WC Archive

Japanese inventor Kiyoshi Amemiya has developed a machine for clearing landmines 100 times faster than hand-removal. He's donated 36 of these machines to Afghanistan, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Thailand and Vietnam.

Bill McKibben has an excellent conversation with Senator John McCain in the current edition of the National Resources Defense Council's OnEarth magazine. McCain seems to have embraced the need to fight global warming.

Andrew Lam has an interesting essay up at AlterNet entitled Globalization vs. Americanization, in which he argues that we're seeing a "transnational revolution" -- and it's not just McDonald's and Disney, and that geography is no longer destiny.

In case it's not already obvious, some of us at WC are big fans of space science. For those of you out there who are, as well, here is the Encyclopedia Astronautica, a startlingly comprehensive database of spacecraft, space programs, obscure space flight history, and everyone who has ever flown beyond Earth's surly bonds.

Intel moves towards greener chips. In a small, regulation-pushed, but still welcome step, Intel is going to reduce the amount of lead used in the manufacturing of its computer components. Now to just get rid of the Selenium, Cadmium, Chromium, Mercury...

Science Daily reports that your favorite carbon structural variant and mine, the nanotube, can be made into cheap and disposable sensors for organophosphate-based pesticides and nerve agents, able to detect traces of OP in amounts as small as 5 parts per billion.

WorldChanging ally Paul Hughes over at FutureHi posted an interesting entry this weekend going over reasons why some of the more commonplace pessimistic political scenarios (from martial law in the US to the panopticon singularity) may not be as likely as some fear.

WorldChanging friend and kickass writer Charlie Stross has been nominated for two Hugo awards! One is for his story "Nightfall," and the other is for Singularity Sky, which was my favorite science fiction book of 2003. Congratulations, Charlie!

We've posted about the Geobacter genus of bacteria before -- microbes which evolved to use minerals as catalysts for making energy. National Geographic now has a short but interesting story about Geobacter discoverer Derek Lovley, and how we came to know about the more than 30 different species of mineral-eating microbes. (Via Mekka)

As BoingBoing goes, so goes the blogosphere. Or so it seems. We've now jumped on the clever little Technorati Cosmos backlink hack bandwagon, so that you can see which other sites out there refer to our posts. It appears slightly more robust than the built-in Moveable Type trackbacks, but we'll watch to see how well it works...

Lawrence Lessig, fresh off of the successful release of his new book Free Culture (as well as its myriad remixes) was elected to the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation. The FSF is the home of the GPL (General Public License), the software license underlying many free/open source applications. Congratulations!

As noted last month, Jaron Lanier will be speaking at the upcoming Bay Area Future Salon meeting. The details are finally set: Jaron will be speaking at the SAP Labs in Palo Alto this Friday, at 7pm. He will be updating his 2000 One Half a Manifesto essay.

reflexorset reminds us that Earth Day 2004 is coming up on Thursday, April 22nd. And while the event may no longer be particularly radical or worldchanging, it's still a good opportunity to educate and make a little noise.

According to Strategy Page, a military-oriented website, the US Department of Defense is about to undertake a program to replace the rocket motors on 500 Minuteman III missiles with a new version which will emit less toxic material while in use. Jokes about not polluting the air while nuking the world write themselves, but bear in mind that such missiles are occasionally launched in tests, so switching to a design which complies with EPA regulations does make sense.

How green is your furniture (and I don't mean color)? It turns out that many chairs and couches are made in environmentally unfriendly ways. Environmental News Network reports today about a variety of companies shifting to sustainable, toxic-free methods of making furniture. Let's hope the design aesthetics match the green ideals...

Christopher Allen at Life With Alacrity has a thoughtful post on what he calls the "four kinds of privacy:" defensive privacy, protecting information which puts you at risk from other citizens; human-rights privacy, protecting information which puts you at risk from the authorities; personal privacy, protecting information about your personal life and activities; and contextual privacy, protecting information which can be misconstrued or is inappropriately intimate. I'm not sure the distinctions are as clear as Allen describes, but the essay is well worth reading.

