FE Archive Volume 8, Number 11

Volume 8, Number 11
08/15/2005
Edited by John L. Petersen
johnp@arlingtoninstitute.org

In This Issue:

Events - "Surviving A Dollar Crash"- A November workshop November 13-16 in Colorado.
Punctuations - Radical Evolution
Future Facts - from Think Links
Think Links - The Future in the News…Today
A Final Quote

At The Arlington Institute, we believe that to understand the future, you need to have an open mind and cast a very wide net. To that end, FUTUREdition explores a cross-disciplinary palette of issues, from the frontiers of science and technology to major developments in mass media, geopolitics, the environment, and social perspectives.

"SURVIVING A DOLLAR CRASH"

Well-known money expert Bernard Lietaer is heading up a stellar line-up at a workshop sponsored by the Financial Planning Association (FPA) "Surviving A Dollar Crash" The November workshop is limited to a select group of 25 high level international financial planners.

Paul Volcker, the previous Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is putting the probability of "a dollar 'hard landing' at 75% within the next 5 years". Even in the US, a major dollar crash is now expected by many other monetary luminaries like Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Joseph Stiglitz, and Paul Krugman. Two major US magazines are publishing substantial articles in their current issues, referring precisely to this possibility. The Atlantic Monthly (July/August 2005) talks about "Countdown to a Meltdown: America's coming economic crisis". In Harper's Magazine (June 2005) you find a sobering discussion entitled "The Iceberg Cometh: Can a Nation of Spenders Be Saved?"

The "Surviving A Dollar Crash" workshop will provide pragmatic strategies to insure against the financial consequences of a dollar crisis. Up-to-date scenarios under which a dollar crash would occur, leading indicators that track changes in the probabilities of each scenario, inventories of the financial tools available to protect against such an event, and hands-on redesign of real-life portfolios, will all be covered.

This very special workshop will take place on November 13-16 in Gold Lake Resort and Spa, 60 minutes from Denver airport, Colorado.

Click on http://www.resilientfinance.com/ for all the details.

This is a unique opportunity to invest in the protection of wealth in the case of an unprecedented dollar crisis.

PUNCTUATIONS

John L. Petersen

Radical Evolution

The other day I had lunch with my friend Joel Garreau who writes for the Washington Post. I hadn't seen him in quite a while and I had a copy of his new book, Radical Evolution: the Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies - and What it Means To Be Human that needed to be autographed. Joel's always good for a provocative conversation so I had looked forward to it.

I had hardly reached for my just-delivered iced tea when he asked me about the significance of Belle, the telekinetic monkey at Duke University. When I hesitated in answering it become rather clear that I hadn't read his book yet. (As it turns out, I had heard about the monkey -- which I quickly tried to make clear.)

I returned to my office with my freshly signed book, and because it was the last one that I had handled it ended up on the top of my pile. Some of you reading this will remember an earlier piece I wrote here about how big my book reading pile is so you know the significance of a particular tome ending up in clear view throughout the day. The combination of Radical Evolution being clearly in sight, nudged by the small embarrassment at not having read the book before seeing the author encouraged me to take it home to read before falling asleep. What a wonderful decision that was.

Joel, as it says on the flyleaf, is a student of culture, values, and change. He is also a futurist at heart, always writing about big, fascinating issues that, one way or another, are fundamentally shaping the world that we all will live in. In the case of Radical Evolution he has done a profoundly important job of bringing the discipline of scenarios to a spectrum of potential futures derived from the trends underway in GRIN technologies, genetic, robotic, information, and nano processes,

Each of these technologies is describing an exponential growth trajectory, called a curve of accelerating returns, that guarantees -- absent some extraordinary wild card, of course -- that capabilities will multiply many times over in short periods like a decade. When you weave them all together it makes it hard to breathe. At least, in reading this book I have again had my breath taken away by the obvious magnitude and significance of any of the alternative worlds that lie on our horizon.

Joel builds three scenarios, Heaven, Hell, and Prevail, and every one gets your attention - big time - and I think about this stuff all the time and am aware of most of the pieces of the puzzle. It's just that the synergy of combining it all always brings me back to the fundamental tenet of The Arlington Institute: that we are living in particularly extraordinary times and some of us need to be thinking about how we get from here to there without killing most of us in the process.

