Tony Naylor travels to the 'curry capital of Britain' for Diwali to find the best budget eats in the city

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Today is Diwali Day, when, annually, tens of thousands of people gather in Leicester to celebrate the festival of light and the start of the Hindu new year. Here are some of the city's best budget eateries, on Belgrave Road and beyond.

1. Curry Capital of Britain

Technically, Leicester only holds the crown by default. It won the title in 2007, and, until this year (a new 'capital' will be announced in December), that's the last time the competition was held. However, no-one would deny this city of masala magicians its extended moment in the spotlight. I've highlighted a few specific venues, below, but, in Leicester, the curry-loving budget traveller is spoilt for choice - particularly along Belgrave/Melton Road, centre of the Diwali Day celebrations. The local Asian population is predominantly Hindu, which means the city has an unusual number of fantastic, cheap vegetarian cafes.

Mirch Masala (Market Street, +44 (0)116 247 0080; mirch-masala.co.uk) does a curious sideline in Mexican and Italian (paneer pizza etc.), and the discerning foodie will have to break one of the golden rules (never eat anywhere that displays pictures of its dishes in the window) at Star Vashnu Dhaba (94 Narborough Road, +44 (0)116 255 3093), but along with Mithaas (103-105 Narborough Road, +44 (0)116 254 1588; mithaas.co.uk) and the popular Dakshin (110 Belgrave Road, +44 (0)116 266 4996; dakshin.co.uk), these are all places where you can eat your fill of fresh, seriously tasty home-style tarka daal or aloo gobi for around £5, with a drink.

For meat eaters, the £6.95 lunch/dinner buffet at the Curry Pot (78-80 Belgrave Road, +44 (0)116 262 6777) and the £7.95 business lunch at Khyber (116 Melton Road, +44 (0)116 266 4842; khybertandoorirestaurant.co.uk) are recommended. Those with great self-control might just sneak in a mains-only evening meal at the award-winning Curry Fever (139 Belgrave Road, +44 (0)116 266 2941; thecurryfever.co.uk) or Ashoka (257 Melton Road, +44 (0)116 266 2185) - which has interesting things like tandoori trout on the menu - for around £10-a-head.

2. Bobby's

First time on Belgrave Road? Then Bobby's is a must. Established in 1976, although you wouldn't know it - the restaurant space is neatly contemporary; the staff are bright, energetic and super-friendly - this Gujerati vegetarian produces some of the sharpest food in the city. Try Bobby's fulsomely flavoured, surprisingly spicy chickpea channa masala, the soul-stirring savoury pleasures of its various lentil dals, and its intriguing bhel and chaat starters - salad-like mixtures of crushed samosa, nuts and other "savouries", chickpeas, onion and potato, topped with yoghurt and chutney. Bobby's is also famous for its mithai Indian sweets, which during Diwali (also celebrated by Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists) take over the whole groundfloor of the restaurant. Prices are pretty keen throughout, but the all-day buffet (£6.99/ £9.99 for two) or takeaway will offer the most variety, at under £10 a head.

• Main with rice, from £6 (eat-in). 154-156 Belgrave Road +44 (0)116 266 0106; eatatbobbys.com

3. Bombay Bites

Ingenious, this. From a tiny corner takeaway in the city centre, Bombay Bites serves a short menu of curries, over rice, in dinky red 'n' yellow takeaway cartons, ready-to-eat on the street. A lamb curry - plenty of tender lamb, in a somewhat indistinct but tasty medium-hot gravy - comes over good long grain rice, sprinkled with fried onions, and is really lifted by a sparky, blitzed lime pickle, or "green chutney". For £3.95, it's a bargain. Take your pot around the corner to the town hall gardens and tuck in.

• Snacks from 50p, meals from £3.25. 41a Belvoir Street, +44 (0)116 285 2299; bombaybites.co.uk

4. Shivalli

The average British curry house deals in a repertoire of stock dishes which revolve around the twin poles of marinated grilled meats and thick, spicy sauces. For greater variety, you need to head south, to Kerala and Goa, where the food is, generally, lighter and the spicing and seasoning a little more sophisticated. Down south, even the hottest dishes offer variegated layers of flavour. In Leicester, people are currently raving about Kayal (153 Granby Street, +44 (0)116 255 4667; kayalrestaurant.com. Lunch thali £5.95), whose Nottingham and Leamington Spa branches I've mentioned previously in this series. Anjuna (76 Highcross Street, +44 (0)116 2512229anjunarestaurant.com. Goan speciality mains from £6.45) is also notable for its Goan specialities, such as soportel - belly pork and liver cooked in fiery spices and vinegar - and its hot, sour tamarind-laced shark curry. Less challenging, but no less interesting, Shivalli is a vegetarian Karnatakan restaurant, where you'll come across numerous filled dosa, fantastic rice sides (mixed with nuts, lentils, fresh curry leaves, mustard seeds etc.), and lesser-spotted, often milder curries like the beetroot sasami. Even the puddings, like kesari bhath, a very sweet, buttery pat of semolina studded with raisins and cashews, are interesting. And don't turn down the hot, fluffy, almost-sweet fried bathura breads, they're delicious. The lunchtime buffet, £4.95, is very popular with local office workers.

• Main with rice, from £5.74 (eat-in). 21 Welford Road, +44 (0)116 255 0137; shivallirestaurant.com

5. Mem Saab

A soaring cliché in glass and polished steel, Highcross Leicester is the kind of soulless, big-statement shopping centre that makes living in the woods and weaving your own shoes seem like a good idea. Naturally, most of the major British restaurant chains are present, and depressingly busy. Swerve them and, instead, if only to remind yourself that you are actually in Leicester, head to Mem Saab, a swanky Indian with a surprisingly simple, understatedly elegant dining room. The two-course lunch is a very competitive £6.95. If you can't stop, you can also pick-up takeaway salads and tandoori naan wraps from the champagne bar. The latter come with a bag of quite terrible chips - bin them, straight off - but the wraps themselves are great. The naan was good and while the meat could have done with a more robust marinade, the waiter's suggestion of mixing the lamb and chicken tikka together in the same wrap was inspired. It was a carnivorous humdinger.

• Wraps/salads from £4.50 (eat-in/ takeaway, midday-4pm), 59-59a Highcross Street, +44 (0)116 253 0243; mem-saableics.com

6. Criterion

From the outside, the Criterion looks like a typically shabby 1960s boozer. Another back-street pub marking time until it's boarded-up. This might possibly be a deliberate policy, to keep the idiots out. For, in reality, the Criterion is a busy hive of boho activity, aimed at two of the last remaining groups of people who will still leave the house in order to drink: Camra members and music fans. Nine guest ales (from £2.50 a pint; the Bishop's Farewell, from Oakham Ales, brightly crisp and fruity) and a busy programme of gigs, music and film events are the main draws, but the Criterion's stone-baked pizzas play their part. The dough is made fresh, daily, and the exemplarily thin bases have a good chew factor, a nice light char, and are topped with decent, fresh ingredients. Remarkably at these prices, the ham is real pig and not some reconstituted pap. The whole place has a real generosity of spirit about it. Staff are friendly, it's comfy, a little bit quirky, and - but for some beer memorabilia - defiantly unstyled. Oh, and as it's also British Sausage Week until 8 November, the Criterion is serving a variety of locally made sausages on buttered rolls (from £2).

• Pizza from £3.50 (9"). 44 Millstone Lane, +44 (0)116 262 5418; criterionvenue.co.uk

7. Currant Affairs

A small kitchen at this "natural food store" turns out wholesome vegetarian snacks. There are first-rate cakes (try the tangy carrot at £1.10); simple, generously filled savoury flans and quiches - a mushroom and cheddar slice is light, eggy, packed with flavour and has a great grilled cheese crust atop (£1.69); mushroom pate and hummus sandwiches, and some very unappetising looking tomato and garlic "sosage" rolls. It's not too worthy, though. You can also pick up a bag of Tyrell's crisps or a bottle of Fentiman's pop to have with your lunch.

• Snacks from 89p, sandwiches from £2. 9a Loseby Lane, +44 (0)116 251 0887

8. The Case Champagne Bar & Snug

A champagne bar? In a budget eating guide? I know, I know, but bear with me. At night, and certainly at weekends, this chic bar (attached to one of Leicester's best restaurants, the Case) is all bling and bellinis, but, over lunch (11.30-2.30pm), it doubles up as a cafe-bar offering solace, salads and sandwiches to weary shoppers. Upmarket fillings include the likes of grilled lemon and thyme chicken with rocket and parmesan, or slow roasted pork belly with peppers and apple. The Case bar also does a good line in interesting burgers, like its venison patty with a red onion, orange and coriander mayo. It being November, it's of little use right now, but the covered outdoor seating area - essentially, the pretty alleyway that leads to the entrance - is a lovely shady hideaway in summer.

• Sandwiches from £3.45, salads from £5.75. 4-6 Hotel Street, +44 (0)116 251 7675; thecase.co.uk

9. Yesim Pattisserie

A scruffy jumble of shops, takeaways and 24/7 traffic, Narborough Road is unlikely to figure on many tourists' itineraries. More fool them. There is a cluster of good bars at its town end, along Braunstone Gate; it's home to some interesting retail outlets - from a Polish delicatessen and Asian supermarkets to second-hand book shops - and it has several good and cheap places to eat. See above, for info on Star Vashnu Dhaba and Mithaas. Turkish bakery-cafe, Yesim, is another such find. A laid-back and cosy, dimly-lit space (all exposed wooden beams, jewel-like lamps and Ottoman ornaments), it offers sweet relief from the chaos outside. You can linger over baklava, borek and, of course, formidably strong coffee. A sample poca (an oval stuffed bread, like an open pasty) was fine for £1.20 - the tomato and herb filling needed more lamb - but a piece of su borek or water borek (the thicker one, with parsley) was tremendous (£2). It had a crisp filo texture without, but, inside, it was all soft, billowing furls of pastry (boiled briefly, so it has the consistency of sheets of lasagne), around a good layer of that pleasingly dry, tart sheep's feta. A portion of this, and you won't need to eat again for hours.

• Snacks from around £1.29 Narborough Road, +44 (0)116 247 1120

10. Mrs Bridges Tea Rooms

Loseby Lane is crammed with cafes, but the veteran Mrs Bridges stands out. Quaint without lapsing into kitsch - it's got a clean monastic aesthetic going on, rather than the usual tea room chintz - it serves a menu which, at this level, and for all its old-school touches, is quietly ambitious. Among the usual filled jacket potatoes and flans, you'll find, for example, a poached salmon, apple and salted broad bean salad, eggs Florentine, and a roast beef, red onion marmalade and Stilton sandwich. Incidentally, you've got to love a cafe that offers to spread dripping on your sandwich bread before it's toasted. Bliss indeed. The homemade cakes and puddings are a highlight, the sampler plate of five desserts (£5.20) offering a serious sugar rush. Coffee is so-so, and they could do with reprinting the rather dog-eared menus.

• Sandwiches from £3.25, meals from around £5. 17 Loseby Lane, +44 (0)116 262 3131

• Tony travelled from Manchester to Leicester with First TransPennine Express (tpexpress.co.uk) and East Midlands Trains (eastmidlandstrains.co.uk) EMT runs regular services from London St Pancras to Leicester, from £22 return.

Eddie Izzard compered and Ed Miliband guested as New Generation Labour showed that the party has been saved

The Labour party held a sort of revival meeting today in which former non-members confessed their sins and declared that they were saved. Yes, in the past they had voted Lib Dem or even Conservative. They had been mired in sin. Now they were washed in the blood of the Ed!

Most of them were very young. The party is now obsessed with youth. One speaker was 15 years old but, like William Hague so many decades ago, already had a grasp of the higher jargon. "This is a new beginning, a new generation for Labour!" he told us.

For New Labour, history had begun in 1997. I realised that for New Generation Labour it began in May 2010 with the defeat of the old, discredited New Labour – if you can follow that. The party must have young people, young persons who are not associated with the failures of the past. As Neil Kinnock once said: "I warn you not to be old …"

The MC this session was Eddie Izzard. I hoped he would wear his trademark women's clothing, which would have demonstrated real inclusivity. Instead he was in masculine black. But he kept up his fast, swooping style of speech. He managed to reduce the words "Ed Miliband" to just two syllables.

More young persons arrived to give their personal testimony, to say how their acceptance of Ed had turned around their lives. A 21-year old woman had voted Liberal Democrat. There was a hissing in the hall, but it was a friendly, cosy hissing, because they knew what was to come. "And I joined the Labour party on 2 June," she said, to loud cheering.

A young man had been a Conservative, but had formed a group of Tories to support their local Labour MP, who lost anyway, but it didn't matter, since after Ed's election, converts – sorry, new Labour members – were arriving at the rate of one per minute!

