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- Dennis Threndyle on Shades of Green
- Bill Streifer on Nuclear Energy by David Bodansky
- katmainomad on Shades of Green
- Another City is Possible: Cars and Climate | Flat Iron Bike on Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air by David MacKay
- Another City is Possible: Cars and Climate | Flat Iron Bike on When do fuel costs actually matter?
Linkstream
- High Plains Aquifer Dwindles
The fossil waters underlying the Great Plains, left over from the Pleistocene, are giving out. We done sucked 'em dry. Any hydrologist could have told you it was in the works. We'll see the end of fossil ground water pumping in the 21st century, whether we like it or not. - Communicating sustainability: lessons from public health
Some lessons from public health for sustainability and climate campaigners. Our choices are largely not our own -- context and norms are far more powerful forces for behavioral change than abstract attitudes. Most people just stick with the default settings. We need to change the default settings. - Every drone strike in Pakistan visualised
A simple but effective visualization of all the drone strikes in Pakistan, from 2004 to the present. 3100+ people dead, 1.5% of them "high value" targets. More than 75% alleged combatants (males of plausibly military age... 14+ years old) or "other". 5% children. 17% "civilians". - The Water Footprint of Crops
A fairly exhaustive accounting of the water embodied in various crop products in a 2011 paper by Mekonnen and Hoekstra. For each kg of rice, 14,000 liters of water. For each kg of beans, 5000 liters of water. Wow. - The NYT on Green Muni Utility Efforts
A piece largely referencing Boulder, talking about cities trying to wrest control of their electricity systems from major utilities. At this point I think I'll probably find any media coverage of this process hopelessly one dimensional, but still, it's nice to know they care.
- High Plains Aquifer Dwindles
Incoming Memes
Tag Archives: pregnancy
Upending an Asian Baby Farm
An apparently illegal surrogacy ring has been busted in Thailand. The company, which called itself “Babe 101: Eugenic Surrogate” was using young Vietnamese women for both gestation and egg donation, and seems to have been aiming primarily at the Asian … Continue reading
Moms market
Further developments in India’s commercial surrogacy market. As the government mulls more detailed regulations, existing rules are already being neatly side-stepped. For instance, sex-selection is not permitted in India, but it is in Panama, so the embryo screening is done … Continue reading
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Tagged economics, genetic engineering, globalization, gray market, india, outsourcing, pregnancy, surrogate
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Womb for Rent
Surrogate pregnancies are becoming common in India. For roughly the cost of having your own baby in the US healthcare system, you can outsource the task of giving birth to a Gujarati woman. It sounds like there’s a wide range … Continue reading
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Tagged biotech, ethics, genetics, globalization, india, outsourcing, poverty, pregnancy, surrogate
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Markets and Morals
A good talk from Chautauqua on the interaction between markets and morals. Some interesting examples of morally ambiguous markets: countries paying one another to take on refugee acceptance obligations and the outsourcing pregnancy to impoverished surrogate mothers in Gujarat, India. … Continue reading
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Tagged chautauqua, economics, ethics, fora.tv, india, markets, philosophy, politics, pregnancy, refugees, surrogate, video
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Links for the week of October 15th, 2009
If you want to follow my shared links in real time instead of as a weekly digest, head over to Delicious. You can search them there easily too.
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Tagged amorylovins, architecture, bicycle, buildings, cervix, china, chinese, cities, climate, coal, copenhagen, denmark, design, economics, education, electricity, energy, environment, finance, foss4g, gis, gnu, government, kingsnorth, language, maps, menstruation, nuclear, osx, photos, planning, policy, politics, pregnancy, reference, rmi, school, sex, software, soleri, stewartbrand, sustainability, system:filetype:pdf, system:media:document, teaching, technology, tools, transparency, transportation, tutoring, uk, urban, water, women, writing, 中文
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What is Human
The utter primacy of H. sapiens in all the theistic religions is one of the things that bothers me most deeply about them. I believe we are unique and unusually important amongst life on earth (as were the first oxygenic … Continue reading