• Bothering Barnett on Biofuels

    by  • April 18, 2008 • 0 Comments

    Commenting on http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/04/robbing_peters_meal_to_gas_pau.html I agree with you completely on hunger from biofuels. That’s been expected for a while. I wrote a paper predicting this scenario in 2003 and I was far, far from the first. Worse, biofuels are basically useless in the big picture unless you move to algae as a feedstock. Consider: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/311/5760/435 Which [...]

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    The tragedy of computer science.

    by  • April 16, 2008 • 2 Comments

    Faster computers do not make writing programs easier, any more than printing presses made it easier to write poetry. Vinay Gupta I’ve been trying to find a way of saying that for a while. Now, of course, conversely Computers which are too slow or too small for the problem at hand make programming harder because [...]

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    Transparency in Government Act of 2008

    by  • April 15, 2008 • 0 Comments

    The foundation has posted its Transparency in Government Act of 2008 on the Web at publicmarkup.org and has invited the public to tweak, add to or criticize any aspect of the proposed bill. The goal, said Ellen Miller, executive director of the foundation, is to change the backroom, secretive way that legislation is typically passed [...]

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    Digital Fabrication as a Catalyst for Freedom

    by  • April 15, 2008 • 0 Comments

    I have said this before: Technology is about people. Why does this catch-phrase seem so important to me? Because, simply, it stabs so many holes in the fabric of that which we have come to accept as truth. The assumptions made constantly and persistently in our social, political, and economic environments have been left untouched [...]

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    the richest 200 people own as much as the bottom 40%

    by  • April 15, 2008 • 2 Comments

    Food is become increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is already unaffordable for many people. The world’s 200 wealthiest people have as much money as about 40 percent of the global population, and yet 850 million people have to go to bed hungry every night. This calamity is “one of the worst violations of human [...]

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