MetaFilter posts tagged with Global

December 1, 2009 — World AIDS Day

xingcat — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:17:14 -0800

Tuesday, December 1, 2009 is the 21st annual World AIDS Day An estimated 33.4 million people worldwide worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS. Take a moment today to think about those you've lost, those who are still living with the disease, and how you can prevent yourself or others from becoming infected. Many events are planned for the day, but no matter what the day, be sure to know the basics about transmission.

Big Planet

Artw — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:22:42 -0800

The Apex Book of World SF gathers stories from around the globe, giving Science Fiction a global aspect not always seen. Charles Tan interviews the writers who contributed.

The Struggle For the Soul of Islam

reenum — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:29:06 -0800

Back in 2004, the Chicago Tribune published an investigative series about the state of Islam after 9/11. They hit many prescient topics, such as: - Islam's origins and how militant groups developed within the faith. - An anecdote about how hard line fundamentalists won over the congregation at a mosque in Bridgeview, IL. - The Saudi financing of militant groups. - Egypt's shift from moderate Islam to fundamentalism. - Tensions in Iran between hard liners and people yearning for greater freedom in society. - The growth of the International Muslim Brotherhood within the United States. - The story of Ismail Maasawabi, a Palestinian youth who became a suicide bomber in Gaza. - How Turkey has remained a moderate Muslim state. - The influence of madrassas in the growing fundamentalism in Pakistan. - The conflict between moderate and fundamentalist groups in Indonesia. - The spread of Islam in Europe. - An anecdote about an Islamic school in France. - How the children of Muslim immigrants to the U.S. balance these two cultures. -The role American foreign policy has played in the rise of fundamentalism.

seeing is believing

kliuless — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:45:24 -0800

What global warming looks like - Some amazing time lapse sequences of glacier retreat and a spectacular ice-shelf collapse: BONUS -Freeman Dyson on Charlie Rose -First Comes Global Warming, Then an Evolutionary Explosion -Humpty Dumpty and the Ghosts -Earth's Period of Habitability Is Nearly Over -ICE Satellite Maps Profound Polar Thinning -Four degrees and beyond -Bjørn Lomborg switches tack -Jared Diamond lunch interview -Consumerism is 'eating the future' -Scientists seek global limits on damaging human activities

free as in beer money

kliuless — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:33:40 -0800

Illustrating the cause of, and solution to, too much debt: *ahem*

In a sleepy European holiday resort town in a depressed economy and therefore no visitors, there is great excitement when a wealthy Russian guest appears in the local hotel reception, announces that he intends to stay for an extended period and places a €100 note on the counter as surety while he demands to be shown the available rooms. While he is being shown the room, the hotelier takes the €100 note round to his butcher, who is pressing for payment. The butcher in turn pays his wholesaler who, in turn, pays his farmer supplier. The farmer takes the note round to his favourite “good time girl” to whom he owes €100 for services rendered. She, in turn, rushes round to the hotel to settle her bill for rooms provided on credit. In the meantime, the Russian returns to the lobby, announces that no rooms are satisfactory, takes back his €100 note and leaves, never to be seen again. No new money has been introduced into the local economy, but everyone’s debts have been settled.

which leads us to The Future of Global Finance by liaquat ahamed:

It has long been recognized that the global financial structure — built as it is around the dollar as the world’s reserve currency — has a fundamental design flaw that makes it inherently unstable. The problem was first identified back in the early 1960s by the Belgian-American economist Robert Triffin, in “Gold and the Dollar Crisis.” Writing about Europe’s accumulation of dollars, he argued that the system carried the seeds of its own destruction. Foreigners could acquire dollars only if the United States ran current account deficits — that is, spent more than it earned. But lending money to someone who lives beyond his means has obvious dangers, and the same is true of countries. Thus, the American deficits necessary to supply dollars to the world for international transactions simultaneously undermined confidence in the currency. It was only a matter of time, Triffin predicted, before the system would be hit by a crisis...

note this isn't about the crisis just past so much as it is the perpetuation of a system -- prone to boom and bust -- requiring ever greater ~~innovation~~ swathes of the world's population going into debt (servitude). as bsetser writes: "borrowing by U.S. households cannot be the main source of global demand growth in the future." it just so happens that it was borrowed in a currency that the federal reserve can print and that the rest of the world has bought into (predicated implicitly upon future productivity...) so i've been reading God and Gold by walter russell mead [a favourite of SDB] and was struck by the passages on the legacy of the bank of england:

