Image from An Inconvenient Truth: Blue curve is average temperature on Earth for the last 650,000 years, red is amount of CO2 in the atmosphere for the same time period. Lower yellow dot is today’s CO2 levels. Top yellow dot is where it will be in 2030 (median projection). That’s Gore on a forklift beside it. Difference between top and bottom of the blue curve is half-a-mile-thick ice at the bottom (ice age) and today’s climate at the top. Videos of the Week: Charles Hall Explains Peak Oil in Ninety Minutes: A thorough explanation of the concept, with some great graphics in the accompanying slides. James Surowiecki on the Future of the Organization: A rambling half-hour video of the Wisdom of Crowds author on theory X (we work only because we must) and theory Y (we work for a creative outlet and self-actualization as well), bottom-up self-managed communities (open source etc.), the failure of top-down motivation, Goldcorp’s Wisdom of Crowds online exploration of where to mine for new gold, how humans and primates behave altruistically and respond to status symbols, and why experts and leaders are over-rated. Malcolm Gladwell on Collaborative Genius: A half-hour video by the Tipping Point guy from small-town Ontario who argues that individual genius is not as valuable as that resulting from collaborative effort. Modern complex problems, he says, requires persistance rather than genius, and assessment of large numbers of diverse ideas rather than a few great ideas. News of the Week: Canada Knuckles Under to US Blacklist and Refuses Entry to US Protesters: The Bush regime has blacklisted protesters at the last International Women’s Day demonstrators arrested for passive civil disobedience, and the Harper regime in Canada is using this US blacklist to prevent liberals from entering Canada. No coverage on this in the mainstream Canadian media. Plexus Tackles the Complex Problem of MRSA: The Plexus Conplexity Institute is working on complex solutions to the challenge of MRSA, one of the growing epidemic of antibacterial-resistant strains of germs plaguing hospitals and communities. The major challenges are complacency and the alarming lack of compliance with hygiene practices by hospital workers, especially doctors. The approach to coping with these perplexing challenges is to engage the wisdom of crowds in the hospitals themselves (some of the best ideas come from housekeeping staff and patients) and use the complexity principal called ‘positive deviance’ (the principle that some people have much better approaches and practices than others doing the identical work). Notice how similar this is to Gladwell’s point above? Thanks to education reform guru Barbara Dieu for the link. Co-op America Finds the Best Green Businesses are All Small: A fascinating survey of America’s greenest businesses from the Responsible Shopper Boycott List guys suggests that to be really green you have to be small and community-based. This should not be surprising, but it is important. Why is the Dow So High?: HTWW wonders why, given the credit crisis, the collapse of the US dollar, and $80/barrel oil, the Dow is at record highs, especially since the price of US homes and volume of home sales are still plummeting. 9/11 and the Anti-Feminist Backlash: A great Salon book review (of Susan Faludi’s The Terror Dream) by Rebecca Traister wonders if 9/11 has given the anti-feminist movement incredible power and impetus to reverse decades of gains, and how our reaction against Arabs in the wake of 9/11 echoes our reaction against First Nations people during the first decades of our invasion of the Americas. Fascinating ideas here. Why is Google Stock so High: Dave Snowden wonders why Google stock is still so high when no one lloks at the ads on their pages. Sy Hersh Explains Why Cheney/Bush Will Attack Iran: Bad news all around, and Hersh is usually right. Thought for the Week: It’s World Animal Week. Ten ways to make the world better for animals (from WSPA via Common Dreams):
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Collapse Watch:
Hope — On the Balance of Probabilities
The Caste War for the Dregs
Recuperation, Accommodation, Resilience
How Do We Teach the Critical Skills
Collapse Not Apocalypse
Effective Activism
'Making Sense of the World' Reading List
Notes From the Rising Dark
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Collapse: Slowly Then Suddenly
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Making Sense of Who We Are
What Would Net-Zero Emissions Look Like?
Post Collapse with Michael Dowd (video)
Why Economic Collapse Will Precede Climate Collapse
Being Adaptable: A Reminder List
A Culture of Fear
What Will It Take?
