"Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
Poppycock! An e-reader, dropped once will break, unlike a book, making the durability and portability questionable. While the quality of an iPad, may be consistent, so are conventional books. As far as interactivity, a book requires you to physically manipulate a page to get more information, activating parts of your brain associated with learning. An e-reader requires you to stare at a screen that is as easy to ignore as any TV commercial. Searchability? That is called an index. If you don't know how to use one, you won't do much better with keywords. Finally, environmentally friendly? E-readers are made of non-renewable resources that must be mined, causing environmental destruction, toxic byproducts, and greenhouse gasses to power them. Books are made from trees, which unlike rare earth metals are renewable.
It does however make you complicit in terrorism, the terrorism effected by the capitalist system designed to make wealth trickle up. They CEO will always be paid before the stockholder or the worker. Continuing to participate in the system does make us all bad people.
To assume that a lack of government regulation is the same as no regulation is to completely overlook the corporate regulation that those who want net neutrality oppose. I would always rather have the government regulating instead of the profit driven anti-competitive private sector.
So go to another school, if you don't want to study under Keown. A professor teaching his own thoughts is what you sign up for, and I am sure his isn't the only classroom that uses the text, otherwise it wouldn't be published. I also make students read things I have written. If they don't want to learn what I have to say, they ought not take my class!
That isn't a kickback, that is the publishing industry fighting fair use by making his students pay for his books. He could distribute it for free, but he has a contract telling him not to do that...
By "piracy" they of course refer to fair use for academic purposes. I have had multiple publishers reps tell me that any use of their materials without payment to them is piracy, and then they tell me they have never heard of fair use, and that I must have made it up...
Duly noted, but as I said elsewhere, for every farmer like you I have met, I meet another 10 who just do what the chemical companies tell them to do...
And I completely agree that consumption patterns have to change rather than putting all the onus on farmers to be "sustainable."
Duly noted. I work with a wide variety of farmers, so I really shouldn't overgeneralize. Unfortunately, for every farmer I meet who wants to farm smarter, I meet 10 who don't think about their actions, they just think about making money.
The organics studies show that labor input goes up per acre, but you have higher drought resistance and therefore about 4% higher yield over time. The problem I have seen is that people are so far into debt with the chemical companies, they can't afford the transition. But in the long term, that fertilizer bill goes away... As long as consumers buy wider variety...
So are farmers smart enough to know that if you kill nematodes, you kill the soil and are therefore fully dependent on chemical companies if you want to keep farming? Are they smart enough to know that you should NEVER use this product? Most I have talked to lately insist its impossible to produce food without chemicals, which just isn't true. In fact, most studies show that the surpluses would be larger without chemicals limiting the environment. We might have to eat more than five crops and not use corn in everything (but then it isn't in ANY of my cookbooks, so why is corn syrup in all my food?). Unfortunately, your examples above of early adoption suggest that farmers go for "shiny" things, rather than useful tech. Try getting them to adopt precision fertilization using GPS, and they balk, because it isn't about the environment, its only about yield maps. So the shiny advert will convince them to make the soil into a barren substrate...
The center is known for some level of hysterics (but also raising public awareness), and this is a case of hysterics. The problem is not population growth, the problem is overconsumption. The places in the world where population is growing tend to consume about 1/40th of the resources of the average person in the US. So until the population of India hits 12 Billion, I am more worried about resource waste in the first world (which tends to have shrinking populations) than population growth in the third world.
Democracy is a nice ideal, but where is it practiced? Truth is we have governments, they are all basically the same, and the most efficient are dictatorships.
Lovelock is off base about some things, but this solution is really the only solution, because the US proves that there is danger when the majority is wrong or stupid.
And while part of the problem is the IR energy stored in the oceans, the problem is still that too much radiation is trapped by the atmosphere. This solution would only work if the sun was the problem, rather than the atmosphere.
Endowment with public funds? No way for me. The NYT might not be able to cope without public funds, but I can cope without the NYT.
Aside from squandering money on yet another useless cause, let us keep in mind that public endowments would allow government greater control over news sources.
Yet in the case of government funding (such as BBC), the press is freer, better, and more critical of the government. Providing funding to a free press ensures the survival of the press. The private model we have in the US is all about attracting advertisers and not offending them. Subscriptions are irrelevant except as demographics for ad pricing. News has little to do with it. Public support is the ONLY option for a free press that represents the people rather than the government, the advertiser, the corporate interest that owns the outlet, etc.
If they served strawberries or shrimp on planes, yes. But all we get is a bag of salted peanuts in hope we will spend $5 on a drink. Allergies that can kill are no joking matter, and a nut free zone might be a better solution to the problem than having to divert a plane because someone went into anaphylactic shock...
People speak Nahua every day. There are surviving speakers, and languages such as O'Odham and Hopi are in the same family. Heck, there is a restaurant chain in the US that uses Nahua in their name, "Taco Bell."
The battle of the Alamo occurred in Mexico. The problem was that the Mexican government manumitted the slaves of US citizens who happened to be living in Mexico, and the US went to war to protect the rights of slave owners living abroad. So in this case, the laws of the USA are enforced everywhere...
If you read the link (you should always do this, do you just trust all sources on the net? If you do, boy oh boy have I got some links for you), you can see it is a link to a TED talk, thus a video. No need to complain about your own poor clicking habits.
