Music

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music. ~Ronald Reagan

Poverty & Unemployment in Afghanistan

A poll was taken in Afghanistan by Oxfam asking Afghans the cause of the conflict in their country. Here are the results:

I went to a talk a few days ago by Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute who said that the strongest risk factor for a failed state is the rate of unemployment, especially among young men. Check out his new book: Plan B 4.0, which you can even download for free.

Fun with Leaves

On a lighter note, check out these fantastic pics on NYTimes.com.

The rise and fall of the US vis a vis China

Check out the relative proportions of world GDP for China and the US over time, especially the first one from 1820. I had no idea. [ft.com]

The rest of the article fleshes out the implications:

As US president Barack Obama begins a tour of Asian capitals, the standard assumption in the west is that his meetings will be with leaders of nations that rank as America’s junior partners. Yet the reality is more complex. Amid the rubble of the financial crisis, the US position as singular superpower and global economic top dog looks increasingly under threat.

Those who take pleasure in America’s discomfort point out that this global economic colossus has become shackled to the world’s largest pile of international debt and pulled down by a sinking currency. By common consent China is the chief beneficiary of the financial debacle and a serious challenger to US hegemony.In particular, when he reaches Beijing next week, nothing will be able to disguise the fact that Mr Obama is paying a visit to his country’s biggest creditor.

Since economic might so often goes hand in hand with military strength, this shift in economic power, along with the recent weakness of the dollar, has been heralded as a harbinger of US national decline.

How we live

Check out this very interesting photo essay on ForeignPolicy.com:

In 2008, the number of people living in cities for the first time exceeded those in rural areas worldwide, a historic turning point. One-third of urban dwellers, approximately 1 billion people, live in slums. The United Nations predicts that number will double in the next 25 years....

"No matter what economic condition people are living in, not only do we need to create shelter over our head, but to create a home."

Why won't Obama go?

Perhaps Obama is wavering on going to Copenhagen for the climate talks so that he doesn't further alienate the Republicans he wants support from on the Health Care issue. Thoughts?

For the past two years, 192 countries have participated in talks on the pressing issue of climate change, which will culminate in the Copenhagen summit next month. So far, more than 40 heads of state have agreed to attend, to act as negotiators and more importantly to demonstrate a firm commitment to ambitious targets. The growing list includes Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

But the RSVPs seem lost in the mail for the leaders of the countries considered to be the lynchpins of the deal -- China, the United States, and India. Hu Jintao, Barack Obama, and Manmohan Singh haven't committed yet -- and they should. This summer, Obama indicated he would not attend because Congress has not yet passed climate change legislation. He's since waffled a bit, saying he would if his appearance would close the deal. It's weak tea, and those calling for him to attend include Al Gore and Brazil's da Silva, who used his weekly radio address to implore Obama and Hu to make the trip.

It is less likely that Hu or Singh will attend. Their developing countries have been good negotiators, but reticent to commit to ambitious targets. (China recently called for keeping the Kyoto protocol instead.) If Obama commits, though, they would be a lot more willing -- and that should be reason for the U.S. leader to consider heading across the pond.

In other climate news, the International Energy Agency released its full World Energy Outlook yesterday. One choice doomsday passage:

For every year that passes, the window for action on emissions over a given period becomes narrower -- and the costs of transforming the energy sector increase. We calculate that each year of delay before moving onto the emissions path consistent with a 2°C temperature increase would add approximately $500 billion to the global incremental investment cost...A delay of just a few years would probably render that goal completely out of reach.

Deforestation slowing in Brazil

The number of acres cut in the Amazon this year are the lowest since the government started tracking it in 1988. If you want to take a cynical view, though, it is for the same reason the US has had a major reduction in green house gas emissions in the past year: macro-economic forces. This news is also a bit like unemployment in the US: it's getting worse more slowly.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped nearly 46 percent from August 2008 to July 2009 — the biggest annual decline in two decades, the government said Thursday.

Analysis of satellite imagery by the National Institute for Space Research shows an estimated 7,008 square kilometers (2,705 square miles) of forest were cleared during the 12-month period, the lowest rate since the government started monitoring deforestation in 1988.

"The new deforestation data represents an extraordinary and significant reduction for Brazil," President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvasaid in a statement.

The numbers have been falling since 2004, when they reached a peak of 27,000 square kilometers (10,425 square miles) cleared in one year, according to the space research institute.

The government credited its aggressive monitoring and enforcement measures for the drop, as well as its promotion of sustainable activities in the Amazon region, an area in northern Brazil the size of the U.S. west of the Mississippi River.

But Paulo Gustavo, environmental policy director of Conservation International, said a major factor is the drop in world prices for beef, soy and other products that drive people to clear land for agriculture in the rainforest.

"The police control has improved a little, there has been success in controlling deforestation," Gustavo said. "But the main factor is the drop in commodity prices, which are the main factor in speeding up or slowing deforestation." [news.yahoo.com]

Just what the world needs...

Venezuela and Russia say they are working on a series of agreements for Moscow to provide the South American country with technology for the development of industries ranging from robotics to biochemistry.

Venezuela's science and technology minister, Jesse Chacon, says the agreements will likely be signed next year.

Russian authorities have presented more than 5,000 technological projects for Venezuela's consideration.

Chacon says the transfer of nuclear technology is not among the projects that were presented at a forum in Venezuela's capital Monday — even through Russia plans to help Venezuela develop nuclear energy to produce electricity. [news.yahoo.com]

Fort Hood

“When a white guy shoots up a post office, they call that going postal,” said Victor Benjamin II, 30, a former member of the Army. “But when a Muslim does it, they call it jihad." [NYTimes.com]

Non-proliferation, Rogue States aren't the Problem

But there's just one problem: The United States is looking for nukes in all the wrong places. Nuclear terrorism won't come from countries; it will come from vast networks of operatives with only tenuous links to states. Nor are terrorists likely to get their nuclear material from rogue regimes. Far more probable is that they will steal it or obtain it through the growing global black market. If this is to be prevented, the United States and its allies will have to give their counterproliferation mindset a sweeping overhaul.

Today's terrorist threats are far less tangible than the traditional, state-centric security ones embodied by such countries as Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel. Rather than diplomatic channels, terrorist networks use advanced information technology to advance their ideology, goals, and missions. They are bound by none of the norms and restraints of states. [ForeginPolicy.com]

Is Ahmadinejad Jewish?