A Future Without Us
Dean Walker Interview (video)
The Mushroom at the End of the World
What Would It Take To Live Sustainably?
The New Political Map (Poster)
Beyond Belief
Complexity and Collapse
Requiem for a Species
Civilization Disease
What a Desolated Earth Looks Like
If We Had a Better Story...
Giving Up on Environmentalism
The Hard Part is Finding People Who Care
Going Vegan
The Dark & Gathering Sameness of the World
The End of Philosophy
A Short History of Progress
The Boiling Frog
Our Culture / Ourselves:
A CoVid-19 Recap
What It Means to be Human
A Culture Built on Wrong Models
Understanding Conservatives
Our Unique Capacity for Hatred
Not Meant to Govern Each Other
The Humanist Trap
Credulous
Amazing What People Get Used To
My Reluctant Misanthropy
The Dawn of Everything
Species Shame
Why Misinformation Doesn't Work
The Lab-Leak Hypothesis
The Right to Die
CoVid-19: Go for Zero
Pollard's Laws
On Caste
The Process of Self-Organization
The Tragic Spread of Misinformation
A Better Way to Work
The Needs of the Moment
Ask Yourself This
What to Believe Now?
Rogue Primate
Conversation & Silence
The Language of Our Eyes
True Story
May I Ask a Question?
Cultural Acedia: When We Can No Longer Care
Useless Advice
Several Short Sentences About Learning
Why I Don't Want to Hear Your Story
A Harvest of Myths
The Qualities of a Great Story
The Trouble With Stories
A Model of Identity & Community
Not Ready to Do What's Needed
A Culture of Dependence
So What's Next
Ten Things to Do When You're Feeling Hopeless
No Use to the World Broken
Living in Another World
Does Language Restrict What We Can Think?
The Value of Conversation Manifesto Nobody Knows Anything
If I Only Had 37 Days
The Only Life We Know
A Long Way Down
No Noble Savages
Figments of Reality
Too Far Ahead
Learning From Nature
The Rogue Animal
How the World Really Works:
Making Sense of Scents
An Age of Wonder
The Truth About Ukraine
Navigating Complexity
The Supply Chain Problem
The Promise of Dialogue
Too Dumb to Take Care of Ourselves
Extinction Capitalism
Homeless
Republicans Slide Into Fascism
All the Things I Was Wrong About
Several Short Sentences About Sharks
How Change Happens
What's the Best Possible Outcome?
The Perpetual Growth Machine
We Make Zero
How Long We've Been Around (graphic)
If You Wanted to Sabotage the Elections
Collective Intelligence & Complexity
Ten Things I Wish I'd Learned Earlier
The Problem With Systems
Against Hope (Video)
The Admission of Necessary Ignorance
Several Short Sentences About Jellyfish
Loren Eiseley, in Verse
A Synopsis of 'Finding the Sweet Spot'
Learning from Indigenous Cultures
The Gift Economy
The Job of the Media
The Wal-Mart Dilemma
The Illusion of the Separate Self, and Free Will:
No Free Will, No Freedom
The Other Side of 'No Me'
This Body Takes Me For a Walk
The Only One Who Really Knew Me
No Free Will — Fightin' Words
The Paradox of the Self
A Radical Non-Duality FAQ
What We Think We Know
Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark
Healing From Ourselves
The Entanglement Hypothesis
Nothing Needs to Happen
Nothing to Say About This
What I Wanted to Believe
A Continuous Reassemblage of Meaning
No Choice But to Misbehave
What's Apparently Happening
A Different Kind of Animal
Happy Now?
This Creature
Did Early Humans Have Selves?
Nothing On Offer Here
Even Simpler and More Hopeless Than That
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What Happens in Vagus
We Have No Choice
Never Comfortable in the Skin of Self
Letting Go of the Story of Me
All There Is, Is This
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Non-Duality Dude (Play)
Your Self: An Owner's Manual (Satire)
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