Demon — that is, the out-of-equilibrium configurations labeled “life” — for its own pro-thermodynamic purposes?
Energy is conserved, if we put aside some subtleties associated with general relativity. But there’s useful energy, and useless energy. When you burn gasoline in your car engine, the amount of energy doesn’t really change; some of it gets converted into the motion of your car, while some gets dissipated into useless forms such as noise, heat, and exhaust, increasing entropy along the way. That’s why it’s helpful to invent the concept of “free energy” to keep track of how much energy is actually available for doing useful work, like accelerating a car. Roughly speaking, the free energy is the total energy minus entropy times temperature, so free energy is used up as entropy increases.
Because the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that entropy increases, the history of the universe is the story of dissipation of free energy. Energy wants to be converted from useful forms to useless forms. But it might not happen automatically; sometimes a configuration with excess free energy can last a long time before something comes along to nudge it into a higher-entropy form. Gasoline and oxygen are a combustible mixture, but you still need a spark to set the fire.
This is where life comes in, at least according to one view. Apparently (I’m certainly not an expert in this stuff) there are two competing theories that attempt to explain the first steps taken toward life on Earth. One is a “replicator-first” picture, in which the key jump from chemistry to life was taken by a molecule such as RNA that was able to reproduce itself, passing information on to subsequent generations. The competitor is a “metabolism-first” picture, where the important step was a set of interactions that helped release free energy in the atmosphere of the young Earth. You can read some background about these two options in this profile of Mike Russell (pdf), one of the leading advocates of the metabolism-first view.
I was reading a bit about this stuff because I wanted to move beyond the fairly simplistic sketch I presented in my book about the relationship between entropy and life. So I did a little research and found some papers by Eric Smith at the Santa Fe Institute. Smith has taken quite an academic path; his Ph.D. was in string theory, working with Joe Polchinski, and now he applies ideas from complexity to questions as diverse as economics and the origin of life.
On Saturday I was on a long plane ride from LA to Bozeman, Montana, via Denver. So I had pulled out one of Smith’s papers and started to read it. A couple sat down next to me, and the husband said “Oh yes, Eric Smith. I know his work well.” This well-read person turned out to be none other than Mike Russell, featured in the profile above. Here I was trying to learn about entropy and the origin of life, and one of the world’s experts sits down right next to me. (Not completely a coincidence; Russell is at JPL, and we were both headed to give plenary talks at the annual IEEE Aerospace Conference.)
So I explained a little to Mike (now we are buddies) what I was trying to understand, and he immediately said “Ah, that’s easy. The purpose of life is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide.” (See figure above, taken from one of Eric Smith’s talks.)
That might be something of a colorful exaggeration, but there’s something fascinating and provocative behind the idea. An extremely simplified version of the story is that the Earth was quite a bit hotter in its early days than it is today, and the atmosphere was full of carbon dioxide. At high temperatures that’s a stable situation; but once the Earth cools, it would be energetically favorable for that CO2 to react with hydrogen to make methane (and other hydrocarbons) and water. That is to say, there is a lot of free energy in that CO2, just waiting to be released.
The problem is that there is a chemical barrier to actually releasing the energy. In physicist-speak: the Earth’s atmosphere was caught in a false vacuum. There’s no reaction that takes you directly from CO2 and hydrogen to methane (CH4) and water; you have to go through a series of reactions to get there. And the first steps along the way constitute a potential barrier: they consume energy rather than releasing it. Here’s a plot from one of Russell’s talks of the free energy per carbon atom of various steps along the way; it looks for all the world like a particle physicist’s plot of the potential energy of a field caught in a metastable vacuum. (Different curves represent different environments.)
Here is the bold hypothesis: life is Nature’s way of opening up a chemical channel to release all of that free energy bottled up in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the young Earth. My own understanding gets a little fuzzy at this point, but the basic idea seems intelligible. While there is no simple reaction that takes CO2 directly to hydrocarbons, there are complicated series of reactions that do so. Some sort of membrane (e.g. a cell wall) helps to segregate out the relevant chemicals; various inorganic compounds act as enzymes to speed the reactions along. The reason for the complexity of life, which is low entropy considered all by itself, is that it helps the bigger picture increase in entropy.
In ordinary statistical mechanics, we say that high-entropy configurations are more likely than low-entropy ones because there are simply more of them. But that logic doesn’t quite go through if you can’t get to the high-entropy configurations in any straightforward way. Nevertheless, a sufficiently complicated system can bounce around in configuration space, trying various different possibilities, until it hits on something that looks quite complex and unlikely, but is in fact very useful in helping the system as a whole evolve to a higher-entropy state. That’s life (as it were). It’s not so different from other cases like hurricanes or turbulence where apparent complexity arises in the natural course of events; it’s all about using up that free energy.
Obviously there is a lot missing to this story, and much of it is an absence of complete understanding on my part, although some of it is that we simply don’t know everything about life as yet. For one thing, even if you are a metabolism-first sympathizer, at some point you have to explain the origin of replication and information processing, which plays a crucial role how we think about life. For another, it’s a long road from explaining the origin of life to getting to the present day. It’s true that we know of very primitive organisms whose goal in life seems to be the conversion of CO2 into methane and acetate — methanogens and acetogens, respectively. But animals tend to produce CO2 rather than consume it, so it’s obviously not the whole story.
No surprise, really; whatever the story of life might be, there’s no question it’s a complicated one. But it all comes down to the elementary building blocks of Nature doing their best to fulfill the Second Law.
We are all Ponce: The Quest for Longevity | by Futurismic | 10 March 2010, 05:00 PM
When I was very little, some early-grade teacher lost in the mists of memory told me the story of how Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon spent much of his life searching for the Fountain of Youth. Now that I’m approaching one of those decade birthdays, I can finally relate. Besides, as the leading edge of the baby boom starts retiring, this seems like a good time to take a peek at the science around longevity. (more…)
Star Wars In Concert, in Liverpool – pictures and video | by scyfilove.com (Liverpool) | 10 March 2010, 04:47 PM
Don't tell George, but here's some images and video from the Liverpool concert
Star Wars In Concert, in Liverpool – pictures and video has just flown in from scyfilove.com - click through for the rest of the good stuff
Ugly code of the week 1 | by Ross (Wirral) | 10 March 2010, 04:37 PM
As I'm in the process of working out what to write for my first [weeknote](http://www.weeknotes.com) I thought I'd start another weekly posting schedule - hence Ugly Code Of The Week. I thought it would be quite useful, or at least interesting historically, to occassionally post a line of code that I am particularly ashamed of and in the process of cleaning up. I'm hoping that I can use this as a record of what I want to avoid. It won't always be Python, and I should point out that not all of my code is like this - I just tend to write code before going back to clean it up once it works - a habit I am trying to reduce by getting it right first time. `results = [ add_fields(show_fields,x) for x in model_cls.objects.filter( Q(**{qf:q}) ).order_by(field).all() ]` Yes, I know. Sorry, I won't do it again. Part of the problem with this is that the naming is not very clear, and another problem is that there is far too much going on in one line for a reasonable amount of readability. On the other hand, [list comprehensions rock](http://docs.python.org/tutorial/datastructures.html#list-comprehensions).
