tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3121931771305090392024-03-07T21:08:35.623-08:00chocochocochocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-69008884097093386542011-07-22T09:07:00.000-07:002011-07-22T09:07:26.069-07:00Age no excuse for failing to learn a new language - life - 22 July 2011 - New Scientist<a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128224.000-age-no-excuse-for-failing-to-learn-a-new-language.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news">Age no excuse for failing to learn a new language - life - 22 July 2011 - New Scientist</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>asllearnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05358825775332677166noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-67897628236781636142011-07-18T11:47:00.000-07:002011-07-18T11:51:59.024-07:00<a title="my stuff" href="http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/4184/vlcsnap2010120109h07m00.png" target="_blank" ><img src="http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/4184/vlcsnap2010120109h07m00.png" border="0" hspace="8" alt="vlcsnap-2010-12-01-09h07m00s234" align="center" height="600" /></a>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>Contrakyotohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08818835189206681544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-64115719463797879262011-05-23T12:06:00.001-07:002011-05-23T12:06:33.342-07:00Japanese protest revised school radiation limit<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry"> <blockquote class="posterous_long_quote"><div>TOKYO: Furious parents at the centre of Japan's atomic crisis and hundreds of their supporters rallied in Tokyo on Monday against revised nuclear safety standards in schools they say are putting children at risk.<p>Japanese children can now be exposed to 20 times the radiation that was permissible before the March 11 tsunami caused a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, sparking the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.</p><p>Around 400 protesters, many from areas around the stricken plant, flocked to the education and science ministry to demand a rethink on the new limit, which allows exposure of up to 20 millisieverts a year.</p><p>A group of Fukushima residents submitted a letter for the education minister demanding the ministry do all it can to lower radiation levels at schools and offer financial support.</p><p>Protest organisers said the radiation limit for playgrounds was about six times as much as the 0.6 microsievert-per-hour legal maximum under which under-18s are allowed to work.</p><p>Demonstrators brandished banners emblazoned with slogans such as "Protect children in Fukushima from radiation" and chanted: "Why is it 20 millisieverts? Come out minister!"</p><p>Ministers have defended the increase in the acceptable safety level as a necessary measure to guarantee the education of thousands of children in Fukushima prefecture.</p><p>Science minister Yoshiaki Takaki had earlier told a parliamentary session: "We are always thinking that we should never underestimate the risk of radiation."</p><p>"Efforts have to be made in order to avoid radiation as much as possible," he said.</p><p>But the demonstrators were not placated.</p><p>"This is enough. I'm really furious to see the government has no intention of protecting its people," said Ruiko Muto, 57, who had journeyed from Miharu town, about 45 kilometres from the crippled plant.</p><p>"We are making the demand in order to protect children, as Fukushima's education authorities are following the guidelines and saying outside activities can be safe."</p><p>The nuclear crisis remains unresolved and tens of thousands of people are still unable to return to homes, farms and businesses in a 20-kilometre zone around the radiation-spewing plant.</p><p>More than 20 elementary and junior high schools within 30 kilometres have been forced to close since the accident, affecting some 5,000 pupils, the Yomiuri daily newspaper reported on Monday.</p><p>- AFP/de</p></div></blockquote> <div class="posterous_quote_citation">via <a href="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1130720/1/.html">channelnewsasia.com</a></div> <p>and the beat goes on....</p></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-75178072677404966352011-04-25T17:48:00.001-07:002011-04-25T17:48:37.588-07:00Layer 8: US goes after some game-changing energy projects<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry"> <blockquote class="posterous_long_quote"><p>In this case ARPA-E will be overseeing the following, from the agency's report:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.granthelpcenter.org/plants-engineered-to-replace-oil-petro/feed">Plants Engineered To Replace Oil (PETRO</a>). Technologies for low-cost production of advanced biofuels are limited by the small amount of available energy captured by photosynthesis and the inefficient processes used to convert plant matter to fuel. PETRO aims to create plants that capture more energy from sunlight and convert that energy directly into fuels. ARPA-E will fund technologies that optimize the biochemical processes of energy capture and conversion to develop farm-ready crops that deliver more energy per acre with less processing prior to the pump. If successful, PETRO will create biofuels for half their current cost, finally making them cost-competitive with fuels from oil. Up to $30 million will be made available for this program area. </li> <li>High Energy Advanced Thermal Storage (HEATS). More than 90% of energy technologies involve the transport and conversion of thermal energy. Advancements in thermal energy storage - both hot and cold - would dramatically improve performance for a variety of critical energy applications. ARPA-E seeks to develop revolutionary cost-effective thermal energy storage technologies in three focus areas: 1) high temperature storage systems to deliver solar electricity more efficiently around the clock and allow nuclear and fossil resources the flexibility to meet peak demand, 2) fuel produced from the sun's heat, and 3) HVAC systems that use thermal storage to improve the driving range of electric vehicles by up to 40%. Up to $30 million will be made available for this program area. </li> <li>Rare Earth Alternatives in Critical Technologies (REACT). Rare earths are naturally-occurring minerals with unique magnetic properties that are used in many emerging energy technologies. As demand for these technologies continues to increase, rare earths are rapidly becoming more expensive due to limited global supply - prices of many have increased 300-700% in the past year. Rising rare earth prices have already escalated costs for some energy technologies and may jeopardize the widespread adoption of many critical energy solutions by US manufacturers. ARPA-E seeks to fund early-stage technology alternatives that reduce or eliminate the dependence on rare earth materials by developing substitutes in two key areas: electric vehicle motors and wind generators. Up to $30 million will be made available for this program area. </li> <li>Green Electricity Network Integration (GENI). Recent advances in computation, networking, and grid monitoring have shed light on potential ways to deliver electricity more efficiently and reliably. Today, however, the equivalent of one out of every five electricity dollars is lost to power outages and 30% of the grid's hardware needs replacing. ARPA-E seeks to fund innovative control software and high-voltage hardware to reliably control the grid, specifically: 1) controls able to manage 10 times more sporadically available wind and solar electricity than currently on the grid, and 2) resilient power flow control hardware - or the energy equivalent of an internet router - to enable significantly more electricity through the existing network of transmission lines. Up to $30 million will be made available for this program area. </li> <li>Solar Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology (Solar ADEPT). The DOE SunShot Initiative leverages the unique strengths across DOE to reduce the total cost of utility-scale solar systems by 75% by the end of 2020. If successful, this collaboration would deliver solar electricity at roughly 6 cents a kilowatt hour - a cost competitive with electricity from fossil fuels. This would enable solar electricity to scale without subsidies and make the US globally competitive in solar technology. ARPA-E's portion of the collaboration is the Solar ADEPT program, which focuses on integrating advanced power electronics into solar panels and solar farms to extract and deliver energy more efficiently. Specifically, ARPA-E aims to invest in key advances in magnetics, semiconductor switches, and charge storage, which could reduce power conversion costs by up to 50% for utilities and 80% for homeowners. Up to $10 million will be made available for this program area.</li></ul></blockquote> <div class="posterous_quote_citation">via <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/us-goes-after-some-game-changing-energy-proje">networkworld.com</a></div> <p></p></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-34715154338121826802011-04-21T14:50:00.001-07:002011-04-21T14:50:16.961-07:00Globalization of jobs « Real-World Economics Review Blog<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry"> <blockquote class="posterous_long_quote"><h2>Globalization of jobs</h2> <div class="info"> <span class="date">April 20, 2011</span> <span class="author"><a href="http://rwer.wordpress.com/author/dfruccio/" title="Posts by David Ruccio">David Ruccio</a></span> <span class="addcomment"><a href="http://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/globalization-of-jobs/#respond">Leave a comment</a></span> <span class="comments"><a href="http://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/globalization-of-jobs/#comments">Go to comments</a></span> <p> </p></div> <div class="content"> <p>from <strong>David Ruccio</strong></p> <p>Once upon a time, the cheerleaders of globalization, like Matt Slaughter, could claim that “for every one job that U.S. multinationals created abroad. . .they created nearly two U.S. jobs in their [U.S.-based] parents.” As the following <strong>graph</strong> shows, that’s no longer the case. <span></span></p> <p><a href="http://anticap.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/jobs.jpg"><img title="jobs" src="http://anticap.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/jobs.jpg?w=614&h=347&h=347" height="347" alt="" width="614" /></a></p> <div> <p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704821704576270783611823972.html#articleTabs%3Dinteractive" target="_blank">source</a></p> <p>Over the past decade, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704821704576270783611823972.html" target="_blank">U.S. multinational corporations</a>—like General Electric, Caterpillar, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart—have been hiring abroad while cutting jobs at home.</p> <blockquote class="posterous_medium_quote"><p>The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That’s a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad.</p> <p>In all, U.S. multinationals employed 21.1 million people at home in 2009 and 10.3 million elsewhere, including increasing numbers of higher-skilled foreign workers.</p></blockquote> <p>The ability of multinational corporations to shift production and jobs when and where they want—shrinking employment at home and abroad while increasing productivity or hiring everywhere or cutting jobs at home while adding them abroad—undercuts the position of U.S. workers and undermines the usual neoclassical dogma concerning the benefits of globalization.</p> <p>All they’re left with is the argument that globalization makes consumer goods cheaper in the United States—which only works if anyone is left with a job to buy those goods.