Supergeek arrived on the platform and was grilled by Eddie Izzard. It was a light grilling. The law of the nonsensical reverse was invoked.

"If people are joining at speed, does that mean it's easy from now on in?" the comedian inquired.

What did he expect? "Well, I for one intend to put my feet up for a few years. There'll be plenty of time to start campaigning in 2015." No, it turns out to be very different. "I'm afraid it's going to be a long, hard road," Ed told us.

"Are you ready for action, ready to go?" asked Eddie.

Another stumper. "Certainly," Ed smacked back.

Eddie tried some flattery. It was untrue that Ed looked like Wallace. He was more like Gromit, "the really cool dog who builds a rocket to the moon and stops the evil penguin" – possibly a reference to David Cameron. Warning to comedians: it's never safe to compare your party leader to a non-existent comical character.

Ed said some curious things. "Too many Labour party meetings begin with the minutes of the last meeting," he said sternly. What were they supposed to have instead? Minutes of the next meeting?

He left to another ovation. The conference was saved, saved! And once again, not a single mention of Tony Blair or Gordon Brown.

Non-OPEC Oil Production Hits the Wall

In the last year I’ve read several articles expounding on the many non-OPEC oil discoveries that have been made in recent years and how large the oil resource is within the non-OPEC sphere of the world. The objective of these articles is to reassure the reader that all is well for non-OPEC oil production, now and in the foreseeable future. If all is so well outside OPEC, one must ask why the non-OPEC oil production rate has not exceeded the level achieved in 2004 in spite of the elevated price of oil since then.

Invitation to an Energy Crisis

DALLAS – As rising consumption and nationalism in OPEC countries pushes down their crude-oil exports and forces international oil companies to invest in high-cost areas with small reserves as global demand continues to grow, oil prices might ultimately shatter the record set in 2008. In the short run, heightened volatility will be the rule, owing to economic, political, natural, and technical factors. One has only to examine the recent past to see why.

While speculators can affect prices in the short run and increase price volatility, market fundamentals and government actions explain the spectacular rise in oil prices between 2003 and mid-2008. During this period, world oil demand increased, mostly in developing countries, while production remained relatively flat from 2005 to 2008. The only way to meet growing demand was to use OPEC’s spare capacity and commercial inventories. Once spare capacity vanished and commercial inventories declined to critical levels relative to estimated future demand, oil prices started to break record after record.

Schlumberger 'may miss Wall St targets'

Schlumberger's chief executive Andrew Gould said today the oilfield services giant will have difficulty meeting Wall Street profit forecasts this year, adding that rising natural gas drilling in North America will not lead to "satisfactory returns" this year.

Enbridge plans gas pipeline in midwest U.S.

Enbridge Inc., a leading Canadian energy provider, said Monday it will build a new natural gas liquids pipeline to tap into markets in the midwestern United States.

The new line will move the fuel from the Marcellus Shale in Southern Pennsylvania to existing facilities in the Chicago area, the company said in a release.

China expects 5% growth of net oil import in 2010

BEIJING - China's net oil imports are expected to total 210 million tons this year, National Energy Administration (NEA) said Monday.

The volume would be about 11 million tons, or 5.5 percent, higher that last year, said Huang Li, vice director of Energy Saving and Science Equipment Department, NEA.

Raymond J. Learsy: The New York Times Continues Its Fawning Coverage of Saudi Oil Policies

Once again in its inimical fashion the New York Times, in a an article "China's Rapid Growth Shifts the Geopolitics of Oil'' 3.20.10 instructs us, as is their wont, on the exemplary policies of Saudi Arabia on matters oil.

Oil prices stay high despite State order

The cost of petroleum products remains high in most parts of Western Kenya despite a government directive to marketers to reduce oil prices.

'Energy crisis damaging industries'

LAHORE (APP) - Accusing former president Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf for the prevailing energy crisis, Federal Minister for Commerce Makhdoom Amin Fahim has that the loadshedding was resulting in huge problems in the industrial sector.

Talking to newsmen at Aibak Polo Ground, he quoted Federal Minister for Water and Power Raja Pervez Ashraf, saying form April 15 onwards the power outages would reduce significantly.

Nuclear energy on the table for Pakistan?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 22 (UPI) -- Washington may consider a civilian nuclear energy package for Pakistan at a major bilateral conference scheduled for the end of the week, U.S. officials said.

Pakistan is on the verge of a major energy crisis. Energy officials said recently that the national energy grid faced shortfalls of more than 4,000 megawatts during peak hours, leaving several parts of the country prone to blackouts.

Jordan follows UAE nuclear lead

Jordan is likely to become the next Arab state after the UAE to sign a contract to build civilian nuclear reactors, one of the region’s top energy officials said yesterday.

A number of Arab countries, including Kuwait and Egypt, have begun the long process of planning for nuclear plants, but Jordan has made the most progress, said Dr Adnan Shihab-Eldin, the secretary general of the Kuwait National Nuclear Energy Committee.

Chrysler to make electric Fiat 500

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Chrysler Group announced Monday that it plans to produce a purely electric version of the iconic Fiat 500 minicar.

Cyprus ‘to run out of drinking water’

Cyprus is predicted to become the first part of the European Union to run out of water. A spokesman at the EU Commission said the Mediterranean island was Europe’s ‘front line’ in the war against diminishing water resources.

Divided by war in 1974, the former British colony has been consumed by the rivalry between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The generation-old conflict has obscured the environmental disaster that has empty reservoirs, led to water rationing and is killing the island’s ecosystem.

The Secret of Sea Level Rise: It Will Vary Greatly by Region

As the world warms, sea levels could easily rise three to six feet this century. But increases will vary widely by region, with prevailing winds, powerful ocean currents, and even the gravitational pull of the polar ice sheets determining whether some coastal areas will be inundated while others stay dry.

Wind Energy Investment of $65 Billion May Curb Fossil Fuel Use

(Bloomberg) -- China WindPower Group Ltd., Iberdrola SA and Duke Energy Corp. will lead development of an estimated $65 billion of wind-power plants this year that let utilities reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

The estimate from Bloomberg New Energy Finance assumes a 9 percent increase in global installations of wind turbines this year, adding as much as 41 gigawatts of generation capacity. That’s the equivalent of 34 new nuclear power stations.

Utilities that built natural gas-fired generators during the last decade are increasingly erecting turbines and buying wind power from competitors, tapping a renewable-energy source as governments consider ways to penalize carbon-based fuels.

Oil Falls to Three-Week Low on Concern Demand Rebound May Stall

(Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell to a three-week low in New York on concern governments around the world may follow India in raising interest rates, damping the recovery in global fuel demand.

Oil dropped a third day as the U.S. dollar traded near a three-week high against the euro, dimming the appeal of commodities for hedging against inflation. The commodity plunged 1.9 percent on March 19 after India unexpectedly raised rates. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has spare production capacity in excess of 6 million barrels per day, its president said.

“Immediate oil market fundamentals haven’t justified gains beyond $80,” said Andrey Kryuchenkov, a VTB Capital analyst in London. “Until seasonal demand picks up and reduces the stockpile overhang, we’ll keep trading on external factors such as the dollar and concerns over eventual monetary tightening.”

OPEC's Business Model: Sit Back and Let the Money Flow In

OPEC, producer of about 40% of the world's oil, is once again in the catbird seat, once again. Now, you're probably thinking, "When hasn't OPEC been in the catbird seat?"

True, when you're sitting on a considerable portion of the modern world's most important commodity, it's hard to ever argue that the deck is stacked against you, but these are especially advantageous times for OPEC.

Russian crude won't hit Mideast prices to Asia - Qatar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Russian crude exports to the Pacific will not hurt prices of Middle Eastern crude sold to Asia, Qatar Oil Minister Abdullah al-Attiyah said on Monday.

His comments echo what the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members, including top exporter Saudi Arabia, said last week.

Russia started selling its new ESPO Blend crude from the Far East port of Kozmino from late 2009, a first step towards expanding its exports into Asian markets.

Petrobras May Boost Investment by 26% to Focus on Offshore Oil

(Bloomberg) -- Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil’s state-run oil producer, aims to boost its spending plan by as much as 26 percent as it focuses on developing the Americas’ largest discovery in three decades and other offshore deposits.

Shell, PetroChina Win Arrow With Sweetened $3.2 Billion Offer

(Bloomberg) -- Royal Dutch Shell Plc and PetroChina Co. agreed to buy Arrow Energy Ltd. after increasing their offer to A$3.5 billion ($3.2 billion), marking China’s entry to Australia’s coal-seam gas industry.

Shell and PetroChina will pay A$4.70 cash a share for Arrow’s Australian business, the Brisbane-based company said today. The price was raised from A$4.45 and is 35 percent above the stock’s level before the initial bid was reported March 8. Investors will also get shares in a new company holding Arrow’s gas assets in China, Indonesia, India and Vietnam, which may be worth as much as A$400 million, according to analysts.

China commercial crude stocks up 5.2 pct in Feb - OGP

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's commercial crude oil inventories rose 5.2 percent in February over January to 28.2 million tonnes, China OGP reported on Monday.

China imports less Iranian oil, defying demand jump

BEIJING - China’s imports of Iranian crude oil shrank by nearly 40 percent in the first two months of 2010, compared to the same time last year, despite the Asian economy’s expanding hunger for foreign oil.

Chinese customs data issued on Monday showed Iran, which was China’s third biggest foreign supplier of crude oil last year, slipped to fourth behind Russia in the first two months of 2010.

Iran shipped 2.53 million metric tonnes of crude to China, a fall of 37.2 percent compared to the first two months of 2009.

Qatar to up LNG supply to India to 11.5 mln tonnes

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Qatar plans to raise its supply of Liquefied Natural Gas to India to 11.5 million tonnes from 2014, against the current 7.5 million tonnes a year, its oil minister Abdullah al-Attiyah said in New Delhi on Sunday.

He said Qatar currently produces 62 million tonnes of LNG and from October it will be raised to 77 million tonnes.

PetroChina, Shell to Export 8 Million Tons/Yr of LNG from Curtis

(Bloomberg) -- PetroChina Co. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc plan to export up to 8 million tons per year of LNG from the proposed Curtis Island plant in Australia, the Chinese company’s project manager, Aiji Ge, said in a statement today.

Ukraine to send team to Moscow for gas talks

KIEV (Reuters) - A Ukrainian delegation will travel to Moscow on Tuesday to discuss a gas agreement between the two countries, the energy ministry and the state energy company Naftogaz said.

The visit will be the first attempt by the new leadership of President Viktor Yanukovich to get a revision of what the Ukrainians say are onerous prices for Russian natural gas.

BHP Coal Terminal Damaged by Cyclone, Stays Shut

(Bloomberg) -- BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest mining company, said its Hay Point Coal terminal in Australia was damaged at the weekend and remains shut after being hit by a cyclone that also closed mines.

“Assessments will be undertaken to determine the extent of repairs required and likely timeframes to recommence operations,” BHP said today in an e-mailed statement. Some northern coal mines suspended operations, it said, without identifying them.

Fossil fuel money ‘could fund bank’

A new green-energy bank should be created out of the as yet unspent £200million Scottish fossil fuel levy fund, industry body Scottish Renewables said.

The fund is contributed to by suppliers of electricity from non-renewable energy sources and is ring-fenced for green-energy projects.

It remains unused due to wrangling between Holyrood and Westminster.

Choose subsistence before oil

If you look at oil and gas development, the roads and pipelines into the Yukon Flats would only destroy our traditional way of life and the renewable resources that support that way of life. Once the oil is gone, we will be left with a big mess and polluted ecosystem. Our subsistence resources will be undermined; what then? Doyon can find other economic opportunities without destroying the land that is fundamental to our traditions, culture and subsistence way of life. Let’s look seriously at renewable energy options.

Jim Rogers Says a Eurozone of 10 Members Would Be a “Wonderful Thing”

High energy prices are here to stay. The experts know that known reserves are declining at a steady rate. In 25 years there will be no oil for anyone at any price. There could be ups and downs in the price along the way, if for example the UK goes bankrupt. In a decade, the price will be much, much higher though.

The pound sterling’s outlook is not good. North Sea oil is drying up. The UK has huge, huge debt. The City of London financial center is badly damaged and politicians are trying to kill the goose that laid the golden egg by increasing taxes so much that it will drive out the remaining banks. In a few years we will look back and be shocked at how far the pound has come down.

Air Pollution Hits Record High in Hong Kong

HONG KONG — Air pollution in Hong Kong, one of the perpetual banes of living and working in the Asian financial hub, skyrocketed to record levels on Monday, triggering an official government warning to avoid outdoor activities and physical exertion.