Whether the rumors are true or not, they will impact Ahmadinejad's stance on the Middle East. FP.com suggests he'll have to remain hardline or become even more anti-Israel in order to demonstrate that his family background is as he says it is.

But in the end, the rumor is almost as powerful as the truth when it comes to shaping Ahmadinejad's actions at home and abroad. None of the accounts suggest he had any active participation in the choices allegedly made by his parents while he was still a child. Yet even suggestions of not having been Shiite for many generations -- despite his mother's family claiming descent from Islam's prophet Muhammad -- undercuts Ahmadinejad's legitimacy in the eyes of many conservative Iranians.

Ultimately, on the domestic front in Iran, the whole issue plays into the widening chasm between the mullahs and Ahmadinejad, some of whom have challenged his family's Muslim lineage and piety for years. His oft-questioned background also may explain why he and the many relatives he appointed to high office are working hard to create a secular yet still autocratic state, moving away from the theocratic oversight of politics.

On the international front, the problem of Ahmadinejad's past produces other complications. As his heritage becomes a more public question, it only makes it less likely that he can find accommodation with Israel without compromising himself in Muslim eyes. To protect and further his political career, Ahmadinejad will only be more compelled to reaffirm his Shiite identity by presenting himself as the champion of Muslim and Palestinian rights over Jewish and Israeli ones.

Consequently, Ahmadinejad's Jewish background, if it does exist, will only make peace in the Middle East and compromise with the United States less likely on his part. And in endeavoring to deflect and vitiate complications -- actual or imaginary -- from his past, the Iranian president continues to sully his nation's image and tarnish his own legacy.

Yes, we currently subsidize fossil fuels!

This seems like a no-brainer. How did this not happen sooner?

Group of 20 leaders are close to an agreement on phasing out subsidies for fossil fuels in an effort to curb global warming, though no fixed dates have been set, reports Reuters.

Several G20 countries subsidize fuel such as coal and oil, at a cost of about $300 billion, to keep prices artificially low for consumers, which boosts both demand for hydrocarbons and emissions, reports Reuters.

Obama aide Michael Froman told Reuters that phasing out fossil fuel subsidies worldwide could cut greenhouse gases by up to 12 percent by 2050, citing estimates by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Energy Agency. He said United States would agree to the cuts as well.

Ever wonder what Swedes do during those long winters?

STOCKHOLM – “I saw a wonderful statue earlier. I always knew it was there, but today I measured it and soon we’ll knit a sweater for it. We’ll meet up on site to stitch it and take a picture for our blog.”

Maskan (“the stitch”), one of three code-named female founders of the Stockholm “guerrilla knitting” group, Stickkontakt, is telling me about their upcoming knitting graffiti action. Inspired by the Houston group, Knitta Please, Stickkontakt decorate everything from lampposts and bins to park benches and tree trunks with colorful yarns. “We often have political messages,” Maskan tells me. “But sometimes we don’t. Once, we decided to celebrate Sweden’s few female statues by dressing up four of them as super heroines.”

There is a zero tolerance policy for graffiti in Stockholm; any unauthorized street art must be removed within 24 hours. But that hasn’t dissuaded guerrilla knitters.

“We’re hoping that our actions – which can hardly be called vandalism – will serve as a kind of gateway to making people more open to street art in general,” says Maria, cofounder of another knitting graffiti group called Masquerade.

Maria and her friend Lina, the other cofounder of Masquerade, see knitting graffiti as fun, harmless, quirky, and soft, with the potential for a global impact. In fact, they recently returned from a trip where they used knitting graffiti to “tag” along the Trans-Siberian railway in Russia, Mongolia, and China. [csmonitor.com]

Crowd-sourcing

You know that I'm a foodie and this article would have appealed to me anyway, but the thing that really caught my attention is the word "crowd-sourcing". I guess that's the verb for how a wiki is created. I would say that evolutionary improvement can be made through the "crowd-sourcing" of a recipe, but that's not the way to make revolutionary steps or to produce real novelty or innovation. So, what do you think of the word? And what do you think of the process it describes?

AS the digital age seeps into the kitchen, it’s time to reconsider whether too many cooks spoil the broth.

Crowd-sourcing recipes — corralling a group of strangers on the Internet to create and edit a bank of recipes — is gaining popularity and investors.

The idea is that a thousand cooks can come up with a better recipe than any single chef.

Some cooks argue that the collective process strips recipes of their personality and their provenance. But backers believe they are creating a new authority for cooking: the Wikipedia of recipes. [NYTimes.com]

happy birthday to me!

Norman Borlaug - Father of the Green Revolution

Norman Borlaug, who revolutionized agriculture, increasing crop yields to feed millions of people died last week. As the world continues to confront expanding populations and increasing environmental degradation, what will be the next wave of agricultural innovation?

Here's a bit of his obituary from Economist.com:

As a boy, he hadn’t known what hunger was. He came from a small Norwegian farm in Iowa, the land of butter-sculptures and the breaded tenderloin sandwich. But on his first trip to “the big city”, Minneapolis, in 1933, grown men had begged him for a nickel for a cup of coffee and a small, dry hamburger, and a riot had started round him when a milk-cart dumped its load in the street. He saw then how close to breakdown America was, because of hunger. It was impossible “to build a peaceful world on empty stomachs”.

Crop diseases drew his attention first, inspiring him to turn from forestry to plant pathology under Charles Stakman, a lifelong mentor, at the University of Minnesota. Rusts especially exercised him: how they lived, under the green live tissue of stems, how they spread, travelling for miles on the jet stream, and how they fell from the sky to infect even the healthiest crop, if the moisture and temperature were right. Rust had devastated the Midwest in the 1930s, and Mexico shortly before he went there. So Mr Borlaug first bred wheat cultivars for rust-resistance, a ten-year task, and then crossed them with Norin, a dwarf Japanese variety, to produce a shorter, straighter, stronger wheat which, when properly charged with water and fertiliser, gave three times the yield.

This was the wheat that swept India in its “Green Revolution”, raising yields from 12m tonnes in 1965 to 20m by 1970, causing the country to run out of jute bags to carry it, carts and railcars to transport it, and places to store it; that made Pakistan self-sufficient in wheat by 1968; that almost doubled yields even in Sudan, on the edge of the Sahel. The famines and huge mortality that had been predicted for the second half of the 20th century never came to pass. More food led not to more births, but fewer, as the better-fed had smaller families. Global grain production outpaced population growth, and Mr Borlaug won the Nobel peace prize in 1970 for saving hundreds of millions of lives.