You should know that unlike what typically emerges out of the Washington beltway, this is not some deadly report laden with trends and statistics that you must study to understand. Joel is a delightful writer who not only knows how to put words together interestingly, but also is a master at stringing ideas in such a way that you lean forward, wondering what cool thing is coming next. That's bothersome to some Washington-types who have criticized the book because it didn't require heavy lifting, not much fun and include every aspect of life.. Radical Evolution is not predictive or prescriptive and focuses on only technological trends, so there's more to the big story than this, but I can hardly wait to get to bed these nights to see what's next!

I recommend it: Radical Evolution

FUTURE FACTS - FROM THINK LINKS
DID YOU KNOW THAT...

The world's first cloned dog has been achieved by researchers in South Korea.
Oceanic plankton have largely disappeared from the waters off Northern California, Oregon and Washington, mystifying scientists, stressing fisheries and causing widespread seabird mortality.
Recent research could lead to synthetic sharkskin that would make ships and submarines faster and less expensive to operate.
Using random event generators, researchers attempting to measure the effect of human consciousness on machines have detected small but "statistically significant" signs that minds may be able to interact with machines.
Scientists say they have been able to monitor people's thoughts through brain scanning.

THINK LINKS – THE FUTURE IN THE NEWS...TODAY

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE

Futures Market
Trip to the Moon

Futures Market -- (Mirror.co.uk -- July 26, 2005)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/tm_objectid=15779660%26method=full%26siteid=94762-name_page.html
A Technology Timeline compiled by researchers at BT's futurology department has come up with a list of advances it says will change tomorrow's world. And they should know what they're talking about - in the past they've correctly predicted text messaging, email spam and internet search engines. According to BT's boffins, most of us will live to 100 while obesity and the dentist's drill will be distant memories.

Trip to the Moon -- (CNN -- August 10, 2005)
http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/10/news/funny/moontrip/index.htm?cnn=yes
Space Adventures, an Arlington, Va. based company, announced plans for two passengers to ride a Russian Soyuz rocket to the moon and back as early as 2008. The Soyuz would travel around the far side of the moon and then return to Earth without orbiting or landing, according to the firm's CEO, who said they have identified more than 1,000 people with both the financial resources and the interest to consider making the trip.

NEW REALITIES

Scientists Find Planet With Three Suns
Ancient Aryan Civilization Achieved Incredible Technological Progress
Explorers: Arctic Ocean Depths Teeming with Life
Gravity Doughnut Promises Time Machine
Eerie Sounds of Saturn's Radio Emissions
Mind May Affect Machines

Scientists Find Planet With Three Suns -- (Reuters -- July 14, 2005)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/07/14/planet.suns.reut/index.html
Astronomers have detected a planet outside our solar system with three suns, a finding that challenges astronomers' theories of planetary formation. The planet, a gas giant slightly larger than Jupiter, orbits the main star of a triple-star system known as HD 188753 in the constellation Cygnus. The stellar trio and its planet are about 149 light-years from Earth and about as close to each other as our sun is to Saturn.

Ancient Aryan Civilization Achieved Incredible Technological Progress -- (PRAVDA -- July 16, 2005)
http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/377/15814_Arkaim.html
Scientists discovered mysterious circles on the area of the ancient Russian town of Arkaim, which dates back with Egypt and Babylon. Historians, archaeologists and ufologists have spent many years trying to unravel the secrets of the town, which turned out to be a temple and an astronomic observatory upon further investigation.

Explorers: Arctic Ocean Depths Teeming with Life -- (Reuters -- August 1, 2005)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/08/01/arctic.sealife.reut/index.html
The remotest depths of the Arctic ocean are surprisingly full of life, including previously unknown species of jellyfish and worms. A team of scientists led by the University of Alaska used robot submarines and sonar to probe an isolated 12,470-foot (3,800-meter) basin off Canada's Arctic coast where they fear species could be at risk from global warming.

Gravity Doughnut Promises Time Machine -- (Nature -- July 13, 2005)
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050711/full/050711-4.html
One of the major difficulties of traveling backwards in time has just been solved, according to an Israeli theoretical physicist. And the solution, he says, is doughnut-shaped. Gravitational field lines circle around this doughnut, curving space and time back on themselves. One of the benefits of this theory is that it does not rely on hypothetical or exotic matter proposed in previous theories.