Air Pollution Kills 50,000 in the U.K. a Year, Lawmakers Says

(Bloomberg) -- Air pollution from traffic and industry kills as many as 50,000 people in the U.K. every year, and the nation could face fines of as much as $450 million for failing to meet European Union targets, lawmakers said.

Carbon capture a coal solution

An interesting project ramping up in southeastern Saskatchewan is a good example of the kind of long-term investment needed to ensure Canada’s future.

It’s a carbon capture and storage (CCS) job that will, when finished, capture a million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, and provide a demonstration of Canadian technology to monitor and verify the state and amount of the gas underground so we know just how much is there and to prove there is no leakage.

The New Energy Opportunity

Given all the obstacles, you might wonder why we bother with renewable energy at all. In fact, we wouldn't, and didn't for years, when the world's oil and gas reserves looked endless, and everybody thought global warming was what happened when the sun came up in the morning.

But peak oil will strike at some time, and unless climate global warming is exposed as a myth, hoax, religion or tax grab, we need to do something about our warming planet as well.

Japan planning 14 nuclear plants: report

TOKYO (AFP) – Resource-poor Japan is planning to build at least 14 nuclear power plants over the next 20 years to reduce its reliance on other countries for its energy needs, a report said Sunday.

The world's second biggest economy, which wants to double its provision for its fuel consumption, will make an announcement in June on whether it indends to press ahead with the plants, the Nikkei business daily said.

Asia’s nuclear dilemma

Nuclear power has long been opposed on safety, environmental, security and business grounds. But Asian governments are saying they can’t fight global warming without more of it.

Chevron plans solar panel installation: report

(Reuters) - U.S. energy giant Chevron Corp is set to announce on Monday the installation of 7,700 solar power panels near Bakersfield in California, which is expected to produce 740 kilowatts of electricity, the Los Angeles Times said.

The sloping panels will be used to power the pumps and the pipelines operated at Chevron's Kern River oil field facility, the paper said.

'Cold fusion' moves closer to mainstream acceptance

A potential new energy source so controversial that people once regarded it as junk science is moving closer to acceptance by the mainstream scientific community. That's the conclusion of the organizer of one of the largest scientific sessions on the topic -- "cold fusion" -- being held in San Francisco for the next two days in the Moscone Center during the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

World Water Day: Why business needs to worry (Peter Brabeck-Letmanthe, Chairman, Nestle S.A.)

Monday is World Water Day, but I suspect relatively few will have noticed.

While the world is rightly moving to address the challenges presented by climate change and depleting supplies of fossil fuels, the same awareness and consensus does not exist when it comes to addressing our usage of water. Yet the harsh fact is that we will probably run out of water long before we run out of fuel.

We need to act fast, now.

Drought spreading across China

Severe drought is continuing to plague southwest China, and is spreading to other parts of the country. These are the worst conditions the region has ever seen in a century. The government is calling on people to use water sparingly.

Hunger adds to drought's woes

MUYANG, Yunnan - Besides thirst, Yunnan farmer He Zhongcai has to battle another basic need - hunger.

After a seemingly endless drought in Xiaowanshan village since August, the daily dish for He's family is a kind of green grass, called Eyangcao - it means last choice for a starving sheep.

Mixing In Some Carbon

MOSS LANDING, Calif. — It seems like alchemy: a Silicon Valley start-up says it has found a way to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from coal and gas power plants and lock them into cement.

Wind contributing to Arctic sea ice loss, study finds

Much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in recent years is down to the region's swirling winds and is not a direct result of global warming, a new study reveals.

Ice blown out of the region by Arctic winds can explain around one-third of the steep downward trend in sea ice extent in the region since 1979, the scientists say.

The study does not question that global warming is also melting ice in the Arctic, but it could raise doubts about high-profile claims that the region has passed a climate "tipping point" that could see ice loss sharply accelerate in coming years.

Energy security worry to drive India's low-CO2 plan

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Worries over energy security will drive India's goal to slow the growth of its carbon emissions, the head of a government panel tasked with developing the country's low-carbon strategy said on Monday.

Reserves of fossil fuels such as coal were fast running out, making it imperative for India to improve efficiency and accelerate renewable energy sources to keep the economy growing at a projected 8 to 9 percent annually, Kirit Parikh said.

From Wishful Thinking to Real-World Action on Climate

As for population, I noted that Africa’s population is projected to double — from one to two billion — by 2050. That means exposure to climate hazards will greatly increase in many places even if climate patterns don’t change at all. So family planning, and sanitation and water management, sure sound like vital parts of any push for climate progress.

But “population” was barely mentioned in Copenhagen. I almost guarantee that such projects will have a hard time winning grants from the planned Copenhagen Green Climate Fund.

Is Corporate America Our Best Hope Against Climate Change?

Although industry is still the engine of all those carbon emissions — more than a few CEOs doubt that global warming even exists — it is also the source of clean-energy solutions, which are emerging from every layer of the business world, from tiny startups to Fortune 500 behemoths. Major corporations set their own plans for greenhouse gas emissions reductions that far greener than targets that nations throw about at U.N. climate change summits.

Meanwhile Washington is paralyzed, seemingly incapable of coming to grips with global warming or the looming energy crisis. What we need is smart policy to deal with the biggest long-term challenge facing the country. What we get is vacuum.

Ernst & Young's 'window-dressing' role at Lehman Brothers renews criticism of accountancy profession

Ernst & Young's attempts to brush aside criticism of its role in the collapse of Lehman Brothers has failed to deter critics of the profession. If anything, the accountancy firm has forged an alliance of disparate and usually antagonistic groups disturbed by the role it played alongside law firm Linklaters in providing "window dressing" for Lehman's risky financial structures.

Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne said yesterday he wants reform as much as Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman Vince Cable and Prem Sikka, the radical academic Prem Sikka, who has spent more than 20 years arguing that accountancy firms appear, like the Woody Allen character Zelig, in the foreground at every major corporate crash, only to fade from view when difficult questions are asked.

In their sights are the Big Four accountancy firms, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which stand accused of charging excessive fees for work that appears to make little difference when things go wrong.

In the case of Lehmans, Ernst & Young was paid $31m. KPMG charged a similar amount for auditing Wachovia, the fourth largest bank in the US until the government forced its sale to Wells Fargo to head off insolvency.

In the UK, Royal Bank of Scotland paid its auditor, Deloitte ,£58.8m in fees in 2008; while PwC was paid £12m by Lloyds TSB in 2007 before its disastrous merger with HBOS, which in turn paid KPMG £9m.

One barrier to reform is the widespread belief that western capitalism cannot afford to see the Big Four reduced to three or two by scandals that result in long-running and costly lawsuits. In short, they are like the banks and too big to fail.

The collapse of Enron, the US gas company turned financial speculator, brought Arthur Andersen to its knees, after the firm was found aiding and abetting the company's use of off balance sheet vehicles. Andersen helped the company hide losses and shredded vital papers when regulators came looking for evidence. A flurry of class action lawsuits buried the accounting firm.

Aware that a similar incident could kill off another audit firm, the profession has lobbied on both sides of the Atlantic to limit their liability when faced by angry investors.

Limited liability

In July 2000, the government passed legislation allowing accountancy and law firms to become limited liability partnerships (LLPs).

Under the old rules, partners in a firm had been jointly and severally liable for the misdeeds of each other. A lawsuit against one was in effect brought against all partners in the firm.

Indemnity insurance rocketed as corporations got bigger and damages suits likewise. For instance, Ernst & Young was sued for £2bn damages for losses after Equitable Life almost went bust.

LLP status allowed firms to ring-fence lawsuits. Only the partner and the firm concerned could be sued, leaving the assets of other partners intact.

More recently, the profession, led by a former PricewaterhouseCoopers partner, Peter Wyman, persuaded the goverment to allow limited liability audit agreements further circumscribing the ability of investors to sue auditors in the case of a corporate failure.

Wyman, who retains an advisory role at PwC, is featured in a lengthy webcast on FinancialDirector.co.uk explaining the benefits of the agreements and how his efforts to persuade the US government to follow suit had failed. Ernst & Young's exposure as a central character in the collapse of Lehman has probably taken the issue off the agenda for several years. And without US agreement, no major corporation can press ahead and agree a deal.

As Wyman points out, all the biggest companies are registered with the Securities & Exchange Commission, the US equivalent of the Financial Services Authority, and the SEC is not budging.

Cap on legal payouts to investors

The profession has also been seeking a monetary cap on legal payouts to investors. Representatives from the Big Four accountancy firms met officials at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills last spring, to argue that auditors risked going bust if a wave of litigation resulted from investors and liquidators trying to recover losses from big company failures.

Not only banks but a host of corporate failures could be blamed on the failure of auditors to spot rule breaches, excessively risky decisions or criminal behaviour.

Currently, an auditor can be sued for all losses when a company collapses, even if they were judged to be only partly to blame. The Big Four put forward a compromise solution, to limit an auditor's liability to the proportion of their client's loss they are considered responsible for. Under this proposal, shareholders could over-rule the arrangement with the auditors with a vote at an annual general meeting.

Tory MP Michael Fallon, who is deputy chairman of the influential treasury select committee, said he expected a report by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), which is responsible for promoting confidence in corporate reporting and governance, to come up with reforms of the audit profession in the light of the banking crisis.

The FRC is due to publish its delayed report in the summer after spending more than two years consulting industry figures and the profession on changes to the role played by auditors.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW), the body that regulates the Big Four, among others, is also due to report on proposals to toughen the regime for auditors.

Robert Hodgkinson, an executive director at the ICAEW, said he was concerned that auditors had largely followed the approach agreed with investors and regulators but still failed to signal problems at companies that collapsed. The institute has already published a governance code for audit firms.

Fallon said the select committee was concerned at the transparency of audits of UK banks after the collapse of Northern Rock and the near demise of RBS and Lloyds Banking Group.

Vince Cable said the committee's investigation of Northern Rock showed that auditors should be banned from accepting any consultancy work.

"It is crystal clear that bank auditors should not take fees for other work because it will inevitably create conflicts of interest. But that is just a starting point to cleaning up the whole profession," he said.

A failure of the auditory nerves

The centuries-old system of auditing has long been criticised as too cosy and is once again under scrutiny for failing to spot problems at Lehmans.

Auditors going into a big bank will be led by an experienced partner from one of the Big Four accountancy firms: KPMG, Ernst & Young, Deloitte or PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The team will be made up mostly of trainee and junior accountants who will check the financial statements made by the holding company and its subsidiaries. They will take samples of transactions to satisfy themselves that staff are following accounting and reporting rules. They are also supposed to liaise with internal auditors, who are in effect in-house whistleblowers. However, auditors in times past have accepted transactions chosen by the company, and ignored the warnings of internal auditors.

Auditors are employed by investors to oversee the company and check its results represent a "true and fair" view of its finances. But the audit report is presented to the directors and any rows over potential financial discrepancies or misgivings about corporate practices are kept behind closed doors. If disagreement spirals out of control, auditors may refuse to sign off the accounts. The principles-based auditing in the UK is supposed to get round the box-ticking treatment of accounts in the US, which is deemed rigid and merely establishing that figures meet legal/regulatory rules. Yet investors in Lehman found that stricter US accounting rules prevented the sale and buyback schemes that disguised $50bn of its liabilities, while UK rules allowed them.

If there is anyone in your family who thinks that learning in general or science in particular, is tedious and boring, then they haven't been to the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale. This is a museum with more than 200 interactive exhibits and special shows that compete with the best of Florida's tourist attractions.

Promoting lifelong learning in science for children and adults through exhibits and programs is the mission of this museum and they do it in flying colors.

An example of the novelty and inventiveness of this place is a special exhibit that they are currently running. "Grossology, the impolite science of the human body" uses animatronics and other high-tech interactive exhibits to let you discover, in a humorous way, everything about the human body including warts, pimples, farts, belches and the like.

The museum offers a mix of special exhibits, like Grossology that rotate during the months and some permanent exhibits as well. The permanent exhibits will also capture the imagination of young and old alike. For example the Runways to Rockets exhibit hall has a new 4,000 square foot aviation station where visitors will be able to learn how to fly by actually stepping into a simulated cockpit. You will even be able to put on personal wings and step into an air tunnel and feel what flying is all about.

Another stand-out exhibition is the Living in the Everglades section of the museum. Here you will find an 11,000 square foot outdoor trail that highlights the different ecosystems of Florida. The indoor exhibit has interactive kiosks showing the importance of the Everglades, the effect of humans on the Everglades and current efforts to restore this eco-system to a healthy condition.

The discovery center section of the museum was especially designed for children seven years old and younger. Here they can climb a tree, build a wall or hoist a sale and experience the fun of learning how the world is put together.

For older folks, the Gizmo City section explains how things work, and how technology affects our lives. The highlight here is the virtual volleyball game.