Technorati claim | by Ross (Wirral) | 10 March 2010, 04:11 PM
H4STECXXFGCK
Predator versus alien: this will surely not end well | by Futurismic | 10 March 2010, 04:00 PM
While Alabama may have its congongrass, we here in the UK have our own invasive species of Far Eastern weed in the form of Fallopia japonica, better known as Japanese knotweed. In their great wisdom, our Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is planning to introduce another alien species – a form of plant lice – into the ecosystem to get rid of it. [image by dankogreen]
Laboratory tests were started on pests from Japan which control the knotweed by feeding on sap from its stems, causing the plant to die back.
The tests showed the chosen Aphalara itadori did not eat any other species, including closely related British plants and important crops.
Genius! I mean, the odds of a short-lifespanned insect evolving itself a wider diet when introduced to a totally new biosphere must be so small as to be negligible. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan!
Paging John Wyndham… would John Wyndham please report to the briefing rooms…
Second roundtable discussion on Safeguarding2.0 | by thinkpublic.com | 10 March 2010, 03:59 PM
Friday morning saw the second roundtable discussion on Safeguarding2.0 held at the offices of Local Government Information Unit in Central London. thinkpublic were joined at the breakfast meeting by some of the other partners of the project including FutureGov, Barnardo’s, Headshift and NESTA who are funding the research stage of the project, as announced in January. The Safeguarding2.0 project was conceived as a way to improve children’s social services by joining some of the dots between agencies operating in the area. Since the first roundtable discussion in August 2009, the partners have organised themselves as a task force, facilitating an ongoing dialogue around scoping innovative solutions to empower social workers and the way in which they communicate with their service users.
The conversation on Friday was incredibly interesting and full of enthusiasm, although it was indicated that early attempts at engagement with council workers have been met with reluctance from social workers understandably worried about compromising client relationships and confidentiality. Ian Drysdale explained how thinkpublic have faced many obstacles in trying to produce meaningful ethnographic research as service users have consistently declined to participate. However, we are now in a good position to record some good material with a willing social professional, eager to tell his story. So far the project proposal has outlined several areas of work, but it was noted at the meeting that the scope needs to be re-examined and the possibilities for both low-tech and high-tech solutions looked at.
To date the research has shown that while there are dangers in generalising the barriers to improving public services, there is a culture of fear and a low level of trust among agencies and professionals working in public services. This fear in addition to a defined hierarchy within the civil service can provide for further bureaucracy which impedes the development of openness and data sharing among various agencies such as Police, educators and youth workers. The importance of conducting real ethnographic research on the ground with civil servants and understanding “a day in the life” of the social worker in this context is imperative. This would help define the touch points at where an application or services proposed by the project, could provide real assistance to social workers and benefit the safeguarding of children greatly.
It was proposed by many partners that the tool which may be designed could take the form of a mobile web-application, helping social workers to add to the story of their clients case as it unfolds. This application would need to be flexible, recognise the tension of formal data capture, yet simultaneously engage with existing systems in use by local authorities and agencies already. The research has shown already how networked communication between agencies, puts the service-user at the centre of a case and is the most beneficial way to coordinate a multi-agency response in safeguarding the child at risk. This type of practice is already been trialled in Scotland with the Multi-Agency Resource Service, MARS. As the serviceusers, in this case young people, increasingly use social media to communicate with each other it would be logical to explore the possibilities offered by web technology which may help them tell their story and receive better care and attention. Other areas of exploration look at data visualisation and the tagging of cases and incidents in order to better understand the context in which social agencies operate.
All of the ideas discussed at the meeting serve to empower the public servant, giving them a chance to operate on an intuitive level, further empowering and helping their clients, children at risk. Another project, on which thinkpublic worked with the NHS Institute for Innovation was cited as a model solution. “Releasing time to Care” encouraged NHS staff to network and share expertise and advise on best practice allowing them to improve ward efficiency, resulting in more time available for nurses to spend caring for patients. As the Safeguarding2.0 project progresses it is hoped that a similar innovative solution can be designed which allows for radical efficiency in line with NESTA’s vision for the project.
Scenes from Kenya | by The Big Picture (Boston Globe) | 10 March 2010, 03:39 PM
The Do-Nothing Energy Tax: $3 Gasoline Dead Ahead | by Climate Progress | 10 March 2010, 03:06 PM
As long as we keep taking no serious action on climate and clean energy, there’s nothing to stop the energy bills of Americans from rising. Daniel J. Weiss, CAP’s Director of Climate Strategy, explains what’s in store this summer.
The mounds of snow blackened by auto exhaust have barely melted in Washington, D.C, yet the Energy Information Administration’s Short Term Energy Outlook already predicts that:
Average U.S. pump prices likely will exceed $3 per gallon at times during the forthcoming spring and summer driving season.
EIA projects gasoline consumption will begin to show modest, but consistent, increases over the previous year, growing by 60,000 bbl/d in 2010 and 70,000 bbl/d in 2011.
This is a price increase of 17 percent compared to summer 2009, along with a consumption increase of six-tenths of a percent. It means that American drivers will spend an additional $174 million per day on gasoline this summer compared to last year. This could be as much as $16 billion more during the months of June, July and August. Total daily spending on gasoline this summer could be more than $1 billion per day.
The higher gasoline prices reflect higher oil prices.
EIA expects WTI prices to average above $80 per barrel this spring, rising to an average of about $82 per barrel by the end of the year and to $85 per barrel by the end of 2011.
This will mark a rise in crude oil prices from a $39 per barrel in February 2009 to $82 by the end of 2010 – a 110 percent increase in two years. Oil prices have already closed above $80 this week.
Higher gasoline prices are like a tax on consumers – they pay more for the same amount of product, with the additional funds enriching big oil companies and foreign oil suppliers.
[JR: I would add that $3 gasoline will just be a pit stop on the path to $4 and $5 gas (see "Deutsche Bank: Oil to hit $175 a barrel by 2016" and World’s top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery, urges immediate action: “We have to leave oil before oil leaves us”).]
Since one of every four barrels of oil comes from nations that the State Department classifies as “dangerous or unstable,” more oil consumption and higher prices further enriches these states. And a $1 increase in oil prices provides an additional $1 billion dollars to the Iranian government – even though the U.S. buys no oil from it. This can only help Iran incite unrest and attacks in Iraq and elsewhere.
Short-Term Energy Outlook, March 2010:
EIA also predicts an increase in U.S. coal consumption compared to 2009.
Anticipated increases in electricity demand and higher natural gas prices will contribute to modest growth in coal-fired generation in 2010 and 2011. Forecast coal consumption in the electric power sector increases by about 3 percent in 2010, though staying under 1 billion short tons. EIA projects coal consumption in the electric power sector will increase by 1.6 percent in 2011
And with more oil and coal consumption comes higher levels of carbon dioxide pollution after several years of decrease due to the 2007-2009 recession.
Projected improvements in the economy contribute to an expected 1.5-percent increase in CO2 emissions in 2010. Increased use of coal in the electric power sector and continued economic growth, combined with the expansion of transportation-related petroleum consumption, lead to a 1.2-percent increase in CO2 emissions in 2011. However, even with increases in 2010 and 2011, projected CO2 emissions in 2011 are lower than annual emissions from 1999 through 2008.