Britain fought a series of wars with France for a century and a quarter. France was a far larger and wealthier foe - the strongest power on the continent. The conflicts repeatedly left France financially exhausted and bankrupt. Britain's debts mounted astronomically as we have seen, but Britain went from one peak of economic and financial strength to ever higher peaks after each conflict. The secret financial weapon was public credit and the Bank of England which managed the debt. A million pounds were borrowed in 1692 to fight the French. By the time Louis XIV died, the debt was over 50£ million. The War of the Austrian Succession pushed the debt to 140£ million. It was almost 250£ million by the end of the wars that included the American Revolution, and 800£ million by the time Napoleon was safely ensconced on St. Helena. These were HUGE sums. They have been calculated as 222% of GDP after the American Revolution, and 268% of GDP at their peak in 1822. Mead explains how the Bank helped finance these wars. It sold government bonds that became assets in private hands and facilitated the development of the financial system that aided commerce. Influential people came to rely on government bonds and Bank notes and Bank shares for income and liquid wealth. The nation's civil and business leaders thus quickly had a stake in the success of the new monarch, William III, who had recently chased James II from the throne. "Government debt, historically a source of weakness, had been transformed into an instrument of strength." Alexander Hamilton copied the English financial system, and the young United States enjoyed similar financial and economic success.

now, not everyone was happy, but it's worked more or less over the centuries and, depending on how you're counting, we're apparently on version 3.0 (BW2 edition) of central bank mediated finance. yet while obama seems unable to, as schama puts it, "make – as American history yearns for him to do – money moral again," perhaps mead is on to something when he concludes that...

Lula is right: the global crisis emerged from a system built, with all its many flaws, by blue-eyed palefaces. But if countries like Brazil can stick with their own versions of Dutch finance, the future of the system will increasingly be shaped by people who look more like Lula—and the palefaces are going to have to run hard to keep up.

afterall, as lula sez, "when my presidency ends, I will go back to my home industrial city town, 800 meters from my local trade union that projected me my political life. And if I fail, when I go back to my hometown, it's going to take another century for another worker, another member of the working class to reach the presidency, because they're going to say that the workers do not have the competency to run a country."

Move over Suez Canal, there's a new route in town

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:40:46 -0800

For hundreds of years, mariners have dreamed of an Arctic shortcut that would allow them to speed trade between Asia and the West. Two German ships are poised to complete that transit for the first time, aided by the retreat of Arctic ice that scientists have linked to global warming. Arctic Shortcut Beckons Shippers as Ice Thaws.

Canada Reigns In Facebook

shoesfullofdust — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:08:13 -0800

Facebook agrees to privacy changes [Flash video | article]. After an investigation by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which found that Facebook gave "confusing or incomplete" privacy information to subscribers and gave developers "virtually unrestricted access to Facebook users’ personal information", Facebook has agreed to address the Privacy Commissioner’s concerns. “These changes mean that the privacy of 200 million Facebook users in Canada and around the world will be far better protected.” - Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart. "The notion that some teenager, working in a basement halfway around the globe, that could have access to all of this personal information was unsettling, to say the least." - Elizabeth Denholm, Deputy Privacy Commissioner.

Climate Change

nola — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:59:52 -0800

potholer54 is a youtuber who in his own words; I've been a journalist for 20 years, 14 years as a science correspondent. My degree is in geology, but while working for a science magazine and several science programs I had to tackle a number of different fields, from quantum physics to microbiology. He has a series called Climate Change that you might find interesting. Examines and explains the science of climate change. Then goes on to debunk some common myths

School Lunch From Around The World

Joe Beese — Sun, 31 May 2009 20:16:59 -0800

School Lunch From Around The World

The Global Food Crisis

dgaicun — Sun, 17 May 2009 08:59:27 -0800

The End of Plenty: Our hot and hungry world could face a perpetual food crisis. From National Geographic Magazine. Full page link (warning: printer prompt). Photo Gallery.

Are we still the world?

infini — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:02:32 -0800

From A-lister to Aid worker: Does celebrity diplomacy really work? Rock stars," asked Homer Simpson, with his customary sagacity, "is there anything they don't know?" Only these days, of course, it's not just rockers but movie stars and businessmen – and indeed anyone with an above-average public profile – who, for one reason or another, are intent on telling the rest of us how the world should be changed for the better. Or at least, that's how it seems. So much so that a conference of eminent professors of international relations assembled recently in The Hague to explore the modern phenomenon of what they call "celebrity diplomacy", amid fears that it has reached the point where superstar lobbyists are damaging the traditional workings of international diplomacy and global politics.

The Grand Experiment

troy — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:01:31 -0800

History Repeats Itself in Different Hues -- a readable Q&A data dump comparing the economics and policy responses of 1990s Japan and current events

What is 10 or 20 Trillion US dollars between friends?

gen — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:44:25 -0800

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the award-winning book The Black Swan, (previously), was interviewed recently by Charlie Rose: A conversation about economics with Nassim Taleb (as well as Time Magazine.) Taleb is more pessimistic than Nouriel Roubini, (previously, previously) who thinks that the total sum for this current global meltdown may be somewhere between 10-20 Trillion US dollars.

macrovision

krautland — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:59:17 -0800

The AirTraffic Team at zhaw has posted a video depicting global flight activity over a single day to their site: windows media link / quicktime link. that's all.

"Total Warming"

iamkimiam — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:44:37 -0800

Global Warming. The video was made by McCann Erickson (ad agency) for the Portuguese Association, Quercus.

