Sloan-News: The 2005 Survey of Online Learning concludes that the breadth of online college courses may soon rival traditional face-to-face offerings. Survey results show more than three out of five institutions offering face-to-face undergraduate (63%) or graduate (65%) level courses also offer courses at the same level online.

In addition, larger percentages (56%) of chief academic officers agree that online education is critical to their long-term strategy. ?Colleges and universities are starting to understand that online courses help increase enrollment and improve diversity without the need for additional classrooms,? said Frank Mayadas, president, Sloan-C and program director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. ?It also helps address professors? needs for workplace flexibility, among other issues challenging academia.?

Sloan News: The 2005 Survey of Online Learning concludes that the breadth of online college courses may soon rival traditional face-to-face offerings. Survey results show more than three out of five institutions offering face-to-face undergraduate (63%) or graduate (65%) level courses also offer courses at the same level online.

In addition, larger percentages (56%) of chief academic officers agree that online education is critical to their long-term strategy. ?Colleges and universities are starting to understand that online courses help increase enrollment and improve diversity without the need for additional classrooms,? said Frank Mayadas, president, Sloan-C and program director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. ?It also helps address professors? needs for workplace flexibility, among other issues challenging academia.?

The first big test of the international community?s capacity to
manage scarcity may come with oil or it could come with grain.
If the latter is the case, this could occur when China?whose
grain harvest fell by 34 million tons, or 9 percent, between 1998
and 2005?turns to the world market for massive imports of 30
million, 50 million, or possibly even 100 million tons of grain
per year. Demand on this scale could quickly overwhelm world
grain markets. When this happens, China will have to look to
the United States, which controls the world?s grain exports of
over 40 percent of some 200 million tons.32
This will pose a fascinating geopolitical situation. More
than 1.3 billion Chinese consumers, who had an estimated
$160-billion trade surplus with the United States in 2004?
enough to buy the entire U.S. grain harvest twice?will be competing
with Americans for U.S. grain, driving up U.S. food
prices.

For many years environmentalists have pointed to the United
States as the world?s leading consumer, noting that 5 percent of
the world?s people were consuming nearly a third of the earth?s
resources. Although that was true for some time, it no longer is.
China has replaced the United States as the leading consumer of
basic commodities.11
Among the five basic food, energy, and industrial commodities?
grain and meat, oil and coal, and steel?consumption in
China has eclipsed that of the United States in all but oil. China
has opened a wide lead with grain, consuming 380 million tons
in 2005 versus 260 million tons in the United States. Among the
big three grains, China leads in the consumption of both wheat
and rice and trails the United States only in corn.12

The world is facing the emergence of a geopolitics of scarcity,
which is already highly visible in the efforts by China, India, and
other developing countries to ensure their access to oil supplies.
In the future, the issue will be who gets access to not only Middle
Eastern oil but also Brazilian ethanol and North American grain.
Pressures on land and water resources, already excessive in most
of the world, will intensify further as the demand for biofuels
climbs. This geopolitics of scarcity is an early manifestation of
civilization in an overshoot-and-collapse mode,

In this new world, the price of oil begins to set the price of
food, not so much because of rising fuel costs for farmers and
food processors but more because almost everything we eat can
be converted into fuel for cars. In this new world of high oil
prices, supermarkets and service stations will compete in commodity
markets for basic food commodities such as wheat, corn,
soybeans, and sugarcane.

As of 2005, some 42 countries have populations that are
stable or declining slightly in size as a result of falling birth
rates. But now for the first time ever, demographers are
projecting population declines in some countries because of
rising death rates, among them Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia,
and Swaziland.

Resources that accumulated over eons of geological time are
being consumed in a single human lifespan. We are crossing
natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines
that we do not recognize. These deadlines, determined by
nature, are not politically negotiable.

