The Great Rivers Partnership: IBM and the Earth

It is going to take changes in consciousness, changes in legislation, changes in strategy, deeper scientific understanding, deeper communication of scientific understanding to business owners and managers, new production technologies, new philosophies AND MORE to prevent the ever growing negative footprint on the earth by industrial civilization.

But at least IBM is prepared to develop IT technologies that allow us to monitor and understand what is happening. You may find interesting The Great Rivers Partnership.

Column: Et Tu, George by Nicholas Kristof

New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has done amazing work bringing the situation in Darfur to the attention of the American public. He also has an elegant way of analyzing the failures of leadership of President George W. Bush.

I particularly like his January 23, 2007 column Et Tu, George?.

Column: China's Sunshine Boys by Thomas Friedman

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has argued in many of his pieces that we America must consider energy policy as critical to the future of our security, economy and environment.

I particularly liked his December 6, 2006 article China's Sunshine Boys.

Column: Who Will Succeed Al Gore? Our Crucible Moment by Thomas Friedman

A lot deservedly has been said about the Nobel Committee's decision to award the 2007 Peace Prize to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and to Al Gore. But I thought an interesting perspective on Mr. Gore and on American Politics is Thomas L. Friedman's October 14, 2007 column Who Will Succeed Al Gore?.
 

The War: Directed/Produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (Florentine Films, PBS-WETA)

Six years in the making, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's The War is a magnificent documentary of World War II, and its affects on the Americans who served in the military, and those who lived through it at home. Focusing primarily on about a score of families from 4 smaller cities of the United States, and including many hours of actual combat footage, this is an amazingly comprehensive view of the War. The coverage of the social environment just before and during and after the War is elegant. Very highly recommended.

Financial Costs of Iraq War could be $2 Trillion

While the deepest loses from the chaos in Iraq in which American troops participate are of course the deaths of Americans, non-combatant Iraqis, and other internationals, following by the severe life-altering injuries that Americans, non-combatant Iraqis and other internationals sustain, followed by the fact of how many Iraqis have been forced to flee the country or endure years of chaos... even the pure financial cost to the United States is already staggering. Based on recent work by well-regarded economists, using information from the Congressional Budget Office, the likely cost of this war is $2 Trillion. The amount of positive benefit this money could have provided to the people of the world, and to the non-military aspects of the struggle against terrorism, is almost beyond contemplation. (Low estimates are $1.2 Trillion BTW).

For an interesting summary, see this article from the May-June 2007 issue of Harvard Magazine: The $2-Trillion War.

Persistence of Myths - Recent Research Results

On September 4, 2007, the Washington Post ran an article entitled Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach by Shankar Vedantam. Very interesting reports of research on how many people's minds work in terms of associating "truth" with messages they have heard many times, even when many of those times were statements saying the statement itself was incorrect.

Film: No End In Sight (2007, Charles Ferguson, Representational Films/Magnolia, 102 min)

No End In Sight, directed by Charles Ferguson, reconstructs the period from 3 months before the US attacked Iraq through the period of the first Iraqi parliamentary elections using interviews with journalists, diplomats, military personnel, and intelligence officials. It argues that a series of willfully foolish decisions in Washington made civil war and insurgency in Iraqi extremely likely. Meanwhile, it explains the human, cultural and financial cost of this historic blunder. This is a film that you simply must see.

Film: The Ground Truth (Patricia Foulkrod, 2006, 80 min)

Patricia Foulkrod's film
The Ground Truth is a series of interviews with US veterans of the Iraq War. This is a truly unique and important film.

Film: SiCKO by Michael Moore (Dog Eat Dog/Lionsgate/Weinstein, 2007, 116min)

            


Michael Moore has blended several amazing tales in his new film about the American Healthcare System. One tale is about individual Americans who were covered by health insurance, but whose insurance companies, in an attempt to control costs, denied them coverage leading to human suffering.

Another tale is about how health care is delivered in 4 foreign countries, each of which developed its own version of universal no-cost or ultra-low-cost medical care, and each of which, while spending less than the US does, produces dramatically better health outcomes and seems to have much more satisfied health care providers.

A third tale is about Moore's hypothesis that making health coverage connected to employment is just one of several systematic tactics to keep citizens fearful, stressed, and passive.

Amazingly, using a wide-range of archival footage, interviews he did in 2004 through 2006, and a sense of irony and humor, this dense material, and often tragically sad material, comes across elegantly and enjoyably. In the end, Moore believes that foundational social values in a country end up determining how much the voices of citizens can influence how systems, like the health care system, are operated. A terrific and timely film.