Eerie Sounds of Saturn's Radio Emissions -- (NASA -- July 25, 2005)
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia07966.html
Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which have been monitored by the Cassini spacecraft, which began detecting these radio emissions in April 2002, when it was 374 million kilometers (234 million miles) from the planet. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet similar to Earth's northern and southern lights. Listen to an audible rendering of these emissions from NASA.

Mind May Affect Machines -- (Wired -- July 19, 2005)
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68216,00.html?tw=rss.TOP
Researchers at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program, or Pear, have been attempting to measure the effect of human consciousness on machines since 1979. Using random event generators they have conducted experiments involving participants' focused intent on controlling the machines' output. Out of several million trials, they've detected small but "statistically significant" signs that minds may be able to interact with machines.

GENTICS/HEALTH TECHNOLOGY

A Tiny Camera Becomes A Pill
Strong Magnetic Fields Aid Severe Depression
Mutant Mice Helping Cure Diseases
World's First Canine Clone Revealed
Parasites' Genetic Code 'Cracked'
'Cheap' Genome Sequencing Now Possible

A Tiny Camera Becomes A Pill -- (WUSA -- July 5, 2005)
http://www.wusatv9.com/health/health_article.aspx?storyid=41017
Patients are now swallowing a special pill to help doctors get a better look at what's actually going on inside the body. It's called Pill Cam ESO and is about the size of a large vitamin. The camera takes approximately 14 pictures every second and the Pill Cam ESO lasts between 15 to 20 minutes, so about 25 or 26 hundred pictures are taken over the time period.

Strong Magnetic Fields Aid Severe Depression -- (Science Daily -- July 12, 2005)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/07/050712140901.htm
A less aggressive alternative to shock therapy for treating severe depression now seems to be provided by what is known as transcranial magnetic stimulation. The patient remains completely conscious throughout therapy, which is pain free and has not been shown to cause the memory impairment known to occur with shock therapy.

Mutant Mice Helping Cure Diseases -- (Associated Press -- August 10, 2005)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/08/10/lab.mice.ap/index.html
Since researchers published the mouse's entire genetic makeup in map form three years ago, increasingly exotic rodents are being created with relative ease. Millions of modified mice are now routinely created by injecting disease-causing genes or knocking out genes in mouse embryos. Their decreasing cost and increasing availability is helping researchers in pursuit of all manner of disease cures.

World's First Canine Clone Revealed -- (New Scientist -- August 3, 2005)
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7785
The world's first cloned dog has been revealed by researchers. South Korea's king of cloning , Woo Suk Hwang has successfully cloned an Afghan hound. The breakthrough is bound to lead to excitement among dog lovers who long to clone their dead pets, but Gerald Schatten at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, US, has stern words. We are not in the business of cloning pets, he says. We perform nuclear transfer for medical research.

Parasites' Genetic Code 'Cracked' -- (BBC -- July 15, 2005)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4681707.stm
International scientists say they have sequenced the genomes of three parasites responsible for diseases that kill more than 150,000 people a year. Their understanding should help with treatments for Chagas disease, African sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis caused by the three pathogens. It might even be possible to make vaccines, they told Science journal.

'Cheap' Genome Sequencing Now Possible -- (Reuters -- August 5, 2005)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/08/05/cheap.genome.reut/index.html
Researchers said they had found a faster and cheaper way to sequence your own personal genome that would cost only about $2.2 million. They hope eventually to reduce the cost further to $1,000 per genome -- the entire DNA code of a person, plant or other organism. Their new method bypasses traditional gel-based technology for analyzing DNA and instead uses color-coded beads, a microscope and a camera.

NANOTECHNOLOGY

'Smart' Bio-nanotubes Developed; May Help in Drug Delivery
DNA Nanoparticles Deliver Genes Intravenously

'Smart' Bio-nanotubes Developed; May Help in Drug Delivery -- (UC Santa Barbara -- August 2, 2005)
http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1325
Materials scientists working with biologists have developed "smart" bio-nanotubes with open or closed ends that could be developed for drug or gene delivery applications. The nanotubes are "smart" in the sense that they could be designed to deliver a drug or gene in a particular location in the body.