Carbon Dioxide Emissions Growth Chart:
Clearly, efforts to reduce oil dependence, coal burning, and global warming pollution cannot begin a moment too soon. The bipartisan American Clean Energy and Security Act, passed by the House of Representatives last summer, would cut oil use by at least 600,000 barrels per day by 2020. It’s the Senate’s turn to pass comprehensive bipartisan clean energy legislation that reduces oil dependence. Senators who care about Americans’ pocket books, national security, and a healthy future must join efforts by Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to solve these problems. We can’t afford to wait much longer.
Related Post:
Are 'Crowds' Still Valuable To Brands? | by onlineSpin | 10 March 2010, 03:00 PM
Crowd-sourcing, user-generated content, consumer-generated content: these were huge buzzwords from 2004-2008. Then along came Twitter and Facebook. Social media became the darling of the moment, and crowd-sourcing became a casualty of growth. Guess what! The UGC space and crowd-sourcing are still very much alive and kicking, but the focus seems to have shifted from consumers creating the content, to their becoming a waypoint for the content as it spreads.
USA Today: Some scientists misread poll data on global warming controversy - Stanford researcher: "It is certainly possible that public confidence in climate scientists has declined since our last survey in December, but it's not likely." | by Climate Progress | 10 March 2010, 02:53 PM
Polling data is misunderstood and misread all of the time. The public strongly supports action on climate and clean energy legislation, even if it raises their energy bill by $10 a month, but even (lazy) environmentalists are unaware of that.
Now it turns out that polling on the science may be equally misunderstood, as USA Today reported Tuesday:
The recent controversies “have really shaken the confidence of the public in the conduct of science,” according to atmospheric scientist Ralph Cicerone, head of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Cicerone was speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting last month on a panel calling for more communication and release of data to rebuild lost trust for scientists. IPCC chiefs have made similar calls in the handling of their reports.
Scientists see reason for worry in polls like one released in December by Fox News that found 23% of respondents saw global warming as “not a problem,” up from 12% in 2005. Also at the AAAS meeting, Yale, American University and George Mason University released a survey of 978 people challenging the notion that people 18 to 35 were any more engaged than their elders on climate change. Statistically, 44% in that age range — matching the national average — found global warming as either “not too important” or “not at all important,” even though they grew up in an era when climate scientists had found it very likely that temperatures had increased over the last century due to fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases.
I would add that the messaging on the climate and clean energy jobs bill has focused on spelling out the multiple benefits the bill brings, which is a key reason support for the bill remains high. But many environmentalists and politicians — but not all, not folks like Sen. Kerry – have been persuaded not to emphasize global warming or focus on explaining climate science (see “Messaging 101b: EcoAmerica’s phrase ‘our deteriorating atmosphere’ isn’t going to replace ‘global warming’ — and that’s a good thing“).
But what “if” (apologies to Kipling again) scientists are misreading those poll results and conflating them with news coverage of the recent public-relations black eyes from e-mails and the glacier mistake? What’s really happening, suggests polling expert Jon Krosnick of Stanford University, is “scientists are over-reacting. It’s another funny instance of scientists ignoring science.”
Krosnick and his colleagues argue that polling suggesting less interest in fixing climate change might indicate the public has its mind on more immediate problems in the midst of a global economic downturn, with the U.S. unemployment rate stuck at 9.7%. The AAAS-released survey of young people, for example, finds that 82% of them trust scientists for information on global warming and the national average is 74%.
“Very few professions enjoy the level of confidence from the public that scientists do, and those numbers haven’t changed much in a decade,” he says. “We don’t see a lot of evidence that the general public in the United States is picking up on the (University of East Anglia) e-mails. It’s too inside baseball.”
So to try to see what is happening, Krosnick and colleagues tried a new approach to a standard polling question, “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” In a September survey of 906 adults, they asked the question in different ways:
•When asked, without being given any examples of problems, 0% mentioned global warming, but 52% mentioned jobs or the economy.
•When asked — with problems such as stopping crime, terrorism or global warming mentioned — 6% selected the climate concern, and 34% mentioned jobs or the economy.
•When asked, “What do you think will be the most important problem facing the world in the future?” global warming moved to 9%, with 24% saying jobs or the economy.
•And when asked, “What do you think will be the most serious problem facing the world in the future if nothing is done to stop it?” global warming moved to 15%, with jobs or the economy falling to 13%.
That is a terrific question and a terrific point. The classic polling question “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” is somewhat ambiguous. It’s not clear whether you are asking what problem is having the biggest negative impact on you this very moment or whether you are asking what is the biggest problem we face in general.
In a follow-up December Associated Press/Stanford University poll of 1,005 adults, they found simply asking the last question bumped global warming up to 12% of the responses, up from 1% for problems today, effectively a statistical tie with the September poll.
It could just be that people think that global warming is a problem the government will solve in the future, Krosnick suggests, so today they are worried about their jobs instead. The part of the population already deeply opposed to climate change science likely has been inflamed further by the recent controversies, he adds, but that may be about as far as it goes. “It is certainly possible that public confidence in climate scientists has declined since our last survey in December, but it’s not likely, since little time has passed, and there has been no huge news [or] huge dissemination of the old news.”
For all of the confusion raised about the emails and the IPCC — indeed, for all of the nonstop disinformation campaign largely funded by Big Oil and the special interests in the past decade — the public still understands that doing nothing about climate change is very risky.
Finally, Daniel Lashof of the Natural Resources Defense Council makes the point that matches my experience:
“No senator I’ve spoken to has mentioned the e-mails in their thinking about climate. The focus is much more on the economy, national security, clean energy jobs.”
The message is that consistent messaging works.
Exclusive interview with the man behind Curitiba's master plan | by Green Futures | 10 March 2010, 02:46 PM
Jaime Lerner tells Green Futures how to redesign a city, what Brazil’s major metropolises have yet to learn, and why urban acupuncture is the way forward.
When it comes to urban design, here’s the rule of thumb: city = life, work and mobility.” Jaime Lerner, former Mayor of Curitiba turned green city guru, is never short on soundbites. They helped him get elected back in the 1970s, when his urban master plan did so much to transform the city. And he wields them neatly to sum up the various successes along the way – from the celebrated rapid transit system, to overcoming the city’s notorious flood problems. Or as Lerner puts it: “While other cities buried rivers in concrete, we created parks along ours.”
And the parks aren’t just for the pleasure. As natural floodplains, they offer a more effective defence against seasonal flooding than concrete barriers, and can be used as boating lakes when the Iguazu River bursts its banks. It’s a strategy now being adopted as far away as the Netherlands, as governments look to adapt to climate change.
This respect for the pre-urban landscape helped Curitiba to hang onto a dwindling resource that many cities destroy, only to spend millions bringing it back: green space. “When we started planning, we came up with the idea of establishing a ‘grid’ for Curitiba, and occupying some of its cells with parks. But as time went on, we saw that a better idea was to save the existing – but endangered – forest remnants. With this policy, even as the population tripled, we were able to increase the amount of green areas per inhabitant from 0.5 metres squared (m2) to 52m2.”