Fortunately, there is a consensus emerging among scientists
on the broad outlines of the changes needed. If economic
progress is to be sustained, we need to replace the fossil-fuelbased,
automobile-centered, throwaway economy with a new
economic model. Instead of being based on fossil fuels, the new
economy will be powered by abundant sources of renewable
energy: wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, and biofuels.
Instead of being centered around automobiles, future transportation
systems will be far more diverse, widely employing
light rail, buses, and bicycles as well as cars. The goal will be to
maximize mobility, not automobile ownership.
The throwaway economy will be replaced by a comprehensive
reuse/recycle economy. Consumer products from cars to computers
will be designed so that they can be disassembled into their
component parts and completely recycled. Throwaway products
such as single-use beverage containers will be phased out.

As a result, we are consuming renewable resources faster than they can regenerate. Forests are shrinking, grasslands are deteriorating, water tables are falling, fisheries are collapsing, and soils are eroding. We are using up oil at a pace that leaves little time to plan beyond peak oil. And we are discharging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster than nature can absorb them, setting the stage for a rise in the earth?s temperature well above any since agriculture began. Our twenty-first century civilization is not the first to move onto an economic path that was environmentally unsustainable.

Our global economy is outgrowing the capacity of the earth to support it, moving our early twenty-first century civilization ever closer to decline and possible collapse. In our preoccupation with quarterly earnings reports and year-to-year economic growth, we have lost sight of how large the human enterprise has become relative to the earth?s resources. A century ago, annual growth in the world economy was measured in billions of dollars. Today it is measured in trillions.

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Washington's problem is that it has relied on authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen and North Africa to partner with it in its 'war on terrorism,' to moderate regional hostility toward Israel and -- in the case of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf principalities -- to provide reliable energy supplies to the West and Japan. Washington does not desire precipitous regime change in allied states on which it is dependent, yet it believes that regime transformation is ultimately in its interest. As a result, Washington is constrained to walk a fine line between pressuring allied authoritarian regimes to reform and making sure that it does not alienate them so much that they resist cooperation in the pursuit of its vital strategic aims."

International migration, ... | Aideffectiveness | Development Gateway: "The labor forces in many developed countries are expected to peak around 2010, and decline by around 5 percent in the following two decades, accompanied by a rapid increase in dependency ratios. Conversely, the labor forces in many developing countries are expanding rapidly, resulting in declines in dependency ratios. This imbalance is likely to create strong demand for workers in developed countries' labor markets, especially for numerous service sectors that can only be supplied locally. There are large north-south wage gaps, however, especially for unskilled and semiskilled labor. "

KurzweilAI.net: "A new biofuel production method converts biomass (organic leftovers) into a fuel called 'syngas' that outperforms both petroleum and plant oil-based biodiesel.
It also produces 85 to 90 percent less climate-changing carbon dioxide than motoring on fossil diesel, and generates less soot and smog because the fuel contains none of the sulfur found in conventional diesel and few aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene. "

EETimes.com - Computer R&D rocks on: "We've moved from a community of experts using machines in glass rooms to an environment where the technology is at everyone's fingertips"

People's Daily Online -- Potential risks in world economy cannot be neglected, report: "The report believes that these potential risks mainly lie in the continuously rising oil price, imbalance in global economy, real estate bubble and intensified international trade protectionism.
In 2006 the world economy will still grow at a fast pace with robust oil demand on the international market, the report said. But oil supply, vulnerable to many factors such as refining capacity and geopolitics, is subject to great uncertainty. Besides, speculation capital will significantly magnify the short of supply. As a result, there will still be high possibility of huge fluctuations in oil price in 2006, which will increase the risk of development for various economies and particularly affect developing countries. "

Guardian Unlimited | Science | Geneticists claim ageing breakthrough but immortality will have to wait: "A genetic experiment to unlock the secrets of the ageing process has created organisms that live six times their usual lifespan, raising hopes that it might be possible to slow ageing in humans."

World Bank - - Global Economic Prospects 2006: Migration can deliver welfare gains, reduce poverty; Remittances reach $232 billion: "Officially recorded remittances worldwide exceeded $232 billion in 2005. Of this, developing countries received $167 billion, more than twice the level of development aid from all sources. The GEP authors suggest that remittances sent through informal channels could add at least 50 percent to the official estimate, making remittances the largest source of external capital in many developing countries."