Greens attacked him, saying his new varieties used too much water and costly chemical fertiliser; his link with DuPont was noted. They complained that traditional farming was disrupted and diversity replaced by monoculture. Mr Borlaug called them naysayers and elitists, who had never known hunger but thought, for the health of the planet, that the poor should go without good food. Higher yields, he pointed out, saved marginal land and forest from farming. Inorganic fertiliser just replaced natural nutrients, and more efficiently than manure. As for cross-breeding, Mother Nature had done it first, cross-pollinating different wild grasses until they produced a grain that could eventually expand into modern bread.

Genetic engineering of plants greatly excited him. The risks, he said, were rubbish, unproven by science, while the potential benefits were endless. The transfer of useful characteristics might now take weeks, rather than decades. More lives would be saved. The gene for rust-resistance in rice, for example, might be put into all other cereals. He hoped he might live to see it.

Meanwhile what he called the “Population Monster” was breathing down his neck, or rather ticking, like Captain Hook’s crocodile. Every second brought two more people, crying to be fed. By 2050, he wrote in 2005, the world would need to double its food supply. Some 800m were malnourished as it was. Mr Borlaug loved to talk of reaching for the stars, but his day-to-day motto was an earthly one. Get the plough. Start growing now.

What do France and Bhutan have in common?

From ForeignPolicy.com. What do you think? Is it valid, good or reasonable to measure Gross National Happiness? Well-Being per Capita?

Nicolas Sarkozy's government is rolling out a "revolutionary" new economic indicator:

France plans to include happiness and well-being in its measurements of economic progress, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday, beckoning other countries to join in a "revolution" in the way growth is tracked after the global economic crisis. [...]

France — whose growth has lagged its peers in recent decades according to standard measures — will also try to convince other governments to change their economic tracking, Sarkozy said

"A great revolution is waiting for us," he said. "For years, people said that finance was a formidable creator of wealth, only to discover one day that it accumulated so many risks that the world almost plunged into chaos."

"The crisis doesn't only make us free to imagine other models, another future, another world. It obliges us to do so," he said.

One minor quibble: Sarkozy should really give some credit to King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck of Bhutan, the true pioneer of gross national happiness.

Skeptics can (and will) look at this new innovation as a ploy for France to "juke the stats," since its short workweek and social benefits look a lot more impressive than its GDP growth.

That aside, the transformation of Sarkozy's economic message has been pretty astounding. The president came to power promising privitization and economic modernization and was lambasted by French left-wingers for his attachment to "Anglo-Saxon" economic models. But since the economic crisis (and his own popularity crisis) he's made a habit of attacking the Anglo-Saxons for their free-market orthodoxy and consulting with market-skeptics Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz on new economic indicators.

Where have you gone, Sarko l'Américain?

Health care vs. Free trade?

Here's a trade-off that will not be good for us. From Economist.com:

ALTHOUGH Barack Obama alarmed free traders last year with protectionist-sounding pronouncements on the campaign trail, such as one about the need to renegotiate NAFTA, optimists among them dismissed this as mere posturing designed to placate restive trade unions. Yet a decision by the White House to impose punitive tariffs (35% for the first year, falling by five percentage points a year, to 25% in the third year) on Chinese-made pneumatic tyres now raises serious doubts about Mr Obama’s commitment to free trade...

Simon Evenett, a trade economist at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, argues that Mr Obama’s decision is a clear affirmation of the power of American labour unions in shaping its trade policy. It appears that Mr Obama is desperate to shore-up support from unions and the left of the Democratic Party for health-care reform—his most pressing domestic concern—and is prepared to risk repercussions on trade.

If so, heightened economic tensions between America and China are a heavy price to pay. Mr Prasad says that “an escalating trade war between these two large economies has the potential to disrupt the world trading system”. The China-America spat also comes soon before the leaders of the G20, the group of big rich and emerging economies, meet in Pittsburgh on September 24th. Global co-operation has been crucial amid efforts to encourage economic recovery. It would be a tragedy if it that were derailed by posturing over tyres and chicken.

Einstein Quote of the Day

I've always held a special place in my heart for math, and this quote sums it up:

One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its laws are absolutely certain and indisputable, while those of other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts.

Crocs: On life support

Crocs are on the decline and the company teetering on the brink. [Salon.com] Say it ain't so!

"For a while, they were just right there, in the middle of American culture," says Richard Polk, the owner of Pedestrian Shops and ComfortableShoes.com, based in Boulder, Colo. Polk's store was the first real shoe store to stock the crazy-looking plastic shoes, a few years back, when they first roared out of nearby Aurora to take the world by storm. Polk was a believer; not only did his shop get on the bandwagon early, but he also wore a pair all through a campaign for Boulder City Council in 2005. Yet looking back, even he can't quite believe it. "It was amazing -- here you got grown-ups talking about serious stuff, wearing royal blue shoes," Polk says. "I don't think that'll ever happen again."

Which is sort of the problem for Crocs Inc. now. Reports about the company's future look bleak -- it lost $185.1 million last year, shed 2,000 jobs, and revenue in the first quarter of 2009 declined by 32 percent. And yes, you read that right -- they had grown so big so quickly that they laid off 2,000 people. Just three years ago, Crocs went public in a splashy stock offering, raising $200 million; now it trades at about three bucks a share, down from a high of nearly $70 in October 2007. Analysts wonder whether a scheduled September debt payment will do the firm in.

Road Trip!!!

I don't know what language this is in, but I know that in just 6 days these folks have seen Hershey, PA, NYC, Niagara Falls, Cedar Point in Ohio and Chicago. That's a lot of ground to cover.

Click on the link above to check out their blog...

Resources on Afghan elections

If you want to read up on the elections in Afghanistan on Thursday, here are special sections on the topic:
Financial Times
Al Jazeera

Swiss healthcare in the US

A rundown by Paul Krugman on the different ways countries provide healthcare:

Every wealthy country other than the United States guarantees essential care to all its citizens. There are, however, wide variations in the specifics, with three main approaches taken.

In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false. Like every system, the National Health Service has problems, but over all it appears to provide quite good care while spending only about 40 percent as much per person as we do. By the way, our own Veterans Health Administration, which is run somewhat like the British health service, also manages to combine quality care with low costs.