The importance of green space to good health and quality of life is undisputed, “and if a city has quality of life,” says Lerner, “naturally it has a very strong sustainability component”. By way of example he comments that by living close to your work, or bringing your work closer to home, you’re both improving the quality of life and reducing demand for transport.Curitiba is perhaps best known for its extraordinarily cheap and effective transport system, the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). With triple-section bendy buses in dedicated bus lanes, it carries two million passengers a day, as many as some subway systems. But where an underground rail network costs as much as $100 million per kilometre, the BRT costs just $1 million per kilometre. “Creativity begins when you cut a zero from your budget,” Lerner laughs. Fares on the buses are flat, and the city’s growth has been planned along the routes, so that no one lives or works more than 400 metres from a bus stop.
A quick, precise touch
Of course, Lerner acknowledges, this system can’t just be copied and transferred to any urban area. “Every city has to make the best out of each mode of transportation it has, be it on the surface or underground. The key resides in not having competing systems on the same space, and using everything that the city has in the most effective way.”
Lerner began with a simple dream for Curitiba: health, education, childcare. But he is quick to acknowledge that he couldn’t have changed a thing if others hadn’t shared his vision. “A city is a collective dream,” he says, “and to build this dream is vital.” This is where leadership and good communication skills come in. Building the dream means creating scenarios of a possible future that are “desired by the majority”. Because unless the inhabitants share the dream and can believe in it, their “essential involvement” will be lacking.
The downside, he jokes, is that once you start the population dreaming, it’s hard to get them to stop: “The more the population gets used to advances, the more demanding it becomes. Managing Curitiba became a commitment of constant innovation”. Rather than stem the dream, Lerner recommends ‘urban acupuncture’ as a cure for all sorts of urban problems from neglect of the natural environment to poor economic management.
“It’s a quick, precise touch in a key point,” he explains. “Just as in the medical approach, strategic ‘punctual interventions’ create a new energy that will trigger positive chain-reactions, helping to cure and enhance the whole system.”
And the cure for environmental damage on a larger scale – like climate change? The same rule applies, says Lerner. “Around 75% of global carbon emissions are related to cities. And little by little, it is becoming clear that it is in the cities that we can bring about more efficient and effective changes.” – Anna Simpson and Ben Tuxworth.
Are we failing to see the wood for the gadgets? | by Forum for the Future | 10 March 2010, 02:45 PM
I’ve recently found myself questioning whether we are becoming over-reliant on technological fixes to the sustainability challenges we face today. Are we in danger of falling for ‘techno-wash’ as a way of avoiding some more fundamental (and maybe more painful) decisions about the way we live our lives? Does technology sometimes obscure the bigger picture?
Did you see the story about one of the government’s new flagship schools pulling the plug on interactive whiteboards and other wireless components, and reverting to pen and paper? Teachers wanted to avoid wasting time when systems failed to function properly, and losing the attention of pupils.
How about this recent post on our website? It made me laugh. Apparently iPhone users can now download an app to show them whether they should stop using said app, and pocket their iPhone. The so-called ASBO app displays 'anti-social behaviour' statistics for the user's current location. My knee-jerk reaction was to assume the reason for the app was to simply tell users to “get off the thing, be sociable and actually talk to your mates”. And I know I wasn’t alone in that reaction.
Get off your Luddite high horse I hear you cry. Ok, I’ll admit to being a bit of a technophobe. I’m frequently in deep and murky waters when trying to talk about apps or Twitter and feel a killjoy when I question whether the latest fashionable gadget really does makes life a lot easier or much more pleasurable. Don’t get me wrong, there are fantastic benefits to most of our advances in technology, be that the wheel, windmill or the worldwide web. I just become a bit irrational or disconcerted about our reliance on shiny technology sometimes.
But this is a really important issue as we seek to develop a low carbon economy and society. For example, the Zero Carbon Hub’s report rightly suggests that a lot more needs to be done to market zero carbon homes. It highlights the fact that while consumers are happy to take a risk on the next cool gadget, they won’t take a punt on a zero carbon home because it is perceived to be too futuristic, hi-tech and experimental. When you consider the money involved, that’s not a surprise – the appetite for fashionable, innovative technology will obviously take the consumer only so far.
Of course in years to come, I’ve no doubt that the highly fashionable iPhone or a super duper variation will be integral to remotely managing the heating in your home, rotating your roof top renewables, or altering the tints in your windows! And I acknowledge we will not be able to deliver a truly zero carbon home that is fit for our expectations without the help of technology.
It’s all very well to try and paint a positive vision of a low-carbon future, replete with whizz bang applications (sorry, apps) and smart technology, but there is a danger that we can turn some people off (not literally) by placing too much emphasis on high-tech solutions. Indeed, from my work with building design professionals and their clients, I know that technology can be a distraction from low-tech, passive solutions that can have a bigger overall impact.
The old adage of avoid, reduce, then replace (fossil fuel sources on energy) continues to serve us well. Being clever about building form and orientation, and concentrating on the fabric of our buildings must come before the signing of cheques for ground source heat pumps or micro-wind turbines. And it is certainly time we stop hearing about buildings that have photovoltaic arrays or solar panels on north-facing roofs!
So, here’s a plea – don’t forget the simple, low-tech decisions we can all take which deliver greater benefits than that shiny item that sits on your roof, in your office or in your pocket. Technology has its place in making our world more sustainable, but our collective understanding of what our priorities should be and the changes in behaviour which will flow from that should have much more of a lasting legacy.
Martin Hunt is Head of Built Environment at Forum for the Future
Now playing: Apps Script for Google Docs | by Official Google Blog | 10 March 2010, 02:22 PM
The Google Apps team here in New York City is a hotbed of movie fanatics. But while planning a recent movie night, we realized we spend too much time organizing our events and not enough time discussing, debating and watching movies.
To take the hard work out of planning, we turned to Google Apps Script, which lets you write short programs that automatically perform simple actions within a spreadsheet. For example, our Movie Night script figures out which movies are playing close by and invites everyone to vote on what they’d most like to see.
Google Apps Script has been available to Google Apps customers since January, and today we’re excited to bring it to everyone who uses Google spreadsheets. Apps Script can be helpful for all kinds of things, from customized party invites to sending out holiday letters — in fact Apps Script can be especially helpful for those repetitive, time consuming tasks.
To help you find useful scripts, we’ve also launched a public gallery where you can check out our Movie Night script and browse other available scripts. If you’re feeling adventurous, try your hand at writing your own script and submit it to the gallery for others to use. To see the gallery or install a script in your spreadsheet, click on “Insert” and select “Script.”
Check out the Google Docs blog for more information about Apps Script, and to learn about writing your own scripts, visit the Google Apps Developer Blog.
Colonialism redux | by Futurismic | 10 March 2010, 02:00 PM
Via Tobias Buckell, The Guardian reports on Ethiopia, one of the world’s most food-short nations, and how it’s selling huge tracts of arable land to business interests from other countries:
The 1,000 hectares of land which contain the Awassa greenhouses are leased for 99 years to a Saudi billionaire businessman, Ethiopian-born Sheikh Mohammed al-Amoudi, one of the 50 richest men in the world. His Saudi Star company plans to spend up to $2bn acquiring and developing 500,000 hectares of land in Ethiopia in the next few years. So far, it has bought four farms and is already growing wheat, rice, vegetables and flowers for the Saudi market. It expects eventually to employ more than 10,000 people.
