QualityHosting4U's Link Exchange DirectoryYou are here » QualityHosting4U's Link Exchange » Links Directory » Reference » Flags (0)
Flags RSS FeedsAchieving U.S. Energy Security Through Energy Diversity - ?We?ve been spoiled as a nation,? says Bob Malone. For decades, energy was inexpensive and abundant, and most Americans took it for granted. Recently ?we?ve seen the world change around us.? Successive presidential administrations have failed to free the nation of dependence on foreign oil, and to advance alternatives to fossil fuels. We must now, once and for all, shape a comprehensive national energy policy, Malone maintains. With the dive in financial markets and general economic gloom, Malone worries that the public can?t focus clearly on energy. He reminds us that the fate of the U.S. economy is intricately bound up with energy costs, and that this year alone, ?we?ll pay more than $400 billion for imported oil,? and that the U.S. has paid out $8 trillion for foreign oil since 1973. High energy costs t...Feed Source: mitworld.mit.edu Global Concerns of National Importance for the Next U.S. Administration - ?I?ve drunk kava in the South Pacific and rubbed noses with natives,? says William Fallon. ?I?ve enjoyed tender baby camel as a delicacy. I?ve met presidents, kings, prime ministers and many ordinary folks. I?ve done a lot of things. That was yesterday. What matters is today and tomorrow.? Now, says Fallon, is the time for all Americans to get down to business addressing the key crises confronting them. And he does mean ordinary Americans, not just the next president.
As a naval man with 45 years of experience dealing with conflicts all over the world, Fallon figures that the major challenges facing the nation will be at minimum ?daunting,? but they are not beyond our collective capability. There?s the financial crisis; nuclear and other threats from Iran, North Korea and wide-ranging terror organizations; the competiti... The Electoral College Experts Debate and Audience Dialogue (Part 4) - Much like our divided country, each side of this debate strains to comprehend the perspective of the other, together reaching no consensus on the fate of the Electoral College. In what feels like a constitutional law and political science scrimmage, participants lob questions and spark exchanges. What follows is a short list of discussion themes:
Judith Best wonders how a movement currently pursuing a nationwide popular vote outside of a Constitutional amendment can accomplish its goal without usurping Constitutional process. Robert Bennett responds that advocates believe they are neither overturning the Constitutional system nor encroaching on the prerogatives of federal government. Alexander Belenky asks what benefits popular vote proponents think it will bring. Alexander Keyssa... The Electoral College Experts Audience Dialogue (Part 5) - Audience members take the floor in this last of five sessions debating whether to retain or discard the Electoral College system. Through question, answer and general discussion, the panelists further elucidate their positions on the main conference topic.
The following is a short list of discussion areas raised by audience questions:
Panelists engage around how a national popular vote system would impact minority groups. Judith Best and Robert Hardaway believe that minorities in swing states have an advantage in our current system, and a change would mean losing that leverage. Robert Bennett, Paul Schumaker, and Akhil Amar dispute this.
John Fortier, Schumaker, Alan Natapoff, and Vikram and Akhil Amar discuss whether a national popular ... What (if Anything) Should Be Done About Improving the System of Electing a President? (Part 3) - As David King puts it, ?The Constitution has an on the one hand, on the other quality,? and the Electoral College seems a focal point for contrariness and ambivalence. King ticks off areas where the EC can be viewed alternatively: for instance, does it encourage healthy, broad-based campaigning and widespread voting, or promote targeted campaigning, and widespread voter fraud? Well acquainted with congressmen, King worries about the tension between short-term concerns (getting re-elected), and long-term interests. He believes that with the Electoral College, ?you at least tip toward caring about winning multiple states?and the more states you try to win, the more candidates for office look to the long term and national best interest.?
Arnold Barnett offers a ?pragmatic compromise? between a popular... The Role of Civic Media in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election - In World of Warcraft, online ?clans? form whose members, while dispersed geographically, exhibit fierce loyalty toward each other -- reminiscent, says Henry Jenkins of neighborhood bowling leagues. He wonders whether new media platforms that encourage bonding over long distances might help move Americans back toward more personal and immediate civic engagement.
