The World Bank's Data Finder allows you to compare 17 key statistics, such as life expectancy and CO2 emissions, country-by-country and year-by-year on an interactive world map. While a few countries have not provided data, and no statistics are available prior to 1960, it is nevertheless remarkable that so much data can be accessed so easily.
Statistics that you can look up in the Data Finder include:
Google has recently teamed up with the World Bank to offer you the opportunity to make graphs of Data Finder statistics. See this post from Google's own blog to learn how it is done!
Edward "Ted" Burtynsky's photos show us the ugly result of our industrial times. The genius of his work, however, is that, from a visual standpoint, Burtynsky's photos aren't ugly.
After seeing photos such as this one, I'm surprised that people seem to think that drilling for oil has no harmful effects on the environment.
Relatively cheap oil has allowed us to travel great distances with ease, it has allowed us to live like kings, but, as you can see here, it has also resulted in enormous amounts of waste.
Even the infrastructure that we're currently using doesn't provide us with an efficient use of our time, materials, or energy itself.
Boom and bust cycles are an inherent part of economies like ours that are based on the consumption of extracted resources like oil. This is one of a number of abandoned plants in Detroit.
The EBSCOhost databases you know and love are now available to you on your mobile device. EBSCOhost Mobile offers many of the same features as the non-mobile version of EBSCOhost but the interface has been optimized for use on a mobile device with a smaller screen. Your device must have javascript enabled in order to use EBSCOhost Mobile. Give it a try and tell us what you think. Please don't search and drive.
Like you, I normally don't pay much attention to who wins the MacArthur Fellowship, also known as "the genius award." But in 2008 the $500,000 award went to a Wisconsin resident who is part of the solution to the inherent problems of our commercial food production and food distribution systems.
Will Allen is the founder and CEO of Growing Power, an organization that produces lots of food year-round on two acres in Milwaukee. Since supermarkets are reluctant to build in our inner-cities, inner city residents are often forced to subside on the highly processed foods they can get at corner stores.
So Growing Power is doing a great service to inner city residents by making good food available to them.
But I think that those of us who don't live in inner cities would be making a huge mistake to assume that the Growing Power model is not relevant to our own needs. As you may remember, the price of food has gone up over the last few years. It is no coincidence that it went up at the same time that the price of oil skyrocketed.
As you may have already seen in King Corn, or read in books like The Party's Over, or articles like "Eating Fossil Fuels", commercial food production in our country is largely dependent upon fossil fuels. Oil and natural gas are the main ingredients in the fertilizers and herbicides that the system is based on. Even the seeds are produced by chemical companies like Monsanto. And did you know that the agricultural system as I have just described it is literally ruining the soil of our great land? The American food production system is unsustainable.
On the other hand, Will Allen and his people at Growing Power work with nature. They grow fish in tanks and the water is cleaned with aquatic plants. Worms consume the garden waste and make it into compost. The greenhouses and hoophouses have multiple levels so that growing space is maximized.
We have more than enough land to start our own community gardens at Moraine Park Technical College. Let's be ahead of the curve and become leaders in sustainability!
Watch a two-minute-plus video of Will Allen based on an interview he did for the MacArthur Foundation after winning their award.
Read Street Farmer, an article about Will Allen that appeared in the New York Times Magazine.
So you want to be a good parent to your new baby but you don't have time to read a whole book about it? The New Baby Answer Book provides answers to 150 important questions about raising a child from birth to kindergarten. The authors are, Robin Goldstein, a specialist in child and adolescent development, and Janet Gallant, a writer who specializes in family issues.
* How can I keep my crawling baby safe?
* Why does my child have an imaginary friend?
* How do I prevent temper tantrums?
Find the answers in this book!
Fond du Lac campus, call number: HQ 774.5 .G66 2009
I've started reading Bruce Gevirtzman's An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers: Shaking Hands with Aliens, but I'm afraid that my descriptions of it will not do it justice. All I can say right now is that Mr. Gevirtzman's long career as a high school teacher and his willingness to listen to teens has resulted in valuable insights which he shares in this book.
Fond du Lac campus, call number: BF 724 .G463 2008
Fresh Food From Small Places: The Square Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting by R. J. Ruppenthal is bound to surprise you. Before reading the book, I didn't know that I could grow highly nutritious sprouts in a dark, indoor location - without any mess. I didn't know that it is legal to raise chickens (usually only hens, however) in many large cities. Nor did I realize that over-watering is the most common mistake for American gardeners.
In addition to telling us how city-dwellers can raise up to 10 or even 15% of their own food in a surprisingly small amount of space, Ruppenthal also explains why anybody would want to do it. Check out this book if you're curious.
Fond du Lac campus, call number SB 453 .R87 2008
What Ruppenthal's book (above) does for ambitious "urban" gardeners, The Backyard Homestead (edited by Carleen Madigan) does for those with more space (land) to work with. The cover boasts that you can "Produce all the food you need on just a quarter of an acre!" I'd like to see you do it. Let me know how it goes.
Fond du Lac campus, call number SB 321 .B1434 2009
Our current hard times are addressed in The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff. Although the authors go into intricate detail, they have not lost the forest for the trees. For the two authors and, they tell us, for many economists that came before them, the big picture is that we would inevitably come to a late stage of capitalism in which our economic system becomes inefficient.
As you may have figured, Foster and Magdoff believe that we've reached that inefficient late stage. In the introduction (pages 11-23), they point out that the United States economy in recent years has been characterized by bubbles (the two that come to my mind now are the dotcom bubble and the housing bubble). The inefficiency in our economy is a result of these bubbles in which investors throw more capital at one sector than it deserves and real-world consequences don't become apparent until after the bubble bursts.
In this book, Foster and Magdoff present a clear and cogent picture of the causes of our current hard times. They also mention a seemingly unrealistic solution: Socialism.
The World Bank's Data Finder allows you to compare 17 key statistics, such as life expectancy and CO2 emissions, country-by-country and year-by-year on an interactive world map. While a few countries have not provided data, and no statistics are available prior to 1960, it is nevertheless remarkable that so much data can be accessed so easily.
So Growing Power is doing a great service to inner city residents by making good food available to them.
