Bornstein's Book Catalyst for Change in Spain

We received a note from our good friend, David Bornstein.

His first book titled The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank which chronicles the worldwide growth of the anti-poverty strategy "micro-credit." He has exciting news about his second book, and writes:

"I just returned from the launch of my book How To Change the World in Spain and had some good news I'd like to share with you. Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain decided to celebrate the country's annual Day of the Book this past weekend by publicly giving a copy of Como Cambiar el Mundo to all of his Ministers. (Last year, he gave them Don Quixote!)

"It's potentially a significant gesture because there are not nearly enough examples of governments actively looking to social entrepreneurs for innovative policy and policy-implementation ideas."

In his book, Bornstein profiles nine remarkable social entrepreneurs--all Ashoka fellows--described as driven, creative people who question the status quo, exploit new opportunities, refuse to give up, and remake the world for the better.

Also:

• David Bornstein at Pop!Tech 2004.
• Click here to listen to a podcast his presentation at IT Conversations.
• Click here to see our facilitation graphics from the event.

Museum of Foriegn Groceries

BULLY BUZZ: Kids Spreadin' the Word on Bully Prevention

KDig Studio - where Kids Discover, Invent and Grow - is a Community House Learning Center after school program for middle school students. The studio is a dynamic learning environment where youth work individually and with others using design, writing, and state-of-the-art technology to develop projects that create positive change in their lives, schools, and communities.

These kids have created a fantastic interactive project using digital video and interactive media, titled: BULLY BUZZ, Kids Spreadin' the Word on Bully Prevention.

A message from the kids at K-Dig:

Hi! We're 10 sixth and seventh graders from Columbus Middle School & KDig Studio! We've been working hard designing projects that will help prevent and reduce bullying in our schools.

We're inviting you to come and participate in our projects and to hear our perspective - a fresh perspective - on this major issue.

When?
Thursday, April 28, 2005
from 5pm - 6pm

Where?
The Community House
120 Parkhurst Street, Piitsburgh, PA
(Right off of North Avenue on the corner of Sandusky and Parkhurst, across from the Allegheny General Hospital emergency entrance.)

Where do I Park?
Parking is available in Allegheny General's Sandusky Street Garage.
One you turn onto Sandusky, take an immediate right into the garage.
A bright orange Community House sign will be posted by the entrance.

Pizza and Drinks will be served, and child care will be provided!

For more information please contact Kelly Simpson-Scupelli at 412.414.4661.

Marshall Arisman @ HOW

I was very excited to see that Marshall Arisman is on of the headliners for this summer's HOW Conference in Chicago.

I went to his site and discovered an entire series of sacred monkeys!

You never truly outgrow you heros, and Marshall is one of mine: living large, painting with gusto and intensity in the tradition of Goya, Beckmann and Bacon.

I had the privilege of watching him work at my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis. He produced a quick series of monoprints and paintings in two days using only his fingers and the heel of his palm, working more like a sculptor than a painter.

From Arisman's bio:

The paintings and drawings of Marshall Arisman have been widely exhibited, both internationally and nationally. His work may be seen in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, at the National Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian Institution, as well as in many private and corporate collections.

Mr. Arisman's original graphic essay, "Heaven Departed," in which paintings and drawings describe the emotional and spiritual impact of nuclear war on society, was published in book form by Vision Publishers (Tokyo, 1988).

Chairman of the M.F.A. degree program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Marshall Arisman was the first American invited to exhibit his artwork in mainland China. His series, "Sacred Monkeys," appeared at the Guang Dong Museum of Art in April 1999.

Mr. Arisman is the subject of a full-length documentary film directed by Tony Silver titled "Facing the Audience: The Arts of Marshall Arisman." The film will have its premier showing at the 2002 Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Real Climatologists Look at the Real Cilmate

'Though I am enjoying the sunniest April in 30 years (and watching our baby become a toddler playing with worms in the garden) I can't help but worry that the lack of April showers bode ill for May flowers.

RealClimate is for anyone mildly (or wildly) questioning the state of the world's weather; and whether or not it's getting hotter 'n' hotter.

