Prepare for Change

http://www.france24.com/en/20170226-renowned-french-historian-detained-10-hours-us-customs-officials "A French historian was detained for 10 hours by US customs officials this week while on his way to an academic conference in Texas. Henry Rousso, 62, a specialist in the history of World War II who has taught at the Sorbonne in Paris and Columbia University in New York, was held for questioning after his flight from Paris landed in Houston on Wednesday." While on the one hand Trump wants to create new jobs in the US, on the other he is single-handedly destroying international tourism and travel to the US.  No one wants to travel to a country where they will be treated like a terrorist or some sort of criminal.

http://www.salon.com/2017/02/21/universitys-solar-still-improves-ancient-water-cleaning-technology/ " But rising awareness of water scarcity issues has led researchers like Gan and his team in Buffalo to apply new techniques to make solar distillation more efficient. Their solar vapor generator and condenser uses porous paper covered with carbon black, a material that has a near-zero reflectivity and therefore absorbs a higher amount of solar heat. The carbon-covered paper is then placed over floating white polystyrene foam and a thermal insulator that helps concentrate the solar heat onto the carbon layer. The device is then placed on the surface of a dirty water source while the paper acts as a sponge and the carbon as an evaporator. The vapor then condenses on the angled wall of the vaporizer, seeping into a culvert that collects the potable water. Gan and his team have claimed that their prototype produces as much as three times more potable water as ...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/15/robots-schools-teaching-children-redundant-testing-learn-future?CMP=twt_gu "In the future, if you want a job, you must be as unlike a machine as possible: creative, critical and socially skilled. So why are children being taught to behave like machines? Children learn best when teaching aligns with their natural exuberance, energy and curiosity. So why are they dragooned into rows and made to sit still while they are stuffed with facts? We succeed in adulthood through collaboration. So why is collaboration in tests and exams called cheating? Governments claim to want to reduce the number of children being excluded from school. So why are their curriculums and tests so narrow that they alienate any child whose mind does not work in a particular way? The best teachers use their character, creativity and inspiration to trigger children’s instinct to learn. So why are character, creativity and inspiration suppr...

https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/02/how-being-replaced-by-a-machine-turned-this-graphic-artist-into-an-activist/ "The biggest change he’s referring to is the technologically driven separation of people from traditional jobs. Experts predict that, by 2020, over 5 million jobs will be lost due to robotics, AI, 3D printing, and other technologies—largely in office and administrative work. But other sectors will be affected as well. After all, robots can deliver pizza , mop floors , make soup , work an assembly line , check in hotel guests , carry cargo onto battlefields , and perform surgery . It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine them one day displacing sex workers ." Trump wants to re-open coal mines, which is like bringing back buggie whips.  We have to think more about what job displacement can mean. When I was young the magazine articles promised that robots would mean more leisure time for workers, not less pay and wealth transfer to corporations.  That ...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/12/solar-power-to-rise-from-chernobyls-nuclear-ashes "The 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine also resulted in vast areas of land being contaminated by nuclear fallout, with a 30-kilometre exclusion zone, which encompassed the town of Pripyat , being declared in the area round the facility. Now two companies from China plan to build a one-gigawatt solar power plant on 2,500 hectares of land in the exclusion zone to the south of the Chernobyl plant. Ukrainian officials say the companies estimate they will spend up to $1bn on the project over the next two years . A subsidiary of Golden Concord Holdings (GLC), one of China’s biggest renewable energy concerns, will supply and install solar panels at the site, while a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Machinery Corporation (Sinomach) will build and run the plant. 'It is cheap land, and abundant sunlight constitutes a solid foundation for...

http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/30/14128870/foxconn-robots-automation-apple-iphone-china-manufacturing "The first phase of Foxconn’s automation plans involve replacing the work that is either dangerous or involves repetitious labor humans are unwilling to do. The second phase involves improving efficiency by streamlining production lines to reduce the number of excess robots in use. The third and final phase involves automating entire factories, “with only a minimal number of workers assigned for production, logistics, testing, and inspection processes,” according to Jia-peng. The slow and steady march of manufacturing automation has been in place at Foxconn for years. The company said last year that it had set a benchmark of 30 percent automation at its Chinese factories by 2020 . The company can now produce around 10,000 Foxbots a year, Jia-peng says, all of which can be used to replace human labor. In March, Foxconn said it had automated away 60,000 jobs at on...