While Honda and Toyota have raced ahead with hybrid cars, American manufacturers such as GM and Ford have tended to claim that they were working on something even better (even while grudgingly announcing hybrids to come out real soon now). General Motors' advanced hydrogen car efforts were profiled in Wired last year, and now Ken Novak points us to Ford's entry into the "wow, I wonder if this will ever come out?" motor rally: the Model U. I have to admit, it looks pretty nice. It would look even better on the road, and not just in a press release.

Ken Novak points us to an article in Electronic Components claiming that China will move into the top five list of solar cell producers this year, with a projected 60MW production worth of solar power units. It has also launched the "Chinese Lightning Project" to promote solar cells as a power source.

WorldChanging ally Howard Rheingold has a great piece over at The Feature entitled "Inverse Surveillance -- What We Should Do With All Those Phonecams." Regular WorldChanging readers will recognize the argument and some of the language ("sousveillance" we like. "Cyborglogging" we're not so sure about...).

The Baltimore Sun provides some useful info on the current status of hybrid cars in the American automobile market: U.S. registrations for hybrid cars rose more than 25 percent last year, to 43,435...Sales of Toyota's new Prius shot up 62.4 percent in the first quarter compared with sales in the first three months of last year...In March, Honda sold 2,725 hybrid Civics, the most ever in a single month... Half of the hybrids sold in 2003 were the Honda Civic hybrid, and just under half the old model Toyota Prius. Over 11,000 were registered in California, with Virginia coming in at #2 with about 3,400 new hybrids in 2003.

In his AlterNet article "Smart Mobs vs. Amway," Brad deGraf gives a thorough updating and elaboration of the "New Models of Politics" ideas posted here recently. He pulls together many of the ideas about emerging political/campaign models bandied about in this space (and others) in a concise, clear way. Recommended.

I stumbled today across Open Access News, which has been around since May of 2002. It's a group blog and headline site on the open access movement. We've written about the value of "open access" research before -- it underpins the Public Library of Science group, informs the Open Source Textbook movement, and is an engine for "The Scientific South." Since science progresses best when scientists have access to each other's work, OA argues that research papers should be made widely and freely available, via the Internet, to all interested researchers. As the current dominant model involves charging staggering sums to universities for scientific publications (as well as to individual scientists seeking documents), a shift towards open access science would also make it far easier for researchers (and universities and countries) with limited financial resources to participate in scientific discourse.

...because it won't be putting down roots any time soon. In what is widely considered a win for anti-GMO activists, Monsanto has decided not to push its new genetically-modified wheat strains. We applaud the decision, but would encourage Monsanto to look at this as an opportunity to do some real testing on the GM wheat, over an extended period. There may come a time that climate change requires that we modify our agricultural products to be able to survive, and good, long-term testing will go a long way towards making sure that we don't just take short-term solutions with long-term consequences.

Earth-Info-Net points us to www.EU-votewatch.org, a site assembled by Friends of the Earth, WWF, Birdlife, and Greenpeace in order to monitor and publicize the environment-related votes of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). The EU has authority over the vast majority of environmental regulations for member states, and sites like this are great ways of keeping tabs on those in power. As it happens, UK MEPs have the worst environmental voting record, while Danish MEPs came in first. Check it out!

A Polish-Egyptian archaeological team has uncovered ruins which appear to be the lecture halls of the Library of Alexandria. The 13 lecture halls, each with a central podium, could hold as many as 5,000 total students. The president of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities called it "perhaps the oldest university in the world."

Not exactly worldchanging, but still worth noting. the US government is taking Greenpeace, the organization, to court in Florida for "sailor mongering," in response to activists boarding a boat bringing illegally felld Amazon mahogany to Miami. Greenpeace says the prosecution is revenge for its criticism of Bush. Given that nobody has been charged with "sailor mongering" since 1890, and the decision to charge the group and not the individuals involved, is arguably an attack on political speech, this is a case well-worth watching closely.

