We kill them

I recommend everyone read the Globe & Mail article written by Jim Balsillie which begins with his account of a U.S. business leader describing a tactic for dealing with successful Canadian businesses: "... We wait until they get big enough, then we go after them. And we kill them.”  In case it wasn't obvious that business is a full contact sport, the article points out several gaps in how Canadian institutions -- legislative and education especially -- are failing to fortify our national economic interests. Since Jim is a well noted hockey fan, he could have used a hockey metaphor – you must skate with your head up or someone is going to flatten you!

Land Value Taxation

This video briefly explains an alternative concept for taxation. Setting the relative values of land would of course be a complex detail of such an idea, but no more complex than the underpinnings of our existing tax labyrinth. It would be a very big software model to test before delivering the news! Nonetheless, the central notion is very interesting and more details are available at the Earthsharing site.

Feb 14 = Generosity Day

Parker Mitchell has a good idea on his blog -- re-brand February 14th as Generosity Day. The idea seems to flow from Sasha Dicter and some of his friends.

Ernesto Sirolli

This is a really excellent commentary on international development. It includes one of the great phrases of business -- Shut up! And listen. Thanks to Margaret & Bob for the link.

The Social Animal

TVO's great series Big Ideas has an excellent talk this week by journalist David Brooks entitled How Success Happens. The talk is based upon the research he did for his book The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement. One of the things he mentions in the talk is Karl Popper's continuum of predictability ranging from clouds to clocks. One of the topics that EWB devote a lot of time is the same notion of being able to distinguish between complex and complicated things. Clouds are very complex and hard to predict; clocks can be very complicated, but ultimately they are extremely predictable.

Cellular carriers lie

Telus is my cellular service provider and I recently called them before I went to Europe to ask about the cost of using my BlackBerry while I was traveling. I was told that I would pay $10 per MB for data and based upon my daily usage in Canada, I was able to predict my cost because I wouldn't be using the browser like I might here in Canada. Perhaps I would get about 20 emails per day, and each email might be at most 5K so I might expect to consume 100K per day, or about a dollar per day.

What they don't explain is that every hour I would be billed 20K to maintain the convenience of a real-time data connection. Back in Canada, that connection is maintained for just 1K per hour. So I was billed an extra 450K (24 hours x 19K), or $4.50, per day in unexpected data!! Telus claim that they are billed the 20K from the foreign carrier, but those networks are running modern 3G networks and they would have as advanced billing capabilities as any carrier here and the data usage would be the same. Therefore, the carriers are charging a HUGE premium, perhaps in Europe, but perhaps by agreement between carriers on both sides.

If you want the convenience of having email arrive immediately while you are in Europe, then you are forced to pay $0.20 per hour and it would be advisable to turn off the device when you sleep which I never do here in Canada. Telus may not have told a direct lie, but they do misrepresent the cost of operating their devices outside their network.

Famine is a crime

A year ago I was getting ready to go to Malawi and my other blog discusses a few of the complexities of international development that I encountered. Disaster relief efforts, such as the response to the famine in Somalia can be even more complex. For example, it would be simple to imagine a boat load of surplus North American food, perhaps bags of wheat, being shipped to Somalia. But imagine being a farmer near the drought zone seeing his crop value drop as the market is flooded with free imports. Dumping a commodity in Canada would result in a trade dispute, but that dispute mechanism is not easily activated by a rural farmer in east Africa. Hopefully the dollars being directed to help people in Somalia through aid agencies in the developed world will be used to purchase food produced within east Africa so as to stimulate, not crush, their agricultural sector.

Someone recently asked me what I thought was the cause of the famine in Somalia . . . actually ... that isn't true. This person simply stated the cause was too many people. I noted that my great-grandparents lived in a society where big families were the norm and most of the developing world is based upon a similar agricultural economy. My response was perhaps a small education, but it makes me wonder how is it possible for Canadians to get the impression that the famine in Somalia is just an agricultural production problem? It seems to me that the media is explaining there is a long lasting war. But perhaps the difference of circumstance is so far beyond our cultural context that most people are incapable of imagining the situation. I went to a refugee camp when I was in Malawi and I can't truly comprehend what is happening in Somalia.

