Politics

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Trouble in the Third Pole

Monday, June 28th, 2010

With respects to the amount of ice it contains, the Earth has a third pole – the Tibetan plateau. With 46,000 glaciers at an average height of 13,000 ft above sea level, it is the Earth’s third largest ice mass. This “Third Pole” is less well-known than the Arctic and Antarctic, but like them, is [...]

The Great Train Race

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

I have always loved trains – they have always occupied a sweet spot in travel for me between the intimate contact with the land that car travel offers and the fast, but depersonalized and remote sense you get from air travel. I had resigned myself to the fact that passenger trains might one day disappear [...]

Veronica Khosa – Bringing Compassion and New Thinking to the Battle Against AIDS in South Africa

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

In the face of what is one of the modern world’s most devastating epidemics, Veronica Khosa is championing compassion. Much has already been written regarding the rising toll that HIV/AIDS-related illnesses and deaths have had on the African continent, but little of the social entrepreneurs who are facing the daily challenges head on. Khosa, a [...]

The World Cafe – Principles for Purposeful Conversations

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

As much as technology has improved our ability to communicate with like-minded individuals around the world, there are still some difficulties that can only be solved by person-to-person discussion. The World Café is a new approach to harnessing the power of a group to take aim at the myriad of concerns that exist in any [...]

Mobilizing Aid for Haiti on the Web

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

It has been three weeks since the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in early January, reducing much of its capitol city of Port-au-Prince to debris and claiming over 170,000 lives. Hitting just 16 miles west of the capitol, the quake destroyed much of the impoverished nation’s infrastructure – leveling entire blocks of commercial [...]

Javed Abidi – Giving Visibility and Hope to India’s Disabled

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Power and compassion – these two words can sum up the focus behind Javed Abidi’s mission. As an impassioned advocate for India’s disabled citizens, he has given voice to an ‘invisible minority‘ – one that has been denied to them by both political and social sectors for decades. It is a subject that he understands [...]

California’s Unquenchable Thirst

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.’ – Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell Folk icon Joni Mitchell’s hit 1970 song ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ was written in response to the slow encroachment of mankind across the Hawaiian islands – but in modern times, the lyrics could serve [...]

Searhcing for Wind Power via Land, Sea and Air

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Before oil, gas, coal, hydroelectric and nuclear power – there was wind. It advanced the spread of civilization – by powering the sailing vessels of the earliest explorers and once settled, enabling them to efficiently irrigate their fields and mill their harvests. To our ancestors, wind must have appeared to be a coy mistress – [...]

Peak Phosphorous – A Looming Crisis

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Consider it an unforeseen consequence of our rapidly advancing ability to control the elements of our natural world – phosphorus, a key building block for life, is facing a shortage. Used as a key component in the production of fertilizer, it may not have the star power of other prized elements (such as gold, silver, [...]

Flash Mobs – The New Political Dissent

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

With the popularity of such widely-viewed YouTube clips as ‘Grand Central Freeze’ and ‘Oprah Flash Mobile Dance Party’, flash mobs have entered into our mainstream consciousness. Defined as a ‘sudden, seemingly spontaneous activity planned through the rapid transmission of announcements’ through a variety of web-based tools (LiveJournal, Twitter, Facebook, et al.), the concept has been [...]