Rare Earth Minerals. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Peggy Greb Powering the world using sustainable energy will require huge numbers of wind turbines, solar panels, and storage batteries. These will need many new sources of rare earth materials. Powering the entire world using sustainable energy will require huge numbers of wind turbines, solar panels, and storage …
Continuer la lecture de Our Dark Materials →
The New York Stock Exchange trading floor in 2009. It has become even more obvious that the primary objective of finance is not to benefit people and firms through loans to help cash-flow and capital investment, but to extract value by means of myriads of new financial instruments. By George KasabovContributing Writer Since 1950, the …
Continuer la lecture de Risk, Gambling, and Financialization →
Public markets were first established less than 3,000 years ago for people to buy and sell using the new invention, money. Market in Kolkata, India. Photo by Bernard Gagnon. We all think we know about money. But do we understand the functions of money, what money actually is, and what it represents? By George KasabovContributing Writer …
Continuer la lecture de Debt, Trust and the Functions of Money →
Featured Book Healthy Pleasures Robert Ornstein and David SobelPaperback edition 1990 Imagine a medical treatment that can help lower your blood pressure, decrease your risk for heart disease and cancer, boost your immune function and block pain. It’s safe, inexpensive and readily available. The main side effects include feeling good, an increased sense of well-being …
Continuer la lecture de Healthy Pleasures →
Featured Book The Matter with Things Iain McGilchrist Richard Gault reviews The Matter with Things, published by Perspectiva Press in 2021. It is Iain McGilchrist’s magnum opus, the product of ten years’ work and the culmination of his varied careers as a neuroscientist, literary scholar, philosopher and psychiatrist. His core argument is that we need to move …
Continuer la lecture de The Matter with Things →
Featured Book Thinking Big How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind Robin Dunbar, Clive Gamble & John GowlettHardcover edition 2014 Today we all exemplify, and our contemporary culture continues to be driven by, the same social brain — including the community sizes and levels of intentionality — that appeared with the earliest …
Continuer la lecture de Thinking Big →
Featured Book Moral Tribes Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them Joshua D. GreenePaperback edition 2014 We live in an age of historically declining violence and expanding kindness. But it doesn’t feel like that to most of us. Unprecedented global threats and conflicts demand advances in our ability to coexist peacefully. Joshua D. …
Continuer la lecture de Moral Tribes →
Communities, schools and teachers all affect students’ educational experiences. In the best case, each of these entities and individuals would work together to support all students to reach their full potential. By Kathleen Mazor, EdD, MSContributing Writer Public schools serve as essential pillars within communities, fostering social cohesion, knowledge dissemination, and opportunity for all children …
Continuer la lecture de Communities, Schools and Teachers →
CREATING THE WORLD WE WANT Discussion Guide: Empathy, Connection, and Global Health and Wealth in the Wake of Covid DOWNLOAD FREE GUIDE There is a moment at the start of every major crisis when we think: “This is going to change everything.” COVID-19 was no exception. But as the crisis born of this global pandemic evolved, …
Continuer la lecture de Discussion Guide: Empathy, Connection, and Global Health and Wealth in the Wake of Covid →
Every year we manufacture an amount of plastic about equal to the weight of all the people on Earth. Plastic is designed to last for centuries, but most of it is used only once and thrown away. Only 5% of plastic is recycled in the US, by far the world’s foremost plastic-using nation. Living with …
Continuer la lecture de Plastic Recycling – One Chance in Twenty →
UC Berkeley materials science and engineering graduate student, preparing a sample film of a new biodegradable plastic. (Credit: Adam Lau/UC Berkeley). Plastic is a miraculous material, but the plastic industry has created a global crisis. Reduce, reuse and recycle has been the approach to plastic waste, but this has failed. A new future for plastic …
Continuer la lecture de The Future of Plastic →
In recent years India has defied calls to abandon its aggressive plans to burn more coal. But now economics and a crisis in health have set the nation on a new course. When the Agua Cliente solar plant west of Phoenix, Arizona was commissioned in 2014 it was the largest in world. But the new …
Continuer la lecture de India: Stepping Back from the Precipice →