Military strategy suggests it is far better to give an enemy a "golden bridge" that permits retreat or saving face rather than to back an enemy into a corner, where the only option is an all out battle.
Students might begin by suggesting "golden bridges" they could offer bullies and move on to identify a country's enemies and offer suggestions of "golden bridges," i.e. desirable options, that are better than open warfare between two countries. Using Bill Clinton to open a back door channel of communication with North Vietnam might be a useful gambit; he was involved in a past mission there.
U.S.-China relations began to improve with a ping pong match between the two countries. Could a basketball game improve relations between the United States and the basketball-loving North Koreans? With partners who are performers and an interest in visiting Japan's Disneyland, the ruling family clearly is interested in the entertainment field. Could a "golden bridge" be created by using North Korea as a movie location? Far-fetched? An Israeli Labor Party election was postponed, because it was scheduled on the same day as a Britney Spears concert, reports TIME magazine (April 24, 2017).
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Russia's Alternative to Putin
Does Russia have a viable alternative to Putin? The more than a thousand protesters, who were detained when they marched with Alexey Navalny in Moscow, and the nearly 100 other Russian cities on Sunday, March 26, 2017, think so.
Unlike the Chinese leaders who, realizing personal gain and other appearances of corruption undermine public support, adopted the Supervision Law that places everyone in the country's public sector under anti-corruption supervision (Under the guise of searching for corruption, Chinese authorities, of course, also position themselves to uncover other prosecutable violations), Putin and the oligarchs he enabled to accumulate their wealth continue to present their soft underbelly for Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation to document on his blog. Someone's $15 million worth of gold bars even fell out of a cargo plane leaving Yakutsk, Russia, according to TIME magazine (April 2, 2018). A Chinese spokesperson said China is willing to lend a hand to other countries that need help fighting corruption. Neighboring Russia is yet to take up the offer.
Moscow's cyberpropaganda concerns U.S. and European democracies, and Putin's adviser, Andrey Krutskikh, brags that Russia is "at the verge of having something in the information arena which will allow us to talk to the Americans as equals"(TIME magazine, May 29, 2017). But these so-called "triumphs" do nothing to prevent government corruption and a failing economy, based on falling oil prices, from motivating protests in Russian streets.
While Vladimir Putin basked in his March 18, 2018 sham election victory, ordinary Russian citizens continued to see their disposable income and standard of living deteriorate. By 2018. senior citizens protested Putin's plan to raise the age when they could retire and claim pensions. Although Putin promises to make Russia a great power again, he, like little North Korea's leader, stakes Russia's claim to world respect for its spheres of influence on new nuclear weapons (In December, 2018, he showed a new missile reaching Florida.) rather than the thriving economies and nuclear weapons that support the powerful positions of the United States and China. Where are Russia's wind farms, medical advances, and hybrid seeds to end world hunger?
Putin has problems: volatile oil revenues far below a once per barrel high near $150; failure to engineer relief from sanctions from the Trump administration; a younger generation getting its news from social media rather than official, state-owned radio and TV stations; corruption favoring oligarchs; a war dragging on in Syria; and a revolt by the Orthodox church in Ukraine. Just as China fears the competing influence of international religions and locks up Uighur Muslims in re-education camps and caused Buddhism's Dalai Lama to flee Tibet, Russia fears the independence of the Orthodox church in Ukraine, supported by Patriarch Bartholomen in Constantinople and Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko. Russia's President Putin, who considers the allegiance of the Russian Orthodox church, including in Ukraine, critical to his authority, threatened to punish those who worshiped in churches affiliated with Constantinople and raised concern that Russia would take over Orthodox cathedrals and monasteries not affiliated with Moscow. The West needs to be prepared to respond to any excuse Putin can use to further strengthen Russia's grip on Ukraine or former Soviet satellites.
The Kremlin has employed various strategies to silence Navalny and prevent him from running for President against Putin. After he was charged with stealing timber from a state-run forestry in 2013, he was sentenced to five years in prison, despite a lack of evidence. In protest, 10,000 took to Moscow's streets and failed to leave. The next morning Navalny was released. Following his release he ran for Mayor of Moscow and won 27% of the vote to come in second to Putin's candidate in a six-candidate field.