One of the big block-buster features of the Museum is an IMAX movie theater with five story-high screens. The screen is said to be the biggest in southern Florida and measures sixty by eighty feet. The sound experience is also spectacular with 42 speakers belting out 15,000 watts of digital surround sound.

You can even bring home some of the fun of this museum by shopping in their Explore Store where you will find games, toys, books and gifts that express the themes of the museum.

The Museum is located in the Arts and Science District, across from Riverwalk's Esplanade Park and the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Admission prices are a modest $10 for adults (less for seniors and children) and a good buy is the $15 General admission ticket which gets you into the exhibits and one IMAX film show

If anyone's in London or thereabouts on the 31st of March, come and see me and a few other science journalists discuss the state of science in the media at City University. The discussion follows a recent government report, entitled Science in the Media: Securing the Future. The report declared that science coverage (in the UK, at least) was in "rude health", while is somewhat different to the picture that others have painted.

I'll be discussing the report as well as, presumably, other matters about science journalism along with a panel of veteran UK journalists. I assume that I have been recruited as the voice of youthful dissent and indeed, those of you who were at my panel at ScienceOnline may remember me reading out a passage from this same report to the sound of laughter from the crowd.

Personally, I think the report has a lot of good things to say, but it's missing any substantial discussion about the new ecosystem of online science journalism and the changing nature of those who can legitimately call themselves science journalists. But enough for now - come along and join the discussion. It should be a good one.

The official description is below and you need to reserve a place.

I'd also like to encourage people who attend to tweet it. Perhaps #scimedia as a hashtag. 

• Date: Wednesday 31 March 2010
• Time: 6.30pm
• Location: City University London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB

A recent government report on science in the media declared that it was in "rude health", while other commentators think that it is ailing and in crisis.

Join the debate with a panel of leading science journalists including:

• Pallab Ghosh (BBC)
• Natasha Loder (Economist)
• Andrew Jack (Financial Times)
• Ed Yong (Not Exactly Rocket Science blog)
• Fiona Fox (Science Media Centre and author of the report)

Legalized marijuana has become a cause du jour of late, gaining steam In places like California and D.C. for its potential to ease the pain of the busted economy and skyrocketing imprisonment rates.

But what effect would it have on the environment?

In truth, growing pot as a large-scale cash crop is toxic to the ecosystem. Growers often cultivate the plant in national forests, where pesticides, waste, and irrigation tubes wreak havoc on the land and wildlife. As the U.S. Forest Service has stated, "They basically trash our public lands."

But here's the catch: This is largely happening because the drug is illegal. Marijuana growers are forced to work in discreet areas of national forests to hide their activity, and the lack of regulation leads to increased recklessness in the way the crop is grown. If pot were legal, growers would likely move to less sensitive growth areas and abide by the same standards as legal medicinal growers, who often buy soil in bulk, use rat traps instead of poison, and utilize drip systems to provide water.

Legalization would also curb the eco-effects of illegal smuggling across the border. Cartels routinely use generators, diesel storage tanks, and animal poison to preserve their cache, when the border area is surrounded by more than 4 million acres of sensitive federal wilderness.

Finally, it would stop the negative effects of the Drug War itself. According to the Drug Policy Alliance Network, some bureaucrats use dangerous herbicides to eradicate "ditch weed" with no commercial value simply because doing so boosts their statistics and makes them look tougher.

Of course, the best thing for the environment would be to simply be cease pot-growing altogether. But let's be real: That's never going to happen. In light of that, the next best bet is to make it legal.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Original Artwork by @Natasha

The state and future of Twitter is passionately debated as users and industry pundits explore whether or not the platform and the relationships that connect one another are in danger of slowing or worse, regressing.  Over the last year, Twitter experienced its most phenomenal growth to date, fueled by the adoption of the communication network by highly visible and influential personalities that attracted legions of new users to establish one-to-many and ultimately many-to-many connections. But, then the meteoric ascent practically leveled-off…

HubSpot released a new report that captures the state of the Twitterverse, opening a window that instantly transforms speculation into analysis and setting the stage for informed discourse and exploration.

According to the report, Twitter’s user growth peaked at 13% in March 2009 falling to just 3.5% in October 2009. And while this is the most recent date for which HubSpot has access, it is revealing nonetheless.

The steep decline, as I’ve said many times, has less to do with exposure and more to do with the initial Twitter experience for prospective users. Millions upon millions of new prospects are introduced to Twitter everyday by brands and media properties who place Twitter center stage in broadcast, print, and in person.

Follow us on Twitter.

Send us a Tweet.

Tweet us to win.

Receive special discounts, promos, and coupons just by following us.

Once they arrive at Twitter, there’s very little instruction or incentive to take the steps to not only create an account, but also adopt it as a form of daily or even weekly communication.

Although user adoption is slowing, existing users appear more engaged. According to the report, the average user is following a greater number of people and earning a greater reach through an increased number of followers. Existing users are also posting more content.

Once engaged in Twitter, the seduction of response, by a stranger or someone we know, combined with the allure of popularity is enticing and intoxicating. Many people fall victim to its addictive qualities as you are rewarded with feedback, connections, and presence through engagement. As such, Twitter is a rich network of opportunity to increase stature as measured through online social capital. Experienced users realize that the value of participatory media is powered by so much more than just simple tweets or conversations.

Paying it forward, reciprocity, and recognition are the investments we make in earning attention and awareness for the value we bring to the table.

When we realize that Twitter is far more than a tool to enliven self-actualization, “I Tweet therefore I am,” we uncork the essence of who we are today and who we wish to become tomorrow. As such, we embrace nuances of self-branding by presenting ourselves through bios, locations, and outbound profile links. Users are making the connection that they can define and shape the experience of those who clickthrough to their profile in order to better present the persona they wish rather than the personality left open to interpretation and perception.

Social Media is making this world a much smaller place, linking us through the words we place into action and the topics, interests and passions we share. We’re forging highly focused and expansive networks that engender opportunities for collaboration, education, and entertainment and as a result, we’re finding comfort outside of our comfort zones. We are now citizens of international provinces where we establish the governance and culture and set the course for our new found freedom.

Relationships are seemingly evolving into relations, where we invest in connections of those we know and also wish to know.  However, while many users maintain following and follower networks numbering in the thousands, 82% of Twitter users maintain a network of less than 100 followers and 91% follow less than 100 people.

The Twitterverse is a living and breathing ecosystem that moves and adapts to current events and the moments of opportunity when someone is prone to sharing, responding, or viewing the activity of their friends and contacts.  Dan Zarrella and I previously discussed the art and science of retweets, and in this report, HubSpot examined user characteristics and patterns of use.

What, when, and how we share, read, and bookmark tweets is governed by what I call the attention aperture. Our attention aperture opens and closes to match our daily regiment. We are only susceptible to learning at different times than we are to sharing. And through the analysis of the greater collective, we can observe patterns in this activity.

HubSpot observed that Thursday and Friday are among the most active days on Twitter, with each accounting for 16% of total tweets. Furthermore, 10 – 11 p.m. is the busiest hour on Twitter, accounting for 4.8% of the tweets in an average day.

HubSpot also documented the distribution of Tweets per day to get an idea of when people are updating their status, but also most likely, ready to be introduced to new, relevant content.

In the report published in collaboration with Dan Zarrella, we observed that Monday and Friday were among the greatest opportunities for retweeting as those windows represented ideal time frames for when the attention aperture was wide open.

Believe it or not, I’m often asked, “what’s the secret to retweets.” People are often introduced to formulas and methodologies that are questionable at best, but presented otherwise. My response is direct and honest, “say something worthy of retweeting.” And for good measure, I always throw in, “120 is the new 140. If you leave room at the end of your tweet for @username and potential commentary, you make it effortless for someone to RT you.”

Billions of Tweets Now Served

According to the data, it appears that the growth of Twitter is indeed leveling. However, existing usage is only skyrocketing among the core group of users who didn’t necessarily need Twitter to tell them how to get value out of ongoing engagement. According to recent research conducted by Pingdom, Twitter is serving more than 40 million tweets per day.

Most notably, on January 12th, 2010, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams published a Tweet that marked the company’s busiest day…

Across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter’s highest-usage day ever. (And today will be bigger.)

In reviewing the astronomical rise of Tweets published by existing users, we see that Twitter is now serving more than one billion tweets per month – crossing over for the first time in December 2009.

From January 2009 to January 2010, the growth is practically blinding. Tweets, in just one year, ballooned 16x.

In the last three months, Twitter experienced month-to-month growth close to 17%.

November 16.8%

December 16.6%

January 16.9%

Pingdom estimates that Twitter will process around 1.4 billion tweets as soon as February 2010.

50,000,000 Tweets Per Day

We can’t help but feel like we’re running on a perpetual treadmill of rapid evolution courtesy of the blurring pace at which the real-time is Web is accelerating. When reviewing the recent Pingdom data, the first thing that comes to mind is, that was then, this is now.

Why?

In February, Twitter added its data to the mix revealing the magnitude and velocity of tweets. As of today, more than 50 million tweets are published in the statusphere, not to mention the distribution and syndication of those tweets across multiple social networks. According to the Twitter team, that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.

For perspective, in 2007, Twitter hosted 5,000 tweets per day. In 2008, the number climbed to 300,000 per day. In 2009, Twitter was publishing an astounding 2.5 million per day and over the course of the year, it soared to 35 million, up 1,400%

Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.

The state of the Twitterverse or the Twittersphere if you will, has less to do with what “is” and more to do with what’s possible. I’m focusing my time on the latter. However, it takes Twitter, as a technology and as a business, to realize that what it is and what it wants to be, is distanced only by the actions it takes today. Meaning, the user experience starts upon the initial visit to Twitter.com and it continues long after registration. There’s much to be done – especially as Twitter has yet to truly demonstrate its value as an independent network for the masses.

I Tweet, therefore I am…part of a larger movement to expand awareness, literacy and connections that escalate causes and conversations that are greater than, but still complement, my purpose for engaging online.

Connect with Brian Solis: Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google Buzz, Facebook
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Get Putting the Public Back in Public Relations and The Conversation Prism:

By now, everyone knows about global warming.  Many also know that it's not "just" an environmental problem--if left unchecked it will have ruinous economic consequences as well. But that's not the only global environmental problem we face that also involves enormous economic costs that most people are unaware of.

Thursday before last, the UK Guardian ran a story about a forthcoming UN report on the environmental costs of doing business the old-fashioned way, "World's top firms cause $2.2tn [trillion] of environmental damage, report estimates".  The story's subhead read: "Report for the UN into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment."  And the story itself began thus:

The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.

The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.

Later this year, another huge UN study - dubbed the "Stern for nature" after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern - will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.

The report is the final stage of an ongoing process that's been under way for several years, as you can see at the UN's webpage for the project:

THE ECONOMICS OF ECOSYSTEMS AND BIODIVERSITY

Human well-being is dependent upon "ecosystem services" provided by nature for free, such as water and air purification, fisheries, timber and nutrient cycling. These are predominantly public goods with no markets and no prices, so their loss often is not detected by our current economic incentive system and can thus continue unabated. A variety of pressures resulting from population growth, changing diets, urbanisation, climate change and many other factors is causing biodiversity to decline, and ecosystems are continuously being degraded. The world's poor are most at risk from the continuing loss of biodiversity, as they are the ones that are most reliant on the ecosystem services that are being degraded.

At the meeting of the environment ministers of the G8 countries and the five major newly industrialising countries that took place in Potsdam in March 2007, the German government proposed a study on 'The economic significance of the global loss of biological diversity' as part of the so-called 'Potsdam Initiative' for biodiversity.

The following wording was agreed at Potsdam: 'In a global study we will initiate the process of analysing the global economic benefit of biological diversity, the costs of the loss of biodiversity and the failure to take protective measures versus the costs of effective conservation.'

This proposal was endorsed by G8+5 leaders at the Heiligendamm Summit on 6-8 June 2007.

An interim report was produced in 2008, after which, the site explains:

The second, more substantial, phase of the study is structured around one background report and several reports targeted towards specific categories of decision makers who are also potential users of evaluation tools for biodiversity and ecosystem services:

• D0 Report on the Ecological and Economic Foundations
  
• D1 Report for Policy Makers
  
• D2 Report for Local Administrators
  
• D3 Report for Businesses
  
• D4 Report for Citizens.

These reports will be compiled in a phased approach and published consecutively between autumn 2009 and autumn 2010. The final results will be presented at CBD COP-10 in 2010.

As indicated by the Guardian headline, a great deal of business profit comes directly from exploiting the unpriced goods of nature, services such as clean, breathable air that business has simply taken for granted, but that ordinary people cannot.  I've been writing about this issue in a very concrete way at the Port of Los Angeles for several years now, primarily by focusing on the externalized health and mortality costs being inflicted on primarily low-income and/or minority communities-otherwise known as "EJ [environmental justice] communities."