DNA Nanoparticles Deliver Genes Intravenously -- (National Cancer Institute -- August 1, 2005)
http://nano.cancer.gov/news_center/nanotech_news_2005-08-01b.asp
A research team has created a novel detergent molecule that may help in developing methods of repairing or compensating for faulty genes involved in causing cancer. The researchers concluded from their experiments that these neutral nanoparticles, when coupled to tumor-targeting molecules such as folic acid, could be useful in delivering anticancer genes to metastatic cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream.

GLOBAL EPIDEMIC

Humans Dying of Pig Disease a Concern
Flu Pandemic: Lethal Yet Preventable
INstant Expert: HIV and AIDS

Humans Dying of Pig Disease a Concern -- (Associated Press -- August 3, 2005)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/03/AR2005080301392.html
Experts on a strep germ that's sickening people and pigs in China are baffled by reports of 37 farmers suddenly falling ill, bleeding under the skin and dying. While not uncommon in pigs, Streptococcus suis is seldom seen in people and never in dozens of cases at once, a development that raises questions about whether the germ has mixed with some other bacteria or virus.

Flu Pandemic: Lethal Yet Preventable -- (New Scientist -- August 3, 2005)
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7787
If Asian bird flu mutates into a form that spreads easily between humans, an outbreak of just 40 infected people would be enough to cause a global pandemic. And within a year half of the world's population would be infected with a mortality rate of 50%, according to two studies released on Wednesday. And yet, the models show, if targeted action is taken within a critical three-week window, an outbreak could be limited to fewer than 100 individuals within two months.

INstant Expert: HIV and AIDS -- (New Scientist -- July 4, 2005)
http://www.newscientist.com/popuparticle.ns?id=in78
AIDS has now surpassed the Black Death on its course to become the worst pandemic in human history. At the end of 2004, 20 million people had been killed by it, and twice that number are currently infected with HIV. Barring a medical breakthrough, it could claim the lives of 60 million people by 2015. Read about AIDS fact, research, and predictions in one concise report.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

We Are the Web
Surfaces Have Built-in 'Fingerprints'
Japan Plans World's Fastest Computer
Search Concepts, Not Keywords, IBM Tells
'Thoughts Read' via Brain Scans

We Are the Web -- (Wired -- August 1, 2005)
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html
The Web, a planet-sized computer, is comparable in complexity to a human brain. Both the brain and the Web have hundreds of billions of neurons (or Web pages). That adds up to a trillion "synapses" between the static pages on the Web. The human brain has about 100 times that number - but brains are not doubling in size every few years. The Machine is.

Surfaces Have Built-in 'Fingerprints' -- (Physics Web -- July 27, 2005)
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/7/15/1
The surfaces of most paper documents, plastic cards and cardboard packages contain unique "fingerprints" that could be used to combat fraud, according to physicists in the UK. The fingerprint is contained in microscopic imperfections on the surface and can be read by a portable laser scanner. The results could eventually eliminate the need for expensive security measures like holograms, chips and special inks on passports, identity cards and pharmaceutical packaging.

Japan Plans World's Fastest Computer -- (Associated Press -- July 26, 2005)
http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=166402412
Japan wants to develop a supercomputer that can operate at 10 petaflops, or 10 quadrillion calculations per second, which is 73 times faster than the current top-ranked IBM's Blue Gene. Kyodo News reported that the total amount for the project is estimated between 80 billion and 100 billion yen ($714 million to $893 million) and the ministry will request 10 billion yen ($89 million) for the next fiscal year's budget.

Search Concepts, Not Keywords, IBM Tells -- (Computerworld -- August 8, 2005)
http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2005/0,4814,103763,00.html
IBM plans to give away key search technologies for corporate data retrieval that use concepts and facts instead of simpler keyword searches used by consumer Web companies such as Google Inc. While simple but powerful keyword searches have revolutionized how Internet users locate and retrieve information, IBM is looking to transform how office workers sift through the piles of data stored inside organizations.

'Thoughts Read' via Brain Scans -- (BBC -- August 7, 2005)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4715327.stm
Scientists say they have been able to monitor people's thoughts via scans of their brains. Teams at University College London and University of California in LA could tell what images people were looking at or what sounds they were listening to. The US team says their study proves brain scans do relate to brain cell electrical activity. The UK team say such research might help paralyzed people communicate, using a "thought-reading" computer.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Siberia's Rapid Thaw Causes Alarm
Scientists Sound Alarm on Arctic Ice Cap
Scientists Use Plastic to Make Steel
Sea Life in Peril -- Plankton Vanishing
How Earth-scale Engineering Can Save the Planet
'Strange Things' Along Pacific Coast Waters
Super Climate Simulation Models Oceans, Ice, Land and Atmosphere

Siberia's Rapid Thaw Causes Alarm -- (BBC -- August 11, 2005)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4141348.stm
The huge expanse of western Siberia is thawing for the first time since its formation, 11,000 years ago. The area, which is the size of France and Germany combined, could release billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This could potentially act as a tipping point, causing global warming to snowball, scientists fear.