Later Alexey Navalny and his brother, Oleg, were charged with shipping company fraud. Again a conviction was rendered with no evidence. Oleg was sentenced to three and a half years in a penal colony, where he has been punished repeatedly for minor infractions and his requests for parole were refused twice. Alexey received a suspended three and a half year sentence and house arrest. Russia was using a traditional method of silencing one family member by imprisoning others. But Alexey cut the tracking bracelet off his ankle, announced what he had done on his blog, and started leaving his family's apartment at will. However, his fraud case is used to keep his name off the ballot in presidential elections, and, for staging protest rallies, he served 30 days in jail in 2018 and was re-arrested again two minutes after his release.
In the later blog, "29 Countries Influence 7 Billion People," see what the former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, wrote about Vladimir Putin and democracy.
Unlike the Chinese leaders who, realizing personal gain and other appearances of corruption undermine public support, adopted the Supervision Law that places everyone in the country's public sector under anti-corruption supervision (Under the guise of searching for corruption, Chinese authorities, of course, also position themselves to uncover other prosecutable violations), Putin and the oligarchs he enabled to accumulate their wealth continue to present their soft underbelly for Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation to document on his blog. Someone's $15 million worth of gold bars even fell out of a cargo plane leaving Yakutsk, Russia, according to TIME magazine (April 2, 2018). A Chinese spokesperson said China is willing to lend a hand to other countries that need help fighting corruption. Neighboring Russia is yet to take up the offer.
Moscow's cyberpropaganda concerns U.S. and European democracies, and Putin's adviser, Andrey Krutskikh, brags that Russia is "at the verge of having something in the information arena which will allow us to talk to the Americans as equals"(TIME magazine, May 29, 2017). But these so-called "triumphs" do nothing to prevent government corruption and a failing economy, based on falling oil prices, from motivating protests in Russian streets.
While Vladimir Putin basked in his March 18, 2018 sham election victory, ordinary Russian citizens continued to see their disposable income and standard of living deteriorate. By 2018. senior citizens protested Putin's plan to raise the age when they could retire and claim pensions. Although Putin promises to make Russia a great power again, he, like little North Korea's leader, stakes Russia's claim to world respect for its spheres of influence on new nuclear weapons (In December, 2018, he showed a new missile reaching Florida.) rather than the thriving economies and nuclear weapons that support the powerful positions of the United States and China. Where are Russia's wind farms, medical advances, and hybrid seeds to end world hunger?
Putin has problems: volatile oil revenues far below a once per barrel high near $150; failure to engineer relief from sanctions from the Trump administration; a younger generation getting its news from social media rather than official, state-owned radio and TV stations; corruption favoring oligarchs; a war dragging on in Syria; and a revolt by the Orthodox church in Ukraine. Just as China fears the competing influence of international religions and locks up Uighur Muslims in re-education camps and caused Buddhism's Dalai Lama to flee Tibet, Russia fears the independence of the Orthodox church in Ukraine, supported by Patriarch Bartholomen in Constantinople and Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko. Russia's President Putin, who considers the allegiance of the Russian Orthodox church, including in Ukraine, critical to his authority, threatened to punish those who worshiped in churches affiliated with Constantinople and raised concern that Russia would take over Orthodox cathedrals and monasteries not affiliated with Moscow. The West needs to be prepared to respond to any excuse Putin can use to further strengthen Russia's grip on Ukraine or former Soviet satellites.
The Kremlin has employed various strategies to silence Navalny and prevent him from running for President against Putin. After he was charged with stealing timber from a state-run forestry in 2013, he was sentenced to five years in prison, despite a lack of evidence. In protest, 10,000 took to Moscow's streets and failed to leave. The next morning Navalny was released. Following his release he ran for Mayor of Moscow and won 27% of the vote to come in second to Putin's candidate in a six-candidate field.
