Published by
Taylor on
April 7, 2008 in
Advertising, Business, Cooking, Design, Energy, Environment, Health, Monday Links, Philanthropy, Sociology and Sustainability.
Sorry for the delay in posting these links, folks. I’ve been traveling, and I’m just now getting back to bloggin’. Unlike some people, I’m determined to make it through the 826 unread items in my Google Reader. How about a few links?
Although common tracking systems, known as cookies, have counted a consumer’s visits to a network of sites, the new monitoring, known as “deep-packet inspection,” enables a far wider view — every Web page visited, every e-mail sent and every search entered. Every bit of data is divided into packets — like electronic envelopes — that the system can access and analyze for content
- This Nick Kristof column on racial and gender bias provides links to a number of interesting online psychological tests.
The initiative is modeled after the grand challenges formulated more than 100 years ago by mathematician David Hilbert. His list of important unsolved problems has encouraged innovation in mathematics research ever since. Similarly, the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative aims to engage creative minds from across scientific disciplines — including those who have not traditionally taken part in global health research — to work on 14 major challenges.
- Smitten Kitchen is my new favorite food/cooking blog. This lemon blueberry yogurt cake looks amazing (due in no small part to their expert photography…and baking).
- If you’re looking to spice up an office memo, or maybe a senior thesis, try the beard font.
That should be enough for now. Sorry to fill the links with so much random stuff, but expect more *ahem* serious blogging to follow this week.
I can’t call this a “money quote,” but it might qualify as a “mind-numbing quote.” Via NPR:
The average Atlanta resident with a job drives 66 miles every day. In fact, people here drive so much that if you added up every commute and every trip to a store or soccer practice on just one day, you’d get a number that’s larger than the distance between the Earth and the sun
Still with me? Does this not strike everyone as profoundly disturbing and yet–if you’ve ever driven through metro Atlanta–possibly a conservative estimate? Morning Edition featured a two-part series this week called “Life in the ‘Burbs,” detailing the environmental costs of American dreams involving jobs in high-rises miles away from bucolic suburban homesteads (these people work for NPR, so don’t assume for a second that they didn’t consider how many folks listen to the show during their morning commute).
Continue reading ‘Suburban Life In Perspective’
Another weekend yields to Monday. Yikes. Jarred and I have been a little distracted and preoccupied with our alma mater‘s storybook run to the Elite 8 of the NCAA tournament. While heartbreaking, a close loss to Kansas tonight means we’ll both be spending less time reading articles about how great the Wildcats are and spending more time on Tropophilia. That is, as soon as Jarred returns from Detroit. In any case, let’s start the week (as usual) with a few links:
“Algae is the best plant out there for converting sunlight to energy. It’s 100x better at creating usable energy per acre than corn [...] new and old companies are trying different strains of algae and different ways of growing them [as well as] using them to clean the flue gas coming out of power plants.”
- My dad was a hobby beekeeper for a number of years when I was a kid, and I’ve always remembered our bee colonies (and beeswax candles) fondly. As you may have read, commercial bee colonies all across the country are experiencing mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) resulting in as high as 70% die-off rates. Beyond Philanthropy identified CCD as an emerging opportunity for philanthropic dollars to make an impact, due to the importance of bees on American agriculture. Now Beyond Philanthropy highlights similar trouble among bat populations. Since bats play a crucial role in insect control–particularly disease-carrying mosquitoes–we should find the loss of 90% of colonies in the North East US to be cause for concern and philanthropic initiative.
- This may only be of interest to fellow North Carolinians, but BlueNC will be hosting a first-of-its-kind (in this state) online gubernatorial debate with the Democratic candidates. Regardless of your political persuasion, it’s good to see candidates engaging in good faith with online communities. Topics for this evening’s debate will include “Technology and its role in transforming government, including transparency and privacy issues,” as well as “The environmental economy, including water policy, energy policy and climate change.”
- Stunning (though not altogether surprising) news that China plans to build 97 new airports by 2020.
- For those of you who are now a year or more out of undergrad and are starting to realize just how poorly you fare in the kitchen, here’s a great site with lots of how-to videos to help you Start Cooking.
Thanks and check back this week for new material. And please keep those guest posts coming! We had a great submission from Christy last week, and we welcome your thoughts on change. Happy day of honesty before April Fools strikes tomorrow.
When the subject of energy comes up, I’ve heard a number of intelligent people defend nuclear power as a favorable alternative to coal-fired plants. In recent years, a smattering of environmentalists have even joined the pro-nuclear camp. Nuclear proponents argue that atomic energy produces zero emissions, gained an unfair bad reputation on safety thanks to disasters like Chernobyl, and is a no-brainer solution to energy needs in the face of climate change. A recent Los Angeles Times Editorial speaks to all of the “pros” in the pro-nuclear movement:
Safety:
“Nuclear waste remains highly toxic not for a few years but for millenniums; if the ancient Egyptians who built the Great Pyramid had also built nuclear plants, the waste would still be deadly. This material is being stored on-site at nuclear plants [...] As these plants age, the chance of a system failure increases.”
Continue reading ‘Going Nuclear?’
Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric, spoke at a conference I attended recently (though the conference was weeks ago, I’ve slowly written about it as I’ve digested the information). You can listen to the full audio of his remarks here. I’d like to–unfairly–use Immelt’s address as a starting point for a broader criticism of some in the corporate sector. I say unfairly, because in many ways Immelt said all of the right things; for instance:
- he argued that a cap-and-trade system is desperately needed in the US to curb carbon emissions
- he emphasized GE’s progress toward energy efficiency–both in their products and in their production processes
- he repeatedly underscored the importance of innovation, investing in R&D, and the power of larger companies like GE to try new clean tech ideas; as he said, “I don’t have to pick which technologies are going to work . . . I get to invest in all of them”
But he also voiced an argument for all things green that I find troublesome:
“being another company in the corporate social responsibility [movement around] the environment had no essential interest to me fundamentally, or to the people inside our company, or to our investors . . . what we set out to say is that green is green.”
Continue reading ‘“Green is Green:” Good Enough?’
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