For Earth Day three years ago, I wrote a feature I republished at MyDD, "Behind Green Eyes: Four Concepts That Can Change How You See The Environment".  These were: community-centered environmentalism, externalized costs, the precautionary principle, and ecosystem services.  All four relate to the subject of the UN project and its forthcoming final report, but the last two are particularly salient. Instead of the environment being something "out there," community-centered environmentalism sees the environment as an integral component in everything we do.

The Precautionary Principle states that if an action or policy could cause significant or irreversible public harm, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action. It is not enough to say, "We don't know of any health effects," as happened for decades with smoking, asbestos, or diesel pollution.  Regarding externalized costs, I wrote, in part:

Although it's a long-standing economic concept, elaborated in detail by British economist Arthur Pigou almost 100 years ago, economic measurements of externalized costs have been hard to make until quite recently.

Locally, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) has played a leading role in developing cost models including health, premature death, agricultural productivity, traffic congestion, visibility, and corrosion.

"With each new air quality plan--we update about every 3 years--we do a socio-economic analysis," AQMD spokesman Sam Atwood explained.  "As more and more medical research is done, we continue to get a more accurate picture the monetary health benefits from cleaning up the smog."

The most recent analysis was just days away from being released when Atwood spoke to Random Lengths, but he provided a ballpark picture.

"Total benefits including health and other benefits exceed $20 billion a year, total. Costs on average each year will be $2.35 billion," Atwood said.

The benefits are reductions in negative externalities, but the ports [are] only part of AQMD's responsibility, and significant externalized costs will still remain.

"The state has told us that by 2020, polluting activity from California's ports operations and associated freight transport will have a health impact of approximately $200 billion," Annette Kondo, spokesperson for the Coalition for Clean Air (CCA) pointed out. "That's a huge health bill that hurts the pocketbooks of all Californians," Kondo continued, adding the following breakdown of annual statistics from the California Air Resources Board:

• 2,400 premature deaths
  
• 2,830 additional hospital admissions
  
• 360,000 sick days for workers
  
• And, 1.1 million missed school days for children in California.

If these costs were included in the price of doing business, it would play havoc with existing business models. Costs of imported goods would skyrocket.  But fortunately, as Atwood's figures remind us, the costs of reducing pollution are much cheaper than costs incurred by producing it.

This is the problem seen on a local scale--already quite massive, but relatively easy to grasp conceptually.  It's not hard to get people to start seeing things this way.  The effort just has to be made to start educating them.  

And regarding ecosystem services, I wrote:

Finally, the ecosystem services perspective looks at natural systems in terms of the services they provide for human society.  Because we have never had to pay for such services, we tend to take them for granted--that is, until they are gone, when they can be very expensive, or even impossible to replace.
These include provisioning services such as food, water, timber, and fiber; regulating services that affect climate, floods, disease, wastes, and water quality; cultural services that provide recreational, aesthetic, and spiritual benefits; and supporting services such as soil formation, photosynthesis, and nutrient cycling.

The UN-sponsored Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, with 1,300 expert contributors from 95 countries concluded that 15 of 24 ecosystem services studied "are being degraded or used unsustainably, including fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water purification, and the regulation of regional and local climate, natural hazards, and pests."

From this perspective, the unpaid health costs from port pollution are typical of economic costs incurred by the destruction of ecosystem services (in this case, the provision of healthy air to breath).  The loss of thousands of acres of wetlands in the harbor also helped destroy the provisioning of rich fisheries which formerly employed thousands of harbor area workers.  

The UN's effort is to look at the entire world the way that I described in terms of our local problem of port pollution.  The press release for the D1 report released in mid-November that I mentioned above described a set of "key recommendations for policymakers to consider."  Here are the first five of them:

1: Invest in ecological infrastructure: This can provide cost-effective opportunities to increase resilience to climate change, reduce risk from natural hazards, improve food and water security, and contribute to poverty alleviation. Up-front investments in maintenance and conservation are almost always cheaper than trying to restore damaged ecosystems, and the social benefits that flow from restoration can be several times higher than the costs. Preliminary TEEB estimates suggest that the potential rates of return can reach 40 percent for mangrove and woodlands/shrublands, 50 percent for tropical forests and 79 percent for grasslands when the multiple ecosystems services are taken into account.

2: Reward benefits through payments and markets: Payments for ecosystem services (PES schemes) from local (e.g. water provisioning) to global (the REDD-Plus proposal for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, as well as from afforestation, reforestation, and effective conservation).

3: Reform environmentally harmful subsidies: Reforming subsidies that are inefficient, outdated or harmful makes double sense during a time of economic and ecological crisis.  

4: Address losses through regulation and pricing: The cost of losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services should be tackled through regulatory frameworks that establish environmental standards and liability regimes. Designing a robust instrumental and market framework to confront resource users with these costs is a key priority for policy makers.

5: Recognise that protected areas are a cornerstone of conservation policies and provide multiple benefits: The global PA network covers around 13.9 percent of the Earth's land surface, 5.9 percent of territorial seas, and only 0.5 percent of the high seas: nearly a sixth of the world's population depend on protected areas for a significant percentage of their livelihoods. Investing US$45 billion in protected areas could secure vital nature-based services worth some US$5 trillion a year, including the sequestration of carbon, the protection and enhancement of water resources and protection against flooding (Balmford et al. 2002). There are also employment incentives, for example, in Bolivia protected-area tourism generates over 20,000 jobs, indirectly supporting over 100,000 people (Pabon-Zamora et al. 2009)

The second five recommendations were more specific, under the umbrella of a particular need for urgency:

The TEEB study shows that benefits of reform are multiple. It also reinforces the growing evidence that there are a number of urgent strategic ecosystem priorities that require policy shifts to address them:

6: Halt deforestation and forest degradation should be an integral part of climate change mitigation and adaptation focused on 'green carbon'. It has the added benefit of preserving the huge range of services and goods forests provide to local people and the wider community;

7: Protect tropical coral reefs - and the associated livelihoods of half a billion people - through major efforts to avoid global temperature rise;

8: Save and restore global fisheries, which are currently under threat of collapse from over fishing;

9: Recognise the deep link between ecosystem degradation and the persistence of rural poverty and align policies across sectors with key Millennium Development Goals.

10: Agree to a forest carbon deal at Copenhagen.

I just can't help but think how different our political situation today would be, if only Obama really had been a transformational leader, and if he'd only had some kind of magical machine that would have allowed him to know what the UN was up to.  There is no doubt whatsoever that Obama has extraordinary gifts that could have been used to bring the above-described issues to public awareness, and pressed home the need to begin thinking and acting within a new conceptual framework.

Obama had the capacity to make all the above intelligable and compelling to people.  Instead, he has wasted all our time in a fruitless search for crumbs from President Snowe, President Lieberman, President Grassley, President Nelson, President Graham.

What an enormous waste!  What a terrible, tragic, enormous waste!

I can't find the paper you've written about and your link doesn't work. What's going on? 

I keep on having to answer this question and it's getting tiresome (although, as we'll see, this no fault of the people who ask it). This post is borne of that frustration.

At the bottom of every piece I write about a piece of peer-reviewed research (which is most of them), I include a citation for the paper in question and a link. This is good practice. Every journalist should, in theory, do it. The link is almost always to a DOI number rather than to the journal page. And often, those links don't work. This post explains why and I will link to it from every single post I write with massive bold letters.

A lot of the stories I write are embargoed - this means that people can only publish their pieces about the story at a certain point in time. However, even after the embargo lifts, there is often a time gap before the journal in question actually publishes the paper and before the DOI listing works. For some journals, this time is negligible - Nature and Science, for example, reliably have their papers up within minutes or hours of the embargo lift. For others, it can be much longer. PNAS is the most obvious example - I've waited for up to two weeks before the paper actually went online after it made the news. The record so far is several months for a Journal of Zoology paper.

It's very important to realise this because at the point when most journalists write their pieces, there is no paper to link to. What they'd have to do is to go back to the piece after it's been published and retrospectively add a link. Which, and I speak from personal experience, is an absolute pain in the nethers. By then, we've got other things to do and (as with PNAS) it's never entirely clear when the paper is actually going to go live.

The alternative, then, is to do what I do, which is to provide the DOI and as full a citation as possible so that when the paper does come online, readers will at least be able to find it.

That's not ideal however, because people still get confused when they search for something that isn't actually out yet. I get a lot of comments to this effect. Of course, the best solution would be to totally eliminate the gap between embargo and publication so that the public can actually see the paper (or, at least, the abstract) when the news hits.

I've written about embargoes before (and thrilled to see that Ivan Oransky has started an Embargo Watch blog). They're controversial but on balance, I'm favourable towards them. The big change I want to see is the extinction of the post-embargo publication gap. It's existence is a vestigial leftover from the age where journalists acted as sources of authority and it's a complete anathema to the internet world.

People expect to be able to tumble down the rabbit-hole of links to find original sources and check them out for themselves, if they are so inclined. These outmoded policies mean that the rabbit hole ends in 404 purgatory.

This practice punishes scientists who are unable to see, comment on, or discuss work that is outed in the mainstream media, it punishes journalists who are trying to link to original sources, and it punishes readers who are inquisitive and skeptical enough to try to verify the information they read. None of these is acceptable.

More on journalism at Not Exactly Rocket Science:

• 
  
• Rebooting science journalism - on blurring boundaries, money, audiences and duck sex
• 
  
• Rebooting science journalism - thoughts from Timmer
• 
  
• Adapting to the new ecosystem of science journalism
• 
  
• Who are the science journalists?
• 
  
• Breaking the inverted pyramid - placing news in context
• 
  
• On cheerleaders and watchdogs - the role of science journalism
• 
  
• Does science journalism falter or flourish under embargo?
• 
  

George John is CEO of display advertising technology company Rocket Fuel.

It’s fashionable to talk about online ad inventory as a commodity that can be traded on exchanges and priced fairly through a market mechanism, just like trading stocks on Wall Street. The analogy misses important differences between online ad inventory and commodities, ones that create opportunities for companies that have the technology to capitalize on the distinctions.

Here’s the thing — online ad impressions are more like snowflakes than stocks: no two are exactly alike, and they melt.

For example, a share of Time Warner is a share of Time Warner, but a single ad impression on Time.com is not exactly the same as any other: not only will future impressions occur at different times obviously, but they will be to different users with different interests and different previous ad interactions, in different geographies, with different demographics, different browser versions, different ISPs, etc. The value even depends on the buyer, and the relevance of that buyer’s ads to the current user — the opportunity to serve an ad to a luxury retail shopper on Time.com is worth more to Nordstrom than to IBM. Even worse, a share of Time Warner will exist in perpetuity, but a single display adserving opportunity comes into existence in real-time when a browser visits a page, and it spoils fractions of a second later when the ad is required to load.

This makes estimating the value of an online ad impression exponentially harder than estimating the value of a financial security, in the true sense of the word “exponential”, since the addition of each new factor describing an online ad impression multiplies the number of statistics requiring estimation by the effective cardinality of that factor. Certainly, quantitative trading houses also build multi-factor models to forecast prices on financial securities, but the point is that ultimately there is in fact a CUSIP or ticker symbol that identifies the security, and there is no such analog in display advertising except for the vector of factors that describe an impression.

The online ad marketplace has progressed through significant phases of evolution, from the early days dominated by relatively indiscriminate forward contracts on bulk bundles of ad space negotiated via publishers’ direct sales teams, to today’s increasing prevalence of exchanges with real-time bidding that allow parties to express bidding strategies based on their own mathematical functions applied to all of the descriptors of a single online ad impression to calculate a bid. In theory, the creation of this kind of market, that is perfectly liquid and allows expression of arbitrary complex bidding algorithms, should have resulted in amazing value creation for advertisers. In practice, the challenge is that the invisible hand of the market is at this point controlled by the immature brain of the market, but this will change.

On a recent day across a handful of real-time exchanges, we saw that over 35% of winning bids were multiples of $1, and over 54% were multiples of $.10 or $.25. Participating in a real-time bidding exchange but only doing this kind of manual bidding is like having a Ferrari and only using it to drive to the grocery store — you can brag about it to your friends, but it’s not really adding any value. This doesn’t indicate that real-time exchanges are a failed enterprise; instead it shows there’s a massive opportunity here for someone who can develop the rocket science that can run rings around the kind of unsophisticated players who are bidding $1 on every impression.

