Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Thunder in the jungle
If you're in the bay area then you need to come throw down to some live afro-Brazilian-samba-funk dance music mixed in with some live Moroccan percussion. And there's the Halloween samba parade downtown courtesy of the 418 starting around 5pm. This is the one day in the year when this unassuming surf town rife with spiritual healers, enlightened yogis, professional surf bums, massage therapists, artists, musicians and your average joe comes together to RAGE. Plus who wants to miss Tika on stilts?
Monday, October 22, 2007
change in green job maket
Nearly every day, it seems, I get an email from a friend, friend of a friend, or complete stranger seeking job advice. Their situations vary, but the requests go something like this: "I'm a (recent college graduate/mid-career changer/returnee to the job market) with a background in (engineering/marketing/sales/business development) and am (interested in/passionate about) (sustainable business/clean technology). What advice can you offer to help me find a job?"
Truth is, as much as I'd like to find all of these folks all meaningful employment, I don't have much to tell them. I offer a few general and simplistic bits of advice. ("Don't go into environmental departments. In many companies, they're the last place to effect meaningful change. Rather, go into operations or design or finance, which afford better opportunities to be a change agent.") And I might direct them to GreenBiz JobLink, where we feature job listings. But that's about it.
As Anne Moore Odell reports this week, the options are growing. Monster, the online job giant, is focusing its considerable heft in helping green-job seekers find work. They're partnering with two nonprofit groups, including Environmental Defense. The activist organization, founded forty years ago under the motto, "Sue the bastards!" now seems to be changing its tune to something like, "Hire them faster!" - Joel Makower
Truth is, as much as I'd like to find all of these folks all meaningful employment, I don't have much to tell them. I offer a few general and simplistic bits of advice. ("Don't go into environmental departments. In many companies, they're the last place to effect meaningful change. Rather, go into operations or design or finance, which afford better opportunities to be a change agent.") And I might direct them to GreenBiz JobLink, where we feature job listings. But that's about it.
As Anne Moore Odell reports this week, the options are growing. Monster, the online job giant, is focusing its considerable heft in helping green-job seekers find work. They're partnering with two nonprofit groups, including Environmental Defense. The activist organization, founded forty years ago under the motto, "Sue the bastards!" now seems to be changing its tune to something like, "Hire them faster!" - Joel Makower
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Una Musica Brutal
"Home is wherever I happen to be. Not accidentally this short introduction comes from one of the great world cities, to the sound of electronic tango. Or as they say in Bangkok and Hong Kong, it comes from the "the other side of the world." For me it makes perfect sense being in the Paris of South America dreaming of Asia and selected cities of the heart (and work)- Kabul, Baghdad, Tehran, Peshawar."
"Robert Musil wrote that parallel universes could be as relevant as reality. Physicists go for a Multiverse that resembles boiling water (where, in Michiko Kaku's words, "the Judeo-Christian genesis takes place within the Buddhist nirvana, all the time"). In philosophical terms, the universe itself may even be a dream. I wonder what Jorge Luis Borges would make of all this. Against our world of nomad wars and Liquid War he would probably counterpunch with a dazzling play on cultures, History and signs. Could it be Kim Jong-il drinking an absinthe at the cafe La Puerto Rico? Could it George W. Bush browsing books on Islam at the venerable Libreria del Colegio? Could it be Osama bin Laden dancing a tango with one of his wives at the ultra-atmospheric Bar Sur?
If only Liquid War was no more harmful than a drink. So here's to you, dear read, a glass of fabulous Malbec. Cheers. Now let's his the road.
Buenos Aires
September 2006"
Pepe Escobar Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War
"Robert Musil wrote that parallel universes could be as relevant as reality. Physicists go for a Multiverse that resembles boiling water (where, in Michiko Kaku's words, "the Judeo-Christian genesis takes place within the Buddhist nirvana, all the time"). In philosophical terms, the universe itself may even be a dream. I wonder what Jorge Luis Borges would make of all this. Against our world of nomad wars and Liquid War he would probably counterpunch with a dazzling play on cultures, History and signs. Could it be Kim Jong-il drinking an absinthe at the cafe La Puerto Rico? Could it George W. Bush browsing books on Islam at the venerable Libreria del Colegio? Could it be Osama bin Laden dancing a tango with one of his wives at the ultra-atmospheric Bar Sur?
If only Liquid War was no more harmful than a drink. So here's to you, dear read, a glass of fabulous Malbec. Cheers. Now let's his the road.
Buenos Aires
September 2006"
Pepe Escobar Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War
Thursday, October 04, 2007
on economic and environmental modeling
"We can't know what future technological disruptions may look like. We do know that extension of smooth trend lines, such as in the Limits to Growth or Population Bomb treatments, is always wrong.
Moreover, differentiating between reoccurring and idiosyncratic phenomenon, the essence of generalization and thus modeling, depends on being able to differentiate between that which is stable, including those dynamics that are predictable and repetitive, and that which is unstable.
This becomes problematic, for economic or environmental modeling, when' human social and cultural systems, and their reflexivity and contingency, become important components of the system.
This time creep is also characteristic of environmental and climate change modeling: the general circulation models of climate change have some explanatory power regarding the physical processes behind climate change, and may be accurate so long as relatively stable technological, institutional and social bases can be assumed.
When such models are extended into social and cultural realms over periods of centuries, however, the basic assumption of institutional, technological, social and cultural stability becomes invalid. It is not that the models are "wrong," it is that they are being mistakenly applied beyond the boundary of their validity."
Brad Allenby on Francisco Louka's book "As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution"
Moreover, differentiating between reoccurring and idiosyncratic phenomenon, the essence of generalization and thus modeling, depends on being able to differentiate between that which is stable, including those dynamics that are predictable and repetitive, and that which is unstable.
This becomes problematic, for economic or environmental modeling, when' human social and cultural systems, and their reflexivity and contingency, become important components of the system.
This time creep is also characteristic of environmental and climate change modeling: the general circulation models of climate change have some explanatory power regarding the physical processes behind climate change, and may be accurate so long as relatively stable technological, institutional and social bases can be assumed.
When such models are extended into social and cultural realms over periods of centuries, however, the basic assumption of institutional, technological, social and cultural stability becomes invalid. It is not that the models are "wrong," it is that they are being mistakenly applied beyond the boundary of their validity."
Brad Allenby on Francisco Louka's book "As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution"
