Instilling capability is criticalfor the health of nations

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One very practical employment of progressive thinking is to support progressive tendencies among very influential conservatives and otherwise try to influence the thinking of those who seem open minded (as well as working for open-mindedness among those who aren't). So, I frequently respond to David Brooks' columns, a very likeable guy (who early on, at his move to The New York Times, honored me with on-camera response to a query about his thinking [which is no longer available to link to]—but that's not why I respond to him).

What follows is my response to his fascinating (as newspapering goes) column today, "Of Love and Money," (now with an added link—and a follow-up to that at the end here, re: my longstanding interest in the work of Annette Laueau’s Unequal Childhoods, which I pursued at some length a couple of months later):

poverty reduction & environmental healthneed each other

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Jeffrey D. Sachs and Walter V. Reid, in a short Science "Policy Forum" article, "Investments Toward Sustainable Development," write:

"Sustainable development, meaning economic growth that is environmentally sound, is a practical necessity. Environmental goals cannot be achieved without development. Poor people will circumvent environmental restrictions in their desperation for land, food, and sustenance. Nor can development goals be achieved and sustained without sound environmental management. Environmental catastrophes will undermine economic life, whether in New Orleans or Nigeria. Therefore, investing in poverty reduction is crucial for environmental policy, while investing in the environment is vital for successful poverty reduction [See figure in the 1-page article]. Yet the world underinvests in both, and rich-country and poor-country governments overlook the policy links between poverty reduction and the environment...."

Science, May 19, 2006 (312:5776, p.1002) 

J. D. Sachs is director of the U.N. Millennium Project and director of the Earth Institute, Columbia University. W. V. Reid was director of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and is with the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University.

unbearable lightness of being there

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vanity fair of self-validating media, episode #491480056

The May 16 BBC interview of Guy Goma—computer tech job applicant from Congo, mistaken for guest expert on the recent Apple, Inc/Apple Corp antitrust case...

...—gets a proper profundity from John Tierney in today's New York Times, making the event allegorical of normal political spinning. (Begin reading at his 5th paragraph: "Hearing his introduction....")

dark energy (or: a vista of primate living)

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The state of nature has hardly ended. We primates, once standing to look across a savannah, have now sometimes become "petroauthoritarian" regimes (Tom Friedman's coinage for Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and others) looking around the planet for primative (sic) petrocorporate clients (e.g., Chad to the U.S., Sudan to China), as the global species sucks the fermented legacy of planetary eons until it learns to fuel its technoeconomies otherwise via, e.g., limitless hydrogen (breeder reactors, fuel cells) and solar power.

Integrating news for a singular world

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The notion of leading news continues to seem tenable. The fact that "more news media outlets are covering less news" relates to several kinds of developments: media market specialization relative to a proliferation of media, daily editorial equilibration (through wire mirrorplays) toward what the leading news is (tendencies toward consensus within the profession), and also regretable trends in the news business.

Ask not what humankind can do for you....

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Dr. Wafa Sultan, Syrian-born psychiatrist living in L.A. created a rage this week on Al Jazeera television with her critique of Muslim violence. She tells the New York Times today:

"The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

love those humans

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Mid-1990s, I was a charter member of Howard Rheingold's pioneering child of The Well, "Electric Minds," which bellied up, but some of its members carried on via a less costly software incarnation that survived [until late 2008], with me as a rarely active member. But I started the interesting topic "Becoming Post-Human," and last October cited an odd article from The New York Times called “Beyond Human,” to which "Starling" replied a few days later, and today, five months later, I wrote (including the separator bar and everything following it):