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Thursday, October 9, 2008

Liquid Assets

As I’ve mentioned before, water conservation and water rights have always interested me since it's an important issue when you grow up on an island.

And I've grown more concerned about the world’s water supply since 2003 when I read Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke.

So it's been interesting to observe the growing public concern about water.

The current online debate on The Economist's website focuses on water; Proposition: "Water, as a scarce resource, should be priced according to its market value."

The October 23, 2008 MIT Enterprise Forum Global Broadcast is titled "From Soft Drinks to Real Estate: How a Looming Water Crisis Affects Our World and How to Optimize the Business Opportunity" and will discuss:

How is the Water Crisis impacting businesses broadly?
What is the impact on key industries such as real-estate development and agri-business?
How does the cost of water impact us as residents and fellow members in a business community?
How does the cost of water impact the cost of goods from hamburgers to t-shirts?
How are new technologies being used to mitigate the crisis?
Where do business opportunities lie to optimize a looming crisis as profitable prevention practices?

And on Sunday, I watched a ninety-minute documentary on my local PBS station, Liquid Assets: The Story of Our Water Infrastructure.

Liquid Assets is a public media and outreach initiative produced by Penn State Public Broadcasting to inform the nation about the critical role our water infrastructure plays in protecting health and promoting economic prosperity and explores the history, engineering, political, and economic challenges of our water infrastructure, and engages communities in local discussions about public water and wastewater issues.

I highly recommend watching this documentary, whether you are a water expert or just an everyday person whose only recently been interested in water conservation and water rights.

Here are some discussion questions suggested by the producers:

Local Issues

What issues in the documentary are similar to the issues in your community?
What are the public health or safety issues that can affect your community as a result of problems with the water infrastructure?
Has your local economy been affected by shortfalls in your water infrastructure?
How will increases in the rate structure be received by consumers?

Infrastructure Maintenance and Repair

Who is responsible for sustaining your community’s water resources? What questions would you like to ask them?
What is your local watershed?
What steps are being taken to protect it?
What other communities share this watershed?
Have the local water systems been inspected?
When will the water systems in your community need to be replaced?
Does your community have a plan to rehabilitate and repair its water infrastructure?
How will your community pay for infrastructure improvements?
How will your community pay for infrastructure improvements? Federal, state, local governments?
Private water companies? Increases in rates? Local tax allocations? Other options?

Community Problem Solving

What do you believe is the most pressing water issue in your community?
What can be done on the local level to solve the community challenges?
What individuals and groups need to come together to achieve results?
What is the first step in bringing these groups together?
How can communities in the same watershed share their ideas?

Click here to view the trailer for Quicktime or here to view it for Windows Media Player.

And on Monday, I watched the Jane Seymour narrated documentary The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry?; click here to watch a promotional Quicktime video or click here to see when it will air on your local PBS station. You can also view a "call to action" video here.

Everywhere you turn it seems more and more people are sounding the alarm about water.

I've got to make time to read Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (click here to read my posts related to this book), Ken Midkiff’s Not a Drop to Drink: America’s Water Crisis (and What You Can Do) (click here to read a post about this book), and Paul Simon’s Tapped Out: The Coming World Crisis in Water and What We Can Do About It.

And any other books you might recommend?

White House Ghosts by Robert Schlesinger

I've just started reading Robert Schlesinger's White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters.

I found out about this book through the New York Times, checked it out from the library after the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and finally got motivated to start reading this lengthy book as I've been eagerly watching the presidential and vice presidential debates and the candidates speeches about the bailout bill.

So far, this book seems very well-researched. Schelsinger is a natural storyteller and expertly weaves the facts into a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of presidents and their speechwriters.

This book is required reading for students of the American presidency.

Click here to read an excerpt of White House Ghosts on the publisher’s website or click here to view the table of contents.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Kareem Abdul Jabbar Lecture

Kareem Abdul Jabbar -- Basketball Hall-of-Famer, Author, Actor, and Humanitarian -- will be speaking at Hopkins on October 28, 2008 as part of the Milton S. Eisenhower Speakers Symposium "A More Perfect Union: Partnership, Progress and Prosperity in a Changing America."