Scientists Sound Alarm on Arctic Ice Cap -- (CBC News -- July 29, 2005)
http://north.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=arctic-ice-29072005
Satellite data for the month of June show Arctic sea ice has shrunk to a record low, raising concerns about climate change, coastal erosion, and changes to wildlife patterns. The National Snow and Ice Data Center in the United States uses remote sensing imagery to survey ice cover at both poles. The center says 2002 was a record low year for sea ice cover in the Arctic, since satellite observations began in 1979. There's evidence that may have been the lowest coverage in a century. Now scientists fear this year could be worse

Scientists Use Plastic to Make Steel -- (Reuters -- August 10, 2005)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/08/10/plastic.steel.reut/index.html
Australian scientists have developed a technique to use waste plastic in steel making, a process that could have implications for recycling scrap metal that accounts for 40 percent of steel production. Under the process, waste plastics are fed into electric steel-making furnaces as an alternative source of carbon and heated to super-hot temperatures of 1,600 degrees Celsius (2,912 Fahrenheit).

Sea Life in Peril -- Plankton Vanishing -- (San Francisco Chronicle -- July 12, 2005)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/12/MNG8SDMMR01.DTL
Oceanic plankton have largely disappeared from the waters off Northern California, Oregon and Washington, mystifying scientists, stressing fisheries and causing widespread seabird mortality. The phenomenon could have long-term implications if it continues: a general decline in near-shore oceanic life, with far fewer fish, birds and marine mammals. No one is certain how long the condition will last. But even a short duration could severely affect seabird populations because of drastically reduced nesting success, scientists say.

How Earth-scale Engineering Can Save the Planet -- (Popular Science -- August 1, 2005)
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviation/article/0,20967,1075786,00.html
As scientists stretch to find a solution to global warming, an array of innovative and imaginative ideas have emerged that constitute tinkering on a global scale. We already are inadvertently changing the climate, so why not advertently try to counterbalance it? asks a community of forward thinking scientists and designers. Here are some of the proposals.

'Strange Things' Along Pacific Coast Waters -- (Associated Press -- August 2, 2005)
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8796487/
Marine biologists are seeing mysterious and disturbing things along the Pacific Coast this year: higher water temperatures, plummeting catches of fish, lots of dead birds on the beaches, and perhaps most worrisome, very little plankton - the tiny organisms that are a vital link in the ocean food chain. "The bottom has fallen out of the coastal food chain, and there's just not enough food out there," said Julia Parrish, a seabird ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Super Climate Simulation Models Oceans, Ice, Land and Atmosphere -- (Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- July 28, 2005)
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/climate-software.html
Researchers have created four new supercomputer simulations that for the first time combine mathematical computer models of the atmosphere, ocean, land surface and sea ice. These simulations are the first field tests of the new Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF), an innovative software system that promises to improve predictive capability in diverse areas such as short-term weather forecasts and century-long climate-change projections.

TERRORISM AND THE FUTURE OF WARFARE

The Iraq Infection
Fake Shark Skin Could Make Navy Fleet Faster
In the Datasphere, No Word Goes Unheard

The Iraq Infection -- (Forbes -- August 2, 2005)
http://www.forbes.com/home/sciencesandmedicine/2005/08/02/iraq-war-infection-bacteria-cx_mh_0802iraqinfect.html
Military doctors are fighting to contain an outbreak of a potentially deadly drug-resistant bacteria that apparently originated in the Iraqi soil. So far at least 280 people, mostly soldiers returning from the battlefield, have been infected, a number of whom contracted the illness while in U.S. military hospitals.

Fake Shark Skin Could Make Navy Fleet Faster -- (Live Science -- July 15, 2005)
http://www.livescience.com/technology/050715_shark_skin.html
Recent research could lead to synthetic shark skin that would make ships and submarines faster and less expensive to operate. If the research pans out, submarines -- already stealthy and shark-like -- could become even more so. The problem now includes the growth of barnacles, mussels, algae and other organisms adding to fuel costs for the military and shipping industry, and increasing drag by up to 15 percent, scientists say.