The second route to universal coverage leaves the actual delivery of health care in private hands, but the government pays most of the bills. That’s how Canada and, in a more complex fashion, France do it. It’s also a system familiar to most Americans, since even those of us not yet on Medicare have parents and relatives who are.

Again, you hear a lot of horror stories about such systems, most of them false. French health care is excellent. Canadians with chronic conditions are more satisfied with their system than their U.S. counterparts. And Medicare is highly popular, as evidenced by the tendency of town-hall protesters to demand that the government keep its hands off the program.

Finally, the third route to universal coverage relies on private insurance companies, using a combination of regulation and subsidies to ensure that everyone is covered. Switzerland offers the clearest example: everyone is required to buy insurance, insurers can’t discriminate based on medical history or pre-existing conditions, and lower-income citizens get government help in paying for their policies.

In this country, the Massachusetts health reform more or less follows the Swiss model; costs are running higher than expected, but the reform has greatly reduced the number of uninsured. And the most common form of health insurance in America, employment-based coverage, actually has some “Swiss” aspects: to avoid making benefits taxable, employers have to follow rules that effectively rule out discrimination based on medical history and subsidize care for lower-wage workers.

So where does Obamacare fit into all this? Basically, it’s a plan to Swissify America, using regulation and subsidies to ensure universal coverage.

Water on the dancefloor

I don't usually get too scientific on you, but I thought this was interesting. Did you know that scientists are still making discoveries about the molecular structure of plain old liquid water?

"One can visualize this as a crowded dance restaurant, with some people sitting at large tables, taking up quite a bit of room—like the tetrahedral component in water—and other people on the dance floor, standing close together and moving slower or faster depending on the mood or 'temperature' of the restaurant—like the molecules in the disordered regions can be excited by heat, the dancers can be excited and move faster with the music," Nilsson said. "There's an exchange when people sitting decide to get up to dance and other dancers sit down to rest. When the dance floor really gets busy, tables can also be moved out of the way to allow for more dancers, and when things cool back off, more tables can be brought in."

This more detailed understanding of the molecular structure and dynamics of liquid water at ambient temperatures mirrors theoretical work on "supercooled" water: an unusual state in which water has not turned into ice even though it is far below the freezing point. In this state, theorists postulate, the liquid is made up of a continuously fluctuating mix of tetrahedral and more disordered structures, with the ratio of the two depending on temperature—just as Nilsson and his colleagues have found to be the case with water at the ambient temperatures important for life.

"Previously, hardly anyone thought that such fluctuations leading to distinct local structures existed at ambient temperatures," Nilsson said. "But that's precisely what we found."

This new work explains, in part, the liquid's strange properties. Water's density maximum at 4 degrees Celsius can be explained by the fact that the tetrahedral structures are of lower density, which does not vary significantly with temperature, while the more disordered regions—which are of higher density—become more disordered and so less dense with increasing temperature. Likewise, as water heats, the percentage of molecules in the more disordered state increases, allowing this excitable structure to absorb significant amounts of heat, which leads to water's high heat capacity. Water's tendency to form strong hydrogen bonds explains the high surface tension that insects take advantage of when walking across water.

Marshall Plan for Africa

Since decades of aid haven't had much effect, here's an old idea with a new application from FP.com.

Just six months into his term, U.S. President Barack Obama is already modeling himself after the country's most transformational Democratic leader, Franklin D. Roosevelt. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Africa this month, now would be the perfect time to follow in the steps of Roosevelt and his secretary of state, George Marshall, by announcing a second Marshall Plan. More than half a century after the United States helped rebuild a war-torn Europe, it's time Africa got the same chance.

The Marshall Plan was fundamentally different from the aid that Africa has received over the past four decades. The Marshall Plan made loans to European businesses, which repaid them to their local governments, which in turn used that revenue for commercial infrastructure -- ports, roads, railways -- to serve those same businesses. Aid to Africa has instead funded government and NGO development projects, without any involvement of the local business sector. The Marshall Plan worked. Aid to Africa has not. An African Marshall Plan is long, long overdue.

Bush's trust in Musharraf (remember, he trusted Putin, too)

The US is funding Pakistan to arm itself against India - not what I want my tax dollars to go for.

"When [Musharraf] looks me in the eye and says, ... 'there won't be a Taliban and won't be al Qaeda,' I believe him, you know?" So said George W. Bush of then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in September 2006. The U.S. president's trust had been forged in a deal made five years earlier: Pakistan would train, equip, and deploy its Army and intelligence service in counterterrorism operations, and Washington promised to reimburse its partner with billions of dollars in weapons, supplies, and cold hard cash. The plan was simple enough, and since 2001, the United States has lived up to its pledge, pouring as much as $12 billion in overt aid and another $10 billion in covert aid to Pakistan.

But today, as the Obama administration re-examines the deal, there is devastating evidence that the billions spent in Pakistan have yielded little in return. For the last eight years, U.S. taxpayers' money has funded hardly any bona fide counterterrorism successes, but quite a bit of corruption in the Pakistani Army and intelligence services. The money has enriched individuals at the expense of the proper functioning of the country's institutions. It has provided habitual kleptocrats with further incentives to skim off the top. Despite the U.S. goal of encouraging democratization, assistance to Pakistan has actually weakened the country's civilian government. And perhaps worst of all, it has hindered Pakistan's ability to fight terrorists....

Pakistan did not use the majority of the funds for the agreed objective of fighting terrorism. Instead, the money was used in the way it has been for the last six decades: to train and stock the Army for conventional warfare, with India viewed as the main threat. The Army spent the vast majority of U.S. funds on types of military equipment that are practically useless against terrorists. It bought an air defense radar system costing $200 million, for example, even though the terrorists in the frontier region have no air capability. The military bought F-16 fighter jets, aircraft-mounted armaments, and anti-ship defense systems. And the U.S. Department of Defense signed off on it. [FP.com]

Good News from Gaza

5000 kites = world record

Green Buddhist School in Ladakh

More from BuddhistArtNews.com, my new favorite source, news of an award winning ultra-green school in Ladakh, which is quite a poor corner of India that borders China and is the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir. I visited there in 2004 for a week after a business trip to India. During one of my day trips from Leh, I crossed the 3rd highest pass in the world - serious altitude. There was an Indian Army post there and the soldiers from very warm Punjab were so delighted to see anyone that they invited us in for tea. But I digress...