Later Alexey Navalny and his brother, Oleg, were charged with shipping company fraud. Again a conviction was rendered with no evidence. Oleg was sentenced to three and a half years in a penal colony, where he has been punished repeatedly for minor infractions and his requests for parole were refused twice. Alexey received a suspended three and a half year sentence and house arrest. Russia was using a traditional method of silencing one family member by imprisoning others. But Alexey cut the tracking bracelet off his ankle, announced what he had done on his blog, and started leaving his family's apartment at will. However, his fraud case is used to keep his name off the ballot in presidential elections, and, for staging protest rallies, he served 30 days in jail in 2018 and was re-arrested again two minutes after his release.
In the later blog, "29 Countries Influence 7 Billion People," see what the former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, wrote about Vladimir Putin and democracy.
Saturday, March 25, 2017
Protecting What Is Prized Isn't Easy
If a famous artist's painting is one-of-a-kind and drug trafficking cartels prosper, what will people do? Some will be in the market buying and selling. Others will steal, kill, risk their lives, and try to hide their actions.
Since those who do things like smuggle slaves in cargo containers and poach rhinoceros horns at night, like it or not young people need to learn to be suspicious and vigilant, to look for abuses, and to ask authorities to undertake the often dangerous security measures needed to regulate or stop these activities. The challenges presented by lumber/wood harvesting, diamond and gold mining in Africa, and the trade in elephant ivory and exotic birds were discussed in earlier posts. Here, let's look at what is involved in regulating the mining of and trade in jade and in protecting an endangered species: the gray wolf.
In Myanmar (formerly knows as Burma), earning a living by finding and selling jade gems shares the same drawbacks as searching for diamonds and gold in Africa. Big Chinese companies connected with the Burmese military hold mining concessions in the jade fields of northern Myanmar's Kachin state, where the Christian Kachin Independence Army and the Buddhist Burmese military are engaged in a civil war. Despite the threat of deadly landslides, TIME magazine reports up to 300,000 unemployed migrants forage on unstable rubble piles looking to find a fortune among the less valuable stones companies dump.
The U.S. in 2016 sought to reward Myanmar for solving one problem, replacing military rule with the National League of Democracy party, by ending sanctions banning jade and ruby imports. But Myanmar's democratic reforms, moratorium on new mining licenses and freeze on renewal of existing mining licenses, safety standards, and anticorruption regulations have not closed mines operating without government certification; captured the tax money lost from jade smuggled to neighboring China; ended deaths from jade mining accidents; stopped the military from banning foreigners, except Chinese buyers, from reaching jade fields; financing the civil war with jade sales and taxes collected by Kachins from freelance miners on their lands; or stopping the heroin trafficking that thrives on sales to local migrants and a worldwide trade. Discuss: what can the U.S. or any country, including Myanmar, do to solve these problems?
Now, let's look at the challenges of placing grey wolves on the U.S. Endangered Species Act or delisting them and authorizing a grey wolf hunting season. Stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Peter and the Wolf have given wolves a bad reputation. But if you've ever tried to see wolves at a zoo, you know they don't come up to look at visitors. You have to really search hard to see them in the shadows of wooded areas.
How many wolves are too many? No humans have been harmed by the State of Wisconsin's estimated 900 wolves. Farmers in the state, who have sheep, goats, and cattle and live near waterways where wolves follow their wildlife prey, report no problems. They say wolves are smart and, if you have barking guard dogs that warn wolves are present, the wolves move on. Of Wisconsin's 70,000 farms, 47 reported a loss from wolves, and of the state's 3.5 million cattle, wolves were believed to have killed 75 animals. Wisconsin manages this situation by compensating farmers for livestock lost to wolves and by allowing landowners to get permits to kill wolves endangering their livestock.
Surveys show 65% of the people who live in what is considered wolf range and 80% outside wolf range consider wolves members of the ecological community that have a right to exist. If wolves are delisted from the U.S. Endangered Species Act and a hunt is authorized, the State does not disclose maps showing where wolf packs are located.Your thoughts?
Since those who do things like smuggle slaves in cargo containers and poach rhinoceros horns at night, like it or not young people need to learn to be suspicious and vigilant, to look for abuses, and to ask authorities to undertake the often dangerous security measures needed to regulate or stop these activities. The challenges presented by lumber/wood harvesting, diamond and gold mining in Africa, and the trade in elephant ivory and exotic birds were discussed in earlier posts. Here, let's look at what is involved in regulating the mining of and trade in jade and in protecting an endangered species: the gray wolf.