World Bank - - Global Economic Prospects 2006: Migration can deliver welfare gains, reduce poverty; Remittances reach $232 billion: "One of the risks to the outlook investigated in the report is the possibility of a disruption in oil supply that could send oil prices even higher, potentially reducing global output by 1.5 percent for several years. A second uncertainty arises from persistent global imbalances and rising public debt in high-income countries. This, the report cautions, could cause long-term interest rates to rise much faster than expected, and dampen growth prospects"

World Bank - - Global Economic Prospects 2006: Migration can deliver welfare gains, reduce poverty; Remittances reach $232 billion: "High oil prices, capacity constraints and gradually rising interest rates are the key factors that have been dampening the global expansion. ?Until recently, strong global demand and rising non-oil commodity prices have mitigated the impact of rising oil prices on oil-importing developing countries,? said Andrew Burns, one of the chapter authors of the report. ?However, the increase in the oil price since 2004 is expected to generate substantial economic costs for oil-importing poor economies that are not fully captured in the GDP numbers.? "

The Law of Accelerating Returns: "In the eighteenth century, we added a few days every year to human longevity; during the nineteenth century we added a couple of weeks each year; and now we're adding almost a half a year every year. With the revolutions in genomics, proteomics, rational drug design, therapeutic cloning of our own organs and tissues, and related developments in bio-information sciences, we will be adding more than a year every year within ten years. "

Are U.S. Innovators Losing Their Competitive Edge? - New York Times: "The Industrial Research Institute, an organization in Arlington, Va., that represents some of the nation's largest corporations, is also concerned that the academic and financial support for scientific innovation is lagging in the United States. The group's most recent data indicate that from 1986 to 2001, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan all awarded more doctoral degrees in science and engineering than did the United States. Between 1991 and 2003, research and development spending in America trailed that of China, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan - in China's case by billions of dollars."

Are U.S. Innovators Losing Their Competitive Edge? - New York Times: "'The scientific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength,' the National Academy of Sciences observed in a report released last month. 'Although many people assume that the United States will always be a world leader in science and technology, this may not continue to be the case inasmuch as great minds and ideas exist throughout the world. We fear the abruptness with which a lead in science and technology can be lost - and the difficulty of recovering a lead once lost, if indeed it can be regained at all.'"

The Collapse of Globalism: and the Rebirth of Nationalism - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "History will eventually give all of these contradictory signals a shape. But history is neither for nor against. It just is. And there is no such thing as a prolonged vacuum in geopolitics. It is always filled. This is what happens every few decades. The world turns, shifts, takes a new tack, or retries an old one. Civilization rushes around one of those blind corners filled with uncertainties. Then, abruptly, the opportunities present themselves to those who move with skill and commitment. "

The Collapse of Globalism: and the Rebirth of Nationalism - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "Ideology, like theater, is dependent on the willing suspension of disbelief. At the core of every ideology lies the worship of a bright new future, with only failure in the immediate past. But once the suspension goes, willingness converts into suspicion--the suspicion of the betrayed. "

The Collapse of Globalism: and the Rebirth of Nationalism - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "Soon people began to notice other contradictions in the Global orthodoxy. How could the same ideology promise a planetary growth in democracy and yet a decline in the power of the nation-state? Democracy exists only inside countries. Weaken the nation-state and you weaken democracy. "

The Collapse of Globalism: and the Rebirth of Nationalism - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "With economic power denationalized and transnationals using the new unregulated debt and currency systems to accumulate a financial worth greater than that of most nation-states, the next logical step was to think of those transnationals as new nations unto themselves--virtual nations, freed of the limitations of geography and citizens, freed of local obligations, empowered with the mobility of money and goods. Better in every way. "

The Collapse of Globalism: and the Rebirth of Nationalism - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "For 250 years the painful job of building the modern nation-state had depended on a continual rebalancing of binding rules for both the public good and self-interest. Now this balance was tipped violently one way by simply shifting much of our economic power out into the global marketplace. "

The Collapse of Globalism: and the Rebirth of Nationalism - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "Of course grand ideologies rarely disappear overnight. Fashions, whether in clothes or food or economics, tend to peter out. Thousands of people have done well out of their belief in Globalization, and their professional survival is dependent on our continued shared devotion to the cause. So is their personal sense of self-worth. They will be in positions of power for a few more years, and so they will make their case for a few more years. But the signs of decline are clear, and since 1995 those signs have multiplied, building on one another, turning a confused situation into a collapse. "