Here's the cool school:

Barely 15 km southeast of Leh, the hilly headquarters of Ladakh district in Jammu and Kashmir, lies one of India’s most innovative “green” schools that operates on solar power and draws on natural elements to provide “sustainable education” to poor children.

The earthquake-resistant Druk White Lotus School, made of local sandstone, poplar and willow wood, steel, glass and solar panels, straddles a sandy stretch of cold desert in Shey village, flanked by barren mountains.

The school, a seat of education that blends the traditional Ladakhi culture, Buddhist philosophy and modern learning modules, is the winner of three World Architecture Awards - for the best “Asian Building”, the best “Green Building” and the best “Education Building”.

Buddha in the Swat Valley

There's a lull in the fighting in the Swat Valley of northwestern Pakistan right now, but many think that the problems with the Taliban there are not over. I first heard of the Swat Valley when I was in graduate school when I was looking at the spread of culture and religion through Central Asia. Gandharan art flourished in the Swat Valley as Buddhism from the south met with Greek artistic influence from the west creating a beautiful sculptural tradition.

A bit of background from BuddhistArtNews.com:

For centuries, the Swat River valley was a Buddhist haven. According to tradition, Buddha himself journeyed to Swat during his last reincarnation, and preached to the local villagers. And by the 6th-century A.D, Buddhist pilgrims from as far away as China flocked to the Swat valley, a beautiful lush land of orchards and rushing mountain streams. One early Chinese account describes as many as 1400 Buddhist monasteries perched along the valley walls in the 7th century.

Devout Buddhist artists left an incredibly rich legacy in Swat. Since the valley lay along a major route of the Silk Road—which stretched from China to the Mediterranean—they were greatly influenced by ideas from elsewhere, and gracefully blended foreign styles in their art. They chiseled beautiful, haunting statues of Buddha into the cliffsides, and left many stupas and other Buddhist relics scattered across the countryside.

The region’s new Taliban rulers regard this legacy, and particularly the images of Buddha, as an affront to Islam, and they have already taken action against them. In 2008, they set off dynamite charges to erase the face of a 23-foot-high Buddha carved into a cliff near Jehanabad in the Swat River valley, an act of terrible vandalism that recalled the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by Afghanistan’s Taliban. In a separate attack, they badly damaged parts of the Swat Museum—which which holds an important collection of Buddhist art—and issued threats to the staff of the museum.

None of this, of course, bodes well for the fate of the Swat’s rich cultural legacy in years to come. But the international community was outraged by the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, and in 2003, UNESCO issued a “Declaration concerning the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage. In part, this declaration stipulates that “States should take all appropriate measures to prevent, avoid, stop and suppress acts of intentional destruction of cultural heritage…. “

Pakistan’s government is clearly caught between a rock and a hard place now, with Taliban militants breathing down its neck, less than 100 miles from Islamabad. But I, like many others, sincerely hope that it will not abandon its responsibility to protect Swat’s rich cultural legacy, particularly in these very trying times.

China's new work groups

Spurred by the unlikely success of a factory-turned-art-space in Beijing called 798 and a desire to diversify the economy, cities across China are converting dozens of abandoned factories into art galleries, industrial-chic office space, and entertainment destinations. Many that aren't yet repurposing old industrial sites are drawing up plans – motivated by hope of profits or fear of criticism from higher-ups for failing to follow the latest trends in city development.

"China's investing heavily in the knowledge worker writ large, and this has become another part of that investment," says Eugenie Birch, chair of the University of Pennsylvania's Department of City and Regional Planning. "And when China does something, it does it at full force."

The 'creative industry' concept, born overseas in the mid-1990s, took hold here a few years ago, when government leaders began referringto it in speeches and planning documents.

Projects are springing up across China, from Shenzhen to Hangzhou to Chengdu. They aim to attract artists, architects, photographers, designers, and advertising firms – the core of what China has labeled "the creative industry." Beijing has more than 20 such districts, and Shanghai more than 70, though not all are factory conversions.

The Yangcheng project, conceived two years ago, is one of at least seven large-scale projects in Guangzhou under construction, with varying degrees of official support. They include a former plastics factory and a shipping warehouse. All offer cheap rent and cavernous workshops.

"We've been opening up our economy for so many years, and it's all been so fast, but it's reached a level where we need to change our development strategy," says a spokeswoman for one of the city's larger creative industry zone projects, who cited company policy against speaking with foreign media in requesting anonymity. "The whole economy has to change to develop this higher-level work." [Christian Science Monitor]

The Future of Iran as a Republic

Interesting overview and op-ed from Al Jazeera...

Thirty years after the Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran - if one can still call it a republic - is at a crossroads.

What has been manifesting itself on Iran's streets since the disputed presidential elections is not only the electorate's collective feeling of injustice and rage, but also the religious-political elite's underlying divide over the future of the velayat-e faqih and its entire political system....

Unfortunately, by committing itself to the rule of law and playing by the rules, the reformist movement [from 1997 to 2005] never questioned the very foundations of Iran's ambiguous political system and ultimately failed to change what one could call power-based law into rights-based law.

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005, the extent of human rights violations in Iran intensified dramatically.

Iranians had not only lost an advocate of liberties and democracy, but were now faced with a government which aimed to achieve the very opposite by implementing the original radical Islamist tenets of the Revolution.

Militarisation of politics

The chief architect of Ahmadinejad's ideology is the hardliner cleric Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi.

Time and again, Yazdi has questioned the legitimacy of the concept of republic within an Islamic system and he continues to advocate totalitarian rule of the jurist consult over the people, who he considers unable to form any social contract with the state.

The Taliban's Code of Conduct

The Taliban has published a new manual to help codify and standardize military procedures. Very interesting reading from Al Jazeera:

Al Jazeera has obtained a copy of the Taliban's new military code of conduct, approved by Mullah Omar, its Afghan leader.

It appears to be an attempt to consolidate a disparate movement.

Following are some key quotes that outline the new code of conduct:

On asylum:

"Every Muslim can invite anyone working for the slave government in Kabul to leave their job, and cut their relationship with this corrupt administration. If the person accepts, then with the permission of the provincial and district leadership, a guarantee of safety can be given."

On prisoners:

"Whenever any official, soldier, contractor or worker of the slave government is captured, these prisoners cannot be attacked or harmed.

"The decision on whether to seek a prisoner exchange, or to release the prisoner, with a strong guarantee, will be made by the provincial leader. Releasing prisoners in exchange for money is strictly prohibited."