In Myanmar (formerly knows as Burma), earning a living by finding and selling jade gems shares the same drawbacks as searching for diamonds and gold in Africa. Big Chinese companies connected with the Burmese military hold mining concessions in the jade fields of northern Myanmar's Kachin state, where the Christian Kachin Independence Army and the Buddhist Burmese military are engaged in a civil war. Despite the threat of deadly landslides, TIME magazine reports up to 300,000 unemployed migrants forage on unstable rubble piles looking to find a fortune among the less valuable stones companies dump.
The U.S. in 2016 sought to reward Myanmar for solving one problem, replacing military rule with the National League of Democracy party, by ending sanctions banning jade and ruby imports. But Myanmar's democratic reforms, moratorium on new mining licenses and freeze on renewal of existing mining licenses, safety standards, and anticorruption regulations have not closed mines operating without government certification; captured the tax money lost from jade smuggled to neighboring China; ended deaths from jade mining accidents; stopped the military from banning foreigners, except Chinese buyers, from reaching jade fields; financing the civil war with jade sales and taxes collected by Kachins from freelance miners on their lands; or stopping the heroin trafficking that thrives on sales to local migrants and a worldwide trade. Discuss: what can the U.S. or any country, including Myanmar, do to solve these problems?
Now, let's look at the challenges of placing grey wolves on the U.S. Endangered Species Act or delisting them and authorizing a grey wolf hunting season. Stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Peter and the Wolf have given wolves a bad reputation. But if you've ever tried to see wolves at a zoo, you know they don't come up to look at visitors. You have to really search hard to see them in the shadows of wooded areas.
How many wolves are too many? No humans have been harmed by the State of Wisconsin's estimated 900 wolves. Farmers in the state, who have sheep, goats, and cattle and live near waterways where wolves follow their wildlife prey, report no problems. They say wolves are smart and, if you have barking guard dogs that warn wolves are present, the wolves move on. Of Wisconsin's 70,000 farms, 47 reported a loss from wolves, and of the state's 3.5 million cattle, wolves were believed to have killed 75 animals. Wisconsin manages this situation by compensating farmers for livestock lost to wolves and by allowing landowners to get permits to kill wolves endangering their livestock.
Surveys show 65% of the people who live in what is considered wolf range and 80% outside wolf range consider wolves members of the ecological community that have a right to exist. If wolves are delisted from the U.S. Endangered Species Act and a hunt is authorized, the State does not disclose maps showing where wolf packs are located.Your thoughts?
Monday, March 20, 2017
Modern Masculinity
The "Men's Project" at the University of Wisconsin - Madison recognizes how modern masculinity is challenged to keep up with changing female roles. Around the world, women are rebelling against stereotypes that portray them as uneducated and unfit for positions in politics and government, athletic competition, business careers, and military service. Yet many cling to the image of tall, white heterosexual males surrounded by women competing for their attention and approval.
In this period of transition, two dynamics are at play. While some men ad women have moved on to accept equality of the sexes, others have not. In the United States, for example, research in Lisa Wade's new book, American Hookup, found there are still men (and women) willing to embrace a culture where sex is a no-strings-attached form of fun that favors men.
Marketers use age demographics to identify male segments, but careful attention to advertising also shows a gradual addition of male lifestyle segments. Loosely based o Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we might label this expanding list of male lifestyle segments as follows:
Philosophers: These men are secure in their manhood whether they are Bill Gates' types or stay-at-home dads. They think each person should do his or her own thing, and they are happy to help those in need.
Top Dogs: These wealthy, good-looking heterosexual players equate masculinity with the constant pursuit of hot women for meaningless sex. They look for wives who support their careers and enhance their status.
Power Couples: College and graduate schools foster romantic bonds between men and women with similar professional, academic research, and business interests. Masculinity is not threatened in these relationships which are based on equality.
Pillars of the Community: These family me look for ways to serve the community. They coach children's soccer leagues, head organizations that sponsor food drives, enter local politics, look out for elderly neighbors, and attend religious services. Without trying, they meet women who also provide community services.
