Blogs

I have my annual physical next week and as always it involves collecting vials of my blood for numerous tests - cholesterol, iron levels, calcium, blood sugar....you name it. What always gets me is the amount of blood taken. I'm a regular blood donor and sometimes I swear that I give more blood during my annual physical than I do when I go to a donor clinic. Of course that's not true.

In the December 29 issue of The Wall Street Journal an article authored by Ron Winslow describes a number of major advances in medicine aimed at transforming the way we treat and cure disease.

When I’m trying to understand something, I start drawing graphs using whatever data’s available; pictures help me more than tables of numbers or regression coefficients. So here’s a picture I drew to see recent trends in US labor productivity — how much more output the American economy gets from its workers over time.

Moving files and programs into clouds sounds great, but how secure will they be? Business and organization leaders everywhere are asking this, and many remain undecided on the answer. They wonder whether they really should trust the cloud with their most sensitive records.

If some pundits are right, 80% of doctors will find themselves replaced by machines in the 21st century. What kind of machines?

On this our last headlines posting for 2012 I have selected the following five stories:

• Wind Power Tax Policies Have Worked to Increase Capacity;
• Robockey - Robotic Game Sharpens Engineering Skills;
• Can Geo-Engineering Stop the Arctic Sea Ice From Melting?

“In the end…the environmental budget is the only one that really counts…it’s difficult to find two nations that have been more severely disadvantaged by climate change than the US and Australia.”--
Tim Flannery, Australian scientist, conservationist and author of The Weather-Makers and The Future Eaters

The year is 2018 and the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the organization charged with selecting the winner of the famous Nobel Peace Prize, has changed their process. They’ve decided to host a global election to allow the people of the world to decide which of the candidates is the most deserving.

Say what you will about 2012 apocalypse predictions, they've been a cultural touchstone for five decades. Whenever Hollywood needed a bogeyman, 2012 was there.  If conspiracy theorists were pressed for specifics, they could point to 2012.  Doomsday prophesies have even provided some welcome chuckles during the fiscal cliff negotiations.  

We live on Lifeboat Earth. Our sea is the Universe. To be ignorant of this is to ignore the potential consequences of our bad behavior and its impact on the boat. We have to stop putting spikes in the bottom of it otherwise we will eventually sink. Instead we need to protect every square centimeter, husbanding all our on board resources and ensuring we survive the journey.