"If the prisoner is a director, commander or district chief or higher, the decision on whether to harm, kill, release or forgive them is only made by the Imam or deputy Imam."

If a military infidel is captured, the decision on whether to kill, release or exchange the hostage is only to be made by the Imam or deputy Imam."

On civilian casualties:

"Governors, district chiefs and line commanders and every member of the Mujahideen must do their best to avoid civilian deaths, civilian injuries and damage to civilian property. Great care must be taken."

On suicide attacks:

"Suicide attacks should only be used on high and important targets. A brave son of Islam should not be used for lower and useless targets. The utmost effort should be made to avoid civilian casualties."

On unity:

"Creating a new mujahideen group or battalion is forbidden. If unofficial groups or irregular battalions refuse to join the formal structure they should be disbanded. If a governor or leader has in the past had a unit or active group in another province, they should bring it to the attention of the leader of that province. That leader should then take over command of the group."

On relations with the Afghan people:

"The Mujahideen have to behave well and show proper treatment to the nation, in order to bring the hearts of civilian muslims closer to them. The mujahideen must avoid discrimination based on tribal roots, language or their geographic background."

Hugo Chavez, State Sponsor of Terrorism

This guy just gets more and more appalling:

Despite repeated denials by President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan officials have continued to assist commanders of Colombia’s largest rebel group, helping them arrange weapons deals in Venezuela and even obtain identity cards to move with ease on Venezuelan soil, according to computer material captured from the rebels in recent months and under review by Western intelligence agencies.

New evidence points to collaborations between members of the Venezuelan government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. A Colombian soldier inspected the area after an aerial bombardment against the FARC in July.

The New York Times

One message discussed a plan for an arms deal in Amazonas.

The materials point to detailed collaborations between the guerrillas and high-ranking military and intelligence officials in Mr. Chávez’s government as recently as several weeks ago, countering the president’s frequent statements that his administration does not assist the rebels. “We do not protect them,” he said in late July.

The new evidence — drawn from computer material captured from the rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC — comes at a low point for ties between Venezuela and Colombia. Mr. Chávez froze diplomatic relations in late July, chafing at assertions by Colombia’s government that Swedish rocket launchers sold to Venezuela ended up in the hands of the FARC. Venezuela’s reaction was also fueled by Colombia’s plans to increase American troop levels there. [NYTimes]

Food as Movie Star

It's not getting great reviews, but there's no way I'm going to miss seeing Julie & Julia when it opens next week. Here's an interesting article on how the food gets portrayed...

Although movies have long relied on half-cooked turkeys colored with motor oil, fruit made of plastic, and ice cream carved from Crisco, food in film is increasingly edible and even delicious.

“Everybody thinks it’s all shellacked,” said Colin Flynn, a New York-based chef and stylist who worked with Ms. Spungen on the film. “In the ’70s and ’80s it was more like that. Food looked more like Plasticine. Nowadays it’s almost always real food.”

For food stylists, most of whom began as cooks, it’s a welcome change. It’s also good for audiences, who have become more sophisticated about food and expect more realistic images. And directors believe that well-prepared food can improve the actors’ performances and the look of the final scene.

“The challenge always is making it seem delicious and hyper-real,” said John Lyons, president of production for Focus Features. “If it doesn’t look hyper-real, it doesn’t work in the movie.”

That means a dish needs to be fresh-looking and well-prepared to begin with, and then enhanced with a bit of oil here and a little fake steam there.

Work & Television

A study in the NY Times shows how people use their time over the course of a day. Click on the link and notice that the area for Television is about as big as the area for Work. So, obviously not every individual spends as much time watching TV as working, but for this group of people surveyed, they did.

That is a major underutilization of talent.

The Quiet Phase in Iran

Green popping up in unexpected places and life on the ground in Tehran...

And on the 13th day Michael Jackson died. Voice of America and BBC Persian are back up, if intermittently, and we crowd around like the rest of the world for the latest news. It is almost a relief. Being a full-time revolutionary is hard work, difficult to sustain. Seeing the non-stop coverage, the obvious distraction of his passing, we grimly joke that Michael was a martyr for the cause. At least he had the decency to delay his death until the worst violence had already passed....

Every young person I see I wonder, What were you doing three weeks ago? Who were you then? I look for signs of subversion. A girl wears a green headscarf. A kid shifts gears in his Kia Pride with an arm encased in a green cast. What does it mean? Together, in a crowd, the color green added up to something. Alone, spread apart and without context, they are just moments of coincidence. [Salon.com]

The White House Kitchen Garden

Michelle Obama's garden is producing lettuce, peas, eggplants and all sorts of other good things. As this article in Salon argues, she is just bringing more visibility to a movement that has been growing for some time. Americans are starting to be more interested in where their food comes from, how its grown and in cooking it themselves.

The Europeans have been doing this for a long time, as evidenced by the Slow Food movement and popular demonstrations around food policy.

I'm missing my garden plot while I'm on vacation. I hope my lettuce will not have bolted by the time I come home, but I'll be so excited to see the progress of my tomatoes and green beans.

Bam!

I visited the Fancy Food Trade Show today in NY. I was served a small cup of pasta and sauce by none other than Emeril Lagasse. I wish I'd thought to take a picture.

Cap & Trade $175/household/year

The Waxman-Markey bill which would establish a carbon cap and trade system in the US is coming up for a vote fairly soon. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will cost on average $175 per household.

By annually reducing the supply of these permits, the cap-and-trade legislation written by House Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts would lower the limit on greenhouse gases to 17 percent less than 2005 levels by 2020, according to Bloomberg News.

The CBO analysis estimates that the legislation will cost the richest U.S. households $245 a year, and the poorest will see gains of $40 a year. [environmentalleader.com]

Is it worth it? Is it worth it if we can prevent massive global displacement? One of the front page articles in this weekend's FT, contained the following:

Estimates of the number of environmental refugees in 2050, when the global population is expected to peak at 9 billion and the planet is forecast to be in the throes of a 2°C-or-more temperature rise, vary between 50 million and 1 billion people. But the most commonly repeated number – included in Britain’s 2006 Stern Review – is between 200 and 250 million, or around 10 times the number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world today.