Of course, it’s self-serving to say that technologies like the ones my company offers are the solution to the problem, but they are: What unlocks the full value of the ecosystem for both advertisers and publishers is an intelligent arbitrageur, with a twist. In finance an arbitrageur adds value only insofar as it creates wealth for itself and generally serving to equalize prices to “fair” levels; but otherwise arbitrage is a zero-sum game. By contrast, in online advertising, value is created by optimally matching demand (ads) with supply (ad space), which fulfills the “right ad, right user, right time” promise. By doing this well, everyone wins — publishers are more fairly rewarded, advertisers can get more responses for the same spend, and users see more relevant ads.

The rocket science involved in doing this well is a combination of a number of components such as predictive modeling, adaptive control, and portfolio optimization. Predictive modeling means using all of the information about an impression to predict the likelihood of response for a given ad, so that an intelligent system can determine the impression’s likely contribution to performance goals. Similar technology is used in many marketing contexts from direct mail to Netflix movie recommendations. Adaptive control involves micro-adjustments to campaigns in flight to keep key objectives like performance and delivery pacing within a desired operating range. This is also the technology that keeps a Segway upright and allows pilots like Captain Sullenberger to glide a 150,000-pound Airbus 320 to a gentle river landing. Portfolio optimization considers an array of potential investments and allocates assets optimally to achieve a desired risk/reward blend, and as the name implies, is similar to its financial analogy.

So the solution is intelligent bidding and adserving. Like Jimmy Carter telling us 30 years ago that we need a coherent energy plan including conservation, the solution has the ring of truth but is also hard, which is where full-service media buying services like my own come in. Instead of forcing an agency media team to jump into the deep end and trade in its day planners for lab notebooks and ditch Photoshop for Mathematica, such services handle the technology and campaign management, and let agencies focus on clients’ strategic needs.

George John is a bona fide rocket scientist who left a career working on artificial intelligence software for Mars rovers at NASA to work on quantitative finance and then optimized marketing. After stints at Stanford, Lockheed, IBM, E.piphany, Salesforce.com and Yahoo, George founded Rocket Fuel Inc as its CEO in 2008. Rocket Fuel provides an adserving and bidding engine to agencies and advertisers primarily via a full-service managed offering, the Rocket Fuel Network, that is sold like an ad network. Its advertisers include many of the top brands in the world such as Infiniti, Lord & Taylor, and BlackBerry.

Companies: Rocket Fuel

     A  reader recently asked me a question about fish oil. She wanted to know if krill oil is better for you than fish oil. Of course, the answer‘s never simple when it comes to your nutrition. So let‘s first start by discussing the ABCs of fish oil.

The catch-22 of fish oil

     As you‘ll recall, omega-3 fatty acids (found in fish or cod liver oil) are basic building blocks of good health. In fact, that‘s why we call them "essential" fatty acids. These vital nutrients support your immune system, heart, mood, blood sugar, joints, brain, and so much more. But they also increase free radicals in your body.

     Free radicals are charged molecules that can speed up the aging process. In addition, many scientists believe that free radicals can damage your DNA. They disrupt the natural life cycle of your cells, which over time can lead to diseases like cancer.

     That‘s why I always remind you to take plenty of antioxidants (especially vitamin E and selenium). These antioxidants neutralize free radicals.

Finding the right fish oil

     Our bodies need omega-3 fatty acids for survival, but we can‘t produce the essential omega-3 ourselves. So we‘ve got to get it from the foods we eat. Unfortunately, very few of us do.

     In that case...

     A bottle of high-quality fish oil capsules should always be a staple in your kitchen cabinet. Find a brand that you trust. Look for the bottle to say 99.99 percent purified fish oil.

     But don‘t worry. The last .01 percent doesn‘t contain mercury. Just small impurities that are nearly impossible to refine away. (It‘s the same with gold. You‘ll only find 99.99 percent pure gold. There‘s no such thing as 100 percent pure gold.)

     So if you can find good fish oil, what‘s the big deal about krill...?

The pros (and cons) of taking krill oil

     As far as I can tell, there are four big reasons why people opt for krill instead of fish (or cod liver) oil.

     First off, krill oil contains a decent dose of the antioxidant astaxanthin. So some natural medicine practitioners say you don‘t need the added vitamin E and selenium when you take krill. But I disagree. Even if you opt for krill oil, you should still take a natural mixed tocopherols-type vitamin E along with it.

     Secondly, some people like taking krill better. There‘s less of a fishy aftertaste. (This isn‘t a huge problem in my book, especially if you take your fish oil before meals. But I know that trick doesn‘t work for everyone. And some people don‘t like to belch fish.)

    Thirdly, sometimes people take krill because they want a "more pure" product. You see, fishermen catch krill in the deepest, darkest waters of Antarctica. So some people believe this pretty much guarantees that your krill oil won‘t contain any pollutants or heavy metals. (But as I said earlier, I wouldn‘t worry about it too much if you find a major brand of fish oil that says 99.99 percent pure on the bottle.)

     The last benefit to taking krill has to do with the environment. You may have seen the recent TIME magazine article about fish oil. Apparently, the market for fish oil supplements has skyrocketed to $1 billion since 1996. As a result, some environmentalists say we‘re putting certain types of fish at risk.

     Scientists have seen declining numbers of one type of fish used primarily for their oil, called menhaden. These fish eat algae in the ocean. But when menhaden levels drop off, algae grow out of control. This depletes oxygen in the ocean and—according to some environmentalists—upsets the ocean‘s ecosystem.

     From this point of view, krill‘s a great option. It‘s a "sustainable" or "renewable" form of fish, which means even if everyone on your street starts taking krill; the fish won‘t disappear off the planet.

     One of the biggest reasons against taking krill has to do with the cost. A 30-day supply of krill oil costs at least twice as much as regular fish oil does. Plus, research for this relatively new supplement is still pretty limited. I‘ve yet to see overwhelming research convincing me that nutritionally it‘s any better for you than regular fish oil. So unless you feel strongly about one of other the reasons cited above, the benefits might not warrant the big price tag.

Decide for yourself

     Look at the pros and cons and decide for yourself about krill oil. I do take it from time to time. Though, it‘s certainly much more expensive than regular fish oil, so I really only take it when I‘m feeling extravagant!

It's Data Privacy Day and when it comes to generating privacy-related buzz in the blogosphere, there are few governments as controversial as China. From Google's recent security issues, to blocked social media sites to the proposed Green Dan censorship program, Western netizens have always had a tenuous relationship with China. As part of our Never Mind the Valley series, ReadWriteWeb spoke to several investors and entrepreneurs to find out what it's like to run a startup beyond what many describe as the "Great Firewall".

Sponsor

Emerging Markets

Says Barrett Parkman, International Business Development Manager at Mobile Internet Great Wall Club, "Having user generated content as the core of a company here is risky business. Not to say UGC isn't alive and well, it's just that companies have to take strong measures to restrict it to uncontroversial topics. This is another reason that the gaming sector and virtual goods industry are growing so rapidly since they are generally uncontroversial in nature."

Because of China's leadership in the gaming sector, CMUNE CEO Ludovic Bodin is taking Chinese revenue models and applying them to his Western-launched products such as Paradise Paintball. Says Bodin, "China is one of the most advanced country in the world for online gaming and has strong knowledge of the sale of virtual goods as a primary business model. CMUNE is taking the best practices in China and adapting for a non-Chinese context and audience. Developing here gives us an advantage to later launch into the Chinese market. "

Plus Eight Star CEO Benjamin Joffe further addresses China's meteoric growth in gaming and virtual goods. Joffe frequently presents emerging trends in China's mobile, telecom and Internet markets.

Explains Joffe, "The online gaming market is still booming despite being already very large. There are nine companies listed on NASDAQ and Hong Kong stock exchanges including Tencent." Joffe argues that while many Chinese companies began similar to their Western counterparts, founders quickly realized the need to generate revenue beyond the ad model. As the leading community portal in China, Tencent earned more than $1.5 billion dollars in revenue last year with a large portion of that generated through virtual goods.

In addition to watching the social gaming space, Joffe suggests that technologists look for interesting plays from the business social networking space and from a unique matchmaking service with a hybrid call center/online component called Zhenai.

Funding

On the other hand, entrepreneurs with more modest needs can find fundraising challenging. Says Richard Robinson, CEO of casual gaming site Kooky Panda, "Later stage VC funding is advanced and even frothy here in the Middle Kingdom and the early stage is still quite nascent." Robinson goes to explain how much of the angel funding in China comes from friends, family and industry insiders. Nevertheless, that environment is improving as new groups step up with seed money and mentorship for early-stage investors.

Former president of Google China Dr. Kai-Fu Lee launched Innovation Works as a $115 million dollar venture fund for early-stage entrepreneurs. The fund focuses on web, mobile and cloud computing technologies targeted at the greater Chinese market and investors include YouTube cofounder Steve Chen and makers of Lenovo, Legend Group. Additional sources for angel funding include associations such as the Asia America MultiTechnology Association angel group, the China Business Angel Network and The Chinese Founders Fund.

Says Dr. Jovan Hsu founding partner of the Chinese Founders Fund, "There are few funds looking to invest in companies where the valuation is less than $10 million dollars and private equity firms are even higher. Early stage companies need more angel funds. The Chinese Founders Fund finds itself in a good position in the investment food chain in China. We're providing smart money."

Mentorship and Learning

Operations

Says Demopoulos, "I've lived in China for many years and have been involved in media and internet projects for nearly a decade. Globalization provides talent, resources, and the chance to deploy anywhere and seek returns. I'm no exception."

Says Victor Tong, an angel investor in WebPlus and former director at Talentsoft, "China has built up a market-oriented economy and the business environment is quite free now. Meanwhile, great development in information technology provides companies a lot of support in their business operation...Doing business in China is a great experience. The 1.3 billion person consumer market is a temptation that's too hard to resist. "

• Richard Dawkins' autobiographical essay, published as part of Drickamer and Dewsbury's Leaders of Animal Behavior - The Second Generation. The Dawkins piece is highly recommended.
• An important titbit: "As for the idea of The Selfish Gene being an advocacy of either selfishness or niceness, both were absurd, and good examples of the inflated importance of titles. The 'selfishness' we are talking about is of genes. From selfish genes, either altruism or selfishness at the individual organism level might flow, depending on the economic conditions that obtained. That was the whole point!"

• The human mind is really weird. Mo of Neurophilosophy reviews a study that found another example of this: among other things, thirsty subjects (who were given lots of pretzels to eat) thought a bottle of water placed a set distance away was closer to them than did non-thirsty controls. 
• "These findings demonstrate that higher order psychological states can have a significant effect on visual perception. Specifically, they show that our desires have a direct influence on the perception of distance, such that desirable objects are perceived to be closer than they really are. This mechanism would serve to guide behaviour in the optimum way, by encouraging the perceiver to reach out and acquire the desired object."

• Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science on the future of science journalism in the age of the internet.
• The good news: "Thanks to new media, everyone with a computer and a connection has the ability to write about science or to comment on what others have written. The ability to produce content has been thrust into the hands of a broad range of people who are keen to talk about science to a mass audience. It's a Cambrian-style explosion in the practice of journalism. This adaptive radiation has also brought in an influx of expertise, people who have both the skill to explain science and the knowledge to talk about it correctly. That means greater accuracy when reporting the findings of studies. It also means better choices in terms of what gets covered. I have argued before that this process of critically analysing a story before the point of publication is vital to ensure that bad science doesn't contaminate the public's news diet. A greater diversity of writers also means more coverage for smaller stories that might fall through the gaps of more mainstream publications. As an example, interesting papers on controversial issues like race, gender equality and religion are widely ignored, while the most recent panacea-of-the-day or evolutionary just-so story has no trouble in grabbing headlines."
• The bad news: "Enthusiastic amateurs will not compensate for a decline in mainstream news reporting or the vast audiences that it reaches. Even the most successful blogs have readerships that are orders of magnitude lower those of mainstream publications. If such publications decline, the worry is that fewer people will be exposed to science stories, save those who actively go in search for it. Communities like ScienceBlogs or Discover Blogs provide a good model for pooling individual audiences and offering diverse content but, again, they largely target people who are already interested. As Dan Gillmor has repeatedly said, we have a problem with demand rather than supply. There is a risk that the science writing of the future will only reach the eyes of the converted."

• Title says it all. Note that some flaky stuff is unfortunately included... (via Ben Goldacre).

• Not exactly surprising, but interesting. There are, however, a bunch of potential flaws. The researchers relied on a 'natural experiment' (Chinese students knowing a lot more science facts than US students), and that this means subjects weren't randomly assigned to the groups. The bottom line finding, for example, is that though Chinese students knew many more science facts, they were no better at scientific reasoning that American students. This, argues the authors, suggests science education focuses too much on facts, and too little on a 'deep understanding of scientific reasoning'. But hold on. Maybe US culture (pluralist, individualistic) is more conducive to the emergence of scientific reasoning skills, but bad at teaching it formally. And maybe Chinese culture (conformist, hierarchical) is bad at fostering those skills, but better at teaching it formally. In other words, it could be that Chinese education does teach scientific reasoning skills, which partly overcomes various cultural biases against it. Granted, it would be a coincidence that the magnitude of this change happens to make it statistically no different from the Americans' skills, but this is not impossible, nor is it the only problem with the study.
  

