Carpenter’s Symphony
26 minutes ago
Exponential Innovations Everywhere
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Joost Bonsen's Opinions on How Money, Ideas, and Talent can
Enable Health, Wealth, and Happyness for Each plus Achieve Liberty, Prosperity, and Vitality for All and Ultimately Help Us Spread Beyond Our Cradle Planet Earth
"Forty years of socialism -- this is what we're up against," said Abdallah Dardari, 46, a London-educated economist who serves as deputy prime minister for economic affairs. [President] Bashar has recruited Syria's best and brightest expatriates to return home. The new team has privatized the banking system, created duty-free industrial parks, and opened a Damascus stock exchange to encourage more of the private and foreign investment that has quickened the pulse of the capital and launched dozens of upscale nightclubs and restaurants. "My job is to deliver for the people of Syria," said Bashar, who is known for occasionally dropping by a restaurant, leaving the bodyguards outside, to share a meal with other diners. In his push to modernize, Bashar's most potent ally is his wife, the former Asma al-Akhras, a stylish, Western-educated business executive who has launched a number of government-sponsored programs for literacy and economic empowerment. Daughter of a prominent Syrian heart specialist, Asma was born and raised in London."The whole story is fascinating and timely -- especially since I've been keenly supporting the Innovate Syria initiative born here at MIT -- and because Syria is the lynchpin for enabling a peaceful and vital Levant.
"How much does the colour of our skin make us who we are, and shape the way the world sees us?"...and spotlighting a 50 year-old book by John Howard Griffin who...
"...embarked on one of the most remarkable one-man social and psychological experiments in history. Griffin was the white man who fooled hundreds of Americans into believing he was a black man as he travelled through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia -- and who felt at first hand the bigotry that meant. The whole business of racial impersonation might make us feel vaguely uncomfortable now, but in 1959 a black writer simply could not have found an audience for such a graphic portrayal of African-American grievance. Only a white writer prepared to take the extraordinary steps that Griffin took could tell the story. [...] He took a drug called Oxsoralen, which is to combat Vitiligo [...] and got under an ultra violet sunlamp."This procedure worked and allowed him to embark on a six week journey in the Deep South, including working various trades. Griffin published Black Like Me in 1961 describing the problems he encountered in finding food and facilities as well as the default hatred of many everyday white people towards him. Connolly concludes...
"It is worth reading what he wrote -- and then reflecting, in this age of the first African-American president, on how far we have come. And how far we have to go."
"Harlan Anderson just turned 80 this month. With Ken Olsen, he started Digital Equipment Corp., which was one of the pillars of the Route 128 era here in Massachusetts, and at one point was the second-biggest technology company in the world. Next month, his memoirs are out: Learn, Earn & Return: My Life as a Computer Pioneer. [...] Olsen and Anderson left MIT in 1957 to start a company that would design new computers that took advantage of the shift from vacuum tubes to transistors. [...] At its peak, DEC employed an incredible 140,000 people worldwide. Olsen was replaced as its leader in 1992, and in the late 1990s, many Digital businesses were sold off, culminating in the sale of the company to Compaq in 1998."The photo of the early DEC Board is pretty epic in that it reminds us of Jay W Forrester, MIT Sloan Professor Emeritus whose former students have gone on to found more high-impact ventures than any other Institute faculty member! Digital, MITRE, 3Com, Patni, Pugh-Roberts, Meditech -- this list continues. Jay even used his own System Dynamics methodology to model the growth of startup companies... and used it as a board member at Digital;-)
"...costs the United States about $120 billion a year in health costs, mostly because of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution. [...] "The largest portion of this is excess mortality -- increased human deaths as a result of criteria air pollutants emitted by power plants and vehicles," said Jared L. Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who led the study committee. Nearly 20,000 people die prematurely each year from such causes, according to the study’s authors, who valued each life at $6 million based on the dollar in 2000. Those pollutants include small soot particles, which cause lung damage; nitrogen oxides, which contribute to smog; and sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain."At the same time, for solid wastes...
"Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as "zero waste" is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations. The movement is simple in concept if not always in execution: Produce less waste. Shun polystyrene foam containers or any other packaging that is not biodegradable. Recycle or compost whatever you can. Though born of idealism, the zero-waste philosophy is now propelled by sobering realities, like the growing difficulty of securing permits for new landfills and an awareness that organic decay in landfills releases methane that helps warm the earth’s atmosphere."By accounting for true costs, and internalizing these historic externalities, economic rationality drives us to minimize these costs. This is a good thing!
"In 1941 the Smith-Putnam Wind Turbine fed AC power to the electric grid, the first wind machine ever to do so. The unprecedented project was built up from nothing, practically conjured, by Palmer Putnam, an MIT-trained geologist with no formal education or experience in wind power. He was a fascinating character, a clean-energy entrepreneur 70 years ahead of his time..."Interesting longer story, including an epic failure mode! Plus check out video of the original turbine in action and more info about the Smith-Putnam turbines!
"Density is green. Does this mean that we all have to live in Manhattan? Not necessarily. Cities such as Stockholm and Copenhagen are dense without being vertical. And closer to home is Montreal, where the predominant housing form is a three- or four-story walk-up. Walk-ups, which don’t require elevators, can create a sufficient density -- about 50 people per acre -- to support public transit, walkability, and other urban amenities. Increasing an area’s density requires changing zoning to allow smaller lots and compact buildings such as walk-ups and townhouses. In other words, being truly green means returning to the kinds of dense cities and garden suburbs Americans built in the first half of the 20th century. A tall order -- but after the binge of the last housing boom, many Americans might be ready to consider a little downsizing."