</p></div></div></blockquote> <div class="posterous_quote_citation">via <a href="http://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/globalization-of-jobs/#more-4806">rwer.wordpress.com</a></div> <p>fantastic graph. you can see how beautifully balanced the two sides are. <br />Of course, this is not about proAmuckika sentiment. After all, it is good that other countries get jobs (should they be at fair wages and conditions) but rather that pro globalization defenders are disingenuous to misinformed...</p></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-33551004804846855562011-04-14T21:55:00.001-07:002011-04-14T21:55:24.911-07:00Society | Vanity Fair<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry"> <blockquote class="posterous_long_quote"><div><h5><a>Go Back</a></h5> <h5><a>Print this page</a></h5> </div> <p> </p><div> <div class="article"> <div class="headers-container"> <div class="headers"> <h5 class="rubric"><span>Inequality</span></h5> <h1 class="content-headline">Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%</h1> <h2 class="sub-header"><span>Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.</span></h2> <div class="byline"> <div class="contributors"><div class="contributor-type first"><span class="contributor"><strong class="label">By </strong><span class="name"><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/contributors/joseph-e-stiglitz">Joseph E. Stiglitz</a></span><span class="contributor-divider"></span><span class="contributor-type-divider"><span class="contributorDivider">•</span></span></span></div><div class="contributor-type last"><span class="contributor"><strong class="label">Illustration by </strong><span class="name"><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/contributors/stephen-doyle">Stephen Doyle</a></span><span class="contributor-divider"></span><span class="contributor-type-divider"></span></span></div></div> </div> <div class="display-date"> May 2011 </div> </div> </div> <div class="content-container"> <div class="content-supporting"> <div class="captioned-photo"> <p class="caption"><b>THE FAT AND THE FURIOUS</b> The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles, says the author, but “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”</p> </div> </div> <div class="article-text"> <p><span class="dc">I</span>t’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.</p> <p>Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called “marginal-productivity theory.” In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years—whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative—went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards “performance bonuses” that they felt compelled to change the name to “retention bonuses” (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.</p> <p><span class="dc">S</span>ome people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which <i>most</i> citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.</p> <p>First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.</p> <p>Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead.</p> <p>None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.</p> <p><span class="dc">E</span>conomists are not sure how to fully explain the growing inequality in America. The ordinary dynamics of supply and demand have certainly played a role: laborsaving technologies have reduced the demand for many “good” middle-class, blue-collar jobs. Globalization has created a worldwide marketplace, pitting expensive unskilled workers in America against cheap unskilled workers overseas. Social changes have also played a role—for instance, the decline of unions, which once represented a third of American workers and now represent about 12 percent.</p> <p>But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power—from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws, especially during Republican administrations, has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself—one of its best investments ever. The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favorable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflicts of interest.</p> <p>When you look at the sheer volume of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent in this country, it’s tempting to see our growing inequality as a quintessentially American achievement—we started way behind the pack, but now we’re doing inequality on a world-class level. And it looks as if we’ll be building on this achievement for years to come, because what made it possible is self-reinforcing. Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth. During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s—a scandal whose dimensions, by today’s standards, seem almost quaint—the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. “I certainly hope so,” he replied. The Supreme Court, in its recent <i>Citizens United</i> case, has enshrined the right of corporations to buy government, by removing limitations on campaign spending. The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would <i>expect</i> the system to work.</p> <p>America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect—people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military—the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich: they encourage competition among countries for <i>business,</i> which drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the “core” labor rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries for <i>workers.</i> Governments would compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good education, and a clean environment—things workers care about. But the top 1 percent don’t need to care.</p> <p><span class="dc">O</span>r, more accurately, they think they don’t. Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling. With youth unemployment in America at around 20 percent (and in some locations, and among some socio-demographic groups, at twice that); with one out of six Americans desiring a full-time job not able to get one; with one out of seven Americans on food stamps (and about the same number suffering from “food insecurity”)—given all this, there is ample evidence that something has blocked the vaunted “trickling down” from the top 1 percent to everyone else. All of this is having the predictable effect of creating alienation—voter turnout among those in their 20s in the last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment rate.</p> <p>In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.</p> <p>As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.</p> <p><span class="dc">A</span>lexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.</p> <p>The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.</p> </div> </div> <p> </p><div class="keywords"> <dl> <dt>Keywords</dt> <dd><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/archive/society">Society</a>, </dd> <dd><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/archive/wealth">Wealth</a>, </dd> <dd><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/archive/inequality">Inequality</a>, </dd> <dd><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/archive/joseph-e-stiglitz">Joseph E. Stiglitz</a></dd></dl></div></div></div></blockquote><div class="posterous_quote_citation">via <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105?printable=true&currentPage=all">vanityfair.com</a></div> <p>how long before people wake up?</p></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-45507106356554177402011-04-06T14:10:00.001-07:002011-04-06T14:10:10.084-07:00U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant - NYTimes.com<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry"> <blockquote class="posterous_long_quote"><h1>U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant</h1> <h6 class="byline">By <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/james_glanz/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by James Glanz" class="meta-per">JAMES GLANZ</a> and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/william_j_broad/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by William J. Broad" class="meta-per">WILLIAM J. BROAD</a></h6> <div> <p> United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nuclear_regulatory_commission/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Nuclear Regulatory Commission" class="meta-org">Nuclear Regulatory Commission</a>. </p> <p> Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores. </p> <p> In recent days, workers have grappled with several side effects of the emergency measures taken to keep nuclear fuel at the plant from overheating, including leaks of radioactive water at the site and radiation burns to workers who step into the water. The assessment, as well as interviews with officials familiar with it, points to a new panoply of complex challenges that water creates for the safety of workers and the recovery and long-term stability of the reactors. </p> <p> While the assessment does not speculate on the likelihood of new explosions or damage from an aftershock, either could lead to a breach of the containment structures in one or more of the crippled reactors, the last barriers that prevent a much more serious release of radiation from the nuclear core. If the fuel continues to heat and melt because of ineffective cooling, some nuclear experts say, that could also leave a radioactive mass that could stay molten for an extended period. </p> <p> The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, provides a more detailed technical assessment than Japanese officials have provided of the conundrum facing the Japanese as they struggle to prevent more fuel from melting at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But it appears to rely largely on data shared with American experts by the Japanese. </p> <p> Among other problems, the document raises new questions about whether pouring water on nuclear fuel in the absence of functioning cooling systems can be sustained indefinitely. Experts have said the Japanese need to continue to keep the fuel cool for many months until the plant can be stabilized, but there is growing awareness that the risks of pumping water on the fuel present a whole new category of challenges that the nuclear industry is only beginning to comprehend. </p> <p> The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown “up to one mile from the units,” and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be “bulldozed over,” presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed. </p> <p> David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who worked on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan and now directs the nuclear safety project at the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/union_of_concerned_scientists/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Union of Concerned Scientists" class="meta-org">Union of Concerned Scientists</a>, said that the welter of problems revealed in the document at three separate reactors made a successful outcome even more uncertain. </p> <p> “I thought they were, not out of the woods, but at least at the edge of the woods,” said Mr. Lochbaum, who was not involved in preparing the document. “This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things don’t work out for them.” </p> <p> The steps recommended by the nuclear commission include injecting nitrogen, an inert gas, into the containment structures in an attempt to purge them of hydrogen and oxygen, which could combine to produce explosions. On Wednesday, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the plant, said it was preparing to take such a step and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/world/asia/07japan.html" title="Times article">to inject nitrogen into one of the reactor containment vessels</a>. </p> <p> The document also recommends that engineers continue adding boron to cooling water to help prevent the cores from restarting the nuclear reaction, a process known as criticality. </p> <p> Even so, the engineers who prepared the document do not believe that a resumption of criticality is