The Foreign Policy article linked here presents a more complex story of food insecurity routed in political extremism. Just like Stalin starved people to death, so too have extremists conducted a similar campaign in Somalia. Imagine being a logistics officer with Doctors Without Borders and consider what it would be like to negotiate with weapon-toting radicals as you attempt to get food to people who are starving to death. I support a couple organizations that are capable of delivering thoughtful action and I hope you will also give generously -- Doctors Without Borders and CARE

Apathy & Eco-douchebaggery

There is an article in the May 2010 issue of Explore magazine by J.B. Mackinnon (he wrote the 100 Mile Diet with his wife Alisa Smith) in which he credits the phrase eco-douchebag to conservation scientist Jennifer Jaquet and her Guilty Planet blog where she features an image of a warning sign in a Whole Foods supermarket: "Dear Customer: Please be advised that our Bread Slicer is used for both Organic and Conventional items." What would compel a store to post such a sign? An eco-douchbag agitator and a foolish acquiescence to said sorry sack.

The article ends with: The greatest enemy of change is apathy, and at the heart of apathy Stanley Cohen found denial: "Our need to be innocent of a troubling recognition." Our small and imperfect efforts are constant reminders that there are patterns to break, whole stories to rewrite, and while they are never enough, no, never enough, a little practice surely won't hurt.

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Sent from my BlackBerry

Travel decision

There are a lot of countries in the world that sound interesting to visit. Norway and Japan are two that have been on my list for a long time. But every now and then I read that Norway and Japan continue to hunt whales. If you have seen the movie The Cove, you will also learn more about Japan's hunt of bottlenose dolphins. Those that aren't sold for 5-6 figures to commercial aquariums are herded around the corner and killed. The meat is toxic so it tends to be mis-labeled and then sold as whale meat. Lovely.

Canadian Science Policy Conference

I recently attended an excellent Science Policy Conference in Toronto. Session summaries, session audio recordings and keynote videos are on the conference website. There were many excellent presentations including Preston Manning who highlights the importance of (a) getting science-literate politicians elected and (b) making sure that scientists understand how to present their concepts and opinions in a language that is easily understood by politicians and the public.

I highly recommend watching the 5 minute interviews. One of note is Peter Singer who notes that through science, Canada can help solve global challenges, both directly and by helping developing countries. With reference to Canada's creation of the U.N. Peacekeeping Force, he suggests that Canada should evolve its international reputation from Blue Helmets to White Lab Coats. You can also watch Canada's Minister of Anti-Science Gary Goodyear read a speech and then be the only speaker to not take questions.

Why doesn't Canada have a National Science Advisor?

The answer is our Prime Minister Stephen Harper eliminated the role in late 2007. A few weeks ago President Obama recruited Harvard professor John Holdren as his primary science advisor and to run the White House Office of Science and Technology. Holdren directly advises Obama; who brings such issues directly to our PM and who does the PM consult when he has a gap in his strategic or tactical understanding of how public policy may be influenced by science and technology ? In theory the Advisor role was to be replaced by the Science, Technology and Innovation Council. In the last 23 months the STIC has published one document on their website and list an underwhelming five press releases. Holden has been on the job for less than a month and he already has the following 2 minute video on the OST site.


Is it possible Mr. Harper feels his knowledge of science and technology requires no assistance? Or perhaps he defers to Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear who recently refused to say he believes in evolution. That is kind of like the Minister of Finance refusing to agree that he believes in capitalism. Goodyear said evolution was a religious issue – even the Vatican agrees that evolution is a scientific fact. AAAS have recently published an interesting interview with Holdren that is worth reading as well.

The Great Disruption ?

In his NY Times column Thomas Friedman, author of the books The World is Flat and Hot Flat and Crowded, recently hypothesized:

What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”
For more from Friendman check out his NY Times columns and videos.