The Global Crisis of Legitimacy of Liberal Democracy - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Then there is the challenge of how to restore equality as one of the key dimensions of democracy. We can no longer pretend that a functioning democracy can be sustained when there is a formal equality of citizens but there are very real and large inequalities of wealth among them. We have seen both in the United States and in the developing world the systematic perversion of democracy at every turn by money and wealth. "

The Global Crisis of Legitimacy of Liberal Democracy - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "At the turn of the 20th century, Max Weber referred to the 'iron cage' of bureaucratization and Robert Michels called attention to the 'iron law of oligarchy.' Today, the 'iron cage' is being forged by a number of forces: bureaucratic centralization that has run out of control, the drive of a national security establishment playing on terrorist fears, corporate concentration and control of production and markets. In the case of the third world, one must add to this brew the draconian policies of powerful multilateral institutions and the systematic subversion of democratic mechanisms by local elites to gain a comprehensive picture of the threats that are strangling democracy globally. "

The Global Crisis of Legitimacy of Liberal Democracy - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "I think that one key reason for the crisis of democracy in the developing world is that electoral democracies of the kind favored by the West have been extraordinarily vulnerable to being hijacked by elites. The system of democracy reestablished in the Philippines after the ouster of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986 illustrates the problem. It is one that encourages maximum factional competition among the elite while allowing them to close ranks against any change in the social and economic structure. "

The Global Crisis of Legitimacy of Liberal Democracy - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Protection for US corporate interests and free trade for the rest of the world- this is the operational dictum of Washington, one that is now on display in the US's adamant refusal to abide by the NAFTA ruling on Canadian softwood imports. Given this nationalist-protectionist posture on the part of Washington, it is not surprising that the WTO talks leading to the Sixth Ministerial in Hong Kong are in danger of collapse. "

The Global Crisis of Legitimacy of Liberal Democracy - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "In my book, Dilemmas of Domination, I identify three dimensions of this crisis. The first is the crisis of overextension, or the growing gap between imperial reach and imperial grasp, the most striking example of which is the US's being drawn into a quagmire in Iraq. This has led to an erosion of its strategic position globally and made the threat of the employment of US military force to discipline recalcitrant governments and forces throughout the world less credible than it was three years ago. Hugo Chavez' scintillating defiance of American power would not be possible without the Iraqi resistance's successfully pinning down US interventionist forces in a war without end. The second is the crisis of overproduction, overaccumulation, or overcapacity. This refers to the growing gap between the tremendous productive capacity of the global capitalist system and the limited global demand for the commodities produced by this system."

IC Publications: "The report also highlights a trend that has been growing, almost unnoticed, over the past decade ? the internationalisation (or globalisation if you prefer that term) of Research and Development (R&D). Taken individually, each of these trends could be explained as cyclic phenomena; taken together, they appear to point to an almost inevitable shifting of the centre of gravity of world economics. If indeed the global economic tectonic plates are moving, they are doing so slowly and the full impact of this movement will not be noticeable for at least two decades. "

IC Publications: "The United Nations? latest report on Foreign Direct Investment global trends shows that FDI flows into Africa in 2004 stood still, exactly equalling 2003 inflows. However, there has been a seismic change elsewhere, with a massive tilt in favour of developing countries like China and a reduction of inflows to the developed world. What does this portend? Is the global centre of gravity shifting away from the developed to the developing world? "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The failure of Washington's self-imposed test caused defense planners to rethink their strategy. Facing a Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq, Washington no longer had the military resources necessary to make its unilateralist strategy credible. A shift in policy was necessary to protect U.S. interests and it was made through 2005 without the publicity attending the National Security Strategy. Nonetheless, the new strategy has been declared openly and frequently since it was put into place in March."
At the core of Washington's new geostrategy is the explicit acknowledgment that its enemy is not "terrorism" in general, but "Islamic extremism." In order to fight that enemy with any effectiveness, Major General Douglas Lute, director of operations for the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which has military responsibility for the entire arc, said in August that the U.S. has embarked on a "long war" that -- all else being equal -- will become the dominant U.S. military engagement once -- as Washington hopes -- Afghanistan and Iraq are stabilized.