an immediate likelihood, Neil Wilmshurst, vice president of the nuclear sector at the Electric Power Research Institute, said when contacted about the document. “I have seen no data to suggest that there is criticality ongoing,” said Mr. Wilmshurst, who was involved in the assessment. </p> <p> The document was prepared for the commission’s Reactor Safety Team, which is assisting the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company. It says it is based on the “most recent available data” from numerous Japanese and American organizations, including the electric power company, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/energy_department/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the U.S. Energy Department." class="meta-org">United States Department of Energy</a>, General Electric and the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent, nonprofit group. </p> <p> The document contains detailed assessments of each of the plant’s six reactors along with recommendations for action. Nuclear experts familiar with the assessment said that it was regularly updated but that over all, the March 26 version closely reflected current thinking. </p> <p> The assessment provides graphic new detail on the conditions of the damaged cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3. Because slumping fuel and salt from seawater that had been used as a coolant is probably blocking circulation pathways, the water flow in No. 1 “is severely restricted and likely blocked.” Inside the core itself, “there is likely no water level,” the assessment says, adding that as a result, “it is difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel.” Similar problems exist in No. 2 and No. 3, although the blockage is probably less severe, the assessment says. </p> <p> Some of the salt may have been washed away in the past week with the switch from seawater to fresh water cooling, nuclear experts said. </p> <p> A rise in the water level of the containment structures has often been depicted as a possible way to immerse and cool the fuel. The assessment, however, warns that “when flooding containment, consider the implications of water weight on seismic capability of containment.” </p> <p> Experts in nuclear plant design say that this warning refers to the enormous stress put on the containment structures by the rising water. The more water in the structures, the more easily a large aftershock could rupture one of them. </p> <p> Margaret Harding, a former reactor designer for General Electric, warned of aftershocks and said, “If I were in the Japanese’s shoes, I’d be very reluctant to have tons and tons of water sitting in a containment whose structural integrity hasn’t been checked since the earthquake.” </p> <p> The N.R.C. document also expressed concern about the potential for a “hazardous atmosphere” in the concrete-and-steel containment structures because of the release of hydrogen and oxygen from the seawater in a highly radioactive environment. </p> <p> Hydrogen explosions in the first few days of the disaster heavily damaged several reactor buildings and in one case may have damaged a containment structure. That hydrogen was produced by a mechanism involving the metal cladding of the nuclear fuel. The document urged that Japanese operators restore the ability to purge the structures of these gases and fill them with stable nitrogen gas, a capability lost after the quake and tsunami. </p> <p> Nuclear experts say that radiation from the core of a reactor can split water molecules in two, releasing hydrogen. Mr. Wilmshurst said that since the March 26 document, engineers had calculated that the amount of hydrogen produced would be small. But Jay A. LaVerne, a physicist at Notre Dame, said that at least near the fuel rods, some hydrogen would in fact be produced, and could react with oxygen. “If so,” Mr. LaVerne said in an interview, “you have an explosive mixture being formed near the fuel rods.” </p> <p> Nuclear engineers have warned in recent days that the pools outside the containment buildings that hold spent fuel rods could pose an even greater danger than the melted reactor cores. The pools, which sit atop the reactor buildings and are meant to keep spent fuel submerged in water, have lost their cooling systems. </p> <p> The N.R.C. report suggests that the fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor suffered a hydrogen explosion early in the Japanese crisis and could have shed much radioactive material into the environment, what it calls “a major source term release.” </p> <p> Experts worry about the fuel pools because explosions have torn away their roofs and exposed their radioactive contents. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core. </p> <p> “Even the best juggler in the world can get too many balls up in the air,” Mr. Lochbaum said of the multiplicity of problems at the plant. “They’ve got a lot of nasty things to negotiate in the future, and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse.” </p> <div class="authorIdentification"> <p></p><p> Henry Fountain contributed reporting from New York, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.</p></div></div></blockquote> <div class="posterous_quote_citation">via <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print">nytimes.com</a></div> <p>This is very frightening and I am going to try to find out more. Even if they succeed at averting these outcomes, I hope the seriousness of how close we have come to even worse outcomes becomes more fully known in Japan. I am especially concerned about the fact that nuclear fuel was ejected "up to one mile away" by the explosions and that the problems with the spent fuel are severe and not easy to resolve.</p></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-51451519247228093902011-04-05T13:02:00.001-07:002011-04-05T13:02:31.360-07:00A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables: Scientific American<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry"> <blockquote class="posterous_long_quote"><div class="articleHeader"><h2 class="articleTitle"><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030&print=true/">A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables</a> </h2> <p>Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world's energy, eliminating all fossil fuels. Here's how</p> <p class="articleInfo"> <span class="byline"> By <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/author.cfm?id=2169">Mark Z. Jacobson</a> and <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/author.cfm?id=2170">Mark A. Delucchi</a> | </span> <span class="datestamp">Monday, October 26, 2009 |</span> <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030&print=true#comments" class="tinyCommentCount" title="comments on this article">166</a> </p> </div> <div> <div class="printableSubCol"> <p class="in-article-image" style="background: #fff;"> <img src="http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030_1.jpg" alt="" width="277" /> <span class="imageCaption"><b></b> </span> <span class="imageCredit">Image: John Lee <em>Aurora Photos</em></span> </p> <div class="bannerAd">Advertisement"); <div class="prWrap" style="margin: 0px auto;"><a href="http://oascentral.scientificamerican.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/sciam.com/print/energy-and-sustainability/L15/1881218924/Right1/sciam.com/p_2011-01_MIT_Ros/p_2011-01_MIT_Ros_300x250.html/32754b6f564532626335674142497876?<a href="><img src="http://speed.pointroll.com/PointRoll/Media/Banners/MIT/836572/MIT_Fall_300x250_35k_BACKUP.gif?PRAd=1432521&PRCID=1432521&PRplcmt=1192159&PRPID=1192159" border="0" height="250" width="300" style="height: 250px;" /></a></div></div></div> <p>In December leaders from around the world will meet in Copenhagen to try to agree on cutting back greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come. The most effective step to implement that goal would be a massive shift away from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy sources. If leaders can have confidence that such a transformation is possible, they might commit to an historic agreement. We think they can.<a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=powering-a-green-planet"><img src="http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/blog/Image/FlypGraphic(1).gif" border="0" height="206px" alt="" width="300px" /></a><br /> A year ago former vice president Al Gore threw down a gauntlet: to repower America with 100 percent carbon-free electricity within 10 years. As the two of us started to evaluate the feasibility of such a change, we took on an even larger challenge: to determine how 100 percent of the world’s energy, for <em>all</em> purposes, could be supplied by wind, water and solar resources, by as early as 2030. Our plan is presented here.</p> <p>Scientists have been building to this moment for at least a decade, analyzing various pieces of the challenge. Most recently, a 2009 Stanford University study ranked energy systems according to their impacts on global warming, pollution, water supply, land use, wildlife and other concerns. The very best options were wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and hydroelectric power—all of which are driven by wind, water or sunlight (referred to as WWS). Nuclear power, coal with carbon capture, and ethanol were all poorer options, as were oil and natural gas. The study also found that battery-electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles recharged by WWS options would largely eliminate pollution from the transportation sector.</p> <p>Our plan calls for millions of wind turbines, water machines and solar installations. The numbers are large, but the scale is not an insurmountable hurdle; society has achieved massive transformations before. During World War II, the U.S. retooled automobile factories to produce 300,000 aircraft, and other countries produced 486,000 more. In 1956 the U.S. began building the Interstate Highway System, which after 35 years extended for 47,000 miles, changing commerce and society.</p> <p>Is it feasible to transform the world’s energy systems? Could it be accomplished in two decades? The answers depend on the technologies chosen, the availability of critical materials, and economic and political factors.</p> <p><strong>Clean Technologies Only</strong><br /> Renewable energy comes from enticing sources: wind, which also produces waves; water, which includes hydroelectric, tidal and geothermal energy (water heated by hot underground rock); and sun, which includes photovoltaics and solar power plants that focus sunlight to heat a fluid that drives a turbine to generate electricity. Our plan includes only technologies that work or are close to working today on a large scale, rather than those that may exist 20 or 30 years from now.</p> <p>To ensure that our system remains clean, we consider only technologies that have near-zero emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants over their entire life cycle, including construction, operation and decommissioning. For example, when burned in vehicles, even the most ecologically acceptable sources of ethanol create air pollution that will cause the same mortality level as when gasoline is burned. Nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are considered. Carbon capture and sequestration technology can reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants but will <em>increase</em> air pollutants and will extend all the other deleterious effects of coal mining, transport and processing, because more coal must be burned to power the capture and storage steps. Similarly, we consider only technologies that do not present significant waste disposal or terrorism risks.