May 30, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 2 Comments
Reforestation is a necessary part of the process of any ecologically responsible development strategy. Forest cover is not only a potent natural resource feeding the overall resilience of an ecosystem, but the hydrological and soil-quality stability, along with the biodensity it can generate, mean it is now more clear than ever that natural levels of forest cover have a very high economic value over the long term.
More on page 133
May 21, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 2 Comments
Albert Einstein has earned over the course of the last 103 years the reputation as the most revolutionary and visionary scientist in modern history, perhaps of all time. His discoveries fundamentally changed what science could claim as knowledge about the physical laws of the universe, and the revelations that stem from his work have affected —in some way or another— virtually every aspect of life in the human world. In the spirit of his ability to go beyond the known scientific tradition, we offer his complete original treatise on Special Relativity…
More on page 123
May 18, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: One Comment
The complete notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, as collected by the Project Gutenberg, are now available through Scribd iPaper, a unique new document format that allows for scrolling through book-length documents right on a static web page, without downloading. The service is a great complement to any project aimed at expanding knowledge, the free flow of information, and access to the great ideas of the past, present, and the future in progress.
More on page 121
May 17, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: 3 Comments
We are living in a time of unprecedented global integration, where economies, security interests, legal systems, and languages and systems of learning have been dispersed and interwoven across the globe. There are obvious positive effects to this integration, along with certain overarching and seemingly intractable problems that cause real worry for even the most hopeful or studied observers. Languages and cultures intermingle, yet seek to remain distinct and continuous, and individuals seek to enhance their own possibilities (requiring freedom of information, and freedom of movement), while seeking to prevent the corrosion of already structured social fabrics.
More on page 120
May 10, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
Food riots from Haiti to west Africa, Egypt and the Philippines, in recent weeks, have sparked concern among policy-makers, diplomats and economists, that the current state of the global food supply is so precarious that such violence will spread and political and economic instability could follow. Concerns about the American economy, home to most productive grain-producing region in the world, and a shift to biofuels there, could mean added difficulty in bringing food prices down.
More on page 114
May 8, 2008 :: Joseph Eugene Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The open-source movement has been a revolutionary phenomenon of startling proportions. It has changed the way software works for us in our daily experience, by bringing costs down far enough that now anyone with an internet connection can launch a web-based publication in literally seconds. Its efficiency, its appeal, its human element, make it a standard to watch as other sectors of economics and public life evolve to integrate the latest communications technologies, and aim for optimum end-user freedom and flexibility.
More on page 118
May 2, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
As the world acclimates to digital technology, and its usefulness in everyday life becomes increasingly relevant to how we achieve a higher quality of life, higher quality of education, and more efficient means of deploying solutions to complex problems, the standard for securing data and ideas may shift from closed environments behind firewalls to a new open standard, where the commons guarantees provenance, and thereby, rights, when warranted.
More on page 116