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "After Washington's initial response to 9/11 of invading Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban regime, it set out on a course of effectively unilateral action, outlined in its 2002 National Security Strategy, which announced that the U.S. was committed to maintaining global military supremacy and was ready to fight preemptive wars against states that threatened its vital interests by harboring 'terrorists' or developing weapons of mass destruction. The generally multilateral approach of previous U.S. administrations was abandoned in favor of organizing 'coalitions of the willing' under Washington's leadership."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Washington's overriding interests in the arc of instability are to contain and suppress Islamic revolutionary movements in order to secure strategic resources and prevent further attacks on U.S. soil, and to cultivate stable and friendly governments in the area that will serve broader U.S. aims in its competition with the power centers of China, Russia and India."

Efforts at innovation Efforts at innovation are carried out by actors who perceive that,through the changes,they can realize net gains, solve particular problems, or better satisfy their own needs or those of others (Davis and North, 1971). Typically, these various motives can only be distinguished analytically.

In sum, the establishment and development of new technological systems will require actors with social power, knowledge and motivation to bring about the necessary changes in material, cultural, and social organizational conditions. Otherwise, there will be no new appropriate technology systems!

No technological innovation will be introduced or incorporated into production, distribution, and use systems (PDU systems) if there are no actors ? entrepreneurs and change agents ? who are motivated and push for its introduction and development. These actors, in addition to their motivation or interests, must possess or mobilize the social powers to bring about the necessary socio-technical restructuring.

Bruland and Mowery (2005) single out two other innovations ? on the institutional level ? that played a key role in the First Industrial Revolution: The development of new forms of company law and finance that supported the growth of corporate firms, and the rise of managerial control of production which transformed workplace organization and scale. This is the basis of the subsequent growth in factory production. ?Managers of ?early industrial enterprises confronted serious challenges in the assembly and maintenance of a suitable workforce, the control of work, and the adoption of new techniques and organizational structures for production activities by a restructured workforce?.two distinct, though clearly overlapping difficulties: the aversion of workers to entering the new large enterprises with their unaccustomed rules and discipline and the shortage of skilled and reliable labour.? ?The emergence of rule-based disciplinary methods, the laborious construction of supervisory systems, and the habituation of workers to an organized and controlled working day emerged slowly but were central developments of early industrialization.

A type of ?Industrial Enlightenment included the surveying and codification of artisanal techniques in published manuals, handbooks, textbooks and pamphlets on industrial practices. Patterns of collective learning and knowledge accumulation during the Industrial Revolution were facilitated as more and more learning was codified, accelerating the diffusion of industrially relevant knowledge across sectors.

Brewing and milling were the first sectors to deploy large, professional managed enterprises with national distribution systems.

Among others, Rogers (1995) in his comprehensive overview of the diffusion of innovations, has identified key factors that influence the potential adopters of an innovation: (1) the relative advantage of the innovation; (2) its compatibility, with the potential adopter?s way of doing things and with established social norms; (3) the complexityof the innovation; (4) Trialability, the ease with which the innovation can b tested by a potential adopter; observability, the ease with which the innovation can be evaluated after trial.

Every new innovation consists of a complex of existing ideas, capabilities, skills, resources, etc. This implies that the greater the variety of these factors within a given system, the greater the scope for them to be combined in different ways, producing new innovations which will be both more complex and more sophisticated.

The process approach to innovation and technological development is one of those most established in the social sciences. Often these models were developed identifying different stages or phases (see below). Basic research -->applied research--->development--->testing/evaluation--> manufacturing/packaging--->marketing/dissemination

The breadth and complexity of knowledge bases for many areas of innovation today mean that even large firms cannot rely simply on their own innovative capacity. Often the reason for buying up other companies is not precisely because of their promise of profitability but because of the need to gain access to particular areas of knowledge.

Organizations are formally and intentionally constructed systems and have explicit goals or purposes and means/production processes to achieve them. Organizations operate as agents or collective actors.