</p><p>In our plan, WWS will supply electric power for heating and transportation—industries that will have to revamp if the world has any hope of slowing climate change. We have assumed that most fossil-fuel heating (as well as ovens and stoves) can be replaced by electric systems and that most fossil-fuel transportation can be replaced by battery and fuel-cell vehicles. Hydrogen, produced by using WWS electricity to split water (electrolysis), would power fuel cells and be burned in airplanes and by industry. </p> <p><strong>Plenty of Supply </strong><br /> Today the maximum power consumed worldwide at any given moment is about 12.5 trillion watts (terawatts, or TW), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The agency projects that in 2030 the world will require 16.9 TW of power as global population and living standards rise, with about 2.8 TW in the U.S. The mix of sources is similar to today’s, heavily dependent on fossil fuels. If, however, the planet were powered entirely by WWS, with no fossil-fuel or biomass combustion, an intriguing savings would occur. Global power demand would be only 11.5 TW, and U.S. demand would be 1.8 TW. That decline occurs because, in most cases, electrification is a more efficient way to use energy. For example, only 17 to 20 percent of the energy in gasoline is used to move a vehicle (the rest is wasted as heat), whereas 75 to 86 percent of the electricity delivered to an electric vehicle goes into motion.</p> <p>Even if demand did rise to 16.9 TW, WWS sources could provide far more power. Detailed studies by us and others indicate that energy from the wind, worldwide, is about 1,700 TW. Solar, alone, offers 6,500 TW. Of course, wind and sun out in the open seas, over high mountains and across protected regions would not be available. If we subtract these and low-wind areas not likely to be developed, we are still left with 40 to 85 TW for wind and 580 TW for solar, each far beyond future human demand. Yet currently we generate only 0.02 TW of wind power and 0.008 TW of solar. These sources hold an incredible amount of untapped potential.</p> <p>The other WWS technologies will help create a flexible range of options. Although all the sources can expand greatly, for practical reasons, wave power can be extracted only near coastal areas. Many geothermal sources are too deep to be tapped economically. And even though hydroelectric power now exceeds all other WWS sources, most of the suitable large reservoirs are already in use.</p> <p><strong>The Plan: Power Plants Required </strong><br /> Clearly, enough renewable energy exists. How, then, would we transition to a new infrastructure to provide the world with 11.5 TW? We have chosen a mix of technologies emphasizing wind and solar, with about 9 percent of demand met by mature water-related methods. (Other combinations of wind and solar could be as successful.)</p> <p>Wind supplies 51 percent of the demand, provided by 3.8 million large wind turbines (each rated at five megawatts) worldwide. Although that quantity may sound enormous, it is interesting to note that the world manufactures 73 million cars and light trucks <em>every year</em>. Another 40 percent of the power comes from photovoltaics and concentrated solar plants, with about 30 percent of the photovoltaic output from rooftop panels on homes and commercial buildings. About 89,000 photovoltaic and concentrated solar power plants, averaging 300 megawatts apiece, would be needed. Our mix also includes 900 hydroelectric stations worldwide, 70 percent of which are already in place.</p> <p>Only about 0.8 percent of the wind base is installed today. The worldwide footprint of the 3.8 million turbines would be less than 50 square kilometers (smaller than Manhattan). When the needed spacing between them is figured, they would occupy about 1 percent of the earth’s land, but the empty space among turbines could be used for agriculture or ranching or as open land or ocean. The nonrooftop photovoltaics and concentrated solar plants would occupy about 0.33 percent of the planet’s land. Building such an extensive infrastructure will take time. But so did the current power plant network. And remember that if we stick with fossil fuels, demand by 2030 will rise to 16.9 TW, requiring about 13,000 large new coal plants, which themselves would occupy a lot more land, as would the mining to supply them.</p><p><strong>The Materials Hurdle</strong><br /> The scale of the WWS infrastructure is not a barrier. But a few materials needed to build it could be scarce or subject to price manipulation.</p> <p>Enough concrete and steel exist for the millions of wind turbines, and both those commodities are fully recyclable. The most problematic materials may be rare-earth metals such as neodymium used in turbine gearboxes. Although the metals are not in short supply, the low-cost sources are concentrated in China, so countries such as the U.S. could be trading dependence on Middle Eastern oil for dependence on Far Eastern metals. Manufacturers are moving toward gearless turbines, however, so that limitation may become moot.</p> <p>Photovoltaic cells rely on amorphous or crystalline silicon, cadmium telluride, or copper indium selenide and sulfide. Limited supplies of tellurium and indium could reduce the prospects for some types of thin-film solar cells, though not for all; the other types might be able to take up the slack. Large-scale production could be restricted by the silver that cells require, but finding ways to reduce the silver content could tackle that hurdle. Recycling parts from old cells could ameliorate material difficulties as well.</p> <p>Three components could pose challenges for building millions of electric vehicles: rare-earth metals for electric motors, lithium for lithium-ion batteries and platinum for fuel cells. More than half the world’s lithium reserves lie in Bolivia and Chile. That concentration, combined with rapidly growing demand, could raise prices significantly. More problematic is the claim by Meridian International Research that not enough economically recoverable lithium exists to build anywhere near the number of batteries needed in a global electric-vehicle economy. Recycling could change the equation, but the economics of recycling depend in part on whether batteries are made with easy recyclability in mind, an issue the industry is aware of. The long-term use of platinum also depends on recycling; current available reserves would sustain annual production of 20 million fuel-cell vehicles, along with existing industrial uses, for fewer than 100 years.</p> <p><strong>Smart Mix for Reliability</strong><br /> A new infrastructure must provide energy on demand at least as reliably as the existing infrastructure. WWS technologies generally suffer less downtime than traditional sources. The average U.S. coal plant is offline 12.5 percent of the year for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. Modern wind turbines have a down time of less than 2 percent on land and less than 5 percent at sea. Photovoltaic systems are also at less than 2 percent. Moreover, when an individual wind, solar or wave device is down, only a small fraction of production is affected; when a coal, nuclear or natural gas plant goes offline, a large chunk of generation is lost.</p> <p>The main WWS challenge is that the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine in a given location. Intermittency problems can be mitigated by a smart balance of sources, such as generating a base supply from steady geothermal or tidal power, relying on wind at night when it is often plentiful, using solar by day and turning to a reliable source such as hydroelectric that can be turned on and off quickly to smooth out supply or meet peak demand. For example, interconnecting wind farms that are only 100 to 200 miles apart can compensate for hours of zero power at any one farm should the wind not be blowing there. Also helpful is interconnecting geographically dispersed sources so they can back up one another, installing smart electric meters in homes that automatically recharge electric vehicles when demand is low and building facilities that store power for later use.</p> <p>Because the wind often blows during stormy conditions when the sun does not shine and the sun often shines on calm days with little wind, combining wind and solar can go a long way toward meeting demand, especially when geothermal provides a steady base and hydroelectric can be called on to fill in the gaps.</p><p><strong>As Cheap as Coal</strong><br /> The mix of WWS sources in our plan can reliably supply the residential, commercial, industrial and transportation sectors. The logical next question is whether the power would be affordable. For each technology, we calculated how much it would cost a producer to generate power and transmit it across the grid. We included the annualized cost of capital, land, operations, maintenance, energy storage to help offset intermittent supply, and transmission. Today the cost of wind, geothermal and hydroelectric are all less than seven cents a kilowatt-hour (¢/kWh); wave and solar are higher. But by 2020 and beyond wind, wave and hydro are expected to be 4¢/kWh or less.</p> <p>For comparison, the average cost in the U.S. in 2007 of conventional power generation and transmission was about 7¢/kWh, and it is projected to be 8¢/kWh in 2020. Power from wind turbines, for example, already costs about the same or less than it does from a new coal or natural gas plant, and in the future wind power is expected to be the least costly of all options. The competitive cost of wind has made it the second-largest source of new electric power generation in the U.S. for the past three years, behind natural gas and ahead of coal.</p> <p>Solar power is relatively expensive now but should be competitive as early as 2020. A careful analysis by Vasilis Fthenakis of Brookhaven National Laboratory indicates that within 10 years, photovoltaic system costs could drop to about 10¢/kWh, including long-distance transmission and the cost of compressed-air storage of power for use at night. The same analysis estimates that concentrated solar power systems with enough thermal storage to generate electricity 24 hours a day in spring, summer and fall could deliver electricity at 10¢/kWh or less.</p> <p>Transportation in a WWS world will be driven by batteries or fuel cells, so we should compare the economics of these electric vehicles with that of internal-combustion-engine vehicles. Detailed analyses by one of us (Delucchi) and Tim Lipman of the University of California, Berkeley, have indicated that mass-produced electric vehicles with advanced lithium-ion or nickel metal-hydride batteries could have a full lifetime cost per mile (including battery replacements) that is comparable with that of a gasoline vehicle, when gasoline sells for more than $2 a gallon.</p> <p>When the so-called externality costs (the monetary value of damages to human health, the environment and climate) of fossil-fuel generation are taken into account, WWS technologies become even more cost-competitive.</p> <p>Overall construction cost for a WWS system might be on the order of $100 trillion worldwide, over 20 years, not including transmission. But this is not money handed out by governments or consumers. It is investment that is paid back through the sale of electricity and energy. And again, relying on traditional sources would raise output from 12.5 to 16.9 TW, requiring thousands more of those plants, costing roughly $10 trillion, not to mention tens of trillions of dollars more in health, environmental and security costs. The WWS plan gives the world a new, clean, efficient energy system rather than an old, dirty, inefficient one.</p> <p><strong>Political Will</strong><br /> Our analyses strongly suggest that the costs of WWS will become competitive with traditional sources. In the interim, however, certain forms of WWS power will be significantly more costly than fossil power. Some combination of WWS subsidies and carbon taxes would thus be needed for a time. A feed-in tariff (FIT) program to cover the difference between generation cost and wholesale electricity prices is especially effective at scaling-up new technologies. Combining FITs with a so-called declining clock auction, in which the right to sell power to the grid goes to the lowest bidders, provides continuing incentive for WWS developers to lower costs. As that happens, FITs can be phased out. FITs have been implemented in a number of European countries and a few U.S. states and have been quite successful in stimulating solar power in Germany.