Providers: For men in this segment, masculinity means men don't do women's work. They don't prepare food, wash and mend clothes, clean the house, or care for children. They don't expect women to work outside the home, and they do expect to sit somewhere drinking a few beers and watching games uninterrupted. Break one of their rules and sexual abuse, domestic violence, and/or emotional bullying can follow.
Marketers know change is possible. But changing a male's view of his masculinity requires a strategy like one a marketer would use to introduce a new product.
The new view, such as the fact that a man can enjoy a meaningful relationship on equal terms with a woman, has to have an advantage over the old, and this advantage needs to be demonstrated. Males need to see other men enjoying meaningful relationships with women within their culture and/or by couples they admire. Change also is easier if switching to something new has an element of familiarity. When computers were introduced, for example, keyboards had built-in acceptance, because they had the look of a typewriter. If a brother has had a good, lifelong relationship with his sister or (I'm reluctant to say, because analogies all have limits) a man has the experience of a close bond with a pet, he knows the joy of friendship and intimacy, albeit platonic. Finally, change also requires minimizing risk. That's why marketers provide trial offers, guaranteed return policies, and free shipping. Men could be persuaded to move toward a new view of masculinity, if they would not suffer a financial loss, physical harm, or, possibly worst of all, the psychological pain of people laughing at them.
In this period of transition, two dynamics are at play. While some men ad women have moved on to accept equality of the sexes, others have not. In the United States, for example, research in Lisa Wade's new book, American Hookup, found there are still men (and women) willing to embrace a culture where sex is a no-strings-attached form of fun that favors men.
Marketers use age demographics to identify male segments, but careful attention to advertising also shows a gradual addition of male lifestyle segments. Loosely based o Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we might label this expanding list of male lifestyle segments as follows:
Philosophers: These men are secure in their manhood whether they are Bill Gates' types or stay-at-home dads. They think each person should do his or her own thing, and they are happy to help those in need.
Top Dogs: These wealthy, good-looking heterosexual players equate masculinity with the constant pursuit of hot women for meaningless sex. They look for wives who support their careers and enhance their status.
Power Couples: College and graduate schools foster romantic bonds between men and women with similar professional, academic research, and business interests. Masculinity is not threatened in these relationships which are based on equality.
Pillars of the Community: These family me look for ways to serve the community. They coach children's soccer leagues, head organizations that sponsor food drives, enter local politics, look out for elderly neighbors, and attend religious services. Without trying, they meet women who also provide community services.
Providers: For men in this segment, masculinity means men don't do women's work. They don't prepare food, wash and mend clothes, clean the house, or care for children. They don't expect women to work outside the home, and they do expect to sit somewhere drinking a few beers and watching games uninterrupted. Break one of their rules and sexual abuse, domestic violence, and/or emotional bullying can follow.
Marketers know change is possible. But changing a male's view of his masculinity requires a strategy like one a marketer would use to introduce a new product.
The new view, such as the fact that a man can enjoy a meaningful relationship on equal terms with a woman, has to have an advantage over the old, and this advantage needs to be demonstrated. Males need to see other men enjoying meaningful relationships with women within their culture and/or by couples they admire. Change also is easier if switching to something new has an element of familiarity. When computers were introduced, for example, keyboards had built-in acceptance, because they had the look of a typewriter. If a brother has had a good, lifelong relationship with his sister or (I'm reluctant to say, because analogies all have limits) a man has the experience of a close bond with a pet, he knows the joy of friendship and intimacy, albeit platonic. Finally, change also requires minimizing risk. That's why marketers provide trial offers, guaranteed return policies, and free shipping. Men could be persuaded to move toward a new view of masculinity, if they would not suffer a financial loss, physical harm, or, possibly worst of all, the psychological pain of people laughing at them.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
A Fork in the Road to the Future
How should children be prepared to handle the next 70 or 80 years of their lives? Or 40-year-olds to handle their next 40 years?