But Ethiopia is only one of 20 or more African countries where land is being bought or leased for intensive agriculture on an immense scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era.
An Observer investigation estimates that up to 50m hectares of land – an area more than double the size of the UK – has been acquired in the last few years or is in the process of being negotiated by governments and wealthy investors working with state subsidies.
Again, the line between nation and corporation is becoming very fuzzy indeed. The map is not the territory, so on and so forth. Maybe a Greek island or two might make a good commercial farm plot?
Let’s just hope that this move by Ethiopa doesn’t have the same knock-on effects as the Daewoo land-grab in Madagascar…
Rattus Banksius | by Liverpool Culture Blog | 10 March 2010, 01:59 PM
Apparently the people who bought the old Whitehouse Pub, on the corner of Berry Street and Duke Street, are going to paint over the Banksy-painted rat that has adorned it for the best part of a decade.
I’m unsure whether this is a bit of publicity stunt, or simply because of twattery.
Although there are reports elsewhere that suggest businessman Billy Palmer wants to keep the mural and convert the pub into a shop and bar, The Grauniad reports that Palmer wants to get rid of the rat and turn the building into ‘luxury flats’.
I suspect, and I hope I’m right, that this is a bit of scouse ribbing on the part of Palmer, who presumably know how well talk of more ‘luxury flats’ will go down in Chinatown, especially if that involves destroying some quite brilliant public art.
The Grauniad also reports that the rat on the side of the Whitehouse is ‘holding a machine gun’, which suggests a spot of remote copy filing to me, so I don’t know how much faith we can put in its reporting on this matter.
If he’s serious Palmer wouldn’t be the first to try to destroy the Banksy rat – which is clearly holding a marker pen that it has used to scrawl all over the building, for anyone doubting the meaning of the image – after Liverpool’s idiot City Council decided it was going to destroy it a few years ago.
Personally I’m all for keeping the artwork as is, derelict building and all. I’ve watched with dismay as the Ropewalks veers towards another cut-and-shut luxury flat and drinking pit grid.
The council has recently put together some sort of steering group to make sure Ropewalks doesn’t fall into disrepair, though I don’t think they’re talking about the disgusting state of Concert Square and Slater Street on a Friday night.
Bars and binge drinking may be the price of progress, but there are 101 derelict buildings in Ropewalks that the council could look at before its starts OK-ing the destruction of public works of art that bring something unique to the area, beyond the array of Jackson Pollocks that pebble dash the area in the early hours.
The other two corners of Berry Street and Duke Street would be a start.
• Image courtesy of Dave the Pap
Finding awesome stuff online with Google Reader Play | by Official Google Blog | 10 March 2010, 01:24 PM
I use Google Reader a lot — not only to stay on top of the news, but also to find interesting blog posts and articles. I’m always telling my friends about Google Reader, and while some of them love it, others don’t want to take the time to set it up. For those of you who fall into this second category, we’re announcing Google Reader Play, a new product that makes the best stuff in Reader more accessible for everyone. Reader Play is a new way to browse interesting stuff on the web, customized to the topics you’re interested in, with no setup required.
Items in Reader Play are presented one at a time, and images and videos are automatically enlarged to maximize the viewing experience. We use the technology behind Recommended Items in Reader to populate Reader Play with the most interesting content on the web. While you don’t need a Google account to use Reader Play, your experience will be personalized if you sign in. As you browse, you can let us know which items you enjoy by clicking the "like" button, and we'll use that info to show you other content we think you’ll enjoy.
We think Reader Play is a fun way to browse interesting items online that you wouldn’t find otherwise. We designed it especially for people who don’t want to spend time curating their own set of feeds — but folks who already use Reader can easily use it to read their feeds as well. Just click the feed settings menu on any feed in Reader and select “View in Reader Play.” We’re launching Reader Play as an experiment in Google Labs so that we can test it out, get feedback from you and then improve it as quickly as possible. Visit google.com/reader/play to give it a try, and let us know what you think!
Student journalism: what is going to happen next? | by YouthNet blog | 10 March 2010, 12:56 PM
So what is it that student journalists want to know? How to freelance? How to carve a niche? These and other areas of journalism were covered at last week's Student Journalists Seminar, held by YouthNet at BBC Broadcasting House. But the day's discussions could be summed up with one question, which isn't particular to just student journalists. What's going to happen next?
The day was attended by about 50 university students from England, Scotland and Wales who were keen to hear how to convert the skills they were already using into a career in the mainstream media. YouthNet lined up a panel of national journalists to address some of the topic's most pressing areas, and the event was hosted by our Chairman and Founder Martyn Lewis CBE.
Tom Whipple from the Times features desk opened the day, describing how by consistently pitching engaging freelance ideas he eventually built a catalogue of commissions. He was followed by Amol Rajan, Assistant Comment Editor at the Independent, who explained how he made a name for himself by taking chances and never turning down an offer – be it to act as mic man on the Wright Stuff or to interview Tony Blair. And James Thornhill, editor of the National Student, addressed the audience with his experiences of setting up his own independent publication – certainly a way to forge a career if no one is opening any doors for you.
But again and again, the discussions turned to the internet and what would come next? The situation was clearly illustrated by Ben Gallop, Head of Interactive and Formula 1 at the BBC, in his talk about how the internet has revolutionised reporting. Currently, he said, the media is staffed by 'digital migrants' who have to change the way they think and work. They are anxious about a generation of 'digital natives' entering the market who are fearless of digital progress. Ben pointed out that while Twitter is currently the latest and biggest platform to have hit journalism – it's a format no one anticipated a couple of years ago. But for a man who is planning how the BBC is going to report the 2012 London Olympics, he'd also like to know what is next. What media will journalists be using in two year's time?
David Seymour, former Political Editor of the Daily Mirror, told the students he had been forecasting the death of newspapers for years – that is, the death of news on paper. Why, he asked, have we not all started downloading the news onto Kindles and other reading devices? What about monetisation – will that take off, as Rupert Murdoch would have, or will the internet remain a free space? How will that affect the future employment opportunities for up-and-coming writers, and what skills will they need to be successful?
Part of the seminar involved a workshop with members of TheSite.org's editorial team, Hannah Jolliffe and Chris Denhom, who showed the young journalists how to use YouthNet's guide to life website to write accurate and relevant stories for their student readers. In the short term, student journalists still need to collect as many bylines as possible, so tips on how to source stories and think of fresh angles were gratefully received.
The students certainly left the event with much to think about – both for their own careers and their publications. But what happens next is something they'll have to keep looking out for.
I really enjoyed the day, and as its organiser, was satisfied to see so many young people who want to write and haven't been put off by the industry's recent doom and gloom. There's so much to look forward to in the future – it is an exciting time for journalists. I also enjoyed the day because it was great to achieve so much with so little. We owe a big thanks to the BBC for giving us the venue, and also to all the generous donations of food which kept the students fed and watered throughout the afternoon. Thanks to Dominos Pizza, Pret A Manger, Yazoo Milkshakes, Eat Natural, Panda Licorice, Fabulous Bakin Boys, Nairns Oatcakes and Divine Chocolate for their support.
So...now to plan next year's event!