History of Coffee

We sit down to a cup every morning and perhaps enjoy a few more throughout the day. Here's the backstory with some juicy tidbits:

The modern coffee drink was invented at the end of 15th century, when roasting and crushing the coffee beans over open fires before extracting them with hot water became the accepted methodology. The Turks claimed coffee to be an aphrodisiac and husbands kept their wives well supplied. If the husband did not supply coffee, it was a legitimate cause for a wife to divorce. Coffeehouses became the social centers, competing with mosques for attendance. As gathering places for political activity and sedition, they banned several times over the next few decades, but they kept reappearing. Eventually a solution was found when coffeehouses and coffee were taxed...

At one point in the mid-16th century, Sultan Murat IV closed them all; they were to remain dark until the last part of the century. But as soon as the Sultan’s edict went into effect, the coffeehouse owners packed up and re-opened their businesses elsewhere, including Venice, Greece and the European continent. Ever notice how Greek coffee is exactly the same as Turkish coffee? The Viennese, not enjoying the grounds in their coffee, invented filtration...

Nevertheless, the Arabians closely guarded their coffee production in order to maintain their complete monopoly. Government policy forbade export of any fertile beans, so that coffee could not be cultivated anywhere else. (The coffee bean is the seed of the coffee tree, but when stripped of its outer layers it becomes infertile.) The Dutch eventually acquired some live shrubs or beans in 1616 and brought them back to Holland where they were grown in greenhouses. Another story tells of a Moslem pilgrim from India named Baba Budan, who secreted seeds out of Arabia in 1650 and planted them in the hills in Mysore, India where they flourished...

The Arabs were known to drink so much coffee that the Christian church denounced it as “the hellish black brew.” But Pope Clement VIII found it so delicious that he baptized it and made it a Christian beverage, saying “coffee is so delicious, it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it.”

At first coffee was mainly sold by lemonade vendors and was believed to have medicinal qualities. Coffeehouses appeared as meeting places for men. The first opened in Oxford in 1650, in London in 1652, in Paris in 1672, in Vienna in 1675. The first coffeehouse opened in Venice in 1683... But then, coffee houses spread quickly across Europe, becoming centers for intellectual exchange. Many great minds of Europe met in the forum, over the beverage.

The largest insurance company in the world, Lloyd’s of London, began as a coffeehouse. It was started in 1688 by Edward Lloyd, who prepared lists of the ships that his customers had insured.

What would Kim Jong-un do?

Here's a nice examination of how the world might look to the North Korean heir-apparent:

But, if one wants to anticipate and understand the opponent's next move, it's useful to peer at the board from his perspective. And a glance at that board reveals that North Korea's nuclear weapons keep its leader out of that rat-hole, the gallows rope off his neck, and his children alive.

There is always the chance that Kim Jong-il's successor will be a historic reformer who decides to end the tyranny he has inherited, turning over his country and his family's future to the South, praying that its mercy keeps him off the gallows. But more likely, he'll just take over the family business of running North Korea. For those who wonder how he might think about nuclear weapons, look at that chessboard from Pyongyang's perspective and ask yourself: What would your move be?

Happiness in Business

This was developed for entrepreneurs building their companies, but I think it is applicable for everyone.

Clothes Origami

I can't figure out how this works, but its amazing.

Thoughts on a Fuel Tax

I want to thank my faithful readers for responding to a post from a few weeks ago where I announced I was in favor of a fuel tax. In case you haven't looked at the comments, I'm copying them here:

1. A very sensible solution if you live in one of the big eastern cities with lots of available public transportation. Quite a different story if you live here in the west, where our cities grew in the era of the automobile and public transportation is practically non-existent.

2. I,too, listened to that NPR story and found it convincing. Then again, there is no reliable public transportation around me, so I have to drive to work. What happens to those who can least afford the tax? They can do without other "sins", but not their paycheck.

3. So how are you going to feel when you have to pay more for all your goods and services? Merchandise arrives in stores with the help of gasoline. The stores aren't going to absorb that cost for you. And service providers...plumbers, electricians, housekeepers...are sure to add on a fuel surcharge. So even though you are an urban dweller, don't think you wouldn't be affected.

Homage to simplicity

It seems that it's the fashion in these lean times to discuss how much richer one's life is without money. This is quite a delightful example by Pico Iyer, who is one of my favorite travel writers:

I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media — and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t think of a single thing I lack.

I’m no Buddhist monk, and I can’t say I’m in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I’ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I’ve come to understanding happiness). Not having a car gives me volumes not to think or worry about, and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping-pong every evening, to write long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track down old baubles for two kids who are now out in the world).

When the phone does ring — once a week — I’m thrilled, as I never was when the phone rang in my overcrowded office in Rockefeller Center. And when I return to the United States every three months or so and pick up a newspaper, I find I haven’t missed much at all. While I’ve been rereading P.G. Wodehouse, or “Walden,” the crazily accelerating roller-coaster of the 24/7 news cycle has propelled people up and down and down and up and then left them pretty much where they started. “I call that man rich,” Henry James’s Ralph Touchett observes in “Portrait of a Lady,” “who can satisfy the requirements of his imagination.” Living in the future tense never did that for me. [NY Times]

General Motors Reinvention Ad

I think this ad is a fascinating approach to their crisis. I suppose it's mostly about reassuring the car-buying public that the company is not going into liquidation and has plans for the future.

Any thoughts?

GM Reinvention Commercial (SPOOF)

And at least one person's response...

Chicago at the forefront of environmental design

Really, Mayor Daley does a good job in promoting sustainability and all things environmental for this City. I think it's great. LEED-ND (Neighborhood Design) is still a standard that is under development by the US Green Building Council and I'm delighted that the City is taking its tenants for use in their planning for this south side area, which is pretty blighted. For more info click here (warning it's a 50 MB pdf.)

As part of an effort to stimulate sustainable and equitable economic development in one of the more socioeconomically distressed areas of the region, the City of Chicago is sponsoring one of the largest sustainable neighborhood revitalization developments in the country. Consisting of 1,140 acres in the South Chicago neighborhood, the Leadership for Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development (LEED ND) plan will serve as a guide to the city for sustainable redevelopment on the south side for the next 25 years.

Currently responsible for the redevelopment plan is City Planner Marilyn Engwall, who has been a part of the effort for nearly a decade. Engwell stresses the comprehensive nature of the redevelopment and the necessity to engage in sustainable community building. “This is a plan—a long range plan—and not a project,” she stated, adding, “This is an area that definitely needs development.”