Forty years after Alvin Toffler noted that American society was fragmenting due to increased social mobility, digital technology permits us ?to build strong friendships and carry them with us wherever we move,? says Jenkins. Social ties can exist without regard to geography, but how do new kinds of social organization play into our politics, especially at the local level? And as local newspapers fold, and media outlets morph into print/online/broad... The Electoral College: Its Logical Foundations and Problems What (if Anything) Should Be Done About Improving the System of Electing a President? (Part 1) - Give a hearty cheer for the Electoral College, and for the Founding Fathers, whose good sense (and good luck), say these panelists, have led to a durable, wise and relatively fair system for electing a president.
By way of introduction, Alex Belenky details the mechanics of the current Electoral College, and explains ?to a certain extent, this is not in line with what was initially designed or meant by the Founding Fathers.? The founders? idea was to appoint ?some wise people from different states and they would come up with their own ideas. These wise people, a so-called independent congress, would elect a president.? Belenky encourages panelists to debate whether the current system, in which electoral votes are determined by how states vote, should be abolished, or combined somehow with a popular v... What (if Anything) Should Be Done About Improving the System of Electing a President? (Part 2) - The Electoral College emphatically does not represent the best of all possible worlds, say these panelists, providing often scathing and nuanced responses to the EC advocates who precede them in this conference.
Akhil Amar favors the direct national election because it ?best expresses the idea of one person, one vote.? One argument in favor of the EC, though: inertia, which essentially expresses that ?the devil you know is better than the devil you don?t.? He takes issue with those who would preserve the EC because it exclusively sustains federalism. Direct national elections, he says, wouldn?t eliminate the Senate or the need for federal oversight of voting. Why fear a direct vote, he asks, when plenty of big states like California and Texas directly elect an executive ?who looks like a mini-presid... Religion and the Election: What Do We Think We Know? - The 2008 U.S. Presidential election was in many ways a watershed event, including the impact of religion on candidates and voters.
Shaun Casey finds some parallels to 2008 in 1960, when John F. Kennedy eventually overcame enough Protestant resistance to become the first Roman Catholic president ? just as Obama campaigned to overcome American racism and become the first African-American president. Kennedy applied a ?technical rationality to most problems,? says Casey, so he hired staffers to help him present his faith in an unthreatening way. Obama also put together a staff to deal with such ?religion problems? as Reverend Wright, the notion that he was a ?Manchurian Meccan candidate,? or even worse, ?a secular Harvard Law School educator who?s really an atheist.?
Alan Wolfe observes that ... Health Care Policy and the Next U.S. Administration - In an energetic talk delivered prior to the U.S. presidential election, Jonathan Gruber provides a useful breakdown of the two candidates? remedies for the nation?s troubled health care system. His detailed analysis of the key issues around health care may prove invaluable as the next president assumes office.
After decades of discussing health reform and watching national health costs balloon uncontrollably, says Gruber, we may finally be watching a consensus emerge to fix what?s broken: a crisis where more than 47 million Americans lack health insurance, and ?are a car accident away from being bankrupted.? Gruber describes key areas that reform must tackle: pooling of health care markets, affordable plans, and mandates. The left and right differ on how to guarantee that sick, poor, young and old pay a fai... 20-Ton Canaries: The Great Whales of the North Atlantic (Panel) - These legal, environmental and policy experts don?t converge on a dominant strategy for saving whales, but make the case in their own ways that we are fast approaching a moment of no return for the great cetaceans, and quite possibly the oceans we all rely on.
?Every time you take a piece out of the ocean without knowing what you?re doing, you?re creating future problems,? says Robin Craig. With whaling and current fishing practices, we simply don?t know what we?re losing in terms of biodiversity and larger ecosystem functioning. Craig is also concerned about the Navy?s use of lower frequency sonar, and the decade of litigation that in one case ended up in the Supreme Court.
Jeremy Firestone has investigated the physics of shipstrikes on whales, looking at whether speed or mass are most im... Books and Libraries in the Digital Age - Perhaps because he is a historian rather than librarian by training, Robert Darnton regards the vast ocean of digital information that civilization has begun accumulating with relish rather than anxiety. Darnton delves into European archives to find raw material, boxes of cast-off ?ephemera,? for his stories of how people lived hundreds of years ago. No wonder he believes ?it?s important to preserve as much as you can because you don?t know what will turn out to be significant.?