Numerous studies focusing on explaining differences in economic Numerous studies focusing on explaining differences in economic growth across countries and regions at different levels of development ( Faberberg, 2005). Fagerberg (1987, 1988) identified three factors affecting differential growth rates across countries: innovation, imitation, and other efforts related to the commercial exploitation of technology.

However, as Fagerberg (2005) points out, ?Different, and to some extent competing, perspectives should not always be seen as a problem: many social phenomena are too complex to be analyzed properly from a single disciplinary perspective.?

In many instances, particular interest groups and social agents are threatened by the developments associated with the innovations. They may resist the developments and succeed in reorienting or blocking them.

The problem is that the "new" has to grow within the framework of the "old" socio-technical systems and institutional framework. The "new" cannot be clearly perceived and is created based on our experience with the "old." Social actors ?private and public, individual and collective? play the roles of entrepreneurs and change agents pushing new products and establishing and developing new systems.

Innovations of the ?breakthrough? or ?systemic? nature are increasingly dependent upon bridging science and technology in new ways. The dynamic interplay between science and technology, and amongst many other elements comprising the environment of innovation, has changed throughout history and is changing rapidly today

Socio-technical systems are exemplified by transport systems, water systems, communication systems all made up, as suggested above, of complexes of components.

Other components are the particular human agents (persons and groups) who have the skills and know-how to use and maintain the technology. Technology is then only one component linked to a number of other components in a social system designed to accomplish tasks and to solve problems.

Technologies extend human capabilities.

Product innovations are new or better material goods as well as services. Process innovations are new or better ways of producing goods and services. The innovations may be technological, technical, or organizational in character.

Technologieare artifacts (physical and non-physical human constructions) used in social action to solve certain problems, to produce certain products, or to earn income and consume. This definition encompasses the more conventional notion that technology is any tool or physical equipment but includes techniques and methods of doing or making.

It is often claimed that that science focuses on knowing ?why?, that is comprehending phenomena and the principles underlying them, while technology is concerned with ?knowing how? to make or produce things; it may be referred to as ?know-how?. Often enough there is a ?reciprocity?, movement back and forth. In general, the boundaries are highly fuzzy and shifting.

science and technology In a social science perspective, science and technology are particular bodies of knowledge, including the knowledge of the means by which new knowledge is obtained

People's Daily Online -- Senior CPC theorist: three trends mark China's development in 21st century: "Zheng said the population of China will reach 1.5 billion in the 2030s or 2040s and it will be the top priority for China to solve the subsistence and development issues for such a huge population, or one fifth of the world's total.
'The Chinese people will be busy with their own affairs for generations to come and there is no need at all for the country to threaten anybody or any nation, ' Zheng said.
The senior theorist said China will unswervingly take part in the economic globalization and deepen co-existence and cooperation with all relevant countries worldwide in a bid to achieve win-win results.
China will blaze new trails in developing industries and an energy-saving society and rely mainly on its own to solve the issues in development, he said. "

FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 16One-Fifth of Human Genes Have Been Patented -- (National Geographic -- October 20, 2005) .
A new study shows that 20% of human genes have been patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities. The study marks the first time that a detailed map has been created to match patents to specific physical locations on the human genome. Researchers can patent genes because they are potentially valuable research tools, useful in diagnostic tests or to discover and produce new drugs.

KurzweilAI.net: "In the evolution of life-forms, the purpose is to survive. In an evolutionary algorithm (a computer program that simulates evolution to solve a problem) applied to, say, investing in the stock market, the purpose is to make money. Simply having more information does not necessarily result in a better fit. A superior solution for a purpose may very well involve less data.
The concept of 'complexity' is often used to describe the nature of the information created by an evolutionary process. Complexity is a close fit to the concept of order "

KurzweilAI.net: "Evolution applies positive feedback in that the more capable methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage. Each epoch of evolution has progressed more rapidly by building on the products of the previous stage. "

KurzweilAI.net: "Evolution applies positive feedback in that the more capable methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage. Each epoch of evolution has progressed more rapidly by building on the products of the previous stage. "

KurzweilAI.net: "Evolution works through indirection: evolution created humans, humans created technology, humans are now working with increasingly advanced technology to create new generations of technology. As a result, the rate of progress of an evolutionary process increases exponentially over time. "

From Wall Street to Beijing: Global Finance Has New Rules, New Players - Knowledge@Wharton: "�Throughout the 1980s, the U.S. was the driver of the world economy, and the world focused on exporting to it. The reality is that in the last two, three or four years the real growth engines are India and China,� with Japan now beginning to emerge as well, said James R. Birle, Jr., managing director and head of global equity capital markets at Merrill Lynch."