The site is written by actual scientists who study actual data and measure temperatures for a living. The contributors present such data to confirm that, yes, the world is getting warmer, and, yes, we should worry.

A recent post illustrates in photos and graphs the worldwide retreat of glaciers from mountaintops.

The editors of RealClimate describe their blog as:

[A] commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.

Genographic Project: A 5-Year Exploration of the Human Journey

From the Genographic Project at NationalGeographic.com:

Explore your own genetic journey with Dr. Spencer Wells. DNA analysis includes a depiction of your ancient ancestors and an interactive map tracing your genetic lineage around the world and through the ages.

The site has a fantastic interactive atlas that reflects the work of Dr. Wells' trek to map the human gene trail from Africa across the Mideast and Asia.

Wells was one of the facinating speakers at Pop!Tech 8 in Camden, Maine.

LISTEN to IT Conversations audio from Pop!Tech 2004 (The New Explorers):
Spencer Wells, a 33-year-old population geneticist, has closed the door on his laboratory and is embarking on the biggest adventure of his life.

His mission: to retrace the most extraordinary journey of all time, a journey that involves every man, woman and child alive today. By collecting blood samples from thousands of men living in isolated tribes around the world and analyzing their DNA, Spencer and his colleagues discovered that all humans alive today can be traced back to a small tribe of hunter-gatherers who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago.

Dr. Spencer Wells hosts a innovative PBS series, Journey of Man, featuring commentary by expert scientists, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists.

Alphachimp Art from Pop!Tech

Click for enlargement.

The New Map Game: Update

THE NEW MAP GAME is being held May 31st - June 2nd, 2005 at the Hyatt Regency Newport in Newport, Rhode Island.

Through collaboration between Alidade’s war gamers and Tom Barnett and The New Rule Sets Project’s strategic thinkers we are also pleased to announce that the country teams have been selected for the game.

The four teams will be:

• United States, Old Core (Blue Team)
• China, New Core (Gold Team)
• Brazil, Seam State (Green Team)
• Iran, Gap (White Team)

The teams were selected in order to set up interesting geo-political interactions such as U.S.-China-Iran and China-Brazil-U.S. Participants will be assigned a team upon arrival at the game.

Also, please check out Tom Barnett’s blog about THE NEW MAP GAME at that proclaims:

“…I think this game will be quite amazing…gaming the successes that need to occur, not just testing the failures we can already imagine. Contingency planning is about running failures to ground, but serious strategic planning is about exploiting successes for all they're worth….”

We also wanted to remind you that it is not too late to sign up for THE NEW MAP GAME at the Early Bird rate. Early Bird registration closes on April 18th. Afterwards, the Corporate and Government rates increase to the Standard Rates listed on the website.

Please note, due to game mechanics and the unique nature of this event, attendance is limited to the first 100 participants.

Register here and to learn more about this groundbreaking event, or contact the Game Director, David Jarvis, at david.jarvis@alidade.net.

Sad Mac: Apple gags bloggers

Now, there is no doubt that, as an owner of an innovation firm, I would be apoplectic with feelings of injustice if I knew employees were leaking vital information to the media.

However, it saddens me that the beloved icon of creativity, that mad underdog of the PC civil wars, is now on the side of repressing freedom of the press. The company has pressed to gain access to emails to the bloggers--namely, Power Page, Think Secret and Apple Insider-- who broke the story of new Apple products still in development.

In March, Apple won the right to see the bloggers' e-mail records to find out who leaked information on upcoming products to them, which they published.

The news organisations have now filed a court brief which says they should be allowed to protect their sources.

If not, they said, it could make journalists wary of publishing stories which are in the public interest.

Sources who give journalists details of corruption or wrongdoing are traditionally protected by law, if the story is in the public's interest.

"Recent corporate scandals involving WorldCom, Enron and the tobacco industry all undoubtedly involved the reporting of information that the companies involved would have preferred to remain unknown to the public," said the brief.

Dave Tomlin, assistant general counsel for the AP news agency, said the case had potential implications journalists of all kinds.