The trendwatching.com site, that has spotters all over the world, found people have looked at current conditions:
The trendwatching.com site, that has spotters all over the world, found people have looked at current conditions:
- immigration
- refugee crisis
- job automation
- depressed wages
- uneven recovery
- generational divide
- racial divide
- fear of terrorism
- Global citizens open to an interconnected world, where people learn to understand their changing relationships to neighborhoods, cities, and nations
- Nation nurturers who seek comfort in the familiar
Dealing with change, especially rapid change, is not easy. It is understandable that some want to wall themselves off from foreigners; to pretend technology is going to slow down and manufacturing jobs, as we have known them, are going to return; to listen only to broadcasts that agree with them; and to cling to traditional families where a man works and an uneducated woman stays at home with the children. But you only need look at one example of the future - shopping malls and stores empty of consumers of all kinds who have switched over to ordering their needs and wants online - to see change is impossible to escape. (Could these empty stores be converted to on-going world fairs where "shoppers" could go to experience and learn new technologies?)
Like it or not, children are going to live in a world of global citizens. Parents and teachers need to prepare to help them feel at home there.
Saturday, March 11, 2017
World's Food Supply Needs Bees & Bees Need Help
One study found 40% of bee and butterfly pollinators are in decline around the world. As if bees didn't have enough problems with the neonicotinoid type of insecticide that has been causing their colonies to collapse since 2006, now they have to deal with the effects of climate change. When spring-like warming occurs too early, flowers can bloom before bees are ready to make their rounds. Crops of at least 140 nuts, fruits, and vegetables can suffer from a lack of pollination.
In the US, clocks are about to be moved an hour ahead this weekend to signal the beginning of daylight saving time and the time to get seeds for planting flowers and food crops on commercial farms and in backyards, rain gardens at the curb, and community plots. The Sierra Club has been sending members packets of what the organization calls a "Bee Feed Flower Mix." These packets contain seeds for bee-tasty nectar and pollen from forget-me-nots, poppies, asters, blue flax, white sweet alyssum, lavender, fleabane daisies, and purple coneflowers. What is important is the seeds in these packets are Untreated.
Untreated seeds are important because treated seeds, such as corn and soybean seeds, are coated with neonicotinoid insecticide to kill pests as soon as the seeds sprout. Frequent exposure to neuro-toxic pesticides that spread through a plant's leaves, pollen, and even nectar damage a bee's nervous and immune systems. While insects destroy plants, so too are strawberries, avocados, peaches, almonds, and other crops lost due to a lack of pollination by bees.
Presented with a decade of evidence about simultaneous bee colony collapse and neonicotinoid use, the European Union suspended the use of neonicotinoid in 2013. In the US, the Department of Agriculture continues to study the problem, and the Saving America's Pollinators Act of 2015 failed to get out of a House of Representatives subcommittee.
US consumers and farmers began to take matters into their own hands. There have been consumer campaigns against stores that sell neonicotinoid-treated plants. Gardeners started to grow bee-friendly flowers and to leave woody debris, leaf litter, and bare soil where bees can breed. You can find more on this subject in the earlier post, "Be Kind to Bees."
Some farms also began to meet the bee health challenge. Besides planting vegetables, an organic farm couple in Minnesota planted flowering dogwood and elderberry hedgerows to attract bees, butterflies, and other insects that pollinate their crops. General Mills, a company that uses honey, fruit, and vegetable ingredients requiring pollination, is working with the Xerces Society and the Department of Agriculture to preserve pollinator habitat on 100,000 acres of US farmland. A plan to grow flowers and shrubs in narrow strips around crop fields is designed to restore seven million acres of land for pollinators in the next five years. But for farmers who usually grow single crops, a shift to diversify with flowers that attract pollinators is not easy. It requires analysis of farm land, how wet and dry it is, for example, and which plants will not attract the insects that could destroy their farm's crops.
The battle to save bees, and the world's food supply, continues.
In the US, clocks are about to be moved an hour ahead this weekend to signal the beginning of daylight saving time and the time to get seeds for planting flowers and food crops on commercial farms and in backyards, rain gardens at the curb, and community plots. The Sierra Club has been sending members packets of what the organization calls a "Bee Feed Flower Mix." These packets contain seeds for bee-tasty nectar and pollen from forget-me-nots, poppies, asters, blue flax, white sweet alyssum, lavender, fleabane daisies, and purple coneflowers. What is important is the seeds in these packets are Untreated.
