Who is John Galt?

Craig Venter: “This would not happen without the oil industry stepping up and taking part,”

Genomicist Craig Venter and his company Synthetic Genomics Incorporated (SGI) have entered into a $600m strategic alliance with Exxon Mobil to develop a next-generation biofuel from photosynthetic algae. Algae absorb carbon dioxide and sunlight in aqueous environments, producing an oil of similar molecular structure to contemporary petroleum products. Algal fuel can be refined, transported and distributed using existing refineries, pipelines and service stations and can run the engines of today’s automobiles and airplanes.

A college dropout who’d come back from a heroin addiction that started when he was just 14, Denzel had lost his way. But one afternoon, while at his mother’s beauty shop in Mount Vernon, New York, Denzel was shocked back onto the right track. There, one of his mother’s customers wrote this prophecy on a piece of paper: “That boy is going to speak to millions of people.”

Imagine how many potential Oscar winners are rotting away in federal prison for doing the same things he did, or how many potential presidential candidates are now someone’s bitch.

Draconian laws that turn regular people into criminals does not prevent drug abuse.  They may as well preach abstinence only (oh wait… ).  I guess treatment is a good first step in changing the strategy, but education and moderation are the real answer.  A strong value system and sense of self-worth prevent addictive behaviors, and I think from there we can expect to enjoy an occaisonal toke just like the rare scotch on the rocks after a long workweek, without being stigmatized or persecuted.

Monotony of Politics

If there are any followers out there, sorry to keep you hanging for so long.  I’m tired of politics right now, nothing new or exciting is really going on.  The tea parties are still kinda tumbling along, the new administration still thinks it can get away with fascism, technology is accelerating, etc.

My concerns right now are more about the business world, and how bad things will continue to get over the next few months.  I do have another post in progress about what Obama will have to do, but as President he will eventually have to face the facts.

Hopefully capitalism will keep chugging along too.

Ethonomics

I stumbled across the word in an email from Fast Company today, here is their definition:

The end of the modern financial system as we know it has cleared the way for an era of ethical economics, or “Ethonomics.” We live in a world that’s resource-constrained but ingenuity-rich. So an upstart generation of entrepreneurs—and innovators within the world’s biggest companies—are founding businesses that are good for the world as well as the bottom line. They are practicing social change through urban revitalization, sustainable agriculture, green IT, alternative energy and online community-powered investing. Any business that claims to be truly sustainable and innovative should be increasingly efficient with energy and natural resources, transparent and accountable, and good on balance for people and other living things. Ethonomics is a hybrid of technology, design, and social responsibility, and at Fast Company we believe it is the future of business.

Priorities in the web-enabled world for the next government:

The most scary thing about the Internet for your government is not pedophiles, terrorists or viruses, whatever you may have read in the papers. It is the danger of your administration being silently obsoleted by the lightning pace at which the Internet changes expectations. I’m not going to give examples of this change, others can do this far better than I. But you don’t need experts’ advice to tell which way the wind blows - if you can’t find any examples of changing expectations in your own life, driven by the internet, I can’t help you anyway: please point me to your successor.