Slashdot Mirror
A good infographic that explains dollars and sense! http://matadornetwork.com/change/infographic-why-the-movie-industry-is-so-wrong-about-sopa/
"Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly." Poppycock! An e-reader, dropped once will break, unlike a book, making the durability and portability questionable. While the quality of an iPad, may be consistent, so are conventional books. As far as interactivity, a book requires you to physically manipulate a page to get more information, activating parts of your brain associated with learning. An e-reader requires you to stare at a screen that is as easy to ignore as any TV commercial. Searchability? That is called an index. If you don't know how to use one, you won't do much better with keywords. Finally, environmentally friendly? E-readers are made of non-renewable resources that must be mined, causing environmental destruction, toxic byproducts, and greenhouse gasses to power them. Books are made from trees, which unlike rare earth metals are renewable.
It does however make you complicit in terrorism, the terrorism effected by the capitalist system designed to make wealth trickle up. They CEO will always be paid before the stockholder or the worker. Continuing to participate in the system does make us all bad people.
To assume that a lack of government regulation is the same as no regulation is to completely overlook the corporate regulation that those who want net neutrality oppose. I would always rather have the government regulating instead of the profit driven anti-competitive private sector.
So go to another school, if you don't want to study under Keown. A professor teaching his own thoughts is what you sign up for, and I am sure his isn't the only classroom that uses the text, otherwise it wouldn't be published. I also make students read things I have written. If they don't want to learn what I have to say, they ought not take my class! That isn't a kickback, that is the publishing industry fighting fair use by making his students pay for his books. He could distribute it for free, but he has a contract telling him not to do that...
Nonsense. That would be grounds for firing, and in fact seeming too close to a sales rep is grounds for disciplinary action.
By "piracy" they of course refer to fair use for academic purposes. I have had multiple publishers reps tell me that any use of their materials without payment to them is piracy, and then they tell me they have never heard of fair use, and that I must have made it up...
Duly noted, but as I said elsewhere, for every farmer like you I have met, I meet another 10 who just do what the chemical companies tell them to do... And I completely agree that consumption patterns have to change rather than putting all the onus on farmers to be "sustainable."
Duly noted. I work with a wide variety of farmers, so I really shouldn't overgeneralize. Unfortunately, for every farmer I meet who wants to farm smarter, I meet 10 who don't think about their actions, they just think about making money. The organics studies show that labor input goes up per acre, but you have higher drought resistance and therefore about 4% higher yield over time. The problem I have seen is that people are so far into debt with the chemical companies, they can't afford the transition. But in the long term, that fertilizer bill goes away... As long as consumers buy wider variety...
So are farmers smart enough to know that if you kill nematodes, you kill the soil and are therefore fully dependent on chemical companies if you want to keep farming? Are they smart enough to know that you should NEVER use this product? Most I have talked to lately insist its impossible to produce food without chemicals, which just isn't true. In fact, most studies show that the surpluses would be larger without chemicals limiting the environment. We might have to eat more than five crops and not use corn in everything (but then it isn't in ANY of my cookbooks, so why is corn syrup in all my food?). Unfortunately, your examples above of early adoption suggest that farmers go for "shiny" things, rather than useful tech. Try getting them to adopt precision fertilization using GPS, and they balk, because it isn't about the environment, its only about yield maps. So the shiny advert will convince them to make the soil into a barren substrate...
The center is known for some level of hysterics (but also raising public awareness), and this is a case of hysterics. The problem is not population growth, the problem is overconsumption. The places in the world where population is growing tend to consume about 1/40th of the resources of the average person in the US. So until the population of India hits 12 Billion, I am more worried about resource waste in the first world (which tends to have shrinking populations) than population growth in the third world.
Democracy is a nice ideal, but where is it practiced? Truth is we have governments, they are all basically the same, and the most efficient are dictatorships. Lovelock is off base about some things, but this solution is really the only solution, because the US proves that there is danger when the majority is wrong or stupid.
And while part of the problem is the IR energy stored in the oceans, the problem is still that too much radiation is trapped by the atmosphere. This solution would only work if the sun was the problem, rather than the atmosphere.
Acidfication caused by too much carbon, which is also causing the warming, which means the same solution is required, not an adaptation.
Endowment with public funds? No way for me. The NYT might not be able to cope without public funds, but I can cope without the NYT. Aside from squandering money on yet another useless cause, let us keep in mind that public endowments would allow government greater control over news sources.
Yet in the case of government funding (such as BBC), the press is freer, better, and more critical of the government. Providing funding to a free press ensures the survival of the press. The private model we have in the US is all about attracting advertisers and not offending them. Subscriptions are irrelevant except as demographics for ad pricing. News has little to do with it. Public support is the ONLY option for a free press that represents the people rather than the government, the advertiser, the corporate interest that owns the outlet, etc.
If they served strawberries or shrimp on planes, yes. But all we get is a bag of salted peanuts in hope we will spend $5 on a drink. Allergies that can kill are no joking matter, and a nut free zone might be a better solution to the problem than having to divert a plane because someone went into anaphylactic shock...
People speak Nahua every day. There are surviving speakers, and languages such as O'Odham and Hopi are in the same family. Heck, there is a restaurant chain in the US that uses Nahua in their name, "Taco Bell."
The battle of the Alamo occurred in Mexico. The problem was that the Mexican government manumitted the slaves of US citizens who happened to be living in Mexico, and the US went to war to protect the rights of slave owners living abroad. So in this case, the laws of the USA are enforced everywhere...
If you read the link (you should always do this, do you just trust all sources on the net? If you do, boy oh boy have I got some links for you), you can see it is a link to a TED talk, thus a video. No need to complain about your own poor clicking habits.