</p><p>Taxing fossil fuels or their use to reflect their environmental damages also makes sense. But at a minimum, existing subsidies for fossil energy, such as tax benefits for exploration and extraction, should be eliminated to level the playing field. Misguided promotion of alternatives that are less desirable than WWS power, such as farm and production subsidies for biofuels, should also be ended, because it delays deployment of cleaner systems. For their part, legislators crafting policy must find ways to resist lobbying by the entrenched energy industries.</p> <p>Finally, each nation needs to be willing to invest in a robust, long-distance transmission system that can carry large quantities of WWS power from remote regions where it is often greatest—such as the Great Plains for wind and the desert Southwest for solar in the U.S.—to centers of consumption, typically cities. Reducing consumer demand during peak usage periods also requires a smart grid that gives generators and consumers much more control over electricity usage hour by hour.</p> <p>A large-scale wind, water and solar energy system can reliably supply the world’s needs, significantly benefiting climate, air quality, water quality, ecology and energy security. As we have shown, the obstacles are primarily political, not technical. A combination of feed-in tariffs plus incentives for providers to reduce costs, elimination of fossil subsidies and an intelligently expanded grid could be enough to ensure rapid deployment. Of course, changes in the real-world power and transportation industries will have to overcome sunk investments in existing infrastructure. But with sensible policies, nations could set a goal of generating 25 percent of their new energy supply with WWS sources in 10 to 15 years and almost 100 percent of new supply in 20 to 30 years. With extremely aggressive policies, all existing fossil-fuel capacity could theoretically be retired and replaced in the same period, but with more modest and likely policies full replacement may take 40 to 50 years. Either way, clear leadership is needed, or else nations will keep trying technologies promoted by industries rather than vetted by scientists.</p> <p>A decade ago it was not clear that a global WWS system would be technically or economically feasible. Having shown that it is, we hope global leaders can figure out how to make WWS power politically feasible as well. They can start by committing to meaningful climate and renewable energy goals now.</p> <p><em>Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030."</em></p></div></blockquote> <div class="posterous_quote_citation">via <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030&print=true">scientificamerican.com</a></div> <p>This is refered to in another fine article <br />Trashing the Planet for Natural Gas: Shale Gas Development Threatens <br />Freshwater Sources, Likely Escalates Climate Destabilization <br />Karen Charman that may be available here for a while <br /><a href="http://www.karencharman.com/resources/TrashingThePlanet.pdf">http://www.karencharman.com/resources/TrashingThePlanet.pdf</a> <br />which comes via <br /><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/should-frack-be-a-curse-word-a-look-at-the-hottest-new-energy-solution-2011-4">http://www.businessinsider.com/should-frack-be-a-curse-word-a-look-at-the-hot...</a> </p><p>what is the best way? Are all ways bad in some way? What if the basic assumption were that there will be pain, how do we make the right decision? How do we convince ourselves that total costs must be accounted for and included in the discussion and create an agreed upon standard for this kind of accounting independent of the solution that might result?</p></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-3554057886101829242011-02-22T22:59:00.001-08:002011-02-22T22:59:38.569-08:00Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry"> <embed name="flashvideo" src="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/includes/flvplayer.swf" allowfullscreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="samedomain" height="389" flashvars="file=/moyers/journal/04232010/flv/352black.flv&image=/moyers/journal/04232010/images/vid1_big.jpg&width=480&height=389&autostart=false&displaywidth=480&backcolor=0x3869a2&frontcolor=0xffffff&lightcolor=0xdf6f0f" quality="high" width="480" style="" /> <div class="posterous_quote_citation">via <a href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04232010/watch.html">pbs.org</a></div> <p>scary!!!</p></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-8879753600738757982010-11-29T17:57:00.001-08:002010-11-29T17:57:04.541-08:00Downsides of Growth « Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry"> this is from richard daly's website. I also have been looking into Marc Lavoie and Georgescu-Roegen. <blockquote class="posterous_long_quote"><h2>Uneconomic Growth</h2> <p>Continuing to grow the economy when the costs are higher than the benefits is actually <em>uneconomic</em> growth. The United Nations has classified five types of uneconomic growth:</p> <ul> <li><strong>jobless growth</strong>, where the economy grows, but does not expand opportunities for employment;</li> <li><strong>ruthless growth</strong>, where the proceeds of economic growth mostly benefit the rich;</li> <li><strong>voiceless growth</strong>, where economic growth is not accompanied by extension of democracy or empowerment;</li> <li><strong>rootless growth</strong>, where economic growth squashes people’s cultural identity; and</li> <li><strong>futureless growth</strong>, where the present generation squanders resources needed by future generations.</li> </ul> <p>The downsides of economic growth can be avoided by maintaining an optimal scale of the economy.</p></blockquote><div class="posterous_quote_citation">via <a href="http://steadystate.org/discover/downsides-of-economic-growth/">steadystate.org</a></div> <p></p></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-59491736117972465362010-11-29T17:16:00.001-08:002010-11-29T17:16:36.747-08:00All In The Mind - About<div class='posterous_autopost'><div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry"> <blockquote><div> <h3>Special Features</h3> <h3><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/features#">Dialogue with the Dalai Lama Part 1 of 3</a></h3> <p><a href="http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2009/12/aim_20091205.mp3">Download Audio</a> </p> <p><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/features#"><img src="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/img/dalai75.jpg" border="0" height="75" alt="Dalai Lama" width="75" style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); margin: 6px; padding: 4px; float: right; height: 75px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p /></a>From the stage of the 2009 Mind and Its Potential conference, His Holiness the Dalai Lama joins <em>All in the Mind</em>'s Natasha Mitchell in an extended conversation about the mind, science and much else. And, joining the dialogue in Parts 2 and 3 is the founder of the field of positive psychology Martin Seligman, leading Harvard evolutionary biologist Marc Hauser, and Buddhist scholar Alan Wallace.</p> <p><em>Broadcast: </em>5 December 2009 | <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/features#">more details...</a></p> <br /> <h3><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/features#">Dialogue with the Dalai Lama Part 2 of 3</a></h3> <p><a href="http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2009/12/aim_20091212.mp3">Download Audio</a> </p> <p><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/features#"><img src="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/img/dalai2.jpg" border="0" height="75" alt="Dalai Lama" width="75" style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); margin: 6px; padding: 4px; float: right; height: 75px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p /></a>His Holiness the Dalai Lama joins <em>All in the Mind</em>'s Natasha Mitchell and leading scholars in a dialogue about science, wellbeing and our moral minds. In Part 2 Harvard evolutionary biologist and author of <em>Moral Minds</em> Marc Hauser asks: does biology constrain our mind's potential and our moral capacity? Is there a place for moral outrage? Next week, founder of the field of positive psychology Martin Seligman and Buddhist scholar Alan Wallace join the fray.</p> <p><em>Broadcast: </em>12 December 2009 | <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/features#">more details...</a></p> <br /> <h3><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/features#">Dialogue with the Dalai Lama Part 3 of 3</a></h3> <p><a href="http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2009/12/aim_20091219.mp3">Download Audio</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/features#"><img src="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/img/dalai3.jpg" border="0" height="75" alt="Dalai Lama" width="75" style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); margin: 6px; padding: 4px; float: right; height: 75px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p /></a>His Holiness the Dalai Lama joins <em>All in the Mind</em>'s Natasha Mitchell and leading scholars in a dialogue about science and the self. In Part 3, founder of the field of positive psychology Martin Seligman and Buddhist scholar Alan Wallace consider with him what it takes to flourish...really flourish...individually and collectively.</p> <p><em>Broadcast: </em>19 December 2009 | <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/features#">more details...</a></p> <br /> </div></blockquote> <div class="posterous_quote_citation">via <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/features/">abc.net.au</a></div> <p>hooray.</p></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-82371745670848034362010-10-18T21:17:00.000-07:002010-10-18T21:33:40.330-07:00TV or not TV, that is the question...Does using <a href="http://www.miller-mccune.com/education/babys-must-see-tv-does-not-increase-vocabulary-24301/">children's TV and video</a> increase their vocabulary? Answer: no! <blockquote><p>"Researchers found that the children did not learn any more words from their month-long exposure to the educational DVD than their control counterparts. In fact, the highest level of learning occurred in a no-video environment in which parents taught their children target words during everyday activities." <span style="font-style:italic;">from Miller-McCune</span><span style="font-style:italic;"><br /></span></p></blockquote><br />But there is good news: It <del>ain't</del> isn't making them <del>dummer</del> dumber either:<br /><br /><blockquote>Earlier this year, our Erik Hayden reported that the amount of television <a href="http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/kids-and-tv-maybe-its-not-an-idiot-box-15160/">had little discernible impact</a> on children aged 5 to 10. While it’s comforting to know that the idiot box is truly not an idiot-maker, it is disheartening to discover that the old video babysitter isn’t making our children any smarter, either.</blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>asllearnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05358825775332677166noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-50613797510758673202010-09-09T07:25:00.000-07:002010-09-09T07:29:50.909-07:00Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.comSomeone recetnly asked me what the best way to study is. Here is an article about it from a recent NY Times.<br />
