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Last login: 1 hour agoLaodan: laodan is a 56 year old guy from Wisconsin, USA.; Likes 1,590 pages, 24 videos, 8 photos • 217 fans • Received 65 reviews; Member since Aug 08, 2005

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http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/top-0-amazing-k.html: Mar 11, 11:24am 3 reviews environment, science, art
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/top-0-amazing-k.html; Kinetic Sculptures in Wired by Aaron Rowe
Kinetic sculptures are simply breathtaking. Drawing green engineering and art together, they give a glimpse at what great beauty can emerge from an unconstrained mind. Perhaps the world will overflow with these spectacles in a time of better education and less strife. Amazing Kinetic Sculpture Videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMqftVhOuTw&feature=related Always amazing to see Theo Jansen's works. He succeeds in showing us that something else than the mechanical logic of capital is possible in shaping our daily lives: openness to nature and creativity. "The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds" says Jansen. There are 30 videos available on YouTube presently about Kinetic Sculptures. Check here: Theo Jansen - Kinetic Sculptor

The Archdruid Report: Back Up The Rabbit Hole: Feb 7, 2:43pm 1 review environment, economy
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/02/back-up-rabbit-hole.html; Back Up The Rabbit Hole in The Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer
As the world closes in on the end of the 21st century's first decade, its industrial societies are leaving behind a period in which just such a temporary set of conditions held sway. Until we recognize the blind alley down which those conditions led the developed world, we will be hard put to respond to a future that has begun to move in a very different direction. ... During the quarter century of ultracheap energy, transportation costs were so low that they became a negligible fraction of the cost of goods. This allowed manufacturers to arbitrage the difference in labor costs between industrial and nonindustrial countries without having to take shipping costs into account. ... Another result, at least as dramatic as globalization though less ballyhooed then or now, was the rise of a throwaway economy all through the industrial world. In hindsight, I suspect, the entire period from 1980 to 2005 will be seen as one of history's supreme blind alleys. ... The possibility that the only way forward out of the present blind alley may require going back to less convenient and more costly ways of doing things is nowhere on our collective radar screens just now. Back Up The Rabbit Hole This idea of progress as being the direction forward on the line of history is typically a story derived out of the religions of the word. This is nowhere to be seen in China and the greater Confucian area nor in any area where animism is still in practice. The Western idea of progress starts with the religions of the word being imposed on all citizens as the societal glue of early kingdoms and empires. That moment is also considered to be the beginning of Western civilization moment that Toynbee spent his life studying. Civilization is like a house. The FOUNDATIONS OF CIVILIZATION are not made of bricks but of AXIOMS of a model of perception of reality that is shared by all the citizens. Culture, understood as epochal behavior within society, is then added to the axioms to grow the house of civilization. Each particular snapshot of epochal behavior acts thus like a CULTURAL ADD-ON. A civilization is then the sum of its axioms + its cultural add-ons. So how do the axioms of our Western and Christian civilization compare with the axioms of the Chinese civilization? It's the story of dualism in the West versus the polarities of unity in China. - dualism: God versus devil, beginning versus end, good versus evil, love versus hate, "you are with us or you are against us", progress versus regress, and so on. Under dualism it is implied that you are on the side of God and good and that the road of history is made of progress. The logical behavior in such an axiomatic setting is thus to believe that everything is fine because we are on the road of progress towards reaching God (ultimate good). As a consequence Westerners experience an utter inability to recognize reality as it is and tend to reject the idea that what they do could be wrong, or even less, counterproductive to their own interests. - polarities of unity: the contact between polarities generates a burst of energy fueling changes and transformations that are as the seconds on the ticking clock of evolution. In that axiomatic setting there is no beginning and end, no all and nothing, no progress and regress. Reality is perceived indeed as a continuum of change. And the logical behavior is then to surf on the realities of the moment in order to position oneself to be able to size the best opportunities at hand in the present. In light of this I'm afraid that John's assertion that "The challenge before us now is to climb back out of the rabbit hole and deal with the world we will have to face when the extravagant Wonderland of the brief era of ultra-cheap energy dissolves into windblown leaves and the shreds of a departed dream" is wishful thinking, for, as Toynbee observed (in a Western civilizational environment) it's NECESSITY that powers change and not the willpower of men.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Society depends on more for less: Feb 5, 11:18am 1 review economics, environment, society
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/7218002.stm; Society depends on more for less in BBC News Online by Sir Mark Moody-Stuart Sir Mark Moody-Stuart is non-executive chairman of Anglo American, and is a member of the UN Global Compact and chairman of the Global Compact Foundation
So what of the market? It is an unsurpassed mechanism for allocating resources to deliver better things. Through competition, technologies are optimised or discarded, opening the field for creativity and choice. I believe in the power and value of markets. But like most things, they have a failing. Without regulation to channel their power, markets will not deliver things which are of no immediate benefit to the individual making his or her choice, even though they may be beneficial to society. Society depends on more for less "Consumer opinion and choice is important, but it will not do the trick on its own" It seems a recalibration of the relation between market and State is well underway. But what Mark Moody-Stuart envisions is more or less a continuation of our present unsustainable way of life through a reduction in the market's footprint compensated by an increased role of the State in economics. This is a good beginning but it is still so far from the kind of solution that is needed for addressing successfully the inter-connectedness between a cascading number of crisis happening simultaneously. See my earlier comments The news is confirming on a daily basis my assessment about a cascading number of crisis happening simultaneously: Worldwide Peak Oil May Already Be Here - Now What? resource collapse Ice Melt Accelerates Around the World side-effects of modernity Fragile Dollar Hegemony: Iran's Oil Bourse could Topple the Dollar globalization of the logic of capital + resource collapse Revised version of an economic rebalancing between private and public 1. public-private investment in energy R&D targeting national energetic autonomy that would re-balancing national balance of payment and eliminate the emission of CO2 responsible for climate change. 2. public investment in, long haul and urban, public transportation complementing a decentralized system of rural local roads 3. subsidized higher education in exchange of a societal service giving the man-power to a permanent education system for the advancement of culture, the arts, and science. 4. finance for the national well-being. Finance is what powers the formation of capital and should thus be guided and regulated to serve the national well-being in order to avoid bubbles of greed