View the trailer, or see the movie website.

April Fools Edition of News.com

Enjoy yourself at the April Fools Day Edition of News.com.

Film: First Lesson in Peace by Yoram Honig (2006, Hebrew-Arabic-English)

First Lesson in Peace is a 56-minute video letter from director Yoram Honig to his young daughter Michal, consisting of narrated video he took when she was 6-years-old and attending the School for Peace bi-national and bi-lingual elementary school at the Israeli village of
Neve Shalom/Wahat-al-Salaam. This is a real gem.

Film: Binta and The Great Idea by Javier Fesser

A delightful 30-minute film is Binta and The Great Idea by Spanish Filmmaker Javier Fesser. The film takes place in Senegal and is a real gem.

Film: West Bank Story by Ari Sandel

A very-well done 30 minute comedy musical film.

(Audio) Book: Holy Cow by Sarah Macdonald (Broadway Books 2004)

In her twenties, journalist Sarah Macdonald backpacked around India and came away with a lasting impression of heat, pollution and poverty. So when an airport beggar read her palm and told her she would return to India—and for love—she screamed, “Never!” and gave the country, and him, the finger.

But eleven years later, the prophecy comes true. When the love of Sarah’s life is posted to India, she quits her dream job to move to the most polluted city on earth, New Delhi. For Sarah this seems like the ultimate sacrifice for love, and it almost kills her, literally. Just settled, she falls dangerously ill with double pneumonia, an experience that compels her to face some serious questions about her own fragile mortality and inner spiritual void. “I must find peace in the only place possible in India,” she concludes. “Within.” Thus begins her journey of discovery through India in search of the meaning of life and death.

Holy Cow is Macdonald’s often hilarious chronicle of her adventures in a land of chaos and contradiction, of encounters with Hinduism, Islam and Jainism, Sufis, Sikhs, Parsis and Christians and a kaleidoscope of yogis, swamis and Bollywood stars. From spiritual retreats and crumbling nirvanas to war zones and New Delhi nightclubs, it is a journey that only a woman on a mission to save her soul, her love life—and her sanity—can survive.

See Holy Cow. I listened to the Audio reading of this book, which was excellently read by Kate Hosking.

A-to-Z Guide to Political Interference in Science (Union of Concerned Scientists)

I am one of the signatories to the Scientists' Statement on Scientific Integrity.

See the clever, elegant and thorough A to Z Guide to Political Interference with Scientific Advice which documents why this is needed.

Film: Eva and the Fire Horse (directed by Julia Kwan, 2005)

This is a delightful film about youth, the coming-of-age of children of immigrants, imagination, and family. Highly recommended.

Video: Frontline: Living Old (Miri Navasky, Karen O'Connor, Nov 21, 2006, 60 min)

Producers Miri Navasky and Karen O'Connor's touching and insightful documentary program for the PBS/WGBH Frontline series, Living Old, examines how the United States is coping with an increasing number of 85-year-old to 105-year-old seniors, who need assistance that in general, neither their children nor the medical community can provide.

Besides the interviews with the anging, their children, there are amazing interviews with numerous medical professionals.



This program is available for purchase on DVD. It can also be watched online, and you can learn more about the issues, at the program website.

Very highly recommended.

Book: American Theocracy (Kevin Phillips, Viking Adult, 2006, 480 pages)

This is an extended historical essay, very carefully researched, which explains how certain economic interests (especially big oil and financial services) are interacting with a Biblical worldview common among many Americans, and leading to all the symptoms which have led previous great powers to sharp declines after long periods of supremacy. Absolutely fascinating!

Film: Shut Up & Sing (Directed by Barbara Kopple & Cecilia Peck, Weinstein Company & Cabin Creek Films, 2006)

The filmmakers travel with the country music trio the Dixie Chicks for three years - from the peak of their popularity as the darlings of country music through the now infamous anti-Bush comment made by the group's lead singer Natalie Maines in 2003 and the political firestorm that resulted - raising questions about freedom of speech and the negative consequences it sometimes has.

As we see the resistance from country music radio stations in the US South to playing their music during the War in Iraq solidify, we see it begin to affect these artists and their manager; we also see them grow from just musicians into honest independent heart-felt citizens. Two of the Dixie Chicks are sisters who have been giving concerts since age 12; now in their mid-thirties, they decide they will not choose between self-censorship and their goal of Arena-scale musical tours.

Highly recommended.