You should check out today's posting on Slashdot of an interview with Egyptian Linux advocate, Alaa. It's a great introduction to the issues facing the uptake of Free/Open Source software in Egypt; many of the issues, especially the prevalence of pirated Microsoft software, can be found across the developing world. Warning: if you're not a regular Slashdot reader, I strongly suggest switching the "Threshold" settings for comments (found between the post content and the comment section) to 4 or 5.

Reuters reports that the World Bank has approved its largest-ever environmental grant to help Madagascar protect its unique ecosystem. "The grant of $49 million will be used to expand protected areas, establish conservation sites in forests and transfer forest management responsibilities to local communities. Conservationists say three-quarters of the estimated 200,000 plant and animal species found in Madagascar, exist nowhere else in the world."

Most vibrating adult toys come in two varieties: carbon-emitting and toxic-metal-waste-producing. That is, most either plug into the wall or run on batteries. But now you have a third option. Blowfish is now carrying a solar-recharging vibrator. 5-7 hours of sunlight leads to a full hour of full-power vibrating fun. (Picture at link entirely tame, but site as a whole is probably NSFW.) Okay, so this isn't our usual fare, but it's definitely good to know that the alternative-energy meme is spreading beyond cars & houses.

Tav writes to tell us that the next "WTF" (WTF's the Future?) will be taking place this Saturday, May 29, at 11am, at the 491 Gallery, Leytonstone, London. From the site: "WTF is an open space gathering/conference of the various grassroots projects, people and organisations working together to create the worlds we want. Including: social progressives, thinkers, doers, visionaries, hackers, activists, artists, musicians, academics, scientists, professors, engineers, philosophers, performers, anyone-who-is-doing-cool-projects. As an incentive to get up so early on a saturday morning, we'll be serving everyone who arrives early with a free, delicious meal. And, to top if off, after the conference, there'll be a party-till-dawn with 6 live bands in the main gallery and film screenings in the cinema next door!"

You UK WorldChangers should definitely check this out -- the last WTF was apparently quite cool, and this one sounds even better. And if you do go, please write and let us know what you learned!

JP Reardon points us to the ConEd "Green Power" page, giving NY area power consumers the option of buying electricity from New Wind Energy, a renewable energy company which provides 25% wind/75% hydro power. Like most on-the-grid green power initiatives, choosing this option actually means that ConEd gets a fraction more of its power from the renewables than from traditional generators, not that you get a special hookup directly from the wind farms. Walter Simpson, energy officer at SUNY Buffalo, gives more details here. (Thanks, JP!)

I really wish National Geographic put the full text of their articles on their website (even if limited to subscribers). Unfortunately, they only provide teaser excerpts. The cover story of the latest issue of NG is "The End of Cheap Oil," and it's well-worth seeking out and reading. You can get a taste of it here, along with some very cool maps -- including a PDF showing the existing oil supplies left in the world, by country.

Alex's interview with climate change scenarist Doug Randall got Slashdotted today, which means quite a few more visitors to this site. So far, we seem to be holding up. If you're new here, take a look around, poke through the archives, and let us know what you think!

I am not a religious person, and am not in the habit of looking at religious groups for innovative approaches to global problems. But Floresta is genuinely interesting: they focus on deforestation as both a manifestation and a symbol of global poverty, using microloans, training in sustainable agriculture, and the planting of trees as a way of helping out the poor in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico. While evangelism is part of their efforts, they emphasize on the site that participation in religious activities is not a prerequisite for their services. They've worked in nearly a hundred communities, made over 2,000 loans, and planted over two million trees. (Via Slacktivist)

We've talked about electronic voting and the need for the inherent transparency of open source to make e-voting trustable before, so it's good to see the notion get some mainstream play. The New York Times Magazine had a good article this last weekend making the case for the need for open source for electronic elections.

Talk Energy is a new discussion and news site focusing on alternative energy use for home and transportation. Based on slashcode, the discussion system used at Slashdot, Talk Energy mixes energy-related headlines, alternative power product reviews, classified ads, and a place for you innovative types to toss your ideas out for group evaluation. They're aiming for a million members, so check 'em out!