In conversation with David Thorburn and audience members, Darnton lays out why he finds more promise than peril in rapidly expanding digital collections. He first owns up to the tactile pleasures of archival history: the sensation of opening a box full of manuscripts, dirty hands, the smell of old paper, and literally c... 20-Ton Canaries: The Great Whales of the North Atlantic (Keynote) - This two-part lecture provides a brief illustrated journey through our whaling past, and the heart-breaking current story of the North Atlantic right whale.
Using many slides, author Eric Jay Dolin recaps highlights from his recent book, Leviathan. Among the tidbits, we learn that Captain John Smith (of Jamestown fame) came to Maine and Massachusetts in 1614 to hunt for whales (with a sideline in gold and silver). It was a bust, like some of his other ventures. The next settlers had more luck, harvesting dead whales that drifted ashore. Through the next century, colonists mastered offshore whaling, and ultimately more than half the income New England earned from selling products to England was derived from whales.
With breaks during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, New Englanders ... Building the Next Generation Company: Innovation, Talent, Excellence - While the ongoing world economic crisis has left many business leaders sweating (or worse), John Chambers is rolling up his sleeves in anticipation of an eventual recovery. After every economic challenge, he says, Cisco has come out with dramatic gains in market share. This time won?t be different, if Chambers? bets pay off.
In the 1990s, he predicted that networks would transform the way the world works, becoming platforms for communications and other IT, and Chambers placed Cisco at the center of that transformation. Today, he envisions a Web 2.0 premised on collaboration and social networking that will similarly transfigure all business life. Since 2001, he?s been positioning Cisco to catch this massive market transition, and indeed, is ?betting the company?s future on it.?
In ?phase two of th... The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces: Anticipating a New Golden Age - Listening to Frank Wilczek describe his research, one might not recognize simple English words, for they assume unfamiliar meanings in the context of physics. The deceptive lexicon of particles, forces and equations includes ?up,? ?down,? ?flavor,? ?color,? ?strange,? ?everything,? and the compelling ?beautiful.? Rigorous science is conveyed in poetry and metaphor.
The springboard for this presentation is the final chapter of Wilczek?s new book, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces. For a sense of history, he first touches on breakthroughs of the 20th century that gave rise to conceptual revolutions: 1910 ? theory of relativity; 1925 ? quantum mechanics; 1970 ? standard model of normal matter. He then broaches current exploration in particle physics and the promise residing in the... Sustainable Building Design @ MIT: Walking the Talk - There?s ?just exactly enough time, with no time to lose? to address the massive challenge of climate change and renewable energy, says moderator John Sterman. With this sense of urgency, MIT faculty, administration and students have taken to heart the mission of rendering their campus and the larger world more sustainable.
Sterman describes a triumph of green construction rising on campus, Building E62, the product of a decade of design and negotiation, which many hope will set the standard for future MIT development. The building features lighting that will use half as much power as existing campus buildings, and heating and cooling that will reduce energy use by one-third. But this is a success story with lessons: green construction requires higher up front costs, and MIT executives were not immediately so... Technologies and Emerging Democracies: Building a Better Gatekeeper - Don?t forsake The New York Times for online media, instructs Ethan Zuckerman, because newspapers provide opportunities for learning about the world largely unavailable in the digital kingdom. Zuckerman points in particular to the ?serendipity box? -- that intensely local or exotic piece that often grabs attention at the bottom of the front page. This ?juicy bait on a hook,? as he calls it, often leads to an in-depth, fascinating report about a culture or perspective far removed from most Americans?. At a time when the world has become connected by infrastructure of all kinds, it behooves Americans to take a closer look at our neighbors, especially those in developing nations. But capturing people?s attention on these matters, says Zuckerman, turns out to be a ?surprisingly difficult problem.?
In th... Energy: The Past Must Not Be Prologue - There are few people who have spent as much time wielding high-level influence in Washington as George Shultz, and in such a variety of roles (Secretary of Labor, Treasury and State, plus the Office of Management and Budget, among others). So the MIT Energy Initiative has much to gain from a friend with this kind of distinguished government record.
