Saturday Links for the Week – April 7, 2007

What it All Means This Week:

Advising Others What to Do: Jeremy Heigh wonders aloud how we can advise others what to do with their lives when we’re not that sure what to do with our own. Even when we may know our Genius, our Gift, our Passion, what to do about it is often far from unclear. In the comments to that post, Chris Corrigan suggests two important steps: practice and reflection. I’d add two more steps to that: experience different ways to make a living, and imagine possibilities. Most of us don’t really know what we’d love to do, what we’re gifted at doing, what’s really needed, or who we’d love to make a living with, because we haven’t experienced enough, haven’t tried doing enough different things (I blame the narrow, experience-poor education system, mostly). And we think too much in terms of careers, categorized, neatly packaged and steered by others, and not enough of what is possible if, with that experience, we free ourselves to imagine how we could make a living, doing something unorthodox in unorthodox ways. What we’re meant to do.

Live Your Life: In the same vein, Walker at MaxSpeak blog points us to a delightful 30-second animation by Danny Smith challenging us to stop consuming and start living for ourselves and those we love.

Web 2.0 in a Nutshell: A 2-hour Don Tapscott video on the eLearning Forum sums up Web 2.0 with humour and intelligence. Thanks to Earl Rudolfo for the link.

Canada’s 20 Best Employers You’ve Never Heard Of: Most ‘best employers’ surveys are fraudulent — employers bribe or coerce their employees to vote for them. A new one by Queen’s University seems more rigorous, and not surprisingly, the top 20 are all unknown companies. The survey report itself is, alas, outrageously expensive. Anyone have a copy I could read? Or know first hand about any of the 20 winning companies?

Global Warming Crises Promise to Create New Regional Conflicts: If the environmental, climatic and biological catastrophes that await us as a result of global warming weren’t bad enough, we’re beginning to see what will happen when their effects are exported, deliberately or inadvertently, to neighbouring countries. The classic example is water diversion — damming river water when yours runs low, at the expense of countries downstream. But now, downwind Korea and Japan are suffering from the deadly mix of industrial toxins and sand and dust from desertified China. Korea has decreed it “yellow dust terrorism“. Expect to hear much more about this global warming (with the emphasis on ‘global’) side-effect.

The Start of the End of Oil in Saudi Arabia and Mexico: In Saudi Arabia, Ghawar, one of the largest oil fields in the world is now producing mostly water, and the Oil Drum has a fascinating and thorough analysis of why. And HTWW profiles a similar occurrence in the giant Cantarell oil field in Mexico.

Canadians Don’t Really Care About the Environment: Notwithstanding national polls that show Canadians consider global warming and the environment to be the ‘most important’ issue of our time, other polls belie this. Opinion polls suggest aversion to Liberal Party leader and environmentalist StÈphane Dion (stirred up again by Dion’s recent willingness to readmit some of the criminals whose theft led to the party’s demise) is so intense they would elect a Conservative majority if a vote were held today. Nothing could be worse for the Canadian environment, as that party’s leaders are worse global warming deniers than the Republicans, and are virtually owned by Big Oil. And another study by Angus Reid pollsters suggests few Canadians would give up their gas guzzling SUVs, pay more for gasoline, cut back on air travel, or turn down their thermostats to reduce carbon emissions, and that the richest Canadians (and Albertans) are least willing to make any compromises to their lifestyle. Meanwhile the right-wing media and Big Oil, seeing a crack in Canadians’ will, are ratcheting up the anti-environment propaganda machine. And to top it all off, Canada’s disgrace, the annual seal hunt, has begun again this week, with hardly a peep of protest. I’m ashamed to bea Canadian.

Thought for the Week: From David Jordan: Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Thanks to Andrew Campbell for the link.