A Solar Grand Plan: Scientific American: Dec 21, 2007 10:00am 9 reviews economics, environment, energy
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan&page=1; A Solar Grand Plan in Scientific American by Ken Zweibel, James Mason and Vasilis Fthenakis
* A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.\u2019s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050. * A vast area of photovoltaic cells would have to be erected in the Southwest. Excess daytime energy would be stored as compressed air in underground caverns to be tapped during nighttime hours. * Large solar concentrator power plants would be built as well. * A new direct-current power transmission backbone would deliver solar electricity across the country. * But $420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive. A Solar Grand Plan Great article and great proposal. The point here is not that this proposal has necessarily to be adopted. The point is that the discussion about an alternative energetic road at last starts to take place. No one alternative to fossil fuels will answer all of our needs. Our energetic future will comprise different technological roads among which solar and geothermal will definitely play a leading role. But peak oil and climate change are upon us now and those alternative roads are only expected to start answering our energetic needs in a meaningful way within a few decades at best. In the meantime we will need to revise drastically our ways of living in order to limit the size of our footprint on mother nature and our energetic consumption to do that. There is no escaping that fact. Or we voluntarily change our ways or we will be imposed to change as a consequence of catastrophic events of our making.

Chinas E-Waste Nightmare Worsening: Nov 19, 2007 9:23am 1 review environment, modernity, china-globalization
http://www.physorg.com/news114623477.html; China's E-Waste Nightmare Worsening via Innovation Watch, in Physics.org by CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer
"Most e-waste in China comes from overseas, but the amount of domestic e-waste is on the rise," he said. This ugly business is driven by pure economics. For the West, where safety rules drive up the cost of disposal, it's as much as 10 times cheaper to export the waste to developing countries. In China, poor migrants from the countryside willingly endure the health risks to earn a few yuan, exploited by profit-hungry entrepreneurs. International agreements and European regulations have made a dent in the export of old electronics to China, but loopholes - and sometimes bribes - allow many to skirt the requirements. And only a sliver of the electronics sold get returned to manufacturers such as Dell and Hewlett Packard for safe recycling. China's E-Waste Nightmare Worsening America Ships Electronic Waste Overseas Chinese made toys poison Western kids. We have been swept under a barrage of news coverage with similar titles. But do we ever think about how our reaction here is perceived there? Think about it. They are observing their parents, brothers, sisters and neighbors dieing from what they know to be poisoning by pollution but they have nowhere to flee and so they endure their misery mostly in silence. Westerners generally judge China from their high stools of superiority. Ha this crap produced in China, ha China's environmental catastrophe, ha China's human rights record. But what about China's reasons to enter modernity so fast? For the countries of the South a fast industrialization appears as the only possible answer to their survival at the hands of a, so perceived, totalitarian Western centric economic model. In other words the Chinese think that the survival of their nation is depending upon their rapid and successful implementation of such an economic model. In the South industrialization is perceived as a question of survival and speed is considered to be paramount. In such conditions the law is often late to answer problems and if the law has been enacted its implementation does not necessarily follow... And the West is too eager to profit from those loopholes in the South's legal systems to reject upon it its own mountains of most poisonous garbage.

WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: Coal …: Nov 17, 2007 11:46am 1 review environment, china
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007590.html; On the side-effects of modernity in China in World Changing
China's rising energy demand isn't just leaving its mark on the country's heritage. Every 30 seconds, an infant with birth defects is born in China, according to Jiang Fan, deputy head of the country's National Population and Family Planning Commission. The rate of birth defects nationwide has soared 40 percent in the past five years, from 105 defects per 10,000 births in 2001 to nearly 146 in 2006. The problem now affects nearly 1 in 10 Chinese families, the Commission stated in a recent report . On the side-effects of modernity in China the degradation of more than 80 percent of China's 33 designated World Heritage sites Birth defect rates are highest ever Powering China's Development: The Role of Renewable Energy. The side-effects of modernity has brought the world on the brink just at a time when 50% of the world population struggles to industrialize fast. For them those among on the side of this 50% of the world population side-effects seem even multiplied by the speed of their industrialization.

Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to …: Oct 31, 2007 2:52pm 2 reviews environment, history, paleontology
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0706977104v1; North American Comet Catastrophe 10,900 BC via stbalbach / Metafilter, in pnas by R. B. Firestone, A. West, J. P. Kennett, L. Becker, T. E. Bunch, Z. S. Revay, P. H. Schultz, T. Belgya, D. J. Kennett, J. M. Erlandson, . J. Dickenson, A. C. Goodyear, R. S. Harris, G. A. Howard, J. B. Kloosterman, P. Lechler, P. A. Mayewski, J. Montgomery, R. Poreda, T. Darrah, S. S. Que Hee, A. R. Smith, A. Stich, W. Topping, J. H. Wittke, and W. S. Wolbach
On May 23, 2007 a multi-disciplinary team of scientists announced (YouTube, 70mins, 7-parts, part1-1 is a summary) the finding of physical evidence strongly suggesting that, around 12,900 years ago (10,900 BC), a massive Shoemaker-Levy type comet hit the atmosphere, air burst over the Great Lakes region of North America and probably engulfed much of the continent in a fireball and subsequent firestorm with catastrophic effects for life and climate. The extraterrestrial event coincides with the mass extinction or depopulation of many of North America's largest mammals (including camels, mammoths, the short-faced bear and numerous other species); coincides with the end of the Clovis culture; and coincides with the start of a global climatic shift known as the Younger Dryas, a sudden return of Ice Age conditions. The "Younger Dryas impact event", as it is banally being called, now competes with some well known and hotly debated theories, such as human hunters killed the mammals; or the Younger Dryas was caused by a slow down in the Gulf Stream (which has implications for current Global Warming predictions). On September 27, 2007 the team officially published their findings as "Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago that contributed to the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling" (PNAS open access). North American Comet Catastrophe 10,900 BC The authors note that "The shock wave, thermal pulse, and event-related environmental effects (e.g., extensive biomass burning and food limitations) contributed to end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions and adaptive shifts among PaleoAmericans in North America." I always found that our understanding, of the emergence of agriculture that sprouted its roots some 10-12,000 years ago, was very poor; speculative at best. This article is throwing one set of supplemental data in the cauldron of known facts.