Shultz discusses our nation?s ?roller coaster? energy ride. He harks back fondly to Dwight Eisenhower, who thought if the U.S. imported more than 20% of its oil, ?we would be headed for trouble in national security.? Eisenhower instituted an oil import quota program, many viewed as the ?OPEC of its day,? says Shultz. Prices stood at a whopping $3 per barrel. Then came the oil shocks of the ?70s ? the Arab oil embargo, the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. ... Leading Change: A Conversation with Ron Williams - In what Dean Dave Schmittlein bills as a master class, Ronald A. Williams discusses how an emphasis on new technology and application of basic values helped turn around the health care giant Aetna.
Williams? case study begins in 2001, when he arrived to find a corporation bleeding out -- having lost $280 million in the past year. He diagnosed key areas of failure and opportunity in Aetna?s vast enterprise: orchestrating medical, dental and other health and insurance benefits in a network of 843 thousand health care professionals with 37 million members. Williams shaped a path to recovery focusing on a better understanding of Aetna?s current customers, from small employers to the largest corporations, and the best way of expanding into new markets such as retailers, banks and law firms. To do this, Aetna need... The International Development Fair: The Human Factor at Work in the World - Imagine if thousands of Amy Smiths were unleashed on the world, providing simple, ingenious inventions to make life easier for those subsisting on less than $2 a day -- half of humanity. This MacArthur Award-winning inventor has been seeding such programs at MIT, and describes tangible results of efforts to inspire students to apply innovative thinking and technology to everyday problems in the developing world.
The Designs for Developing Countries Project, the MIT Program in Developmental Entrepreneurship and D (Development)-Lab have spawned a range of initiatives, spanning the fields of public health, labor, and agriculture. In Ghana and Ecuador, MIT students are helping provide safe drinking water, with low-cost water testing methods that can be applied in the field with no electricity. ... Beyond the Bench: Preparing MIT Students for the Challenges of Global Leadership - MIT produces students who are ?deep, entrepreneurial, passionate, diverse and active,? says Phillip Clay, the kind of talented individuals who should play major parts on the world stage. MIT has begun a drive to ensure that its students fulfill their promise. Central to this mission, Richard Samuels says, is the kind of education that steeps students in the realities of globalization. In a world that?s not so much flat as converging and increasingly complex and diverse, students must ?step boldly and intelligently into the global market of ideas and commerce,? says Samuels, lest they ?become cogs in a global machine.? MIT hopes ?to create the people who design and operate those machines.?
This means making international studies a core part of the MIT experience, and establishing MIT in an in... Opportunities in Infrastructure and Built Environment - Half the world?s population currently lives in cities, and that number is spiraling upward, as urban settlements gobble up most of the world?s natural resources and emit the most pollutants. No wonder that these panelists perceive the challenge (and opportunity) of sustainability as much bigger than getting people to switch from incandescent light bulbs to fluorescents.
The ?latest craze in city governance,? says Judith Layzer is making your city as sustainable as possible. New York for instance, has vowed to plant one million trees, and convert its entire taxi fleet to hybrids. Chicago is covering its rooftops in green; Toronto composts. Layzer believes there are ?good reasons to worry we?ll see symbolic commitments with not much done.?
Cities struggle to undertake systemic change, partly becau... Opportunities in Building More Sustainable Supply Chains - When a global corporation implements sustainability standards, it pays to work closely with supply chains, as these panelists attest.
From his research, Richard M. Locke knows that the traditional methods of achieving decent labor conditions don?t work well. When Locke examined years of records gathered by Nike and other companies concerned with employee treatment in overseas factories, he found the conventional compliance route -- auditing, policing and enforcement -- just hadn?t brought about consistent improvements in child labor, or excess hours.
What does work, Locke discovered, are collaborative approaches -- when the corporate buyer offers to show the way, sharing know-how and resources with its suppliers. For instance, when one of Nike?s Vietnamese apparel factories -- an under-perform... Getting Unstuck: How to Promote More Sustainable Practices in Our Organizations - All that?s required to achieve sustainability, says Rebecca Henderson, is to clean up your current operations and/or rethink the business. ?That?s easy,? she says -- with a smile. Henderson has spent much of her career trying to help firms embrace and survive such transformations. She and her colleagues have analyzed why businesses get stuck in their ways, and how they can break free to act boldly around the challenge and opportunity of sustainability.