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<blockquote>September 6, 2010</blockquote><blockquote>Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits</blockquote><blockquote>By BENEDICT CAREY</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>Every September, millions of parents try a kind of psychological witchcraft, to transform their summer-glazed campers into fall students, their video-bugs into bookworms. Advice is cheap and all too familiar: Clear a quiet work space. Stick to a homework schedule. Set goals. Set boundaries. Do not bribe (except in emergencies).</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>And check out the classroom. Does Junior’s learning style match the new teacher’s approach? Or the school’s philosophy? Maybe the child isn’t “a good fit” for the school.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules. The trouble is, no one can predict how.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>Yet there are effective approaches to learning, at least for those who are motivated. In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>“We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>Ditto for teaching styles, researchers say. Some excellent instructors caper in front of the blackboard like summer-theater Falstaffs; others are reserved to the point of shyness. “We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,” said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>But individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>“What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting,” said Dr. Bjork, the senior author of the two-room experiment.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with strength, speed and skill drills.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>The advantages of this approach to studying can be striking, in some topic areas. In a study recently posted online by the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, Doug Rohrer and Kelli Taylor of the University of South Florida taught a group of fourth graders four equations, each to calculate a different dimension of a prism. Half of the children learned by studying repeated examples of one equation, say, calculating the number of prism faces when given the number of sides at the base, then moving on to the next type of calculation, studying repeated examples of that. The other half studied mixed problem sets, which included examples all four types of calculations grouped together. Both groups solved sample problems along the way, as they studied.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>A day later, the researchers gave all of the students a test on the material, presenting new problems of the same type. The children who had studied mixed sets did twice as well as the others, outscoring them 77 percent to 38 percent. The researchers have found the same in experiments involving adults and younger children.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>“When students see a list of problems, all of the same kind, they know the strategy to use before they even read the problem,” said Dr. Rohrer. “That’s like riding a bike with training wheels.” With mixed practice, he added, “each problem is different from the last one, which means kids must learn how to choose the appropriate procedure — just like they had to do on the test.”</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>These findings extend well beyond math, even to aesthetic intuitive learning. In an experiment published last month in the journal Psychology and Aging, researchers found that college students and adults of retirement age were better able to distinguish the painting styles of 12 unfamiliar artists after viewing mixed collections (assortments, including works from all 12) than after viewing a dozen works from one artist, all together, then moving on to the next painter.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>The finding undermines the common assumption that intensive immersion is the best way to really master a particular genre, or type of creative work, said Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College and the lead author of the study. “What seems to be happening in this case is that the brain is picking up deeper patterns when seeing assortments of paintings; it’s picking up what’s similar and what’s different about them,” often subconsciously.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>Cognitive scientists do not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn — it holds its new load for a while, then most everything falls out.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>“With many students, it’s not like they can’t remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L. Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s like they’ve never seen it before.”</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>When the neural suitcase is packed carefully and gradually, it holds its contents for far, far longer. An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>No one knows for sure why. It may be that the brain, when it revisits material at a later time, has to relearn some of what it has absorbed before adding new stuff — and that that process is itself self-reinforcing.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>“The idea is that forgetting is the friend of learning,” said Dr. Kornell. “When you forget something, it allows you to relearn, and do so effectively, the next time you see it.”</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>That’s one reason cognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>Dr. Roediger uses the analogy of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, which holds that the act of measuring a property of a particle (position, for example) reduces the accuracy with which you can know another property (momentum, for example): “Testing not only measures knowledge but changes it,” he says — and, happily, in the direction of more certainty, not less.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>In one of his own experiments, Dr. Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke, also of Washington University, had college students study science passages from a reading comprehension test, in short study periods. When students studied the same material twice, in back-to-back sessions, they did very well on a test given immediately afterward, then began to forget the material.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>But if they studied the passage just once and did a practice test in the second session, they did very well on one test two days later, and another given a week later.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>“Testing has such bad connotation; people think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have.”</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>Of course, one reason the thought of testing tightens people’s stomachs is that tests are so often hard. Paradoxically, it is just this difficulty that makes them such effective study tools, research suggests. The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later forget. This effect, which researchers call “desirable difficulty,” is evident in daily life. The name of the actor who played Linc in “The Mod Squad”? Francie’s brother in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”? The name of the co-discoverer, with Newton, of calculus?</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>The more mental sweat it takes to dig it out, the more securely it will be subsequently anchored.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>None of which is to suggest that these techniques — alternating study environments, mixing content, spacing study sessions, self-testing or all the above — will turn a grade-A slacker into a grade-A student. Motivation matters. So do impressing friends, making the hockey team and finding the nerve to text the cute student in social studies.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>“In lab experiments, you’re able to control for all factors except the one you’re studying,” said Dr. Willingham. “Not true in the classroom, in real life. All of these things are interacting at the same time.”</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>But at the very least, the cognitive techniques give parents and students, young and old, something many did not have before: a study plan based on evidence, not schoolyard folk wisdom, or empty theorizing.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote>Correction: September 8, 2010</blockquote><blockquote><br />
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</blockquote><blockquote>An article on Tuesday about the effectiveness of various study habits described incorrectly the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics. The principle holds that the act of measuring one property of a particle (position, for example) reduces the accuracy with which you can know another property (momentum, for example) — not that the act of measuring a property of the particle alters that property.</blockquote><blockquote><br />
</blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com</blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-78691180009493392372010-08-27T02:01:00.000-07:002010-08-27T02:05:28.662-07:00NY Times article about language and...well, language...<blockquote><em>“Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” </em></blockquote>Does Your Language Shape How You Think? <em><span style="font-size: x-small;">By GUY DEUTSCHER</span></em><br />
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Seventy years ago, in 1940, a popular science magazine published a short article that set in motion one of the trendiest intellectual fads of the 20th century. At first glance, there seemed little about the article to augur its subsequent celebrity. Neither the title, “Science and Linguistics,” nor the magazine, M.I.T.’s Technology Review, was most people’s idea of glamour. And the author, a chemical engineer who worked for an insurance company and moonlighted as an anthropology lecturer at Yale University, was an unlikely candidate for international superstardom. And yet Benjamin Lee Whorf let loose an alluring idea about language’s power over the mind, and his stirring prose seduced a whole generation into believing that our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think. <br />
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In particular, Whorf announced, Native American languages impose on their speakers a picture of reality that is totally different from ours, so their speakers would simply not be able to understand some of our most basic concepts, like the flow of time or the distinction between objects (like “stone”) and actions (like “fall”). For decades, Whorf’s theory dazzled both academics and the general public alike. In his shadow, others made a whole range of imaginative claims about the supposed power of language, from the assertion that Native American languages instill in their speakers an intuitive understanding of Einstein’s concept of time as a fourth dimension to the theory that the nature of the Jewish religion was determined by the tense system of ancient Hebrew. <br />
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Eventually, Whorf’s theory crash-landed on hard facts and solid common sense, when it transpired that there had never actually been any evidence to support his fantastic claims. The reaction was so severe that for decades, any attempts to explore the influence of the mother tongue on our thoughts were relegated to the loony fringes of disrepute. But 70 years on, it is surely time to put the trauma of Whorf behind us. And in the last few years, new research has revealed that when we learn our mother tongue, we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways. <br />