I had no idea he had written so many books:

Doors will open at 7:30 pm at Shriver Hall on the Homewood Campus and the talk begins at 8:00 pm.

Seating is free and open to the public.

Shriver Hall Auditorium is on the university’s Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St., in Baltimore.

A reception in the Clipper Room follows the event.

Visitor parking is available in the South Garage, 3101 Wyman Park Drive, Baltimore, Md. 21211.

Monday, October 6, 2008

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

As a nerd (MIT grads are nerds by default), I'm deeply interested in reading Stephen Baker's The Numerati.

This book explores how mathematicians are quantifying and analyzing our lives. Thanks to the use of credit/debit cards and the electronic gadgets we use (cell phones, TiVo, laptops, GPS, etc), our lives are becoming increasingly digital and increasingly transparent lives.

So many things that we do create digital data points that allow our behavior to be analyzed.

It's definitely a book of the times; the Wall Street Journal, Conde Nast Portfolio, San Francisco Chronicle, Business Week, and many other well-respected news sources have reviewed this book favorably.

Click here to listen to Baker speak about The Numerati on NPR's Fresh Air; an excerpt is also available on that site. Click here to view the table of contents.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

David Cay Johnston on the bailout bill

Whether you were for or against the bailout bill, these three essays by David Cay Johnston, written for The Plank (a blog for The New Republic) are worth reading:

I've been a long-time fan of Johnston's investigative reporting for The New York Times and after recently reading two of his books -- Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else (click here to read an excerpt of the book or click here to read my entries on this book) and Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (click here to read my entries on this book or click here to read excerpts and view the table of contents on the author’s website for this book) -- I've come to trust Johnston as an advocate for the common person.

It seems to me that instead of doing concrete research into how the bailout bill might affect Americans and the global economy, most media sources were simply fear-mongering about the chaos that we were doomed to if the bailout failed to pass. I'm also disappointed that Congress appears not to have considered alternatives to the bailout bill initially proposed by Hank Paulson and instead just worked to improve it.

It couldn't have hurt them to talk to some of the world's economists who had differing opinions.

Absent that, we can trust Johnston to speak up for us.

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter

I haven't been interested in reading any of former President Jimmy Carter's books.

And this Nobel Peace Prize winner has written a lot of books:

I didn't know that he wrote not just non-fiction but also a book of poetry and a children's book. And that doesn't even include the books that he's written prefaces, forewords or introductions for!

But the one I'm considering reading now is Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. I remember reading a less than glowing New York Times review of this book in January 2007 not long after this book came out.

Obviously the publisher thinks much more highly of this book; here's what the publisher has to say about this book:

President Carter, who was able to negotiate peace between Israel and Egypt, has remained deeply involved in Middle East affairs since leaving the White House. He has stayed in touch with the major players from all sides in the conflict and has made numerous trips to the Holy Land, most recently as an observer in the Palestinian elections of 2005 and 2006.

In this book President Carter shares his intimate knowledge of the history of the Middle East and his personal experiences with the principal actors, and he addresses sensitive political issues many American officials avoid. Pulling no punches, Carter prescribes steps that must be taken for the two states to share the Holy Land without a system of apartheid or the constant fear of terrorism.

The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known, the president writes. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy, and the international "road map" for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be honored. As were all previous administrations since the founding of Israel, U.S. government leaders must be in the forefront of achieving this long-delayed goal of a just agreement that both sides can honor.

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid is a challenging, provocative, and courageous book.

Having rea d Queen Noor's Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life, I'd like to learn more about Israeli-Palestinian history and politics and I'm interested in reading Carter's Palestine because I suspect that it tells a different side of the story than we normally hear in the United States.

That this book has sparked much uproar makes me think that this is an important book to read -- whether or not it is accurate.

Click here to view the table of contents or click here to read an excerpt.

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