Powerful women

SD = (HC x SP x EE) ** Women
where,
SD = Sustainable Development
HC = Human Condition (basic needs such as shelter, food, clean water, medicine)
SP = Social Position (such as cast or cultural prosecution)
EE = Enabling Environment (everything from climate & weather to agriculture policy, land ownership rights , business start-up complexity , access to investment funds)


This is a very interesting equation presented by Kevin McCort, the CEO at CARE Canada, to help describe the complexity in international development. Note the three factors HC, SP and EE are all interacting functions and the product is then raised to the power of women. A few women will have a small change in development, but a lot will cause an enormous change. And a zero in any factor, no matter how many women are involved will generate no results.

I have heard George Roter, co-founder of Engineers Without Borders comment that if you monitored just one single factor in a society as a proxy for development it would be women's education level. For a society to have more women with more education will require a cascade of things to have occurred which in total will minimize the systemic problems associated with poverty such as access to healthcare, social imbalance, etc - in essence HC, SP & EE.

Tomorrow Today Election Q&A

A group of twelve national conservation and environmental groups submitted six questions to the leaders of all the national parties. The 90-second per question video response from each party is interesting in part due to the absence of any response from the Conservatives.

Election season - where is the science debate?

Looking through the standard national media sites I found only one article about Canadian science and technology policy. The CBC article essentially asks the same thing I am asking - where is the public debate or discussion?

The Liberals are showing steady increases to NSERC; the Green Party would invest in "green" technology and remove funding to the oil industry. But I would like to hear how the Conservatives justify the elimination of the National Science Advisor earlier this year. Who is advising the PM? Maybe Stockwell Day who thinks humans lived with dinosaurs within the last few thousand years? Mr. Harper and other cabinet members seem to follow the George Bush school of anti-science. While 22% of Canadians polled believe "God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years," is it really too much to ask for our elected officials to have a better education?

Our economy isn't going to make it too far into the 21st century unless we have a more science-literate population. And that requires appropriate political understanding and foresight. The natural resource extraction industries which were the foundation of Canada need to be eclipsed by value added industries that will require substantial understanding of science and technology by the workforce and by politicians.

Acceleration

Isn't it strange that we live in an era that has seen such a spectacular use of information and communication technology and yet it all sits on top of a comparatively archaic system of extracting and cracking hydrocarbon molecules? What do you think it is going to take to move away from the hydrocarbon economy?

Global hydrocarbon-released CO2 grew 3.1 percent per year between 2000 and 2006, more than twice the 1990's rate. I predict equal or greater growth for another 10-15 years. After that I imagine we will experience some unbelievable polar ice events. The industrialized world will have a collective "holly crap!" moment that will even produce a massive shift in U.S. and Canadian policy to drive solar, geothermal and other non-carbon-based power production and a renewed power distribution infrastructure. And then over an agonizingly slow period of 10-20 years, carbon consuming technologies (power plants and transportation systems) will be forced out of operation. I predict Canadian governments will fail to help companies develop core technologies and we will buy virtually everything from abroad and further hollow out the economy.

The Earth Policy Institute newsletters have periodic reports on this stuff worth reading. But it may scare the crap out of you. If it does, write a short letter (or an email if you are only somewhat alarmed) to every politician you can think of and tell them to show some leadership and backbone and to steer our society towards a consumption model that is sustainable for a century from now, not just another decade or two. If you have kids, do you think they will want to have kids?

14 grand challenges for engineering

A U.S. National Academy of Engineering committee today announced their list of 14 grand challenges for engineering this century. You can vote for which you think is the most important goal on the list. The Challenges:

• Make solar energy affordable • Provide energy from fusion • Develop carbon sequestration methods • Manage the nitrogen cycle • Provide access to clean water • Restore and improve urban infrastructure • Advance health informatics • Engineer better medicines • Reverse-engineer the brain • Prevent nuclear terror • Secure cyberspace • Enhance virtual reality • Advance personalized learning • Engineer the tools for scientific discovery

Rwanda: education, entertainment and entrepreneurship

At the AAAS conference Rwandan President Paul Kigami stated that Rwanda is working towards allocating 3% of GDP for science and technology, which is a rate equal to South Korea and greater than the U.S. Listen to Kigami and their science & technology minister talk about how they are upgrading their telecommunications infrastructure with goals of fiber to all local counties to facilitate everything from education to entertainment and entrepreneurship.