"For us, this case is about whether the First Amendment protects journalists from being turned into informants for the government, the courts or anybody else who wants to use them that way," Mr Tomlin said.

"We believe strongly that it does, and that it's a good thing for all of us that journalists have this protection."

~ from BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4435809.stm

Goodbye, John Paul II

In 1991, I left the United States for an extended tour of Europe which lead to almost five years in Poland. In that first summer, with the Berlin Wall barely dismantled, I found my way, without a guidebook or plan, to Krakow and hooked up with a 20,000 person pilgrimage to Jasna Gora in Czestochowa.

The Pope, a native of Poland, was returning home for the first time after the Soviets had pulled out of Eastern Europe since 1945, and he had invited young people from around the world to meet him at the spiritual center of his homeland, the Shrine of the Black Madonna.

Over one million accepted his invitation.

Through my Polish boss' wife's colleage's daughter's boyfriend's parents, I had a place to stay. They also gave me two tickets, which, it turns out, gave me access to the stage where John Paul II would be speaking to the throng of backpacking kids and enthusiastic fans below.

I will never do justice to the dark, tangled, magnificient pagant that unfolded before me (even though I spent four years trying to do just that in words, paints and prints).

I will miss the man who electrified so many young people, even when his body, frozen by Parkinson's, was not able to communicate the spirit inside of him.

Rest in Peace, Karol Wojtyla, and my you be lifted up on eagles' wings.

~P.D.

(see more etchings and linocuts inspired by four pilgrimages to Czestochowa between 1991-1995)

Hong Kong Walls of Density and Light

Hong Kong's population has increased steadily over the past decade, reaching about 7.1 million by 2000.

The population density with respect to built-up area would be even much more higher, since only a small proportion of land are developed. Despite the population density, Hong Kong was reported to be one of the greenest cities in Asia. The majority of people live on flats in high-rise buildings. The rest of the open spaces are often covered with parks, woods and shrubs. The vertical placement of the population explains why densely populated, green city is not an oxymoronic phrase.
~ Answers.com

Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with an overall density of some 6,300 people per square kilometre. Two photographers capture that density, in saturated, rich photographs:

Architecture of Density | Michael Wolf

One of the most densely populated metropolitan areas in the world, Hong Kong has an overall density of nearly 6,700 people per square kilometer. The majority of its citizens live in flats in high-rise buildings. In Architecture of Density, Wolf investigates these vibrant city blocks, finding a mesmerizing abstraction in the buildings' facades.

Some of the structures in the series are photographed without reference to the context of sky or ground, and many buildings are seen in a state of repair or construction: their walls covered with a grid of scaffolding or the soft colored curtains that protect the streets below from falling debris. From a distance, such elements become a part of the photograph's intricate design.
~ from www.photomichaelwolf.com

[via Z+ Partners]

City of Darkness | Ian Lambot

Hak Nam, the old Walled City of Kowloon was finally demolished over ten years ago, in 1993, and to the end it retained its seedy magnificence.

The Kowloon Walled City was a garrison town built by the Qing government as a military outpost in 1847 [see history].

During the Japanese occupation in 1942-45 the walls were torn and the stone was used to expand the nearby Kai Tak Airport. Following the end of WWII hundreds of thousands of migrants from China turned this area into a slum. In 1987, it was announced the Walled City would be cleared and replaced with a park. The park is built in the classical Jiangnan style and its features include a Garden of the Chinese Zodiac, a Mountain View Pavilion and a Hill Top Pavilion [see photos].

Surrounded now only by walls of political inhibition, the City became the place where they could get their breath back; where they could live as Chinese among other Chinese, untaxed, uncounted and untormented by governments of any kind.

And so, the Walled City became that rarest of things, a working model of an anarchist society. Inevitably, it bred all the vices. Crime flourished and the Triads made the place their stronghold, operating brothels and opium ‘divans’ and gambling dens. Undoubtedly, these few (and it always was a small proportion) kept the majority of residents in a state of fear and subjection, which is why for many years outsiders trying to penetrate were given the coldest of shoulders.
~from www.arch.columbia.edu

(via Owen Mack of OBTTV)