Enertia founder Michael Sykes wrote to us suggesting that we check out his company. Using sustainable design principles and green materials, Enertia promises homes which can save on power costs, will last far longer than most present-day houses, and do relatively little harm to the planet while they're around. At least according to the site's info, that is; have any of you built or lived in an Enertia home?

You want to test new techniques for cleaning up ocean oil spills, but don't want to dump oil into the water -- what do you do? If you're the Norweigian Clean Seas Association for Operating Companies, you use popcorn instead. It turns out that popcorn, once it absorbs water, forms an emulsion that mimics the behavior of oil in ocean currents... and any bits that don't get cleaned up in the test provide a tasty snack for wildlife.

(Via World Turning)

It's a bit gimmicky, sure, but the idea of adding a copy of the US Constitution to your iPod holds a certain appeal. The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy is making the Constitution available as an iPod "Notes" file (which, sadly, doesn't work with the ancient first generation iPods -- sorry, early adopters, like me) for easy portability and quick reference. One wishes that certain members of the current administration had a deeper familiarity with the text; perhaps this will help.

Even if Washington DC isn't interested in reducing greenhouse gases, California is. According to the Los Angeles Times (and republished by ClimateArk.org), "California plans to require automobile manufacturers to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in new cars by nearly 30% over the next decade as it implements the first regulation in the world to tackle tailpipe exhaust linked to global warming." The details will be outlined on Monday by the California Air Resources Board (CARB); historically, other states have followed California's lead on pollution controls, and even Canada is watching to see how well this works.

(Via Earth Blog)

Informal, a UK group which apparently focuses on wireless free networking, has a detailed and fascinating report on the growth and diversity of WiFi in the greater London area entitled "The State of Wireless London." It documents the growth of wireless networking, and compares networks built by "freenetwork" groups to those built by commercial providers. The snazzy maps and detailed documentation are both cool and impressive.

(Via SmartMobs)

That was quick -- LongNow has the audio recording of Bruce's speech last Friday up already. You can download it in MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC formats, but beware -- these are not small files (the MP3 is 66MB, for example).

(Thanks for the heads-up, Stefan!)

Update: Zander Rose, of Long Now, says in the comments:

We are getting slammed with downloads right now (morning of 6/16). We are working on finding a larger pipe to serve this out of now...

Speaking of web access to cool technology, the Fraunhaofer Institute in Germany has made a Quantum Computer Simulator available online, allowing you to test how various problems can be solved using a 27 qubit quantum computer. Do let us know if you do something cool with it...

Wired notes that the BBC will soon open its vast archives, starting with nature programming, to web consumers. Only in the UK, though; people coming in from foreign IP addresses will be blocked. The article is particularly interesting in its detailing of just what a "content owner" actually has to go through in the current world of intellectual property regulations to make something like this available for use.

Speaking of intellectual property, Canada is going through its own struggles with just how to balance the rights of IP users and the rights of IP owners (which, despite the common confusion, are *not* necessarily the IP creators). The report from the Canadian Parliament's so-called Bulte committee came down strongly on the side of owners. Toronto Star columnist Michael Geist has written a series of essays about copyright in Canada that are well worth reading, even if you're not a resident of the Great White North: Will Copyright Reform Chill Use Of Web? (May 31); and Copyright Reform Needs A Balanced Approach (June 14).

Energy company Royal Dutch Shell has had a rough year, what with overstating its oil reserves by 20% and being blamed for multiple deaths in Nigeria; it's not surprising, then, that the company's leadership is starting to take a long, hard look at the business they're in. Lord Ron Oxburgh, the recently-appointed British Chair of Shell, stated in an interview in The Guardian today that he's "really very worried" about human-induced global warming, and that "You can't slip a piece of paper between David King [the government's chief science adviser who said climate change was a bigger threat than terrorism] and me on this position." Shell (along with BP-Amoco) already invests far more money in alternative energy research than the American major oil company, Exxon-Mobil; we'll see if the new leadership is able to make a clean break with the past.