Better net awards need applications | by ScraperWiki | 10 March 2010, 12:52 PM
An outfit called UnLtd has these Better Net Awards of between £5,000 and £15,000 for “original and innovative projects” that increases education about the Internet and IT, or provides an internet based solution to social, educational, health and environmental issues, and so on.
Your project is not supposed to be part of your paid employment, involve political campaigning, encourage commercial disharmony, employ people other than yourself, or fund living expenses.
Well, that pretty much blows any of the ideas I tend to come up with. Maybe I have the wrong attitude. Or perhaps my attitude is a result of the ideas I happen to come up with.
If these awards are your cup of tea, do look to their case studies for inspiration, as well as their ideas bank.
Update: If you have already have something working, then you can consider entering it into the Nominet Awards.
The relevance to us is that a proportion of the winning ideas will certainly rely on structured local public data — of the kind that ScraperWiki is intended to produce. Suppose your idea is a creative way to encourage volunteers to visit their local old people’s home (eg to set up and maintain a free internet terminal in their common room). Well, for that you’re probably going to need a database of old people’s homes. And this can be scraped from the Care Quality Commission.
The ScraperWiki technology is supposed to make it cheaper and easier to implement new and better ideas for these kinds awards. So go for it. Their online form is here.
Dunesteef – podcast genre fiction zine | by Futurismic | 10 March 2010, 12:45 PM
Here’s a heads-up for podcast fans from the Futurismic mailbag – Dunesteef is an audio fiction magazine that mainly deals in material with SF/F/H tropes, and they’ve just run a version of Jason Stoddard’s “Willpower”.
Looks like they’re knocking out about ten stories per quarter, which is pretty respectable… so those of you with the (enviable) spare time in which to listen to great stories read aloud should probably add it to your podcast aggregator, RSS reader or preferred software of equivalent function. 
Overbury uses AMEE to add traceability and rigour to project analysis | by AMEE Development | 10 March 2010, 12:28 PM
Overbury announces the launch of a new innovative web-based tool that accurately records the carbon footprinting of client fit-out and refurbishment projects.
Overbury, the office fit-out and refurbishment specialist, has teamed up with the carbon footprinting platform AMEE to create a simple and powerful tool to calculate an accurate carbon footprint. The tool works from accurate entry of data, calculation and cross referencing of information to show the carbon impact projects generate.
Carrying out a study in a rigorous manner needs large amounts of data to be collected and collated. Project managers from Overbury enter data through a secure website that records information such as the method of waste disposal of materials, the quantity and type of new materials delivered and how far they travelled to get to the site. The tool also records the mode of transport and distance workers travelled to site. The amount and types of energy used during the construction process are also taken into consideration.
Developing this tool enables Overbury’s clients to work towards reducing the carbon emissions of projects. This requires an innovative approach to the challenges sites are often faced with. An example of this is waste and the need to increase recycling rates. Overbury works in partnership with waste contractors, sub-contractors and site staff to achieve this reduction in emissions through management of waste.
Capturing such a wide range of data means that the impact of each project can be comprehensively accounted for. The complex calculations are undertaken based on detailed reference sources within the system which are easily accessed through a simple web interface. When the project is complete, project managers can download a PDF report with the total footprint alongside graphs and a breakdown of where the emissions came from.
Jamie Andrews, Market Development Manager at AMEE says:
“We are very pleased for the AMEE Platform to be used in this way. By recording the full scope of emissions for refurbishment projects, Overbury clients can be confident that everything has been accounted for. The tool makes it easy to see the effect of emissions reduction efforts in a clear and easy-to-audit way.”
The benefit of using AMEE is that all of the underlying data sources can easily by checked by going to AMEE Explorer. Liz Collett, Group Environmental Manager at Overbury says:
“Working with AMEE enabled us to deliver a tool that enables our clients to understand the carbon impact of their projects. Being able to use the AMEE engine adds traceability and rigour to our assessments which is what our clients require.”
About Overbury
Overbury operates as a main contractor alongside professional teams to manage the delivery of the construction phase of office fit-out and refurbishment. Overbury puts sustainability at the forefront of projects and works to minimise the environmental impacts. Carbon footprinting is one of the most recent initiatives that Overbury has undertaken.
About AMEE
AMEE helps companies, governments and consumers calculate their carbon footprint consistent with the best science and international standards. The AMEE API provides access to the most up-to-date carbon and environmental data. Applications and solutions that are “powered by AMEE” help ensure compliance with authoritative international standards.
A Preview Of Jason deCaires Taylor's Underwater Sculptures in Cancun, Mexico | by Wooster Collective | 10 March 2010, 12:24 PM
Bienal Internacional De Arte De Rua | by Wooster Collective | 10 March 2010, 12:14 PM
Bienal Internacional De Arte De Rua from Jared Levy on Vimeo.
Claudio Ethos: Casa Das Caldeiras - A Film By Jared Levy | by Wooster Collective | 10 March 2010, 12:12 PM
Claudio Ethos - Casa Das Caldeiras from Jared Levy on Vimeo.
simonhrjohnson | by The Baseline Scenario | 10 March 2010, 12:11 PM
By Simon Johnson
If you’ve read, are reading, or plan to read Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail, you also need to pick up a copy of Hank Paulson’s memoir, On The Brink. Sorkin has the bankers’ story, in sordid yet compelling detail, of how they received the most generous bailout in the world financial history during fall 2008 – and set us up for great problems to come. Paulson tells us why, when, and how exactly he let them get away with this.
Hank Paulson does not, of course, intend to be candid. As I review in detail on The New Republic’s The Book site this morning, On The Brink is actually a masterpiece of misdirection and disinformation.
But still, he gives it all away – and if any details remain obscure, check them in Sorkin. Paulson honestly believes that the financial sector as constructed is productive, makes sense, and should continue to operate in roughly its current form.
Whether or not Paulson really understands the functioning of big banks in the US today is an interesting question – for example he never mentions how they treated customers during the boom, and there is not one word about the need for greater consumer protection moving forward. On the other hand, perhaps this omission tells us that he understands the game all too well – and is keen for it to continue.
He certainly did his best to make that happen.
Shit We're Diggin': The Art of Rai Escale | by Wooster Collective | 10 March 2010, 12:03 PM
You can see more of Rai Escale's art here.
What voters think of Nick Clegg - an update | by Neil Stockley | 10 March 2010, 12:01 PM
This week’s Times-Populus poll of Labour – Conservative marginal seats tells us a bit more about voters’ views of the three main party leaders, including Nick Clegg.
Nick is perceived as the most authentic of the party leaders. Asked whether each leader “generally says what he really thinks, not just what spin doctors tell him to say”, they gave Nick a spread of plus 25 per cent. For David Cameron the figure was plus 18 per cent. Both opposition party leaders were well ahead of Gordon Brown (plus 6 per cent).
The Populus result ties in with previous polls that gave Nick high marks for being honest and not just saying what people want to hear. Last week’s YouGov poll for The Sun found that he came top for being “honest” with a 23 per cent score, compared to 21 per cent for Brown and 20 per cent for Cameron.
The YouGov poll gave Nick the highest rating (21 per cent) for “being in touch with the concerns of ordinary people”. This is also consistent with previous surveys.