• Another Not Exactly Rocket Science piece, this time on an awesome study that used a genetic algorithm to study the evolution of communication.
• "[The researchers] think that similar processes are at work in nature. When animals move, forage or generally go about their lives, they provide inadvertent cues that can signal information to other individuals. If that creates a conflict of interest, natural selection will favour individuals that can suppress or tweak that information, be it through stealth, camouflage, jamming or flat-out lies. As in the robot experiment, these processes could help to explain the huge variety of deceptive strategies in the natural world. "

• I blogged a while back about Uganda's shocking child sacrifices. Now it seems American evangelicals have famed the flames of anti-homosexuality extremism in the country. A Ugandan lawmaker has actually proposed the death penalty for homosexuality. Evil and religion, who would've thought?

• NY Times columnist Ross Douthat on tolerance. He points out, correctly, that tolerance (in its valuable and defensible sense) isn't about mealy-mouthed, relativistic "acceptance". It's about a lack of compulsion - i.e. coercion - in matters of belief and conscience. Vigorous debate is certainly compatible with tolerance.
• "Liberal democracy offers religious believers a bargain. Accept, as a price of citizenship, that you may never impose your convictions on your neighbor, or use state power to compel belief. In return, you will be free to practice your own faith as you see fit — and free, as well, to compete with other believers (and nonbelievers) in the marketplace of ideas."
• "That’s the theory. In practice, the admirable principle that nobody should be persecuted for their beliefs often blurs into the more illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion. Or champion one’s own faith as an alternative. Or say anything whatsoever about religion, outside the privacy of church, synagogue or home."

• Breaking: homeopathy is bollocks.
• "To put homeopathy in a medicinal context, if you wanted to consume a normal 500mg paracetamol dose you would need ten million billion homeopathic pills. Where each pill is the same mass as the Milky Way galaxy. There is actually not enough matter in the entire known Universe to make the homeopathic equivalent of a single paracetamol pill."

Give it the gas: On the road to a cleaner energy future, natural gas offers an alternative route

Every few weeks, it seems, fresh news arrives telling of impressive discoveries of oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico, an area that, until recently, was viewed as well worked over and unlikely to yield any new bonanzas.

Last September brought word of a giant Gulf oil field reeled in by British Petroleum. And the latest Gulf headline-maker is a potentially major gas play offshore Louisiana that appears likely to add new trillions of cubic feet of gas to growing domestic reserves of the cleanest-burning carbon fuel.

So much for worked over. The new take on the Gulf is decidedly more optimistic.

Goldman Sees ‘Upside Risk’ for China’s Oil Demand

(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said it sees “significant upside risk” to its forecast for China’s oil demand this year.

China’s oil consumption growth may exceed the bank’s forecast of 625,000 barrels a day in 2010, analysts including Jeffrey Currie said in an e-mailed report today. The country is the world’s second-biggest fuel user.

Pakistan: Rise in fertilizer rates to cause Rabi yield decline

LAHORE - The sudden raise in the prices of fertilizers after acute shortage of water in the country could lead to decline production of Rabi crops particularly wheat up to 20 to 30 per cent of the total production.

Experts said that the quantity of fertilizers is usually increased in case of water shortage.

Zambia: State to Plan Ahead for Indeni Maintenance

MINISTRY of Energy and Water Development Permanent Secretary Teddy Kasonso has said that advance preparations in the face of routine maintenance closures at Indeni Oil Refinery will help address the fuel shortages in the country during the period.

In the past, the nation has experienced fuel shortages because of starting the preparations for sufficient fuel stocks at the last minute.

Ethiopia inflation soars to 7.1 pct y/y in Dec

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia's year-on-year inflation rose to 7.1 percent in December from 0.6 percent in November on the back of rising fuel, food and construction material prices, the statistics office said on Friday.

Inflation in the vast Horn of Africa nation hit a high of 64.2 percent in July 2008. It then entered a period of deflation from July to October last year.

Life getting harsher in North Korea

Food shortages have been made more painful because "it's the elite that creams off the food produce," said Muntarbhorn, whose six-year term expires this year, at a press conference in Tokyo.

"There's also a shortage of medicines, particularly now the H1N1 flu has arrived," said Muntarbhorn, who said he had interviewed many refugees from North Korea but never been allowed to visit the isolated country.

Indonesia: Gasoline prices in Timika skyrocket

This shortage of fuel had caused a two-kilometer long queue of hundreds of motorbikes and cars for gasoline at two fuel stations in Timika over the past week.

In response to the situation, Nawaripi fuel station`s supervisor, Rifai, said the state oil company, Pertamina, just delivered him eight to 10 kilo litres a day over the past six days.

That supply was much lower than 29 kilo litres a day he normally received from Pertamina, he said.

Hawaii school bus service being cut back as costs soar

Public school bus routes, which were cut back in November, will be reduced further next school year and the fare may climb to $1 from 75 cents.

The Department of Education will eliminate more school bus routes on O'ahu next school year by increasing the distance students will be required to walk to school.

Walk distances for students were increased in November from 1 mile to 1.5 miles for secondary students, and the fare jumped from 35 cents to 75 cents for a one-way trip.

Asia Fuel Oil-India Essar offers second Feb cargo

SINGAPORE, Jan 22 (Reuters) - India's Essar Oil has issued a tender offering up to 60,000 tonnes of February-loading fuel oil, its second cargo for the month, amid an improving market, tender documents showed on Friday.

Oil Caused Recession, Not Wall Street

The take home from my work and that of Hamilton’s is that the received wisdom may be wrong. Wall Street, sub-prime and regulatory failure are not the ultimate cause of the economic melt down. The root of this crisis is probably oil.

Are You Prepared for the 5 Deadly Emergencies?

Oil prices are on the devil’s own roller coaster, but the big picture is that we are still in a head-on collision with peak oil. What’s more, the cheap, easy-to-pump oil is fast being used up.

To be sure, there were plenty of oil discoveries in 2009, especially in Brazil and the Gulf of Mexico. A whopping 10 billion barrels of oil was added to reserves, the highest rate since 2000. However, the world is consuming around 83 million barrels a day, which equates to 31 billion barrels a year. So, even in a good year, we barely replaced one third of the oil we consumed.

Biofuels: The New Alchemy

At the World Future Energy Summit, some of the most influential people in the renewable energy industry will strategize for solutions to the global climate crisis. Read about some of these new technologies.

Solar Power: Sunshine's Cloudy Days

After a period of rapid expansion, panel manufacturers today are reeling from a pronounced supply surplus, falling prices and stagnating sales. In 2009, industry revenue plunged by nearly 40% to about $25 billion from $40 billion the previous year, according to BankAmerica Merrill Lynch alternative-energy analyst Steven Milunovich. Solar-panel output far outstripped demand last year; manufacturers made 66% more product than they were able to sell, estimates research firm iSuppli located in El Segundo, Calif. Some analysts believe the dismal conditions will persist into 2011, setting up marginal players worldwide for failure. "A large number of manufacturers will not survive," says Paul Semenza, an analyst with research company DisplaySearch, based in San Jose, Calif.

Cutting Carbon: Should We Capture and Store It?

The potential impact of CCS is huge. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that CCS could contribute between 10% and 55% of the cumulative worldwide carbon mitigation effort over the next 90 years. The International Energy Agency says that CCS is "the most important single new technology for CO2 savings" in power generation and industry, and will need to account for about one-fifth of the carbon mitigation effort this century — reducing carbon emissions as much as renewable energy sources will.

Though it requires up to 40% more energy to run a CCS coal power plant than a regular coal plant, CCS could potentially capture about 90% of all the carbon emitted by the plant. To solve the problem of climate change, we "need to use every option we can," says Nick Otter, head of the newly-created Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI) in Australia, which will fund pilot programs and network CCS efforts around the world. "And we've got to have some realism to the approach."

In Abu Dhabi, the Green Economy is in Rude Health

The feeling among many conference-goers can be summed up like this: the politicians might have failed to act on climate change, but everybody else is going to push on regardless. Take Bill Gross, founder of eSolar, a California-based firm that builds solar power plants that use mirrors to concentrate sunlight and boil water that then turns a turbine. Gross has just cut a deal with a privately-owned Chinese power equipment manufacturer to build, over the next 10 years, solar power plants that will generate 2 gigawatts of electricity. To put that in perspective, that's about four times more power than what's produced by all the solar power plants in the world right now. There's interest beyond China, too. After a lunchtime presentation, would-be buyers from the Middle East and Europe milled around to talk to Gross about possible projects, as well.

Real People, Real Preparation, Part 6 With Faith Carr and Carolyn Baker

Faith Carr, after working hunched over a desk for 35 years, ended up disabled. Exhausted after even more years of progressive political activism with no success, she turned her hand to her own backyard. The 25 square-foot herb garden turned into a homestead. Come the revolution, she'll bring the eats.

Pick-your-own vegetables to replace flowers in high street

A Lancashire town is experimenting with using traditional floral displays, including hanging baskets and herbaceous borders, to grow slightly less colourful but more practical greens.

The idea taking shape in Clitheroe is to replace flowers with edible vegetables and offer a modest "pick-your-own" service of plantings to anyone passing by.

Growing Home—Urban Agriculture in Chicago

"Well over 50 percent of the world's population lives in urban communities," says Orrin Williams, the employment training coordinator for Growing Home, as he explains the importance of urban agriculture.

“Urban agriculture is, in my mind, critical to the rebirth of cities and communities that have fallen on hard times,” Williams says.

Oilrigs should be used for homes in areas at risk of flooding, report says

Decommissioned North Sea oil platforms should be towed to the waterfronts of coastal cities at risk of flooding and converted into homes, shops and universities protected from rising sea levels, a study recommends.

Britain should not retreat from the waves but embrace them, adapting to climate change and consequent flooding by building new communities, either on stilts or floating platforms.

Should energy independence be a high priority in the US?

The year is 2013, five years after peak oil. Gas is now over 11.00 a gallon. The average American no longer drives a car. Only the government and the military have access to large amounts of gasoline. It is a world none of us could have imagined.

The average American family of four has made drastic changes to survive. It is a cold Midwest morning, the alarm goes off at 7 AM. The family wakes up to a cold, 55 degree house. An electric spacer heater is the only form of heat, and all electric, nation wide, is shut off from 11PM-7AM. Through out the winter months, only three rooms are heated, the living room, the kitchen, and one bathroom. Because of this, all the beds are now set up in the living room. On top of each bed, are sub zero sleeping bags. These sleeping bags are the difference between life and death, as all across the nation people freeze to death every night in their homes. This has become so common that no one even takes notice anymore.

Oil Falls to Lowest in a Month on Concerns Over Demand, China

(Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell for a third day, dipping below $76 a barrel in New York to its lowest in a month, after a U.S. government report showed refineries in the biggest energy consumer cut processing in response to lower fuel demand.

U.S. refineries ran at 78.4 percent of capacity last week, the lowest rate outside the Atlantic hurricane season since at least 1989, according to the Energy Department. Oil is headed for a second weekly drop after U.S. President Barack Obama proposed restrictions on risk-taking at financial institutions while concerns grew that China may take more steps to curb price increases.

Commodities Have Further to Advance, Hermes Fund’s O’Shea Says

(Bloomberg) -- Commodities, as measured by the S&P; GSCI Light Energy Index, may gain as much as another 10 percent this year, led by oil, sugar and coffee, according to Colin O’Shea, head of commodities at Hermes Fund Managers Ltd.

The index, which Hermes uses as a benchmark, advanced 15 percent last year, buoyed by Chinese demand for oil, copper and other commodities. The gauge has a 36 percent weighting in energy, 30 percent in agriculture and almost 18 percent in industrial metals, based on data from Jan. 21.

Russia Sees Oil, Gas Share of GDP Falling to 14%

(Bloomberg) -- Russia, the world’s biggest energy supplier, may see the share of oil and natural gas in gross domestic product fall to 14 percent within a decade from about 25 percent now, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said.

Oil prices may average less than $70 in the course of the next 10 years, undercutting revenue and reducing the energy industry’s share of GDP, Kudrin said at a conference in Moscow today. Budget revenue from the mineral extraction tax and export tariffs on oil and gas may drop as much 4 percent during this decade, Kudrin said.