From Wall Street to Beijing: Global Finance Has New Rules, New Players - Knowledge@Wharton: "The rising power of hedge funds and private equity investment, continued sharp competition among Wall Street firms, and growth in China and India are the key drivers of global finance today, according to industry leaders at a recent Wharton Finance Conference whose theme was From Wall Street to Beijing: Thriving in a Changing Environment."

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Millions 'will flee degradation': "Millions 'will flee degradation'
There will be as many as 50 million environmental refugees in the world in five years' time. "

Scientific publishing | The paperless library | Economist.com: "This is now changing. According to the OECD report, some 75% of scholarly journals are now online. Entirely new business models are emerging; three main ones were identified by the report's authors. There is the so-called big deal, where institutional subscribers pay for access to a collection of online journal titles through site-licensing agreements. There is open-access publishing, typically supported by asking the author (or his employer) to pay for the paper to be published. Finally, there are open-access archives, where organisations such as universities or international laboratories support institutional repositories. Other models exist that are hybrids of these three, such as delayed open-access, where journals allow only subscribers to read a paper for the first six months, before making it freely available to everyone who wishes to see it."

Ray Kurzweil deciphers a brave new world | Newsmakers | CNET News.comBut the condensed version goes like this: Thanks to Moore's Law and other exponential growth rates, by 2030 a $1 computer will be as powerful as the human brain. Information technology's exponential curve will fuel advances in biology, robotics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence- with world-shattering results including radical life extension and practically omniscient and omnipotent abilities for humans who elect self-augmentation.

Futures PresentationsFutures Links:

Institute of the Future, Anne Arundel CC, Maryland: http://www.aacc.edu/future/default.cfm

World Future Society: http://www.wfs.org/

Prof. Roger Caldwell, Univ of Arizona, Class Website: http://cals.arizona.edu/futures/

Hawaii Center for Futures Studies: http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/

Bruce’s Strategy Page: http://staffwww.fullcoll.edu/bcordell/strategy.htm

Futures Links: "Futures Links:
Futures Research and the Strategic Planning Process
World Future Society
Plausible Futures Newsletter
Institute for the Future
Shaping Tomorrow: anticipate the future
World Futures Studies Federation
Institute for Alternative Futures"

Newsletter UK 9/2005: "Futures studies usually focus on the new that will come, and not so much on the old that will disappear. We are going to remedy that on this theme meeting about the 'living dead' categories that haunt our heads and control our view of realities, even though they already have gone or in actuality have lived out their time. Many of the products we use in our everyday lives will be gone in 15 years - e.g. the fixed line phone. Many of the systems, regulations and institutions by which we organize ourselves today will also likely disappear: counties, shopping hours legislation, and perhaps also office hours and homes for senior citizens. The development creates so many new things that it becomes increasingly important to clear out the old stuff. We will provide an argued candidate list of 'zombies'. "

Robert Fisk: War Is the "Total Failure of the Human Spirit" - Security Council - Global Policy Forum: "It's strange because if you have a crime in Santa Fe, the cops come along. First thing they do is look for the motive. When you have an international crime against humanity on the scale of September 11, 2001. The one thing you're not allowed to do is look for the motive for the crime. And I think that by and large for many months Americans were prevented from looking for the motive. By the time they could look for the motive, we were bombing Afghanistan and saying there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Robert Fisk: War Is the "Total Failure of the Human Spirit" - Security Council - Global Policy Forum: "I think you have a big problem with the lobby groups. I don�t mean just the Israeli lobby, I mean the gun lobby and so on. I think you have a major problem with lobby groups in Washington and every president comes along saying he's going to clean that out but he never does. Actually, Bush didn't say that, not George W., anyway. But I think you have a much bigger problem in the United States where on issues like the Middle East, for example, your voice is simply not heard unless it is pro- Israeli, pro-American policy in the Middle East, etcetera, up on the hill. You'll get a few brave souls, Paul Finley. Look what happened to him. But basically you won't get represented on these critical issues. "