Voters may see Nick as the most sincere and empathetic leader, but they may not know what he stands for. When Populus put the proposition “I have a clear sense of what he really believes”, respondents gave him a spread of plus 14 per cent. That compared to plus 27 per cent for David Cameron and plus 15 per cent for Gordon Brown. And 26 per cent, more than three times the figures for the Labour and Tory leaders, replied “don’t know” when asked this question about Nick.
Now, here’s the real rub. Voters like Nick but they are still unsure about his leadership qualities. According to Populus, he had a spread of plus 49 per cent for being “nice, likeable”, the same figure as for David Cameron and much better than for Gordon Brown (plus 8 per cent). They see Nick as “strong and determined” (plus 40 per cent) but not as much as Cameron (plus 62 per cent) and Brown (plus 52 per cent). And people in the Populus survey were evenly split on whether “he has what it takes to be a leader”.
The YouGov survey told a similar story. Just 7 per cent of respondents saw Nick as “strong”. Brown came top on this one (!) with 26 per cent. And just 6 per cent saw Nick as “a natural leader”, compared to 22 per cent for Cameron.
Nick’s real challenge is a familiar one: a large chunk of voters still don’t know him. In the Populus poll, at least a quarter of those voting replied “don’t know” to the questions about him. (And 40 per cent did not know if he was a “family man”!) In the YouGov survey, 38 per cent did not know which of the listed qualities to associate with him. The general election campaign should resolve that, one way or the other.
Battlestar Galactica vs Beastie Boys in Sabotage (VIDEO) | by scyfilove.com (Liverpool) | 10 March 2010, 11:50 AM
The Beastie Boys and Battlestar Galactica - together at last!
Battlestar Galactica vs Beastie Boys in Sabotage (VIDEO) has just flown in from scyfilove.com - click through for the rest of the good stuff
India: Sugarcane Price Stirs Worry | by Global Voices (India) | 10 March 2010, 11:14 AM
Ram Bansal at India in Peril discusses about the rising price of sugarcane in India and the impending crisis in the sugar market because of it.
Fresh batch of ‘leaked’ emails reveal no sign of conspiracy. Just climate scientists keen on public engagement. | by Climate Safety | 10 March 2010, 11:02 AM
Another batch of private emails from climate scientists has been leaked/hacked/stolen/whatever. These ones, though, are very different than the last.
It’s a thread of emails from the NAS (US National Academy of Sciences), and these guys are mad. They are mad about vested interests skewing the discussion. They are mad that journalists have sat and lapped it right up without checking their facts. They are mad that the public is suddenly more confused than ever about a field of science that is more united than ever.
They want to get hundreds of scientists to sign a declaration that yes, the anthropogenic combustion of fossil fuels is still causing the Earth to warm, and print it in newspapers like the New York Times, using only NAS money. They want to start a prime time science program on PBS. They want to have dozens of public lectures communicating climate science. They want a concise assessment report by the NAS written in layman’s terms. They want a nonprofit group to bridge communication between scientists and the public. They want “nothing short of a massive publicity campaign to educate the citizenry about what our best science is saying and why.”
“We will need funds to make something happen,” says Paul Falkowski, and by February 27th, about 15 NAS scientists had pledged $1000 each, out of their own pockets.
“How can we sit back while many of our colleagues and science as a whole is under attack?” writes Paul Ehrlich.
William Jury describes public presentations he’s given since the CRU hack, and how a common question is, “If the recent charges by anti-warming people aren’t true, why is nobody coming forth to prove it to us?”
And why not? All of us here have done our part, but it’s still not enough. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s felt pretty powerless over the past few months. It’s incredibly obvious, to those who have all the context, that the theory of AGW is as rock-solid as ever. But truth is not enough, not when we’re up against the most effective spin machine in history. I feel like no matter how much work I put into the communication of real science, this machine will always be ten steps ahead.
Reading this string of emails gave me the most hope I’ve felt in months that we might actually be able to steer public opinion in a more accurate direction, so that we can get to work on fixing this problem. It was exhilarating to read that so many scientists are ready and willing to mobilize public communication when we need it the most. I wanted to jump up from the computer and wave my arms around and shout in joy. If I hadn’t been in the school library, I probably would have.
There has long been a stigma against communication in science – for example, Stephen Schneider faced demeaning remarks from his colleagues in the 70s for even speaking to the newspapers about his work. Couple this with the big difference between these two sides fighting for public opinion: one academic, the other political/industrial. When our academic institutions get money, they’ll spend it on research, not on public communication……while the lobby groups and oil companies are hard at work on advertising like this. (Worth a watch, it’s hilarious.)
The amount of public communication and education proposed by the NAS scientists is enormous, but it’s never been more justified than now.
This is a guest post by Kate from Climate Sight.
— Stay in the loop, follow Climate Safety on twitter.
Looks like the budget's going to be March 24 and General Election May 6 | by Liverpool Daily Post - Dale Street Blues | 10 March 2010, 10:45 AM
So it's looking like the budget will almost certainly be on March 24. Which in turns means the General Election will be May 6. No surprises really as it is what has been long suspected and speculated. The timetable would...
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Administrivia | by Gastronomy Domine | 10 March 2010, 10:26 AM
Blogger is stopping support for FTP blogs in a couple of months, and this blog happens to be one of them. I'm migrating the blog this week.
Hopefully, you shouldn't experience any downtime (I'm hoping you won't notice any difference at all). It's a big blog, though, and there are a bazillion links and pictures that I'm going to have to check, so the work will take me a few days. There will probably be no more posts this week - hopefully service should be back to normal on Monday.
On the Street.....Rue De Castiglione, Paris | by The Sartorialist | 10 March 2010, 10:15 AM
Talking at Open Up the City in Helsinki | by Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog | 10 March 2010, 09:51 AM
This Thursday (11th March) I’m speaking at the Forum Virium’s Open Up the City event in Helsinki.
This year their focus is on “open data, design, interfaces and innovation” and I’m speaking under the title “Open Data: What, Why, How?”. It looks like this will be a very interesting event and it’s also a chance to catch up with the very active open data people in Finland!
Update ideas coming from a brainstorming session at a Forum Virium workshop:
Related posts:
Can taxpayers profit from Northern Rock? | by Robert Peston (BBC business editor) | 10 March 2010, 09:30 AM
Evan Davis asked me on the Today Programme this morning whether the probability that taxpayers would eventually emerge with a profit on Northern Rock implies that it was a mistake to nationalise the Rock at the start of 2008.
That conclusion can't be drawn - because the losses that the Rock has suffered over the past two years of almost £1.7bn in total were massively greater than expected by any of the possible private-sector bidders for the Rock.
All the bidders - including the Rock's own management team - seriously under-estimated the difficulties that the Rock's borrowers would face in keeping up the payments, especially on the so-called "Together" mortgages (where the combined value of a mortgage and personal loan "package" taken out by customers exceeded the value of their respective homes).
So, for example, the Rock's management team put together a bid for the bank in early 2008 based on a forecast that there would be losses of just under £200m in 2008 and then a return to profit.
In the event, the Rock has suffered losses on mortgages and loans going bad in excess of £2bn over the past couple of years - or five times more than the Rock's management and other bidders for the bank expected.
So if the Rock had been kept in the private sector, the capital of the bank would have been wiped out. And nationalisation would have been merely postponed rather than avoided.
