Canadian economists advocate putting a price on carbon

More than 220 prominent Canadian economists have signed an open letter to their government advocating a price on carbon, a cap-and-trade system, and a carbon tax.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/271633/220-of-canada-s-leading-economists-call-for-action-on-climate-change

Notes from the side..

In the June/July '08 issue of MIND, Michael Gazzaniga has some new insights into hemispheric specialization and problem-solving:

• The left-brain interpreter makes sense out of all the other processes. It takes all the input that is coming in and puts it together in a make-sense story, even though it may be completely wrong.
• The left hemisphere...tends to falsely recognize new items when they are similar to previously presented items, presumably because they fit into the schema it has constructed.
• The right hemisphere maintains an accurate record of events, leaving the left hemisphere free to elaborate and make inferences about the material presented. In an intact brain, the two systems complement each other, allowing elaborative processing without sacrificing veracity.

and not so new:

• ...the left hemisphere is specialized for language, speech and intelligent behavior, whereas the right is specialized for such tasks as recognizing upright faces, focusing attention, and making perceptual distinctions.

Read the full article at Scientific American MIND

purchase Escaping the Progress Trap online at amazon.com

Berkeley professor lists progress traps

Prof. Tadeusz W. Patzek, PhD, Professor of Geoengineering at UC Berkeley, California has posted a web archive of articles and comments on the progress trap phenomenon. 2008, 2007

Intuition is real!

Researchers at Leeds University Business School say that gut feelings or intuitions are real, and we should take them seriously. Read the Science Blog article here. Or read the British Journal of Psychology article Intuition: A fundamental bridging construct in the behavioural sciences - abstract.

At your service: Escaping the Progress Trap

Aurora Picture Show, a microcinema in Houston, Texas has released a collection of "informational videos by artists who use recent technological tools for purposes other than what they were designed to do and, in some instances, in direct opposition to their intended use." The title of the DVD is At your service: Escaping the Progress Trap and it is included with the Spring '08 issue of Art Lies Contemporary Art Magazine. The videos are also available on line at the Art Lies website and offer a challenging, funny and moving take on progress. See them if you think art can bring you to your senses. See them if you don't.