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Whorf, we now know, made many mistakes. The most serious one was to assume that our mother tongue constrains our minds and prevents us from being able to think certain thoughts. The general structure of his arguments was to claim that if a language has no word for a certain concept, then its speakers would not be able to understand this concept. If a language has no future tense, for instance, its speakers would simply not be able to grasp our notion of future time. It seems barely comprehensible that this line of argument could ever have achieved such success, given that so much contrary evidence confronts you wherever you look. When you ask, in perfectly normal English, and in the present tense, “Are you coming tomorrow?” do you feel your grip on the notion of futurity slipping away? Do English speakers who have never heard the German word Schadenfreude find it difficult to understand the concept of relishing someone else’s misfortune? Or think about it this way: If the inventory of ready-made words in your language determined which concepts you were able to understand, how would you ever learn anything new? <br />
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SINCE THERE IS NO EVIDENCE that any language forbids its speakers to think anything, we must look in an entirely different direction to discover how our mother tongue really does shape our experience of the world. Some 50 years ago, the renowned linguist Roman Jakobson pointed out a crucial fact about differences between languages in a pithy maxim: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” This maxim offers us the key to unlocking the real force of the mother tongue: if different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about. <br />
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Consider this example. Suppose I say to you in English that “I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor.” You may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it’s none of your business. But if we were speaking French or German, I wouldn’t have the privilege to equivocate in this way, because I would be obliged by the grammar of language to choose between voisin or voisine; Nachbar or Nachbarin. These languages compel me to inform you about the sex of my companion whether or not I feel it is remotely your concern. This does not mean, of course, that English speakers are unable to understand the differences between evenings spent with male or female neighbors, but it does mean that they do not have to consider the sexes of neighbors, friends, teachers and a host of other persons each time they come up in a conversation, whereas speakers of some languages are obliged to do so. <br />
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On the other hand, English does oblige you to specify certain types of information that can be left to the context in other languages. If I want to tell you in English about a dinner with my neighbor, I may not have to mention the neighbor’s sex, but I do have to tell you something about the timing of the event: I have to decide whether we dined, have been dining, are dining, will be dining and so on. Chinese, on the other hand, does not oblige its speakers to specify the exact time of the action in this way, because the same verb form can be used for past, present or future actions. Again, this does not mean that the Chinese are unable to understand the concept of time. But it does mean they are not obliged to think about timing whenever they describe an action. <br />
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When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information, it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience that speakers of other languages may not be required to think about all the time. And since such habits of speech are cultivated from the earliest age, it is only natural that they can settle into habits of mind that go beyond language itself, affecting your experiences, perceptions, associations, feelings, memories and orientation in the world. <br />
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BUT IS THERE any evidence for this happening in practice? <br />
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Let’s take genders again. Languages like Spanish, French, German and Russian not only oblige you to think about the sex of friends and neighbors, but they also assign a male or female gender to a whole range of inanimate objects quite at whim. What, for instance, is particularly feminine about a Frenchman’s beard (la barbe)? Why is Russian water a she, and why does she become a he once you have dipped a tea bag into her? Mark Twain famously lamented such erratic genders as female turnips and neuter maidens in his rant “The Awful German Language.” But whereas he claimed that there was something particularly perverse about the German gender system, it is in fact English that is unusual, at least among European languages, in not treating turnips and tea cups as masculine or feminine. Languages that treat an inanimate object as a he or a she force their speakers to talk about such an object as if it were a man or a woman. And as anyone whose mother tongue has a gender system will tell you, once the habit has taken hold, it is all but impossible to shake off. When I speak English, I may say about a bed that “it” is too soft, but as a native Hebrew speaker, I actually feel “she” is too soft. “She” stays feminine all the way from the lungs up to the glottis and is neutered only when she reaches the tip of the tongue. <br />
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In recent years, various experiments have shown that grammatical genders can shape the feelings and associations of speakers toward objects around them. In the 1990s, for example, psychologists compared associations between speakers of German and Spanish. There are many inanimate nouns whose genders in the two languages are reversed. A German bridge is feminine (die Brücke), for instance, but el puente is masculine in Spanish; and the same goes for clocks, apartments, forks, newspapers, pockets, shoulders, stamps, tickets, violins, the sun, the world and love. On the other hand, an apple is masculine for Germans but feminine in Spanish, and so are chairs, brooms, butterflies, keys, mountains, stars, tables, wars, rain and garbage. When speakers were asked to grade various objects on a range of characteristics, Spanish speakers deemed bridges, clocks and violins to have more “manly properties” like strength, but Germans tended to think of them as more slender or elegant. With objects like mountains or chairs, which are “he” in German but “she” in Spanish, the effect was reversed. <br />
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In a different experiment, French and Spanish speakers were asked to assign human voices to various objects in a cartoon. When French speakers saw a picture of a fork (la fourchette), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman’s voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom el tenedor is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it. More recently, psychologists have even shown that “gendered languages” imprint gender traits for objects so strongly in the mind that these associations obstruct speakers’ ability to commit information to memory. <br />
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Of course, all this does not mean that speakers of Spanish or French or German fail to understand that inanimate objects do not really have biological sex — a German woman rarely mistakes her husband for a hat, and Spanish men are not known to confuse a bed with what might be lying in it. Nonetheless, once gender connotations have been imposed on impressionable young minds, they lead those with a gendered mother tongue to see the inanimate world through lenses tinted with associations and emotional responses that English speakers — stuck in their monochrome desert of “its” — are entirely oblivious to. Did the opposite genders of “bridge” in German and Spanish, for example, have an effect on the design of bridges in Spain and Germany? Do the emotional maps imposed by a gender system have higher-level behavioral consequences for our everyday life? Do they shape tastes, fashions, habits and preferences in the societies concerned? At the current state of our knowledge about the brain, this is not something that can be easily measured in a psychology lab. But it would be surprising if they didn’t. <br />
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The area where the most striking evidence for the influence of language on thought has come to light is the language of space — how we describe the orientation of the world around us. Suppose you want to give someone directions for getting to your house. You might say: “After the traffic lights, take the first left, then the second right, and then you’ll see a white house in front of you. Our door is on the right.” But in theory, you could also say: “After the traffic lights, drive north, and then on the second crossing drive east, and you’ll see a white house directly to the east. Ours is the southern door.” These two sets of directions may describe the same route, but they rely on different systems of coordinates. The first uses egocentric coordinates, which depend on our own bodies: a left-right axis and a front-back axis orthogonal to it. The second system uses fixed geographic directions, which do not rotate with us wherever we turn. <br />
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We find it useful to use geographic directions when hiking in the open countryside, for example, but the egocentric coordinates completely dominate our speech when we describe small-scale spaces. We don’t say: “When you get out of the elevator, walk south, and then take the second door to the east.” The reason the egocentric system is so dominant in our language is that it feels so much easier and more natural. After all, we always know where “behind” or “in front of” us is. We don’t need a map or a compass to work it out, we just feel it, because the egocentric coordinates are based directly on our own bodies and our immediate visual fields. <br />
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But then a remote Australian aboriginal tongue, Guugu Yimithirr, from north Queensland, turned up, and with it came the astounding realization that not all languages conform to what we have always taken as simply “natural.” In fact, Guugu Yimithirr doesn’t make any use of egocentric coordinates at all. The anthropologist John Haviland and later the linguist Stephen Levinson have shown that Guugu Yimithirr does not use words like “left” or “right,” “in front of” or “behind,” to describe the position of objects. Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table.” Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.” Even when shown a film on television, they gave descriptions of it based on the orientation of the screen. If the television was facing north, and a man on the screen was approaching, they said that he was “coming northward.” <br />
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When these peculiarities of Guugu Yimithirr were uncovered, they inspired a large-scale research project into the language of space. And as it happens, Guugu Yimithirr is not a freak occurrence; languages that rely primarily on geographical coordinates are scattered around the world, from Polynesia to Mexico, from Namibia to Bali. For us, it might seem the height of absurdity for a dance teacher to say, “Now raise your north hand and move your south leg eastward.” But the joke would be lost on some: the Canadian-American musicologist Colin McPhee, who spent several years on Bali in the 1930s, recalls a young boy who showed great talent for dancing. As there was no instructor in the child’s village, McPhee arranged for him to stay with a teacher in a different village. But when he came to check on the boy’s progress after a few days, he found the boy dejected and the teacher exasperated. It was impossible to teach the boy anything, because he simply did not understand any of the instructions. When told to take “three steps east” or “bend southwest,” he didn’t know what to do. The boy would not have had the least trouble with these directions in his own village, but because the landscape in the new village was entirely unfamiliar, he became disoriented and confused. Why didn’t the teacher use different instructions? He would probably have replied that saying “take three steps forward” or “bend backward” would be the height of absurdity. <br />
