Will fluorescent bulbs save the planet?

Fluorescent bulb

In short… no.  They won’t.

We too often try to solve the very difficult issue of lowering carbon emissions solely through technological means. From fluorescent and LED light bulbs to hybrid and electric vehicles, there’s a concerted attempt to give us more “green” choices that are as painless as possible.

Along with creating those green alternatives, a significant educational shift is occurring.  For example, Discovery’s excellent new Planet Green channel has a show called “Stuff Happens” (with Bill Nye the Science Guy) focusing on the hidden impact our daily activities have on the environment.  Nye exposes how stuff is made and what happens after we consume it.

The awareness and education are great.  In fact, if everyone were significantly more conscious of how, collectively, our commonplace actions have butterfly effect-like consequences on our ecosystem, we could significantly mitigate how quickly we’re destroying the ability of our planet to sustain life, including human life.

I’m not just talking about carbon here!  Our species has co-existed with bacteria since even before we were a species.  Yet, for some reason about a decade ago we declared war on bacteria in our homes and businesses, including the beneficial ones which keep the really harmful ones in check.  Now, I cringe every time I see some ad pitching anti-bacterial this-&-that that kills 99.9% of bacteria.  What it should be saying is, “Makes 0.1% of bacteria STRONGER and helps them come to DOMINATE our environment!”  Is it any wonder flesh-eating staphylococcus (like MRSA) and other terribly strong bacteria are now escaping our hospitals and starting to be contracted in our everyday spaces?

But is it already too late?  Will we be able to raise the “level of thinking” in time, as Einstein referred to when he said, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”  More importantly, will changing the “level of thinking” necessarily result in changing the behaviors that are actually digging us deeper in this hole?

It very well may be that all the technology in the world still can’t compensate for the fact there are just so many of us using so many resources and contaminating the planet so greatly.  If so, the question becomes: How much are people willing to give up some conveniences for the sake of their species?  I suspect not much, unfortunately.

Original content by Ricardo G. (aka @ggroovin)

Would you be scared if I knew ALL your numbers?

BusinessWeek journalist and author Stephen Baker‘s book “The Numerati” gives us a truly fascinating, yet scary, view of those working to know every little detail about us.  I had the good fortune to be able to listen him present his book last night.

It’s his first book, and his original proposal was to look at how math is taught and used around the world.  His editor called him up and told him, “You know, your entire book is actually in your proposed chapter 4 – mathematical modeling of people.”  It’s still early on in how these computer scientists and statisticians are modeling us, but clearly they will make progress.

The thing that caught my ear related to the themes of this blog was when Mr. Baker described the most frequent question he gets asked – something along the lines of “aren’t you scared that the Numerati will destroy our privacy?”  Certainly, this is the kind of fear that immediately hits us when we hear things like IBM creating mathematical models of every consultant in their employ using every conceivable numeric figure that can be measured for each of them, or of Google knowing our every keystroke and movement on the web (and now our phones).

Yet, Mr. Baker pointed out something that strikes to the heart of not seeing the forest for the trees.  It appears that many of us are concerned about protecting our privacy in theory.  However, when offered the opportunity to save money at the grocery store if we let them have some of our information, many of us acquiesce .  When offered the opportunity to fly by the toll both using a magnetic identifier versus having to wait to drop change in the booth, many of choose the convenience.  I would add, when surfing the web, if one doesn’t use a javascript blocker, many sites use Google analytics and feed some information from you to Google that includes other sites you’ve visited.

Reminds me of Ben Franklin’s quote about (paraphrasing here) those willing to give up a little bit of freedom for greater security deserve neither freedom nor security.  Food for thought, anyway: if we care about our privacy so much, we should be careful what information we choose to share with whom and when – especially if it’s for a minor rather than major convenience.  (Oh, and he also touched upon Social Media and how younger folks are sharing so many details about their lives.  Guess we’ll see how that either comes back to bite them or possibly further erodes privacy concerns in our society in the future.  On that note… have I mentioned you can follow me on Twitter?)

Original content by Ricardo G. (aka @ggroovin)

Who needs to boil when you can nuke?

Nagasaki bomb cloud

So… the Cold War’s been over for how long? And that which supposedly kept the Soviet Union from bombing us- what’s the status on all those nukular arms that provided the détente know as “mutually assured destruction” of both them and us? (Or near certain destruction of almost all life on earth if one believes Carl Sagan’s hypothesis that a global “nuclear winter” would follow an all-out nuclear war.)

Turns out both sides still have vast arsenals of nuclear missiles connected to some red button. Meantime, of course, others have joined the “nuclear club” – including several who weren’t invited to join. And here we fear that the North Koreans or the Iranians will join the club by investing in creating their own arms, when the easiest way to acquire a nuke is to bribe some corrupt former-Soviet.

I was heartened to hear candidate Barack Obama actually taking a position on this topic, given it’s not one likely to have garnered him many votes. Ignored by just about everyone for the last 15 to nearly 18 years since the fall of the Wall, here’s hoping he follows through on ensuring that we decrease the numbers of nukes in the world to a point they can only blow up medium-sized countries rather than medium-sized planets. Course, I’d rather he go all the way and works to help rid the world of nuclear arms. I say let’s work to step back from the brink of any such arms ever being used, and let’s make it harder for terrorists to make dirty bombs while we’re at it.

Original content by Ricardo G. (aka @ggroovin)

‘sup with Boiled Frogs?

Boiling a frog

So, first of all, welcome.  Second of all, I’ve already started getting the question, “Why Boiled Frogs?”

Comes from the story that if you put a frog in boiling water it jumps out, while if you put it in cold water that is heated slowly it never jumps out and boils to death. This can be used to illustrate all manner of unnoticed escalations of a situation.

The other inspiration is the book Eat that Frog! which deals with how to overcome procrastination to become more productive.  Figure with a title like this, it’ll remind me to eat my frog every day (take care of the task that’s most important first thing each day).

Would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on topics, but among the things that interest me are:

• how we aren’t doing what needs to be done to take care of our planet and ensure human survival in the long run
• how businesses often take a very short-term view when a long-term view would make them more successful in the short term as well
• how people have a funny way of ignoring the big stuff & sweating the small stuff

Let’s see where that takes us for now, yeah?  Cool.