Untreated seeds are important because treated seeds, such as corn and soybean seeds, are coated with neonicotinoid insecticide to kill pests as soon as the seeds sprout. Frequent exposure to neuro-toxic pesticides that spread through a plant's leaves, pollen, and even nectar damage a bee's nervous and immune systems. While insects destroy plants, so too are strawberries, avocados, peaches, almonds, and other crops lost due to a lack of pollination by bees.
Presented with a decade of evidence about simultaneous bee colony collapse and neonicotinoid use, the European Union suspended the use of neonicotinoid in 2013. In the US, the Department of Agriculture continues to study the problem, and the Saving America's Pollinators Act of 2015 failed to get out of a House of Representatives subcommittee.
US consumers and farmers began to take matters into their own hands. There have been consumer campaigns against stores that sell neonicotinoid-treated plants. Gardeners started to grow bee-friendly flowers and to leave woody debris, leaf litter, and bare soil where bees can breed. You can find more on this subject in the earlier post, "Be Kind to Bees."
Some farms also began to meet the bee health challenge. Besides planting vegetables, an organic farm couple in Minnesota planted flowering dogwood and elderberry hedgerows to attract bees, butterflies, and other insects that pollinate their crops. General Mills, a company that uses honey, fruit, and vegetable ingredients requiring pollination, is working with the Xerces Society and the Department of Agriculture to preserve pollinator habitat on 100,000 acres of US farmland. A plan to grow flowers and shrubs in narrow strips around crop fields is designed to restore seven million acres of land for pollinators in the next five years. But for farmers who usually grow single crops, a shift to diversify with flowers that attract pollinators is not easy. It requires analysis of farm land, how wet and dry it is, for example, and which plants will not attract the insects that could destroy their farm's crops.
The battle to save bees, and the world's food supply, continues.
Sunday, March 5, 2017
Space-Searching International Team Sees Results
Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have found 150,000 stars with 4,706 planets casting a shadow, when they orbit past. The February 23, 2017, issue of Nature reported astronomer Michael Gillon at a Belgium university headed a team that used telescopes in Chile, Hawaii, South Africa, Morocco, Spain, and England to find the Trappist-1 solar system with a planet, Trappist-1e, that maintains a habitable temperature above freezing and below boiling as it orbits around its sun-like star.
Light from stars is scattered and absorbed differently, if orbiting planets have an atmosphere with a chemical composition. Atmospheric gases, such as methane, oxygen, or carbon dioxide, signal the possibility of water and life. The Hubble Space Telescope has been able to tell what atmospheric gases from two of the Trappist-1 planets don't have, but the spectroscopes the James Webb Space Telescope will carry when it launches, possibly in October, 2018, will be capable of more atmospheric analysis.
Light from stars is scattered and absorbed differently, if orbiting planets have an atmosphere with a chemical composition. Atmospheric gases, such as methane, oxygen, or carbon dioxide, signal the possibility of water and life. The Hubble Space Telescope has been able to tell what atmospheric gases from two of the Trappist-1 planets don't have, but the spectroscopes the James Webb Space Telescope will carry when it launches, possibly in October, 2018, will be capable of more atmospheric analysis.
Saturday, March 4, 2017
How to Become an International Entrepreneur
In Shoe Dog, Phil Knight, the creator/founder of NIKE, quotes the maxim, "When goods don't pass international borders, soldiers will." He adds, "Trade is the path of coexistence, cooperation. Peace feeds on prosperity."
Knight's book encourages those who would work for world peace and their own happiness. He frankly presents the ways he handled and mishandled the challenges every international entrepreneur faces and tells them they have a big bull's eye on their backs. He observes trolls everywhere trying to block, thwart, and say no to the entrepreneurial spirit. Elsewhere, I've read entrepreneurs can best avoid discouragement by telling no one, when they first decide to start a business.
Knight's business began modestly. He sold shoes out of the trunk of his car at sporting events and opened his first office next to a pulsating bar.