If information is power, then access is empowering

infini — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:24:54 -0800

In a recent Roundtable on Creative Capitalism hosted by TIME, CK Prahalad, author of "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" brings to our attention the insight that "the essence of poverty is the assymetry of information" and that this asymmetry was now changing due to the availability and affordability of mobile phones in developing nations. Jeffery Sachs supports him by pointing out that the digital divide was being closed by market forces not civic efforts. Global leader Nokia has already leapt into the breach by opening a Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya in order to develop concepts and products that are of value and relevance for those at the Base of the Pyarmid. The ubiquitious little cellphone has now been spotlighted as a key tool for poverty alleviation, although the debate continues. [previously]

stavrosthewonderchicken's home is dying

gen — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:05:40 -0800

Canadian expatriate (and Metafilter member) stavrosthewonderchicken has a detailed and depressing look at the impact of the mountain pine beetle in Northern British Columbia, where a perfect storm of "forest fire suppression, clearcutting (and subsequent replanting), [and] global warming" has led to the destruction of over 130,000 square kilometers of forest.

Floating university moored

divabat — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 21:07:37 -0800

The Scholar Ship , an international floating university stewarded by top universities in Morocco, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Mexico, USA, and Ghana, have temporarily suspended all voyages due to lack of funds - mainly caused by the withdrawal of main sponsor and initiator Royal Caribbean International. The program ran two voyages in 2007 and 2008 before shutdown. Alumni and prospective students on Facebook and Ning are busily sourcing options to revive the organization, while Semester at Sea is offering spaces to students who were accepted for the now-cancelled voyages. This is reminiscent of 2000, when global education non-profit Up with People were also forced to shut down due to lack of funds. Efforts from UWP alumni and supporters allowed for its reform as the WorldSmart Leadership Program in 2003, before returning to its original performance-based roots in 2006. Will the alumni of The Scholar Ship be as successful in bringing back their beloved experiences? How does this reflect on the finances of international education programs in general, when the pullout of a major backer can spell life or death for the organization?

Impermafrost

[expletive deleted] — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:02:52 -0800

"We badly underestimated the degree of damages and the risks of climate change," said Lord Stern in a speech in London yesterday. "All of the links in the chain are on average worse than we thought (pdf) a couple of years ago." NOAA data has revealed that this past march is the 2nd warmest on record, and the warmest on record for both land and the Northern Hemisphere. The most severe and alarming temperature anomaly is in Russia, China and Central Asia, especially East Siberia and the Amur region. Last summer, the East Siberian Sea was the epicenter of the unprecedented Arctic sea ice melt. This year may be little different. Also of significant concern are positive feedbacks from methane released by melting permafrost and possibly clathrate release from the seabed in the same region. The recent fires in Amur Oblast, which was almost 5C warmer than the the 1961-1990 average this March, may also be related to this, and is another example of the kind of positive feedbacks many climate scientists (and Lord Stern) are concerned about.

Twenty Thousand Still Images

doug3505 — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:13:43 -0800

Global Warming Video, From Still Images Twenty days. Twenty thousand still images. A single message. Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk captures the issue of global warming in a video created entirely by using still images.

Bye Hoboken, as you drown in climate-changed caused floods

dabitch — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:57:14 -0800

New Jersey is drowning , or rather it would if the the future as predicted by David Spratty & Philip Sutton in climate code red comes true. Philip Sutton said in an interview that "within five years the Arctic ice in the summertime will be all gone.". With all the ice melting, the waterlevels rise - will your house be under water?

Four onboard, 188 to go

nucleus — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:13:07 -0800

Iceland, Norway, New Zealand and Costa Rica and four cities in other countries have made the pledge to aim for being carbon neutral. New Zealand and Costa Rica had earlier decleared this ambitious goal, but now Iceland and Norway have joined in. Way to go! Of the 192 nations on this planet, there are now only 188 to go.

Harmony, just do it

nickyskye — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:42:28 -0800

YouTube in partnership with The Davos Forum has established a great "contest" although I don't think of it like that. YouTubers are asked to submit a video answering the question "What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?" I thought a long time about the question, and then, after approaching Mayor Gavin Newsom to be in the video, then getting caught up against deadlines, I had the answer: to end racism around the World. Here's the video. Here's Emma Thompson's response.

MRSA... the global medical communities dirty little secret.

PROD_TPSL — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:45:34 -0800

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. In 2005, invasive MRSA infections were estimated to have killed 18,650 in the United States alone. This may be a conservative estimate. It is going global. It is changing politics. It may become pandemic. On a personal note, MRSA knocked my brother "offline" on June 5 2006 at 01:06 EST, and may have played a part in the "kill -9" of my and the Mrs. TPSL's "child process". We are both carriers. No... I'm not bitter.

Newsfilter For Terrorism Junkies

amyms — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:54:19 -0800

The Global Incident Map is an interactive map displaying "terrorism events and other suspicious activities" happening at this very moment (updated every 5 minutes) all around the world. Click on the various icons for "event details" or scroll down for "announcements, alerts and breaking news." Via.