Developed by the U. S. Green Building Council, LEED ND projects take the building standards of LEED and many of the hallmarks of new urbanism, and apply them to an entire area. In addition to requiring new homes in the South Chicago LEED ND to be certified as LEED Silver or better, the initiative incorporates LEED ND standards of easy access to transit, close walking distance to schools and parks, and the remediation of environmentally unsuitable sites. Plans exist for the integration of the three existing Metra stops in the neighborhood with an elaborate transit network reliant on the streetcar—a system that has already gained some traction and financing among local merchants. Whether this part of the plan will happen will take years to determine.

Further thoughts on fuel efficiency

As I was driving yesterday, I was listening to some commentary on NPR about the Obama plan to raise CAFE standards so that cars will have higher fuel efficiency. The argument of the speaker was that higher efficiency means that the cars will be less expensive to operate, thereby encouraging people to drive more, perhaps 10-15% more. In the end, this may not reduce our overall gasoline and oil consumption or our carbon output, but instead will lead to more driving, more congestion etc.

In other words, the only way to decrease driving is to make it more expensive, by putting a higher federal tax on gasoline. That is probably politically impossible, but it makes sense to me.

As an urban dweller who doesn't drive that much, I'm all for a high gasoline tax. Governments put sin taxes on alcohol and cigarettes to discourage their consumption. Why not a sin tax on gasoline? What do the rest of you think?

FT's take on Obama's car efficiency plan

Although a tax of $1 or $2 per gallon of petrol would be more effective in altering consumer behaviour and giving a clear demand signal to manufacturers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles, it would not get through Congress.

But it is an inefficient – and probably ineffective – way of meeting the twin aims Mr Obama has set out for the motor industry and the US carmakers: to curb fuel consumption and dependence on foreign oil and to help the Detroit three “once more outcompete the world”.

The corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) rules that Mr Obama wants to tighten have a history of causing unintended consequences. They were passed in 1975, following the oil crisis, to get drivers to buy smaller and more efficient cars, but instead gave Detroit an incentive to make sports utility vehicles.

The basic problem with the CAFE standards is that, rather than altering patterns of demand, they attempt to ration supply. This flaw is exacerbated by the divide in the rules between standards for “cars” and for “light trucks”, which Detroit has ingeniously exploited.

By the 1980s, petrol was cheap again and drivers did not want to buy the lighter, less powerful cars that were fuel-efficient. Instead, they switched en masse to people carriers and SUVs that were classified as light trucks, and so could be thirstier...

A petrol tax is a rare example of a policy that would be simple, let the market operate, and be likely to achieve Mr Obama’s aims. “This is a noble long-term goal, but a gas tax is an immediate incentive to change,” says David Gerard, an economist at Carnegie Mellon university.

Unfortunately, raising the federal petrol tax, which is currently 18 cents per gallon, to levels that would make it bite is not politically achievable in the US. Instead, the president has had to rally everyone around a clunky and leaky regulatory alternative. That really is extraordinary. [FT]

Sec of Energy Chu

Last week, Secretary of Energy Chu gave a lecture titled, "The Energy Problem and the Interplay between Basic and Applied Research." Here's the review of the lecture at Salon.com, where you can also find a video of the entire lecture.

Addressing a roomful of scientists and students at MIT on Tuesday, however, gave Chu a chance to let his geek flag fly. In a packed auditorium, he delivered MIT's Compton Lecture on the topic "The Energy Problem and the Interplay between Basic and Applied Research." It must have been a huge relief not to have to dumb himself down -- this was an audience primed to laugh appreciatively at jokes about microscopy involving the word "angstrom." I just spent a little over an hour watching it, and I had to marvel, once again, at the fact that a real scientist, a fervent believer in the fundamental importance of basic scientific research, is the man in charge at the Department of Energy. (Thanks to Greentech Media for the tip.)

His lecture ranged across a wide variety of topics, from the number of Nobel Prizes that have been granted for advances in fertilizer technology (two and a half) to the energy efficiency improvements in American refrigerators to the history of Bell Labs and how advances in quantum physics paved the path from the vacuum tube to the transistor. Through it all, he expressed confidence and optimism in the premise that technological progress will allow us to confront the challenges of climate change and energy constraints. There's a lot of "exciting" science to be done, he said more than once, and he seemed thrilled at the prospect of spending the government's checkbook funding the "dazzling" work of the future.

Perhaps most important, while he touted likely advances in battery technology and solar power and genetically engineered biofuels, he was very clear on one point: The crucial front to make immediate progress on is energy efficiency and conservation. Buildings consume 40 percent of the energy used in the United States each year: Making them more energy efficient might not win Chu another Nobel Prize, but it could easily save us from having to build a few more power plants that we can't afford.

He finished with a slide of a picture of the Earth rising above the lunar landscape taken by the astronauts on Apollo 8.

"It's our home," said Chu. "Let's take care of it."

It's about time

For years, Detroit has spent more money on lobbyists fighting higher fuel efficiency standards than they have on efficiency R&D. The Bush administration was on their side - hey, fat cars were good for W's oil buddies.

At long last, now that they've got no choice, US car manufacturers are going to have to do what's right. Too bad they couldn't manage to do it of their own volition, but had to be strong-armed.

Why, after decades of battling, complaining and maneuvering over fuel economy standards, did carmakers fall in line behind the tough new nationwide mileage standard President Obama announced Tuesday?

Because they had no choice. The auto industry is flat on its back, with Chrysler in bankruptcy, General Motors close to it, and both companies taking billions of dollars in federal money. Foreign automakers are getting help from their own governments. Climate change legislation is barreling down the track, and Congress showed last fall that it had no appetite to side with Detroit any more.

Simply put, Detroit and the other companies need Washington’s help, and they are powerless to block the rules Washington dictates.

“They can feel the political winds changing,” said David Doniger, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council who has faced the car companies in court many times. “They need government aid to stay in business. When you have your hand out for help, it’s hard to use the same hand to thumb your nose at the federal government.”

In 2005, car companies were able to stop fuel economy legislation. By 2007, with the country awakened to the realization that global warming was a threat, they were forced to go along with higher standards but managed to water them down.

This time, they arrived at the table so debilitated they could extract only the barest of concessions. The primary gift carmakers received from Mr. Obama in Tuesday’s proposal was the certainty of one fuel economy standard from California to Maine, rather than the patchwork that would have resulted from two sets of regulations, one by the 18 states that wanted tighter standards, and another for everywhere else. [NYTimes.com]