He embraced a management style of telling people what to do (not how to do things) and letting them surprise him with the results. What did one of his early employees do? He set up a data base keeping information about his retail customers, not only what they bought but also their birthdays so he could send cards. And he furnished a store with comfortable chairs bought at yard sales, shelved books about running along with shoes, hung posters of runners, and gave his best customers T-shirts with the company logo on them.
Knight outlines sources of funding: family and friends; local, regional, national, and international banks; venture capitalists; trading companies; public A and B stock offerings. Each funding option has pluses and minuses. Trading companies, for example, lend money with the aim of buying out/taking over the business unless, at the offset, a business stipulates its unwillingness to sell.
Besides the never-ending need to find funding, Knight ran into other problems. Steve Prefontaine, the famous distance runner who was NIKE's first celebrity endorser, died in an automobile accident. Packing too many innovations into a new shoe led to a recall. Despite a contract, the first overseas manufacturer Knight relied on to provide the shoes he sold decided to dump him and get a new distributor. NIKE would have better luck when it was first to find a shoe supplier in China. In the US, competitors tried to put NIKE out of business by using an American Selling Price customs provision. After making a high priced shoe similar to NIKE's, US manufacturers asked the government to impose a $25 million duty on NIKE imports that totaled 20% of their American selling prices. Even after negotiations, NIKE paid a custom's duty of $9 million.
Setbacks can turn into learning experiences and worldwide benefits. After the media blasted conditions in its overseas factories, NIKE responded by becoming a leader in the factory reform movement. To eliminate the toxic process of bonding shoe uppers to soles in a rubber room, NIKE invented a fume-less water-based bonding agent that the company shared with its competitors.
And, finally, Shoe Dog teaches the cure for burnout is more work, and the Japanese word, kensho, means the aha experience of enlightenment, when you suddenly understand.
Knight's book encourages those who would work for world peace and their own happiness. He frankly presents the ways he handled and mishandled the challenges every international entrepreneur faces and tells them they have a big bull's eye on their backs. He observes trolls everywhere trying to block, thwart, and say no to the entrepreneurial spirit. Elsewhere, I've read entrepreneurs can best avoid discouragement by telling no one, when they first decide to start a business.
Knight's business began modestly. He sold shoes out of the trunk of his car at sporting events and opened his first office next to a pulsating bar.
He embraced a management style of telling people what to do (not how to do things) and letting them surprise him with the results. What did one of his early employees do? He set up a data base keeping information about his retail customers, not only what they bought but also their birthdays so he could send cards. And he furnished a store with comfortable chairs bought at yard sales, shelved books about running along with shoes, hung posters of runners, and gave his best customers T-shirts with the company logo on them.
Knight outlines sources of funding: family and friends; local, regional, national, and international banks; venture capitalists; trading companies; public A and B stock offerings. Each funding option has pluses and minuses. Trading companies, for example, lend money with the aim of buying out/taking over the business unless, at the offset, a business stipulates its unwillingness to sell.
Besides the never-ending need to find funding, Knight ran into other problems. Steve Prefontaine, the famous distance runner who was NIKE's first celebrity endorser, died in an automobile accident. Packing too many innovations into a new shoe led to a recall. Despite a contract, the first overseas manufacturer Knight relied on to provide the shoes he sold decided to dump him and get a new distributor. NIKE would have better luck when it was first to find a shoe supplier in China. In the US, competitors tried to put NIKE out of business by using an American Selling Price customs provision. After making a high priced shoe similar to NIKE's, US manufacturers asked the government to impose a $25 million duty on NIKE imports that totaled 20% of their American selling prices. Even after negotiations, NIKE paid a custom's duty of $9 million.
Setbacks can turn into learning experiences and worldwide benefits. After the media blasted conditions in its overseas factories, NIKE responded by becoming a leader in the factory reform movement. To eliminate the toxic process of bonding shoe uppers to soles in a rubber room, NIKE invented a fume-less water-based bonding agent that the company shared with its competitors.
And, finally, Shoe Dog teaches the cure for burnout is more work, and the Japanese word, kensho, means the aha experience of enlightenment, when you suddenly understand.
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