What's more, even if there hadn't been a formal transfer of the equity to the public sector, this bank was on life support from taxpayers - with around £30bn of taxpayer loans at the peak and a formal state guarantee against losses covering its entire £100bn balance sheet.
Which means that keeping it in the private sector, in the sense of ownership of the equity, would have been something of an accounting charade
In fact, some would say that if there's eventually a profit for taxpayers from taking full control of the Rock, that would be a vindication of the decision to nationalise - for two reasons.
First, that the business would arguably have haemorrhaged more without the explicit backing of the state.
Second, and more importantly, the nationalisation of the bank has permitted an exceptionally efficient reconstruction of Northern Rock with regard to its additional capital needs.
This reconstruction involved splitting the Rock in two: as of this year, there exists a new smaller retail bank, with just £10bn of mortgages on its books and £19.5bn of retail deposits - making it one of the most prudently financed banks in the world - and an "asset manager" which holds some £50bn of older mortgages.
The retail bank, called Northern Rock, will be privatised, probably later in the year. And the asset manager will stay in the public sector.
That asset manager will no longer take deposits. So it requires less capital to underpin its assets as a cushion against possible future losses.
This is a long-winded way of saying that net new investment by taxpayers in Northern Rock since privatisation will emerge at around £1.6bn in total - which is the amount that taxpayers would have to get back to avoid making a loss on the nationalisation.
Is it conceivable that £1.6bn could be raised from the combination of the privatisation and the repayments over many years of the mortgages held by the nationalised asset manager?
Yes, that is possible - if not inevitable.
But it will be years before we know.
Which is not to say that there are no more difficult decisions on the Rock for whoever forms the next government.
The most tricky will be whether maximising proceeds from privatisation is paramount.
There are plenty of voices - especially in the Rock's North East home - calling for the new Rock to become a mutual once more, a vanguardist for a new generation of conservatively managed building societies.
The appeal of creating a new super-prudent, customer-owned savings-and-loans institution would be obvious to many - except that if the Rock were mutualised rather than sold, taxpayers would probably end up suffering a loss.
A digital renaissance: partnering with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage | by Official Google Blog | 10 March 2010, 09:19 AM
The Renaissance, Europe's period of cultural, political and scientific rebirth, began in Florence around 600 years ago. At Google we're interested in a (small “r”) renaissance of a different kind — a digital one. Since the launch of Google Books, we’ve been working with libraries and publishers around the globe to bring more of the world's books to more readers around the globe. Any school child should be able to access the works of Petrarch, Dante or Vico (or, if they're so inclined, Machiavelli). In the case of these more famous authors, this is already largely possible, but what about the work of Guglielmo il Giuggiola or Coluccio Salutati? We want all of the great literature and writings of Italy to be accessible to the general public.
Today we’re announcing an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage that will push this vision forward. Working with the National Libraries of Florence and Rome, we’ll digitize up to a million out-of-copyright works. The libraries will select the works to be digitized from their collections, which include a wealth of rare historical books, including scientific works, literature from the period of the founding of Italy and the works of Italy's most famous poets and writers. It marks the first time we’ve ever joined forces with Italian libraries, and the first time we've worked with a ministry of culture.
Around Europe and the rest of the world, we are effectively witnessing a digital renaissance, with an increasing number of organizations running ambitious and promising book digitization projects. We're not the only ones who have seen the need to bring the world's books into digital form. Digitization of books is a tremendous undertaking, requiring the joint effort of a great number of public and private stakeholders. For this reason, we’re supportive of many other efforts at digitization, such as the European Commission's Europeana. We want to see these books have the broadest reach possible — the books we scan are available for inclusion in Europeana, of which the Florence Library is a contributing member, and other digital libraries. The more of the world's historical, cultural treasures we can bring online, the more we can unlock our shared heritage.
We believe today’s announcement is an important step, and we look forward to working with more libraries and other partners. We envision a future in which people will be able to search and access the world's books anywhere, anytime. After all, Antonio Beccadelli and Anastasius Germonius — like Shakespeare and Cervantes — are part of our human cultural history.
Digitally engaging the excluded part 2 | by Tim Hood | 10 March 2010, 09:08 AM
We have now completed all the interviews as part of series supporting C4's Tower Block of Commons and you can see all the answers here
Huge thanks to Natina James, one of the tenants featured on the programme who went to Westminster to put the public's questions to the three MPs. Here's an example of her and Tim Loughton talking about the difficulties of getting some locals to engage.
Here's an account of the project on our funder's website, which sadly did not attract any press attention, suggesting that digital engagement and the innovative projects associated with it are of no interest whatsoever to mainstream media.
Interesting photos - 9 Mar 2010 - Flickr | by Daily interesting photos - Flickr | 10 March 2010, 08:49 AM
The Internet in America: A YouTube Interview with the FCC | by Official Google Blog | 10 March 2010, 08:16 AM
Rock recovery | by Robert Peston (BBC business editor) | 10 March 2010, 08:06 AM
Northern Rock, the nationalised bank whose collapse is most closely associated with the onset of the credit crunch, is almost out of hospital.
In formal accounting or statutory terms, it actually made a profit in the second half of 2009.
But there were a couple of big one-off credits that flattered the bank - including a refund of £350m of supposedly penal interest rate charges levied by the Treasury, following approval of the Rock's rescue by the European Commission
In underlying terms, there was a loss of £139m from July to December last year and a loss of £383m for the year as a whole.
Which looks very good compared with the stonking loss for 2008 of £1.3bn.
Costs have been reduced by almost a third, and the confidence of depositors seems to have stopped eroding - even though the Treasury has announced that it will no longer guarantee their savings in a formal sense.
The bank has now been split in two, with some £50bn of mortgages to be retained in state hands and a small retail bank to be put up for sale, probably in the second half of the year.
There's even a fighting chance that, as and when that bank has been sold and the older mortgages have been paid off, taxpayers could end up making a profit on this most fraught of nationalisations.
How tiny is the blogosphere? | by Knowing and Making (Leigh Caldwell) | 10 March 2010, 07:27 AM
This question is prompted by a few things.
First, seeing the same commenters pop up on obscure and unrelated blogs as appear on famous and prominent ones (hello Min, dearieme, Don, to pick three at random).
Second, meeting the author of one of my regular blogs at a show written by another, and finding they collaborated on the show I was at.
Third, realising that although my readership is still relatively small (one day, Krugman, one day...), it includes a surprisingly high proportion of other bloggers whom I respect, and whose occasional links to me are flattering and pleasing.
My first thought, then, is to wonder whether the blogosphere (at least the economics blogs) is populated by a few hundred people who just spend all their time reading each other's postings, and a few hundred more who comment on them.
My second thought was, if it is, then that's not so bad. Mostly, the people with blogs are the ones you want to read your work - the thoughtful, intelligent ones who are willing to challenge and engage with your ideas. They are the ones who, in the long run, will influence everyone else. Of all the people in the audience of that show, the three that I'd much rather have reading my work are also the three that have their own blogs.
When someone does both link and comment on an article of mine, their (and their commenters') input inevitably improves and often corrects my thinking.
So even if we are in an echo chamber, listening to each other listening to ourselves, when something does leak out from that chamber it has been improved and amplified by the attention of just the people you'd want.
Updated using Planet on 11 March 2010, 02:52 PM