Overload proves the single greatest obstacle for many organizations, Henderson says. Too many projects and too little time result in ?toxic effects, including making it difficult to undertake creative thinking and purposeful redirection? that responding to sustainability requires. Single-minded focus on short term financials can put unbearable pressure on indiv... Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities for Business and Society - If ?organizations are the way that ideas change the world,? as MIT Sloan Dean Dave Schmittlein puts it, then look to institutions like MIT, which has wrapped its arms around the issues of energy and climate change, to help make sustainability real and attainable. The Dean describes some showcase work launched at MIT, including a long-lasting battery for electric cars, and MIT?s own green campus efforts.
For MIT Sloan, explains Richard Locke, sustainability is not an ?in vogue concept? that is about environment or climate change. Rather, it is ?an incredible opportunity for new business, and for existing enterprise to reinvent their practices.? He invites panelists and audience at Convocation sessions to engage in dialog about moving beyond theory to meet the challenges of sustainability.
Forget the notion that the climate... A View From Industry - GM knows you?ll be skeptical, says Gary Cowger, but this icon of American business has committed to transforming itself via a comprehensive regime of environmental sustainability. Cowger offers proof of the corporate giant?s efforts to date and even more ambitious plans for the future.
From its headquarters in Detroit, to 185 manufacturing sites around the world, to the cars and trucks people drive out of a dealership, GM sees ?environmental sustainability more and more ingrained in our operating culture every day.? Cowger says employees in every plant, in every language around the world must embrace environmental metrics along with safety and quality.
This means, for instance, that GM is installing giant solar panels at sites in Europe and the U.S., in some cases, sending electricity back ... A Report Card on Media Coverage of the Presidential Election - There?s anxiety, outrage, and some wistfulness in this panel devoted to weighing the strengths and weaknesses of political reporting during the 2008 campaign season. In the age of the internet and cable news, ?enormously courageous journalism?is lost in the clutter,? notes moderator Ellen Hume. Basic tenets of journalism fall under assault.
From his research, Tom Rosenstiel quantifies what?s changing and what?s not in political journalism. One enduring pattern: 65% of the news hole is dedicated to covering the campaign as horse-race (tactics, strategy), and only 20% concerns policy. This has been true for two generations, he says. Today, cable news dominates political coverage, devoting 62% of its time to the presidential election. This might be a good thing, except that ?cable news has ... Imperative of Science and Technology in Accelerating African and Rwandan Development - The news these days from Africa isn?t all bad. In fact, in some places, it?s downright hopeful, as Rwandan President Paul Kagame attests. ?Our continent is no longer all about violence and disease and human disasters that scarred many African countries in recent decades,? says Kagame. ?We are now becoming a continent of opportunities.?
There are those who doubted Rwanda could ?constitute a viable state,? says Kagame, but 14 years after bloody genocide and civil war, his country has managed an astonishing revival -- enough ?stability and resilience to allow the economy to grow at an average 7% annually in the past several years.? Other African nations have been expanding at the same pace; oil producers are zooming along at even faster clips. Kagame attributes this recovery to such factors as the ?leapfrog... Foreign Policy and the Next U.S. Administration - After tuning in closely to the presidential campaign, these panelists don?t discern worlds of difference in the candidates? approaches to foreign policy. But the speakers convey key concerns and offer words of advice to the next U.S. president.
Barry Posen is interested in the future of U.S. grand strategy, by which he means our plan for achieving and maintaining security and power. Thus far, says Posen, both presidential candidates ?largely share the same view on U.S. grand strategy,? which is very expansive, with ?a long, global agenda for U.S. security goals.?
Both sides agree on the continued struggle against terror, containment of rogue states, and a commitment to the spread of democracy. Their disagreements are ?tactical, though not trivial,? involving for instance the relevance of international institutions, and the role... Personal Robots - Cynthia Breazeal?s eminently charming and huggable creatures appear to have stepped out of Santa?s North Pole workshop. But Breazeal wants you to know that her robots are attempts to create socially intelligent machines ?whose behaviors are governed not just by physics but by having a mind,? and which might someday collaborate with humans in critical interactions.
Breazeal wants to shift the concept of robots from machines that explore distant places like Mars, or vacuum floors, to devices that can function in society at large, dealing with people on a daily basis ?to enhance daily life, to help us as partners.?
Building sophisticated machines means delving into human social intelligence, our ability to develop a sense of self, communicate thoughts and feelings in words and gestures, and... Copyright © 2009, QualityHosting4U's Link Exchange. All Rights Reserved. |