Day: May 2, 2002

The Reciprocity Principle (Or, Do Unto Others . . .)

With the ongoing problems at Userland, some Radio Userland users are starting to post some rather uncomplimentary things about Userland and Dave Winer. Winer, on the other hand, is apologizing and asking for patience,

I apologize for this on behalf of the whole company. The outage is something we have to deal with, and we did a far less than perfect job doing that. Our next efforts are going to be focused on assuring the security of the servers, so we may not immediately be responsive to user-level questions. Please try, if you can, to help each other out, and if possible, give us the benefit of the doubt. Thanks.

The problem for Userland, of course, is that Winer himself rarely gives people the benefit of the doubt. In fact he seems stuck in blame-the-messenger mode when dealing with people who point out bugs or other problems with Userland software.

So when he asks people to “gives us the benefit of the doubt,” I don’t think he’s going to find much sympathy. Hint to Userland: don’t poison your well.

High Yield Conservation Coalition

A coalition of individuals involved with global food issues has issued a declaration calling for more research into high-yield farming and forestry methods in order to provide better food security for the developing world as well as avoid cultivation of environmentally-sensitive ecosystems.

Nobel Peace Prizes winners Norman Borlaug and Oscar Arias have joined with former U.S. Sen. George McGovern, former Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore, James Lovelock and others in support of the “Declaration in Support of Protecting Nature with High-yield Farming and Forestry.” The declaration reads, in part,

Therefore, we, the signatories to this declaration, hereby declare that additional high-yield practices, based on advances in biology, ecology, chemistry, and technology, are critically needed in agriculture and forestry not only to achieve the goal of improving the human condition for all peoples but also the simultaneous preservation of the natural environment and its biodiversity through the conservation of wild areas and natural habitat.

We invite all organizations and individuals concerned with human welfare and the conservation and preservation of our planet’s rich biological heritage to join us in support of high-yield agriculture and forestry by adding their names to this declaration.

Center for Global Food Issues director Dennis Avery writes in a column for TechCentralStation.Com, that the alternative to high-yield agriculture and forestry is environmental destruction,

The leader of the new coalition is Dr. Norman Borlaug, the Iowa plant breeder who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Green Revolution. He and his fellow researchers saved a billion people from starving during the 1960s. But Borlaug was also the first to note (in 1986) that the higher crop yields saved billions of acres of wildlands from being plowed down for low-yield food. Today, the total of wildlands saved by high yield farming has risen to at least 12 million square miles (not acres), equal to the total land area of the United States, Europe, and South America. (Or 3,400 Yellowstone National Parks.)

Large amounts of land that is currently wilderness will have to be put into production if yields should taper off. It is good to see somebody fighting to avoid that possibility.

Source:

Declaration in Support of Protecting Nature with High-yield Farming and Forestry. Center or Global Food Issues, 2002.

High yield heroes. Dennis Avery, TechCentralStation.Com, April 30, 2002.

Good News for Africa Malaria Day

Africa recently marked its second annual Africa Malaria Day designed to highlight efforts at controlling the deadly disease. Almost one million people die from malaria-related complications annually; 90 percent of those victims are in Africa.

Despite the horrific figures, reports of new breakthroughs in understanding the mosquitoes that carry malaria was announced.

The Hartford Courant published a report on April 23, 2002, claiming that gene researchers would soon announce the completion of their efforts to sequence the mosquito genome.

This would mean that the genome for all three organisms involved in malaria — humans, mosquitoes, and the malaria parasite — have been sequenced, which should give researchers new insights into how malaria spreads and how better to treat and/or prevent it.

The Courant also reported that researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio will soon report that they managed to modify mosquitoes in the lab so that they were incapable of transmitting malaria.

Hopefully these new findings will mean the dawning of a new era of malaria research — one that can finally find a way to eradicate this disease.

Sources:

Africa marks war on malaria. Corrine, Podger, The BBC, April 25, 2002.

Scientists near big victory in mosquito wars. Robert Cooke, The Hartford Courant, April 23, 2002.