Russia Considers Shift From Crude Oil Export, Extraction Taxes

(Bloomberg) -- Russia is considering shifting from oil export and mineral extraction taxes to a levy on “excess profit,” said Ilya Trunin, director of the Finance Ministry’s tax and customs department.

Schlumberger Profit Falls as Customers Cut Spending

(Bloomberg) -- Schlumberger Ltd., the world’s largest oilfield-services provider, said fourth-quarter profit fell 31 percent after oil producers slashed spending during the global recession.

Net income dropped to $795 million, or 65 cents a share, from $1.15 billion, or 95 cents, a year earlier, Schlumberger said today in a statement. Excluding one-time items, profit was 67 cents a share, 3 cents higher than the average of 26 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Venezuela’s Planta Centro Generator Sputters Amid Energy Crisis

(Bloomberg) -- Planta Centro, Venezuela’s biggest fossil-fueled power plant, is operating at less than a fifth of its designed capacity, exacerbating a power crisis that has shuttered businesses from aluminum plants to shopping malls.

The plant operated at 267 megawatts of power on Jan. 20, or at about 13 percent of its 2,000 megawatt capacity, according to a daily report from Venezuela’s grid manager, the National Electric System Administration Center, known by its Spanish acronym CNG. The plant hasn’t produced at more than 26 percent of capacity in at least three months, according to CNG.

Venezuela rejects Junin 10, Mariscal Sucre offers

CARACAS (Reuters) - Offers made by foreign companies to help develop Venezuela's Mariscal Sucre offshore gas field and its Junin 10 extra-heavy crude field "did not meet expectations," oil minister Rafael Ramirez said on Thursday.

Nigerian Court Tells Cabinet to Decide on Presidency

(Bloomberg) -- Nigeria’s Federal High Court said the Cabinet must decide within 14 days whether ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua is unfit to discharge his duties as leader of Africa’s top oil producer.

Justice Dan Abutu issued the ruling today in one of three lawsuits seeking to force Yar’Adua to step down and hand power to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan.

'We can survive -- but we must change`

Human population has been on overdrive since the Civil War, he said, and a sustainable level of human population may be no more than 1 billion people. That has created quite a predicament -- the long emergency. A group of 500 scientists gathered for an energy conference in Denver last fall agreed that the global rate of oil production peaked in July of 2008. From that point on, oil will be increasingly expensive and harder to pump.

"Our governments are not prepared for peak oil any more than they were for the recent recession," Brownlee said.

The experts are telling us we need a 20-year crash program to prepare for and avoid the coming devastating consequences, but "it`s not even being considered yet. We`re likely to be caught short. Local communities will feel the pain."

Reliance Industries Q3 profit rises 15.8 percent

MUMBAI — Indian refining and energy giant Reliance Industries announced its first profit rise in over a year on Friday as its performance was boosted by higher natural gas production.

Reliance, India's largest private sector company, said net profit rose 15.8 percent to 40.08 billion rupees (878 million dollars) in the fiscal third quarter to December from 34.62 billion rupees a year earlier.

The electric car revolution will soon take to the streets

For years, the promise and hype surrounding electric cars failed to materialize. But as this year's Detroit auto show demonstrated, major car companies and well-funded startups — fueled by federal clean-energy funding and rapid improvement in lithium-ion batteries — are now producing electric vehicles that will soon be in showrooms.

Swiss pilots aim to circle world in a solar-powered plane

ABU DHABI (AFP) – Bertrand Piccard is no conventional environmental activist -- he hopes to raise awareness about the potential of renewable energy by flying a solar-powered aircraft around the world.

"What we want to do is to fly day and night to show that, with renewable energies, you can have unlimited duration of flight, no restriction," Piccard told AFP at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, where he had a booth to promote his venture.

British State May Have to Subsidize Nuclear Power, Auditor Says

(Bloomberg) -- The British government may have to subsidize construction of nuclear power plants because it lacks a guarantee from Electricite de France SA that new stations will be built, the country’s auditor said today in a report.

Economic considerations, including the price of carbon, difficulties getting plants approved and EDF’s financial position may hamper the company’s efforts to complete projects, the National Audit Office said.

NRC cites fire hazards at Alabama nuclear plant

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators warned the Tennessee Valley Authority on Thursday about "apparent violations" involving fire safety at the utility's Browns Ferry nuclear plant in north Alabama.

Officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the findings don't pose an immediate safety risk but are urging TVA to fix the three-reactor plant, which suffered a nearly disastrous fire in 1975 and later had to shut down for more than two decades due to problems.

Governments 'must tackle' roots of nature crisis

Governments must tackle the underlying causes of biodiversity loss if they are to stem the rate at which ecosystems and species are disappearing.

That was one of the conclusions of an inter-governmental workshop in London held in preparation for October's UN biodiversity summit in Nagoya, Japan.

China-led group may discuss climate fund for poor

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A meeting of four of the world's fastest-growing carbon emitters on Sunday ahead of a January 31 deadline for countries to submit their action plans to fight climate change may discuss a climate fund for poorer nations.

Senators Want to Bar E.P.A. Greenhouse Gas Limits

WASHINGTON — In a direct challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, introduced a resolution on Thursday to prevent the agency from taking any action to regulate carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases.

Protecting against climate change could cost nothing

Fresh air is valuable stuff. Climate change mitigation measures needn't cost us a penny, because the clean-air benefits could more than repay the price, according to a new study.

Low-cost carriers greener than full-service

Ryanair has emerged as an unlikely model for sustainable travel in new research showing that low-cost carriers produce up to 35 percent less carbon emissions per passenger than their full-service counterparts, due to higher load factors and seat density, as well as newer fleets.

Global Warming Increases Flood Risk in Mountain Areas

ScienceDaily — The world's mountainous regions are home to about 800 million people and the source of some of the world's major rivers. In these regions, runoff is strongly affected by temperature. This suggests that flooding could be quite sensitive to global warming, but there has been some lack of scientific consensus on the effects of temperature variations on floods.

Stronger Atlantic Hurricanes Seen Increasing, Damaging Property

(Bloomberg) -- The strongest Atlantic hurricanes may almost double in frequency by the end of the century as the planet warms, U.S. scientists said in the journal Science.

Occurrence of the most destructive hurricanes may rise 81 percent over 80 years while the total number of storms, including weaker systems, is projected to drop by 28 percent, the researchers said. The net effect may be to increase property damage by 30 percent, Tom Knutson, a co-author of the study, said in a telephone interview from Princeton, New Jersey.

Temperatures in Past Decade Were Warmest Since 1880, NASA Says

(Bloomberg) -- Temperatures in the decade that ended in 2009 were the warmest since record-keeping began in 1880, NASA said, backing up data from the U.K. Met Office and the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization.

For the past three decades, surface temperatures rose about 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) per decade, said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Average global temperatures have increased by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880.

“It’s completely unambiguous that the last 10-year period from January 2000 to December 2009 is very clearly the warmest decade in the historical record,” Schmidt said yesterday.

August-December

Oh the first month of school was something else… It went by so fast and was not at all what I had expected. I had hoped for more structure—maybe next year. The kids seem scared and timid, not anything like what I was used to at Alps Road. They really are very sweet but soooo dependent….


Olive Oil—a taller, quiet, shy child, who seems to feel like a misfit. She doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends and blankly stares at me with nothing behind her eyes… I want to crack her… I want to figure out what makes her tick. Mom seems supportive, but at a conference she almost made fun of her interests (thought it was ridiculous that she was obsessed with cats. I know she is going to be a crazy cat lady one day, but if that’s what she loves, then who cares??!?!).…put a new spin on things.

Bart Simpson—TINY!! He is so small and looks like he is in second grade. He never stays in his seat…constantly standing or leaning back. In September I decided how silly it was for this struggle…I just needed to put him in the back so that when he stood up, he wouldn’t block anyone’s view. [[It’s not rocket science teacher_in_training1!]] Sweet kid, but always have to stay on him… Mom is sweet, but I can tell that Bart Simpson gets what Bart Simpson wants….he is quickly discovering that I don’t work that way.

Harry Potter—kind of peculiar. He is really into dragons and kingdoms, star trek and magical journeys. His handwriting is HORRIBLE, but I can tell he is pretty intelligent. I don’t know if it is a lack of fine motor skills, or what, because he also cannot tie his shoes…YES in fourth grade and cannot tie his shoes. Velcro will not be his friend forever.

WWF Macho Man—funny… I think he will be the ladies man one day, because he is the “cool cat.” He is driven, though. Perhaps because of lots of encouragement at home, or perhaps he is self motivated, but either way, I think academics will be important to him. He is a bit of a floater; he doesn’t go unnoticed but doesn’t have a lot to define him in the dynamics of our class…higher middle kid

Eyore—can’t put my finger on him—he seems so lazy. He is always slow to start his work, always putting off doing his tasks. I can’t tell if he works slow, or doesn’t give a crap…hmm….maybe a little of both. He does excel in science and social studies…math kicks his rear and so does writing. Doesn't do so hot in reading either, but LOVES comics and manga.

ShowersBringFlowers—at first she seemed completely unmotivated, but I decided to have a heart to heart with her about how much potential she has…and poof! I received one of the kindest letters from her mother telling me how much she appreciated what I had done for her… one of those notes you never throw away. I need her to become independent…she now cares if she has the answers right, but needs me to guide her through every little step…motivated, but cant do it on her own just yet.

Princess Laila—CUTE little Asian girl….can write like there is no tomorrow, but in math, she makes careless errors and it drives me up a wall. Every time I look at her, I think of my friend Susan. I know there is more to know, but because she is so quiet, I don’t know quite how to tap into it… her mom is one of the kindest women I have ever met… always supporting me and making me feel like I am doing a decent job.

HopelesslyLazy—want to slap him…probably one of the laziest kids I have ever met in every subject EXCEPT reading. He reads ALL the time and really pushes himself to get AR points. I need to motivate him in other areas, but I’m not sure how!! He makes super low on any of the assessments I have given—not sure if it’s a learning deficit or just a lack of caring, still yet to be determined.

Eddie Bauer—what I want my child to look like one day (kind of). Short with a bowl cut and dresses like he is a model for Eddie Bauer and Gap. He secretly thinks being an Auburn fan burns me up (it doesn’t, lol). He is a complete perfectionist and reminds me A LOT of the way I was at that age… it takes him 400 years to complete his work because he wants to make sure it looks just right. His handwriting is amazing and his writing skills are out of this world…he doesn’t take criticism well. He makes me laugh though, because he spouts off with some comical lines here and there on the days he forgets the meds.

SpitternoQuitter—if I had one kid who was right on track (not above and not below) it would be SpitternoQuitter. Larger guy who would annoy me at first for not staying on the third tile in the hall, but realized that his physical stance made it difficult. A little silly, but ultimately is a smart kid. He can’t test worth a poop!!

Mama'sLineBacker—annoys the living crap out of me…and so does his mom. She has enabled him to be dumb---not stupid but dumb… Regardless of the fact that he is served for a learning disability in reading, this kid likes to pretend, I am sure of it. Well, maybe not pretend, but definitely do no work… I am going to break him off this I swear!! His mom wants me to let her know everything rather than making Mama'sLineBacker be responsible for his own work and assignments…not going to happen.

Peace,Love,andGreen—if I had a “Teacher’s Pet” she would probably be it. She is so cute, short blonde bob with cute clothes and a supportive family… she too is a perfectionist. However, she is also so emotionally charged that she doesn’t have a clue what to do with all her feelings. Mom pushes for perfection, and Peace,Love,andGreen wants it too, but she also has some low self esteem when she is not at the top of her game. She feels like a failure and tries to assure herself that she doesn’t care about being smart…she is.

BullyNoMore—I would hang her upside down with tape over her mouth if it was legal. Tattle tail, bully, pretends to be dumb and lazy. That pretty much sums her behavioral issues up…however, I think she knows I wont let her push me and she thrives on it, trying whatever she can to budge me. Well little girl, I am un-budgeable. I know there is more to her…regardless of how conniving she can be, because she is pretty generous (always is the first to let others borrow her things), I think because she longs to be accepted. But then again, she is the first to steal something out of another kid’s desk when they aren’t looking. She thrives on attention and I am doing my best to convince her that positive attention is better than negative.

BoyScout---LOVE this kid…total stereotype BUST. In this area, black males are often associated by society with being “ghetto,” poor, and uneducated. Benji on the other hand is a gifted student who is very articulate and involved in activities like Boy Scouts and karate (not the extra-curricular activities normally associated with young, black males living in the area). So smart…probably one of the smartest in my class. Shaggy curly hair, tall for his age, and completely grounded. He wears his thoughts in his face—whenever I teach, I look to him to determine whether I make any sense… when he looks confused, I know I need to re-word what I’ve said. Sweet family who wants him to have a good life…reminds me of my sweet friend, Nolen.