Saturday Links for the Week – January 6, 2007

Photo by Norbert Rosing from the book The World of the Polar Bear

Let-Self-Change:

Honest Food Guide: Here’s a great poster for your refrigerator and grocery list: A list of what foods are good and bad for you, and why. Thanks to Michael Yarmolinsky for the link.

Working Smarter:

The Laws of Innovation: Readers of Chuck Frey’s Innovation Tools site offer their most important lessons learned about innovation in the last year. Lots to think about here.

Entrepreneurs Aren’t Innovative: So says a recent Wharton study. They’re risk-averse, conservative, not particularly imaginative, and over-reliant on expensive ‘venture capital’. Recipe for failure. That’s why we need a new Natural Enterprise model. Thanks to Innovation Weekly for the link.

50 Things to Do With Google Maps Mashups: Some interesting ideas here on how to use Google Maps to visualize large amounts of data more meaningfully.

Understanding Our Culture:

Technophiles Reassure Each Other the Future is Bright: Edge asked its hand-picked list of ‘thought leaders’ to reassure each other and the rest of us that we have reason to be optimistic. This once-great site has become the definitive echo-chamber. Technology will save us and make the world perfect! And make you immortal! Don’t worry your pretty little head about all the world’s intractable problems! 1001 excuses for inaction! Be happy! Really sad. Thanks to Clark Casteel for the link.

How the World Really Works:

The Imperative of Relocalization: James Kunstler, in the excellent Jan/Feb Orion Magazine, explains why we keep deluding ourselves that the End of Oil will never come and discusses the need for relocalization. Also in this edition, but not online: Whitefoot, a lovely mouse story by Wendell Berry, and an interview by Barry Lopez of Onondaga Faithkeeper Oren Lyons.

This Week’s Grim US Political News:

Bush has issued another ‘signing statement’ exempting himself from privacy laws and authorizing unlimited opening of private citizens’ mail.
The US religious right is systematically infiltrating the military and police forces (Thanks to Peter at Karavans for the link)
And from the NYT (sorry, the link-generator is down, so these are all in the pay-per-view archives for now):

Nuclear firms’ lawyers want indemnity if terrorists attack inadequately-built reactors.
The SEC now allows execs to under-report their obscene salaries.
Small businesses are routinely screwed by government and big corporations thanks to corrupt government award contracting processes.

The Scourge of Inequality: A whole series of editorials in WaPo about why massive and growing inequality of wealth, income, power and opportunity threatens the US’s social fabric. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link.

Orangutans Join Bonobos and Gorillas on Endangered List: Our loving cousins the bonobo monkeys face extinction through habitat encroachment. Gorillas face extinction from AIDS. And now orangs are threatened with extinction because forests are being razed to meet the need for more hydrogenated palm oil in our processed foods.

Thought for the Week: From Oren Lyons (in the Orion interview referred to above):

Our worldview, our perspective and our process of governance is contrary to private property…People should be storming the offices of all these pharmaceutical companies that are stealing money from them. They should be dragging these leaders, these CEOs, out into the streets and they should be challenging them. They’re not doing that. They’re just worried about how they’re going to pay more. It’s the abdication of responsibility by the people…That was the Peace Maker’s instruction: Of, by, and for the people. You choose your own leaders. You put ’em up, and you take ’em down. But you, the people, are responsible. You’re responsible for your life; you’re responsible foreverything.

4 Responses to Saturday Links for the Week – January 6, 2007

MatthewJ says:

January 6, 2007 at 17:07

Food Guide is too PC.The !Kung eat loads of high fat red meat and heart attack and stroke are unheard of. The died the human animal evolved in contained no grains and lots of high-fat red meat.
Kishore Balakrishnan says:

January 6, 2007 at 17:33

Dear Dave Consider linking to http://www.honestfoodguide.org/ instead of the pdf directly because then you and readers might come across many super good resources.. Have you visited http://www.healthranger.org/ Thanks for the link and in general, all your postsCheers, Kishore.
David Parkinson says:

January 6, 2007 at 21:11

Thanks for calling BS on that Edge thing. I spooled through it, all 138000 pages of it or whatever, looking for the comments by Brian Eno, which I assumed might be interesting. ALong the way, I read a lot of crazy ravings which made me feel sad, esp. when I considered the big names on display. I guess you’re never too smart to be stupid. I can’t even remember what Eno was being optimistic about.
Jon Husband says:

January 7, 2007 at 11:58

I did the same thing as David P. above. Eno’s remarks where very meta-level, just saying maybe there’s a chance, becuse of all the interconnectedness, that top-down may be slipping and that bottom-up looks promising.”Technology will save us and make the world perfect! And make you immortal! Don’t worry your pretty little head about all the world’s intractable problems! 1001 excuses for inaction! I understand the points about echo chamber and BS, but to be fair fellows, there WAS a specific question asked which would lead to vague and general answers which would, given current conditions and the “type” involved in / with Edge, to generate similar responses.It would have been more satisfying, no doubt, had some of the respondents said “we’re completely hooped unless we start major behavioural changes after lunch today and don’t stop” but that wasn’t the question … the question was the Edge founder asking “What Are You Optimistic About ?”. No wonder it was over-cheerful and generally vague.And I’m guessing that part of the reason for such a question is that there’s always the standard issue facing us, of the conventional wisdom hat people won’t pay attention or will turn off quickly if brought face to face with difficult and thorny issues.So … what is leadership from a group of intellectuals such as this ? Is it ongoing focus on the deep and inractable problems with relentless concentration on the complexity and difficulty of the major systemic issues, or is it the holding-out of a generalized encouragement ?I’ll bet this is why you included the link, arguing that we should expect more from public intellectuals. With that I agree … however, I think we should ask different questions, questions with some meaning that people might act upon somehow should they choose to.