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So different languages certainly make us speak about space in very different ways. But does this necessarily mean that we have to think about space differently? By now red lights should be flashing, because even if a language doesn’t have a word for “behind,” this doesn’t necessarily mean that its speakers wouldn’t be able to understand this concept. Instead, we should look for the possible consequences of what geographic languages oblige their speakers to convey. In particular, we should be on the lookout for what habits of mind might develop because of the necessity of specifying geographic directions all the time. <br />
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In order to speak a language like Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life. You need to have a compass in your mind that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks or weekends off, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic information or understand what people around you are saying. Indeed, speakers of geographic languages seem to have an almost-superhuman sense of orientation. Regardless of visibility conditions, regardless of whether they are in thick forest or on an open plain, whether outside or indoors or even in caves, whether stationary or moving, they have a spot-on sense of direction. They don’t look at the sun and pause for a moment of calculation before they say, “There’s an ant just north of your foot.” They simply feel where north, south, west and east are, just as people with perfect pitch feel what each note is without having to calculate intervals. There is a wealth of stories about what to us may seem like incredible feats of orientation but for speakers of geographic languages are just a matter of course. One report relates how a speaker of Tzeltal from southern Mexico was blindfolded and spun around more than 20 times in a darkened house. Still blindfolded and dizzy, he pointed without hesitation at the geographic directions. <br />
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How does this work? The convention of communicating with geographic coordinates compels speakers from the youngest age to pay attention to the clues from the physical environment (the position of the sun, wind and so on) every second of their lives, and to develop an accurate memory of their own changing orientations at any given moment. So everyday communication in a geographic language provides the most intense imaginable drilling in geographic orientation (it has been estimated that as much as 1 word in 10 in a normal Guugu Yimithirr conversation is “north,” “south,” “west” or “east,” often accompanied by precise hand gestures). This habit of constant awareness to the geographic direction is inculcated almost from infancy: studies have shown that children in such societies start using geographic directions as early as age 2 and fully master the system by 7 or 8. With such an early and intense drilling, the habit soon becomes second nature, effortless and unconscious. When Guugu Yimithirr speakers were asked how they knew where north is, they couldn’t explain it any more than you can explain how you know where “behind” is. <br />
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But there is more to the effects of a geographic language, for the sense of orientation has to extend further in time than the immediate present. If you speak a Guugu Yimithirr-style language, your memories of anything that you might ever want to report will have to be stored with cardinal directions as part of the picture. One Guugu Yimithirr speaker was filmed telling his friends the story of how in his youth, he capsized in shark-infested waters. He and an older person were caught in a storm, and their boat tipped over. They both jumped into the water and managed to swim nearly three miles to the shore, only to discover that the missionary for whom they worked was far more concerned at the loss of the boat than relieved at their miraculous escape. Apart from the dramatic content, the remarkable thing about the story was that it was remembered throughout in cardinal directions: the speaker jumped into the water on the western side of the boat, his companion to the east of the boat, they saw a giant shark swimming north and so on. Perhaps the cardinal directions were just made up for the occasion? Well, quite by chance, the same person was filmed some years later telling the same story. The cardinal directions matched exactly in the two tellings. Even more remarkable were the spontaneous hand gestures that accompanied the story. For instance, the direction in which the boat rolled over was gestured in the correct geographic orientation, regardless of the direction the speaker was facing in the two films. <br />
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Psychological experiments have also shown that under certain circumstances, speakers of Guugu Yimithirr-style languages even remember “the same reality” differently from us. There has been heated debate about the interpretation of some of these experiments, but one conclusion that seems compelling is that while we are trained to ignore directional rotations when we commit information to memory, speakers of geographic languages are trained not to do so. One way of understanding this is to imagine that you are traveling with a speaker of such a language and staying in a large chain-style hotel, with corridor upon corridor of identical-looking doors. Your friend is staying in the room opposite yours, and when you go into his room, you’ll see an exact replica of yours: the same bathroom door on the left, the same mirrored wardrobe on the right, the same main room with the same bed on the left, the same curtains drawn behind it, the same desk next to the wall on the right, the same television set on the left corner of the desk and the same telephone on the right. In short, you have seen the same room twice. But when your friend comes into your room, he will see something quite different from this, because everything is reversed north-side-south. In his room the bed was in the north, while in yours it is in the south; the telephone that in his room was in the west is now in the east, and so on. So while you will see and remember the same room twice, a speaker of a geographic language will see and remember two different rooms. <br />
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It is not easy for us to conceive how Guugu Yimithirr speakers experience the world, with a crisscrossing of cardinal directions imposed on any mental picture and any piece of graphic memory. Nor is it easy to speculate about how geographic languages affect areas of experience other than spatial orientation — whether they influence the speaker’s sense of identity, for instance, or bring about a less-egocentric outlook on life. But one piece of evidence is telling: if you saw a Guugu Yimithirr speaker pointing at himself, you would naturally assume he meant to draw attention to himself. In fact, he is pointing at a cardinal direction that happens to be behind his back. While we are always at the center of the world, and it would never occur to us that pointing in the direction of our chest could mean anything other than to draw attention to ourselves, a Guugu Yimithirr speaker points through himself, as if he were thin air and his own existence were irrelevant. <br />
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IN WHAT OTHER WAYS might the language we speak influence our experience of the world? Recently, it has been demonstrated in a series of ingenious experiments that we even perceive colors through the lens of our mother tongue. There are radical variations in the way languages carve up the spectrum of visible light; for example, green and blue are distinct colors in English but are considered shades of the same color in many languages. And it turns out that the colors that our language routinely obliges us to treat as distinct can refine our purely visual sensitivity to certain color differences in reality, so that our brains are trained to exaggerate the distance between shades of color if these have different names in our language. As strange as it may sound, our experience of a Chagall painting actually depends to some extent on whether our language has a word for blue. <br />
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In coming years, researchers may also be able to shed light on the impact of language on more subtle areas of perception. For instance, some languages, like Matses in Peru, oblige their speakers, like the finickiest of lawyers, to specify exactly how they came to know about the facts they are reporting. You cannot simply say, as in English, “An animal passed here.” You have to specify, using a different verbal form, whether this was directly experienced (you saw the animal passing), inferred (you saw footprints), conjectured (animals generally pass there that time of day), hearsay or such. If a statement is reported with the incorrect “evidentiality,” it is considered a lie. So if, for instance, you ask a Matses man how many wives he has, unless he can actually see his wives at that very moment, he would have to answer in the past tense and would say something like “There were two last time I checked.” After all, given that the wives are not present, he cannot be absolutely certain that one of them hasn’t died or run off with another man since he last saw them, even if this was only five minutes ago. So he cannot report it as a certain fact in the present tense. Does the need to think constantly about epistemology in such a careful and sophisticated manner inform the speakers’ outlook on life or their sense of truth and causation? When our experimental tools are less blunt, such questions will be amenable to empirical study. <br />
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For many years, our mother tongue was claimed to be a “prison house” that constrained our capacity to reason. Once it turned out that there was no evidence for such claims, this was taken as proof that people of all cultures think in fundamentally the same way. But surely it is a mistake to overestimate the importance of abstract reasoning in our lives. After all, how many daily decisions do we make on the basis of deductive logic compared with those guided by gut feeling, intuition, emotions, impulse or practical skills? The habits of mind that our culture has instilled in us from infancy shape our orientation to the world and our emotional responses to the objects we encounter, and their consequences probably go far beyond what has been experimentally demonstrated so far; they may also have a marked impact on our beliefs, values and ideologies. We may not know as yet how to measure these consequences directly or how to assess their contribution to cultural or political misunderstandings. But as a first step toward understanding one another, we can do better than pretending we all think the same.<br />
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<em>Guy Deutscher is an honorary research fellow at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester. His new book, from which this article is adapted, is “Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages,” to be published this month.</em><div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-312193177130509039.post-44090322826318507932010-08-18T06:13:00.000-07:002010-08-18T06:23:18.016-07:00let the blogging beginThe <a href="http://chocochoco.byethost9.com/">website</a> is up. Check it out!<div class="blogger-post-footer">see http://chocochoco.byethost9.com for more information</div>chocochocohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01451565972465183209noreply@blogger.com0