SHPEGS - Solar Heat Pump Electrical Generation System: Oct 30, 2007 5:28pm 5 reviews environment, energy
http://www.shpegs.org/; SHPEGS: Solar Heat Pump Electrical Generation System Open, Location Independent, Reliable, Clean and Renewable Energy. via a comment of rohar1 on Concentrating Solar Power in The Oil Drum,
This is a project to design and build a system that uses a combination of direct and indirect solar collection to generate electricity and store thermal energy in an economical, environmentally friendly, scalable, reliable, efficient and location independent manner using common construction materials. The project is being managed with a similar methodology to Open Source Software Development and the ideas and contributions are being published openly on the Internet without an attempt to secure patents. The hope is that with an open philosophy that the project shows similar Rapid Application Development and success as Linux and other Open Source Software projects and provides a system that can meet future energy requirements in a sustainable manner. Open, Location Independent, Reliable, Clean and Renewable Energy. An Open Source Electrical Power Generation Initiative... The comments on Concentrating Solar Power are a treasure trove for those interested in renewable energies.

Googles love for solar may extend to other renewables | Tech news blog - CNET Ne…: Oct 30, 2007 2:47pm 2 reviews environment, energy
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9807330-7.html; Google's love for solar may extend to other renewables via the Oil Drum, in C/net by Martin LaMonica
When it comes to bragging rights and solar power, Google's on top: it has the largest corporate installation of solar-powered electricity yet. But that apparently is just the beginning. The search giant is also considering other forms of renewable energy, according to Robyn Beavers, the director of environmental programs at Google. Google intends to generate 50 megawatts of electricity from renewable forms for its operations by 2012. Google's love for solar may extend to other renewables Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin charge a plug-in beneath its solar-powered car port. Google is definitely at the center of everything that really matters today. No surprise that it's stock continues to increase ...

Civilisation ends with a shutdown of human concern. Are we there already? | New…: Oct 30, 2007 1:05pm 1 review environment, civilization, collapse
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2201593,00.html; Civilization ends with a shutdown of human concern. Are we there already? In The Guardian Online by George Monbiot
... the one terrible fact to which our technological hubris blinds us: our dependence on biological production remains absolute. Civilization is just a russetting on the skin of the biosphere, never immune from being rubbed against the sleeve of environmental change. But everyone is watching and waiting for everyone else to move. The unspoken universal thought is this: "If it were really so serious, surely someone would do something?" As the biosphere shrinks, McCarthy describes the collapse of the protagonist's core beliefs. I sense that this might be happening already: that a hardening of interests, a shutting down of concern, is taking place among the people of the rich world. If this is true, we do not need to wait for the forests to burn or food supplies to shrivel before we decide that civilization is in trouble. Civilization ends with a shutdown of human concern. Are we there already? The question appears no longer to know if the great changes that await us are something real or merely the fruit of our imagination. Fact is that more and more people in Europe are feeling disgusted by politics as usual. If you follow the comments on Monbiot's article you are overwhelmed by the largely shared feeling of the readers that capitalism (finance capitalism) is rushing forward without any concern for life.