Robert Fisk: War Is the "Total Failure of the Human Spirit" - Security Council - Global Policy Forum: "You have a bigger problem in the United States in that, as I understand it -- well, I'll quote a U.S. Marine who said to me in San Diego a few months ago, 'Our problem is we have this kind of false democracy,' he said, 'We vote for our senators and congressman for what they say they'll give us and they give us something and say something completely different. "

Modeling of long-term fossil fuel consumption shows 14.5 degree hike in temperature: "If humans continue to use fossil fuels in a business as usual manner for the next several centuries, the polar ice caps will be depleted, ocean sea levels will rise by seven meters and median air temperatures will soar 14.5 degrees warmer than current day. "

People's Daily Online -- US tops the world with 2,267,800 in jail: "US tops the world with 2,267,800 in jail. The number of American prison inmates tops the world at 2,267,800 and continues to grow, according to a report released Oct. 23 by the statistics authority of the US Department of Justice. "

People's Daily Online -- French scholar: The world needs China: "In today's world, various dangers and crises, such as global warming, epidemic, poverty, terrorism, control over new science and technology, and fragile financial system, constitute the common challenges that all countries must face. "

People's Daily Online -- China replaces US to be Australia's biggest source of imports: "China has replaced the United States to become Australia's biggest source of imports.
In the year to September, China, which includes Hong Kong, accounted for 14.3 percent of Australian imports, Australian Associated Press (AAP) quoted new figures released Friday as reporting.
This compared to 13.9 percent which the United States accounted of Australian imports in the same period. "

People's Daily Online -- China becomes major victim of trade protectionism: "China became one of the major victims of trade protectionism in the past nine months or so, suffering from a wide range of trade barriers including anti-dumping, safeguard measures, subsidies and countervailing measures and special safeguard measures.
According to the China's Foreign Trade Report (fall, 2005) released on Friday by the Ministry of Commerce, in the first three quarters of this year, China incurred trade frictions involving 8.9 billion US dollars, a growth of more than 700 percent over the year-earlier level. "

The work has also been about trying to understand how the key bureaucratic components that are responsible for executing the states’ monopoly of force and coercion—the military—were organised, financed, equipped, deployed, controlled and managed then and since. The next challenge must be focused on moving the agenda forward, motivating for a second phase that addresses the conceptual suggestions of a regional security sector project based on national security interests, inherent capacities, and geophysical and strategic advantages.

Most military assistance was to support the colonial and settler project against the nationalist armed struggle project, until full decolonisation in 1994. Thereafter, support switched to the independent
states in different forms. The most interesting example of this was Britain’s support of the Mozambican Armed Forces after the Rome Treaty of 1992, hosted in eastern Zimbabwe.

SPACE.com -- U.S. Military Wants to Own the Weather: "While efforts to tame storms have so far been clouded by failure, some researchers aren�t willing to give up the fight. And even if changing the weather proves overly challenging, residents and disaster officials can do a better job planning and reacting.
In fact, military officials and weather modification experts could be on the verge of joining forces to better gauge, react to, and possibly nullify future hostile forces churned out by Mother Nature.
While some consider the idea farfetched, some military tacticians have already pondered ways to turn weather into a weapon."

People's Daily Online -- Expert says China to become world's No. 1 automaker by 2020: "An economist has said China's auto industry is to experience rapid growth in the coming 15 years and the country will become the world's largest automaker by 2020.
'China's per capita GDP has topped 1,000 US dollars, which means a growing number of Chinese citizens will be able to afford private cars and the auto industry will outgrow the country's GDP, ' said Dr. Feng Fei, an economist with the Development Research Center of the State Council, the Chinese cabinet. "

Reuters Business Channel | Reuters.com: "Global goods trade will grow slightly more in 2006 than this year, World Trade Organization economists predicted on Thursday, but the WTO chief voiced concern at an overall trend toward lower growth."