In the Datasphere, No Word Goes Unheard -- (Business Week -- August 8, 2005)
http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/05_32/b3946007_mz001.htm?chan=gl
Since September 11 more than 3,000 al Qaeda operatives have been nabbed, and some 100 terrorist attacks have been blocked worldwide, according to the FBI. Details on how all this was pulled off are hush-hush. But no doubt two keys were electronic snooping -- using the secret Echelon network -- and computer data mining. Now, these technologies are getting tune-ups -- but nagging privacy concerns won't be put to rest easily.

AUGMENTED INTELLIGENCE

Action Robot to Copy Human Brain

Action Robot to Copy Human Brain -- (BBC -- April 29, 2005)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/mid_/4495257.stm
Aberystwyth University academics are working on the machine which they hope will recognize objects and retrieve them using an arm and cameras for eyes. However, it is unclear at present what it could be used for ultimately. Scientists said they aimed to "unravel" how a part of the brain worked and would then use that information to develop the machine.

ENERGY REVOLUTION

Saving the World with Sunbeams
Grad Student Believes Wood May Replace Oil
Solar Project Could Advance 'Green' Fuel

Saving the World with Sunbeams -- (Wired -- August 7, 2005)
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68460,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_8
A U.S. chemist is trying to determine how the world will produce enough energy to supply 9 billion people by mid-century -- and whether that can be done without pumping off-the-charts amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. The plan involves using the bountiful energy in sunlight to split water into its basic components, hydrogen and oxygen. The elements could then be used to supply clean-running fuel cells or new kinds of machinery, or the energy created from the reaction itself might be harnessed and stored.

Grad Student Believes Wood May Replace Oil -- (Associated Press -- August 3, 2005)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050804/ap_on_sc/wood_crude_oil
Graduate student, Juan Andres Soria, says he has developed a process that turns wood into bio-oil, a substance similar to crude oil. The process in which sawdust and methanol are heated to 900 degrees Fahrenheit to create the bio-oil is already drawing some interest from energy and wood product companies.

Solar Project Could Advance 'Green' Fuel -- (The Jerusalem Post -- August 5, 2005)
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1123121935674
The production of nonpolluting hydrogen fuel could be facilitated by innovative solar technology successfully tested on a large scale at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. Scientists say it also promises to expedite the storage and transportation of hydrogen.

DEMOGRAPHICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Technologies to Aid the Poor
Nora Pouillon started what became the first certified organic restaurant in the U.S.

Technologies to Aid the Poor -- (BBC -- July 13, 2005)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4679015.stm
The best way to help developing nations is to recognize that development is "of the people, by the people and for the people", says a Bangladeshi entrepreneur. "The only way we can depend on each other is if we connect with each other. Connectivity leads to dependability which leads to specialization and then productivity," he said. What was key about a technology as simple as the mobile in a rural village was that people's voices, not just those in authority, were heard. His current project is about developing village-based micro-power plants, fuelled by cow manure.

Nora Pouillon started what became the first certified organic restaurant in the U.S.
http://www.noras.com
Here in Washington twenty-six years ago Nora Pouillon started what became the first certified organic restaurant in the U.S.. Having eaten there on a number of occasions, I can tell you that it is particularly tasty as well as good food. Nora has thought a lot about food and farms and nutrition and is a very persuasive advocate for organic food. In the spring I heard her give a talk that was full of attention-getting facts and statistics about what we put in our mouths and where it comes from. You can find it here. Take a special look at the bullets on the second page.

A FINAL QUOTE...

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. --- Richard Feynman

A special thanks to Bernard Calil, Humera Khan, Deanna Korda, KurzweilAI, Sher Patterson-Black, Diane Petersen, John C. Petersen, the Schwartzreport, Joel Snell, and Thomas Valone, our contributors to this issue. If you see something we should know about, do send it along - thanks. johnp@arlingtoninstitute.org
johnp@arlingtoninstitute.org

Brief About:

Events - "Surviving A Dollar Crash"- A November workshop November 13-16 in Colorado.
Punctuations - Radical Evolution

Publication Date:

08/15/2005

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